Apprentice challenge in Lisbon
Our 40th birthday celebrations continue apace as we’re just back from an amazing adventure in Portugal. Over 70 salon owners, Saks Awards winners, Art Team, HQ staff and our fave suppliers all thoroughly enjoyed an action-packed weekend in the magical city of Lisbon.
Say Saks you lovely lot!
The main activity of the trip was ‘The Apprentice Challenge’… with added Saks style of course! Teams pitched to show the Big Boss and his Advisors that they had exactly what it takes to succeed in bringing a brand-new business – providing some of Portugal’s most famous products – to the UK market.
Extremely sensible team-building exercise
Everyone rose to the challenge and the new-business action played out on the beautiful cobbled streets of one of the oldest cities of the world. It was all about finding out who does what best, playing to strengths, nurturing and empowering the quieter ones, and embracing working as in a team whilst making new friends too.
Apprentice Challenge team on a mission
The winners achieved marketing magic to hear the words ‘you’re hired’ with their flawless pitch promoting ‘Portugese Drinks’. Huge congratulations go out to the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’: Tina Rook – Head of Saks Apprenticeships, Tanya Flynn – Saks Dundee, Paul Carrigan and Karen Williams – Saks Leeds, Jodie Brook and John Goddard – Saks Skipton, Helen Gee – Towergate Insurance.
A flawlessly planned itinerary left plenty of time for everyone to relax, soak up the sunny atmosphere, sight-see… and get glam to party too!
Awards ceremony to get to? Taxi for the Saksy girls!
Our Big Boss, Stephen Kee says: “Everyone LOVES our conferences but Portugal has exceeded all expectations. This year is a huge 40th year celebration for us all and due to our expansion plans we have quite a few new franchisees opening salons this year.
We LOVE rewarding our superstars
Stephen continues: “Portugal was a perfect opportunity to show our new people what makes Saks special – they got a fantastic flavour of what being part of Saks brings. We also took our Saks Awards winners this time as it’s equally important to reward our salon superstars too.”
Roll on this time next year we say!
Big thanks to our lovely sponsors – CosMedix, Elemis, ghd, Kerastase, L’Oréal, Redken, Towergate, Saksessories and Xen-Tan.