00:00Family, friends and the leather industry, thank you and a massive thank you to Patrick, Krista and all the teams at the Oswald Leather Steel Centre.
00:12And councillors would you like to come in and have a photo as well?
00:16Yes.
00:17And then I'm going to ask Patrick to say a few words.
00:21Do come on in.
00:23Here we go.
00:30OK.
00:31So Patrick, we'd like to just say a few things.
00:34Do you like the Oswald Leather Steel Centre?
00:35Yes, the gentleman wants to have two words before me for some reason.
00:38OK.
00:39Safety. Health or safety?
00:40Safety.
00:41Great.
00:43Right. OK. Just a few words.
00:44First of all, I want to say I'm so proud of the fact that the Sandless Company decided to start this charity bike ride 160 miles through the glorious British country, English countryside and then 14 miles to urban sprawl.
00:58And I hope that by the time you reach the end of it, you will have earned the name Soar Saddlers because I know that that's what you call yourselves.
01:05I'm so pleased that the company, who is a great supporter of this Leather Skill Centre and has been the idea and the implementation of it from the very beginning in getting a training facility back in the centre of the town.
01:20I'm so pleased that they've decided to launch this bike ride from here.
01:23I think it is a great showcase for Saddlery. It's a great showcase for what can be achieved when different stakeholders come together and work with each other, both the industry, supporters like the Saddlers Company, the Learners Company, Performance to People and the industry in the town, what can actually be achieved by it.
01:40It's only a few years into its conception and while it isn't making money yet, I fully intend that it will be so that I can eventually retire.
01:50Anyway, I'm so pleased that you've all turned out to support us. I want to thank the councillors from Walsall Council and I know we're going to have some conversations later because this is only the start of the Walsall Leather Skills Centre.
02:05I have an ambition to expand it into a larger space, wherever that might be, so that we can deliver a lot of the other training courses that people are increasingly asking us to do, like the shoe making, the pattern making, pattern cutting, the bag making and the machining courses, which, as you can see from how cramped it is, we're kind of stuck for space.
02:26We're kind of stuck for space, but hopefully, hopefully it's a very bad strategy. We will get to that point, I know, with the sport ball people. Anyway, so I think I've done it.
Comments