How Roy Turned a Passion for Welding into Rapid Welding

Happy as a Pig in Mud

Can you remember the careers quiz at school, the multiple-choice questionnaire that supposedly matched you to your perfect job, with answers ranging from very insightful to completely misleading.

Now imagine the teacher’s horror when a young Roy Edwards, after reading the questions and filling out his answers, firmly set the paper down and declared that no matter what the results were, he knew exactly what he wanted to be.

Roy was going to be a Pig Farmer!

And why not? Even though he had no prior experience of pigs or livestock, as far as Roy was concerned, working with animals was a pretty cool job, and he couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else.

Sadly, his teacher scuppered his dreams. Having explained to Roy that, as exciting as working with pigs might seem and yes, they were very cute when they were little piglets, with no course or training programme to go on to get the right qualifications, he would need to have a re-think.

Funnily enough, nothing in the quiz results suggested how well-matched Roy would be to a career in welding.

School Leavers

On waving goodbye to school and the dream of pig farming, Roy straight away found work as a trainee Rigger with a company called Proctor Aluminium Masts. The end goal, Roy hoped, would be the offer of a full-time role in the company, and while Roy got down to the final three, he sadly wasn’t offered the position.

Never one to be disillusioned, Roy switched paths and instead carried on as a trainee welder. Welding was always something Roy thought would be a good job to do, mainly because his next-door neighbour did it and he always seemed to drive a nice car, so obviously it was very well-paid work!

Learning his trade, Roy started welding using an old Quazi Arc Oil Filled Welder with an HF box; quite a hefty bit of kit by today’s standards and a crude way of aluminium welding, but it was a powerful learning tool.

After a brief stint in Lincolnshire with the RAF, Roy realised that welding was definitely what he wanted to do above all else, and on his return down south he quickly found a job with an aircraft component company, part of BTR Industries, and it was there that he obtained his qualification for welding aviation products; this was 100% x-ray, if the weld failed, the aircraft could come down!

At this point, Roy realised there were huge benefits to having a wide breadth of experience when it came to welding, and he went on to complete roles using a variety of welding processes, such as MIG, TIG, Stick (MMA), Orbital and Plasma.  He gained his ASME IX (9), (an international coding standard), for pipe/boiler work, and with coded welder status Roy went on to work in a range of jobs, such as making pressure vessels/pipe installations, tanks for dairy farms, Brighton’s Sea Life sea lion enclosure, and pipework at Rutherford Atomic Laboratory, Didcot.

But he still wasn’t where he wanted to be.

A Change of View

Roy had the practical experience, and the qualifications, but he decided that it was the right time to switch things up and try a new challenge.

But was this to be in teaching or selling?

In 1986 he joined a company called ARC Welding Supplies in Fareham, as their full-time Equipment Salesman.

Anyone who’s met Roy knows he’s a people person, very passionate and intensely committed to building on and improving things, even if it seems to everyone else that it’s a hopeless cause. It’s no surprise that, very quickly, he was tasked with opening and establishing a second branch of ARC Welding in Dorset, but after four years there, it was time to move on.

Wanting things Pronto

With funding and advice secured from previous customers, Roy, along with his brother, Rob (a Ministry Approved Senior Design Engineer), set about starting their own sales business based out of Porchester. Having been a welder for so long himself, Roy recognised there were gaping holes in the welding supplies sector, and he certainly knew what annoyed him as a paying customer. There were distinct areas that could be improved on in the overall market approach, such as supplying quality products, holding plenty of stock, and getting the right equipment to customers fast. Issues such as lack of information and poor service just weren’t things Roy took kindly to or accepted, because who doesn’t want to feel like their custom is appreciated?

The next dilemma was what to call the new business, and what the branding would be. For ages, nothing seemed to stick. Roy knew he wanted the colour scheme to be red, and this was non-negotiable – Red is bold, it conveys action, responsiveness and energy, everything he wanted for his new company. Between them, Roy and Rob went back and forth trying to decide on a name which encapsulated all of that, and in the end, they decided the business would be called, ‘Pronto Welding’.

At the very last minute, as Roy walked into the printers to produce his first batch of business cards, he changed his mind and Rapid Welding was born!

Even then, during those early Rapid days, Roy still couldn’t forget his previous quandary about pursuing a teaching career, and so as well as starting up a new business, he also committed to lecturing at Highbury College to share the welding love.

Rapid is the Future

“Rapid and Roy are a fantastic company and so lovely to work with! They always offer the best solution, and they have everything you could ever need, from hobbyist to professional!”

Mikala Eade, Technical Sales Representative at Lincoln Electric

Because the last questionnaire Roy filled out suggested he would excel at Pig Farming, and because I can’t trust him to respond to an email with any degree of seriousness, I decided to pick up the phone and ask, “What would you be doing now if you weren’t the MD of Rapid?” 

His answer, straight away, and unsurprisingly is, ‘Engineering, in some form’.

Being hands-on is very much ‘Roy’, whether he’s working on a classic car at home, painstakingly rebuilding an old motorbike from scratch, or out on official Rapid duties.

35 years on from when Rapid started, and with a team of long-standing, dedicated staff whom Roy is very quick to attribute the success of Rapid to, you will still find him visiting customers, enthusiastically showing them the newest bit of kit or jumping on a plane to hunt down the latest innovations in welding technology, just to be ahead of the curve.

As Stuart Rogers, Rapid’s Director of Operations, says, “Roy is a boss and leads – passionately! He can’t always be your friend, but when your chips are down and you run out of luck, you don’t have to ask. He’s always looked after me.”

And that passion and determination has brought Roy, and Rapid Welding, to the here and now, and there’s no doubt that will continue long into the future.

Something tells me that if Roy had become a Pig Farmer, he’d have made a fantastic success of that too.

Thank goodness he chose welding.