Steve Jordan interviews Simone Percy, one of the industry’s many colourful characters and someone who personifies the international moving industry.
It would be hard to imagine anyone more born into the moving business than Simone Percy. From early childhood, she was part of a moving dynasty. Today, working as partner relations and development manager for The Eurogroup in the UK, she uses that experience to help build the company’s success.
Simone was born in Liverpool. Despite her globetrotting life, she still retains a smattering of what is probably the world’s most recognisable regional accent. She left the banks of The Mersey when she was just six years old to follow her family to Abu Dhabi where her father, Phil Reilly, opened Aratrans (Arab Transport Company). In 1979 he started ADSA (which became DASA in 2004), now run by Simone’s brother, Craig. “We used to work there in the summer,” she explained, “helping to put files together. Mum did the surveys.” It was a real family business. The company joined FIDI (FIDI Global Alliance) in 2000.
Simone tried to escape the moving industry. She moved to Dubai with her husband where she worked for the World Trade Centre, then to Oman for a year, moving back when the Gulf War started. She took a job working with an engineering company, managing staff rotations all over the world. “At the age of 22 I was managing 90 engineers,” she explained. “I did that for four years.” But, eventually, she returned to the moving business to work for her father at ADSA.
Simone’s husband got a job in the UK in 1997, so she moved with him and her daughter back to her home country where she worked in customer services for British Airways for five years, including working on the Concord team. Her husband’s job subsequently took them back to Dubai (then a family of four) and then on to Australia in 2008 where Simone worked with OSS before returning to DASA in 2012 where she stayed until three years ago.
Her roving lifestyle had given Simone an empathy for the customers ...
Photo: Simone Percy.