SUPER salesman Karl Ward is taking big strides in business.

Shepley-based Karl, who has a string of sales awards to his name, is reaping the benefits as managing director of Surefoot Systems UK Ltd, a company supplying slip-proofing treatments for floors.

The company has supplied and installed the systems for major names including designer outlet chain McArthur Glen, Center Parcs, Next, Boots and The Mall Corporation, a company with 29 shopping centres around the country.

The treatments have also been applied to floors in bars, restaurants, council offices, supermarkets, sports centres and universities..

Surefoot Systems is exclusive UK distributor for the Anti-slip system and also has distribution rights in France, where it works with a network of 20 distributors and has supplied anti-slip treatments for the viewing roof on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

The firm has also supplied products for Mercedes Benz World, the car maker’s museum based at its UK headquarters and test track in Weybridge, Kent.

The latest development is to provide DIY packs for sale in hardware shops for the domestic market and small contractors.

Karl is also considering franchising the business – enabling other budding entrepreneurs to buy into the Surefoot success story.

“We have a proven business model and we have an incredible client base,” he says. “We have already spoken to the British Franchising Association and we have proved that this is an idea that can run and make a profit.”

Karl has invested astutely in the business – developing a website and acquiring a machine which measures slip resistance levels – to explain to potential clients how the systems work.

Karl is also quick to pay tribute to Business Link, which he says has played a big part in the firm’s success.

“Business Link was instrumental in helping me get a rural business development grant for things like IT equipment and new brochures,” he says.

“I’m now a member of the Business Link forum for businesses in the Huddersfield area.

“We meet once a quarter to talk to each other and hear speakers on business issues.

“The members all represent very different businesses, but we all have similar business concerns.”

Karl says health and safety legislation and the “no-win, no-fee” lawyers have helped drive demand for anti-slip coatings.

He says: “When I bought the distribution rights in 2002, I had an idea that safety and slip prevention would be big, but I didn’t realise how big it would become.”

Despite safety campaigns dedicated to reducing slips and trips, research by the Health and Safety Executive suggests that they remain a major problem – accounting for thousands of injuries each year.

But Karl adds: “It is not just about organisations trying to protect themselves from law suits. Providing a safe environment is also about doing things right for employees and members of the public.”

Karl’s success with Surefoot Systems has been hard-won. He had been successfully selling maintenance products and coatings for more than 20 years before being made redundant following a change of ownership at the firm for which he worked.

“I had no idea what I was going to do,” he says. “I was 47 and I had never been out of work. I tried to go for different things. I was offered two jobs which I turned down because they did not inspire me. I could not get excited about them.”

Instead, Karl followed up an advert from a Dutch firm seeking a UK distributor for its anti-slip systems.

“The idea was more exciting than the job offers I’d received, but also much more risky,” he says.

“It would have been easy to take a job offer and appear to be enthusiastic, but I knew I would be looking for another job within a few months. And it wouldn’t have been fair to the person who offered me the job.”

Karl knows all about being in the “wrong job”.

As a pupil at Almondbury Secondary School, he was captain of the cricket team and had trials for Yorkshire.

But at the age of 16, he joined the Inland Revenue valuation office in Huddersfield.

“My grandfather said I would have a job for life and a good pension,” Karl recalls. “But it bored the pants off me!

“One day, one of the ladies working with me said I ought to be a salesman. She said: ‘I’ve been listening to you on the phone and the way you handle complaints and questions you would earn a lot more money than being stuck in this place’.”

Karl got his first sales job as an independent distributor for Harrogate-based maintenance products firm Belzona.

In time, the firm’s founder offered him an employed role as sales director.

Says Karl: “I turned it down for 12 months because I did not want to be employed.

“Eventually, I was offered a contract and big salary and at the age of 35 I became a director of the firm.

“I took the job with the attitude that if I was fired, I would go into business for myself.

“I did 11 years as sales director and it was a great learning curve.

“When the founder died, it was all change. I was called in on a Friday afternoon and was made redundant with no notice.”

The offer from Holland followed – and Karl and his wife Caro debated the pros and cons of taking the big step.

He says: “We got a big piece of plaint wallpaper and some felt tip pens and did a ’SWAT analysis’. Writing a business plan was very difficult – even with my experience as a sales director.

“But we knew who our clients were and we knew how to pitch a sale.”

Now Surefoot Systems has a database of 500 contacts and has worked for 25 of the UK’s top blue-chip businesses.

It has supplied slip-resistant treatments for locations ranging from the Newcastle underground to Marylebone Station.

Away from work, Karl still enjoys his cricket, playing for Nortonthorpe CC.

He also helps Caro with her career as an artist who has exhibited at the Yorkshire Show and sold works to Zara Phillips and Jilly Cooper.

Karl and Caro have 13-year-old twin boys Daniel and Nicholas.

The family keeps two horses and has a menagerie of other pets.

“We are always doing DIY and gardening,” says Karl. “We also enjoy the countryside.”