Meet the Gladstone team 'down under!'

Rob Patterson, Sales & Account Manager - Gladstone Australia

Gladstone Health & Leisure's Australian office has now been established for almost 4 years where they have implemented over 200 sites including gyms, leisure centres, universities, council offices, aquatic centres and police citizen youth clubs.

The office was originally established by the General Manager, Martin Sparkes who has over 9 years of experience working with Gladstone where he previously worked as Head of Operations in the UK. "It was a great opportunity to set up the office in Sydney and I've certainly enjoyed the challenge and the change of culture and lifestyle. We are making great progress in the market and are confident we can grow significantly over the coming years especially with the exciting developments we have planned''

Martin was soon joined by Rob Patterson in sales and Ben Chamlet in technical engineering. Martin commented "Ben is the technical guru of the office and we haven't found a problem he can't solve...yet! In his spare time Ben can be found playing football for Mosman FC, whereas if Rob is not selling to a gym he can be found working out in one!

Gladstone Australia's training team consists of Linda Hogan and Paolo Coniglio. Linda transferred from the Gladstone office in Ireland to join the growing number of Irish expats based in Sydney. Linda has a number of years experience with Gladstone and previously worked in hospitality. As a keen golfer she has been working on her handicap with the much improved weather conditions. Paolo is the latest member of the team and joined the business in April 2007. He previously worked for the Good Guys where he trained stores on their point of sales systems. If you ask nicely he can still get you a cheap deal at the local store.

All of the team members are actively involved with supporting the growing Australian client base and are excited about many new developments to be shortly introduced. Connect2, our online module, is currently being heavily promoted by the Australian team. The latest version now includes purchasing online memberships, non-member bookings and taking enquiries online. Martin commented "Today we now all bank online or book our flights so it just makes sense to purchase your gym membership or book a PT session online. It also makes your website more "sticky" by attracting greater hits. We are also in the process of adding Securepay as a payment gateway to provide greater flexibity for our Australian customers"

26 June 2008