Welcome to our new-design Mover. We have a completely new style including a new cover, new colours and new fonts, all designed to support our new digital format. I hope you like it. As you browse through this issue you’ll see some text highlighted in a fetching shade of blue. These alert you to interesting links that provide more information, either by linking to specific documents or websites, or to videos to help explain something more clearly or, perhaps, just for fun. You know us by now, sometimes we do that!
This month is particularly well packed with goodies. If you like football, have a look at page 10 to learn about a new moving company set up specifically to look after professional footballers. Page 14 carries the latest AMSA and IAM response to the US government about the military HHG contract. There’s my FIDI conference report on page 30, and an interview with its new president Ebru Demirel. Take a look at page 38 for an insight into the horrors of shipping into Lagos (just don’t). And, of course, read my interview with Alain Taieb of Mobilitas Group for a window into the man behind one of the industry’s most successful companies.
Read too, if you would, my story on page 36. It’s about money … or, at least, about the lack of it in the industry today. As the whole industry worldwide gets increasingly squeezed from corporates, RMCs and the public, I wonder whether it’s time companies held up their hands and said ‘Stop!’. Some may say that’s impossible or impractical. They may well be right. But there are examples of movers standing up to ‘the market’, refusing to be pushed around, and being successful. We live in a time when attitudes can be switched in an instant. People power has never been stronger, all it needs is a little pump priming. Please read the story and let me have your comments.
Finally, there are at least three stories in this issue about women talking on senior industry roles. I haven’t made a big thing about them, except here, because I believe we have moved on. We work in an industry that increasingly enjoys equal opportunity where the best people succeed, whatever their gender. That’s the way it should be and I believe, in the moving and relocation industry, we have achieved it. I would be interested to know what you think.