Shufflebottom #womanofsteel MD Alex Shufflebottom celebrates a major milestone

Friday, 6th June 2025 marks a very special and significant milestone in the ongoing Shufflebottom story. On this day twenty-five years ago, Managing Director, Alex Shufflebottom, started permanent employment at Shufflebottom and so on this silver anniversary, it’s an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on just how much has happened at Shufflebottom in those intervening years.

The new millennium

Rewind to the summer of 2000, when fresh out of university, a young Alex originally came on-board at Shufflebottom to help cover an annual leave requirement within the administration team. It was baptism by fire, as shortly after, following a surprise resignation from the then Buyer, Alex’s mother, Lorna Shufflebottom, (then running Shufflebottom) told Alex in no uncertain words: “You’ll be the Buyer from Monday!” As Alex recalls, she was adamant that she couldn’t do the role – she had no experience, it had a range of skills she didn’t have, but the protestations fell on deaf ears. “You’ll learn,” was the response. And so, Alex did, and was quickly immersed into ‘on the job training’.

The early years

Alex has often wondered whether Shufflebottom – and steel – were always in her DNA, and she was genetically programmed with the inevitability that she would ‘find’ herself in that new role as Buyer twenty-five years ago. Pictures from her family album show that after her birth in hospital, she was taken home in a welding truck! As she grew into a young child, and when children of her own age were off to the beach, her family days out were site visits, seeing customers, setting bolts, or taking measurements. All experiences that were to underpin her hands-on future at Shufflebottom.

On one of those many occasions, Alex (always with a penchant for pink!) accompanied by her father, Martin Shufflebottom, went on a site visit to take measurements, dressed for the occasion in a pink jump suit. Later she was to fall in a hole, where they were positioned in order to take measurements, holding on firmly to her staff, and said jumpsuit splattered in mud. Despite her protestations about her ruined attire, there was no sympathy from the then ‘boss’, simply the words: “Get out of that hole and hold the staff!” Looking back, those words were formative instructions, as, like all businesses, there have been a few metaphoric ‘holes’ to negotiate over the years, many staffs to hold.

When she was eleven-years-of-age, Alex received her first payment – 90p per hour for Saturday cleaning at Shufflebottom. Her one-and-a-half-hour stint necessitated a 06.40 arrival so that everything was in place and everyone at the benches welding by 07.00. This was an early start, especially on a Saturday, but again, perhaps Alex didn’t realise at the time that she was being prepared for a future role, and that time is relative, and that later, a 07.00 start would seem like a lie-in!

Shufflebottom remained as part of the fabric of Alex’s teenage years and during her university holidays where she’d be involved in many aspects of the business such as data entry, answering the phones, attending shows – all vital cogs in the whole operation – and vital for trying to clear her student overdraft!

A turning point

So, looking back, it might have been in the stars that Alex was going to take her place officially as a salaried member of the Shufflebottom #teamofsteel on that June day in 2000. And it was not just the turning point in a new millennium of the personal journey of Alex, but a pivotal point in the story of Shufflebottom.

A few years later, Lorna Shufflebottom made the decision to sell the business she had been running alone (a true woman of steel!) since the death of her husband, Martin.  So, it was in 2008 that Alex along with her brother, Wesley, and Alec Davies, undertook a management buyout. And the rest as they say is history.

Coming of age

Shortly after 2008, one of those ‘holes’ opened up and Alex and the new management team had to hold up their staffs! – this was the time of deep recession and prolonged austerity which saw tough times in the context of steel and construction. Alex remembers these times being some of the most difficult that Shufflebottom has ever negotiated. But, as the record shows, Shufflebottom adapted, grew, and emerged stronger to see the business through other ‘holes’ including COVID 19 and personal tragedies.

Alex and the management team injected new blood into Shufflebottom, committing to drive the business forward from a £12million turnover base. The business became of age, gaining its first CE Mark two years before it became mandatory for structural steel, and leading the way by becoming the first in Wales, and one of the first in the UK to achieve this. This award added profile to the Shufflebottom brand and positioned them for what came next.

Defining memories

In 2014 Shufflebottom scooped the prestigious Construction News Specialist Award, just one of many which have followed over the years since, including RoSPA Gold, a host of RIDBA awards, Training Awards and National and Local Business Awards. Alex will never forget the quote from the Construction News Specialist award judge: “Quality runs through the veins of this business… it is clear that they live and breathe their work.”  

This could not be truer of the family of staff at Shufflebottom who have given their all, and of Alex herself, who has literally lived and breathed her work at Shufflebottom alongside her smaller family of husband, Dafydd, and children, Henri (employed at Shufflebottom) and Ruby.

21st Century developments and ambitions

Alex’s work, along with that of Wesley and Alec has seen investments in the production process, including machinery; investments in staff; and in apprentices and the workforce of the future. Their work has seen Shufflebottom being awarded flagship contracts for £million+ across the UK, has seen the staff roll rise to 76, and the turnover rise to £25miilion+. Today, 25 years after Alex becoming an integral part of the Shufflebottom story, it is a company well-equipped for the demands of 21st century developments and ambitions.        

Along the way there have been many defining moments, too many for Alex to list. But on June 6th, 2025, she will look back on a company that has achieved so much and has so much more to come. She is proud of her accomplishments to date, and of the Shufflebottom name.

The next chapter

All stories evolve and develop, and after the sale of Shufflebottom to the Embrace Group in 2024, Alex Shufflebottom knows that Embrace’s metaphoric arms will wrap themselves around the business and all it stands for as the business writes its next twenty-five-year chapter.

We’d like to say a big diolch yn fawr to Alex and take a moment to pause and celebrate with her on 6th June.

In summary, Alex Shufflebottom was once asked, “What does it feel like to be a woman in the steel industry?” Alex, being Alex, answered simply and directly. “I’ve only ever been me, so I’ve never known anything different.” Her life story shows us why.