Marking the Occasion – 40 years at YF

Just before Christmas, we held a presentation at our factory for our Works Manager, Mark Knowles, who was celebrating 40 years of working at Y F Furniture.  Elaine Scott presented him with a bottle of his favourite whiskey to commemorate the occasion and said a few words about how much we appreciate his hard work and loyalty over the years.  In honour of such a newsworthy event, Carly had a chat with Mark about his memories of the last 40 years and put together a little rundown of how it’s gone and how it’s going…

Mark started work at YF (then Yorkshire Fibreglass) on 10^th December 1984, aged just 18.  He remembers the exact date clearly as it was the same day he passed his driving test: ‘I had an interview on the Friday with Bert Simpson [Yorkshire Fibreglass was then owned by two husband and wife teams – Mike and Elaine Scott who went on to own the business outright in 1998, and Bert and Jean Simpson].  They rang me that afternoon to ask if I could start on Monday, but I said I couldn’t as I had a driving test!  They said to come in afterwards. I passed in the morning and started my new job in the afternoon!’  Mark remembers little about his first day as it passed in a blur, but he knows that Bert showed him around and he met Mike Scott and Alan Bottomley (our former Works Manager who retired in 2016).

The next few years passed quickly as Mark learned a lot about fibreglass and laminating – in those days, Yorkshire Fibreglass manufactured fibreglass tub chairs and our biggest client was P&O Ferries.  Mark remembers that he hated the smell of fibreglass and was glad when David Overend started at YF so he could move on to foaming while Dave took over the laminating!

Mark also spent quite a lot of time in this period helping Mike out at home with his house renovation, something Carly remembers well from when she was a little girl.  This began a lifelong bond with the Scott family which Elaine particularly treasures – since Mike passed away in 2016, she often asks Mark to help out with DIY jobs at her home if things are quiet at work, and she knows she can always depend on him to be there if she needs him. She feels she has seen him grow up and we know that Mike too was very fond of him – despite their similarities sometimes leading to clashes!  Mark says his saddest memory of working at YF has to be the loss of Mike at the end of 2016 which hit him hard, but that he has a lot of entertaining memories of working with him including Mike giving him some money and sending him to the pub next door to buy them a pint each when they were working in the garden on hot days.

In the 1990s, Mark recalls a perilous trip to Birmingham with Bert where they had to navigate the spaghetti junction and he was map reading.  Both were smokers in those days although Bert was more of a cigar man.  Mark remembers that were both so stressed out by the time they finally arrived that he needed a cigarette or two to calm his nerves, and Bert asked for a couple too since he had no cigars on him!

During our days of dealing with the Northern Irish government during the Troubles, Mark used to travel over on the Wednesday night ferry and carry out deliveries every Thursday.  He said this could get very ‘hairy’ at times and quite frightening – he describes being stopped and searched by the army and, worryingly, spotting roadside bushes moving due to possible concealed paramilitary activists.

On a lighter note, Mark also recalls working alone with Dave on dark evenings in the factory section of our very old building (which was once a primary school).  He says the big old boiler used to ‘crackle’ and scare them, and he used to convince Dave that the building was haunted.  Which it may well be!

Over the years, Mark has done various training courses including gaining his forklift truck licence and becoming our designated First Aider.  He has worked his way through the ranks to become one of our most trusted and reliable members of staff – he became Works Foreman after we became a limited company in 2002, and was promoted to Works Manager when Alan retired in 2016.

Mark has seen a lot of changes in furniture trends through the decades, from the early days of fibreglass tub chairs through our contracts with the Northern Irish government where we supplied mainly operator chairs, to our furnishing Morrisons supermarkets nationwide and working long hours fitting desks and filing cabinets outside of opening hours.  Nowadays, the focus is on large modular sofas and soft seating units that we manufacture for other office furniture companies, and he is very much factory based.  Mike and Elaine’s daughter Carly and son-in-law Adam are now Joint MDs, and Mark is a valuable member of the management team alongside Adam, Carly and Elaine, working with Adam to plan production and deliveries and develop new products.

A bad fall in 2024 led to a fracture of Mark’s vertebrae and ribs and he had to take some time off work to recuperate, during which period he was very much missed.  He is back hard at work now, and busy taking the mickey out of everyone as usual – which we hope to see for a good while to come!

We hope you will join us in wishing Mark many congratulations for his special anniversary with YF and thanking him for his hard work over the last 40 years.  Here’s to the future!