Happy 20th Anniversary Cheryl – Twenty Years at eil.com today!

Happy 20^th Anniversary Cheryl – Twenty Years at eil.com today!

It’s a cause for celebration here at eil Towers today as our Operations Team Leader, Cheryl, is celebrating her twentieth anniversary at eil.com – yes that’s right 20 Years!!

So let’s set the scene: August 5th 1996, a sprightly Cheryl starts her first working day at Esprit International Limited, John Major was Prime Minister, Bill Clinton was US president, Trainspotting was on at the cinema and the Spice Girls were in the charts with ‘Wannabe’, how fitting – Girl Power indeed!

Talking with Cheryl it’s evident quite how drastically the company has changed in that time, in ’96 that new-fangled internet/email was just being introduced, so in true mail order fashion Cheryl’s early responsibilities included processing hand-written (hand-writing what’s that?) orders, answering the phone, or if things got truly 21^st Century there was always……The Fax Machine!

As the years rolled on Cheryl’s responsibilities changed, she’s been involved with adding stock, part of the telesales team, pulled and packed more orders than most of us had hot dinners, in fact if you’re unsure about how something works at eil.com you could do worse than ask Cheryl as she’s almost certainly been involved somewhere along the line -now I understand why her colleague Roy has described her as, “the glue that holds the company together” – aahhh, makes you kinda’ warm inside doesn’t it!

Joking aside, what makes somebody stay at the same company for twenty years? Cheryl says, “I’ve had some great times over the years, working in music, free concert tickets, summer BBQ’s, Xmas parties (oh the Xmas parties!) but most of all the people, they’re not colleagues, they’re more like family, that’s what makes me come back everyday”

Here’s a few words from Cheryl herself…

Well what can I say I guess I am now classed as Rare on this 20 years Milestone.  20 years working at eil.com formally known when I started back in 1996 at the young age of 21 as Esprit.

I have worked with some amazing people over the years working in various departments including customer service, stock addition and packaging with colleagues I class as close friends.

Now I am the operations team leader.  On a day to day basis I ensure that all customers orders are processed, packed and dispatched and that all incoming stock is scanned and put away into our now barcoded system, back in the day when I started it was all hand written labels and postal/telesales/fax orders.  How times change!  Yes we now have a website lol

I have some great memories from over my 20 year period being able to see Michael Jackson in concert was a highlight for me, the Christmas parties we have had and various social events that has brought us all closer together into the eil family we have today.

I want to thank Cathryn, Robert and Julian for putting up with me over the past 20 years!

We celebrated this week with a team BBQ:-

some of the eil team!