For the last 6 years Ashton Manufacturing has sponsored an entry in the Anglican Church Grammar School’s annual billy cart grand prix.
The boys did a great job this year coming second in their heat, as you will see in the video.
The special paint job was completed by our team. Our polishers used orange metallic automotive paint which was overlayed with a skull design, which was a special request from the boys.
Business innovation is generating and successfully employing new ideas within your business. This can be in the form of creating and bringing a new product or service to the market, or a series of smaller innovations, for example, finding a more efficient way of working to become more profitable.
Innovation is generally a creative process and many business ideas need significant time, energy or money in order to develop and become commercially viable. Developing a culture of innovation in a business can be vital to its long-term success and profitability.
There are several reasons why the generation of new ideas can be critical to a business’s success. Although every organisation will have its own priorities and specific issues to balance, businesses that fail to innovate may ultimately lose market-share to their competitors, lose key staff, or simply be operating inefficiently. Innovation can often be a key differentiator between market leaders and their rivals.
Innovation can help businesses discover what opportunities exist now, or are likely to emerge in the future. Successful businesses not only respond to their current customer or organisational needs, but often anticipate future trends and develop ideas, products or services that allows them to meet a future demand rapidly and effectively. Innovation will help companies to stay ahead of their competition as markets, technologies or trends shift.
Innovation is not only about developing a new product or service to promote, but it can also look at existing business practices to improve efficiency, develop new customers, reduce waste and increase profit.
Continually improving business practices and seeking to innovate is also likely to help you attract better team members and retain more of your existing staff – something which can be vital to the long-term performance of your business.
Consumers often view innovation as something that adds value to a business or to its services and products. Executed well, innovation can give businesses a commercial advantage – especially in saturated or readily evolving markets. Studies show that consumers may even be willing to pay more for well-designed, novel and innovative product or service offerings, rather than choosing a cheaper, but less interesting rival.
We are delighted to announce that we are launching the Return to Sender™ range of coffins to Australia. Return to Sender are New Zealand’s leading designers and manufacturers of contemporary coffins, catering to the growing number of people looking for less traditional, aesthetically designed coffins with an environmental focus.
Return to Sender’s award-winning coffins are designed to ensure families are able to express what was important to their loved one through their coffin choice. Each coffin is handcrafted with care, from natural materials; made with the environment in mind; and allows for the expression of individuality and values.
What makes Return to Sender different?
Return to Sender believe in using design principles in support of the environment. A family that values beauty, design, creativity, integrity and nature will find a Return to Sender coffin is the perfect departing vessel.
Return to Sender use natural materials as much as possible – water-based colours, natural finishes, wool fleece instead of synthetic fabrics, corn starch and leather in place of plastic. Material use is kept to a minimum and clever design features such as timber locking mechanisms, reduce the need to non-decaying fixings.
Furthermore, Return to Sender coffins are part of our Memorial Tree Program, whereby a native tree is planted on behalf of the family when they choose one of these coffins. This becomes a living legacy of families’ loved ones and helps in our quest to reduce our environmental footprint.
The Wayfarer design coffin
Optional extras for the Wayfarer model:
Contact us for more information
Return to Sender’s award-winning coffins and accessories are available across Australia exclusively through Ashtons. For more information contact your state Account Manager or call us on 1300 263 346 (1300 COFFIN)
You can download the Return to Sender catalogue from our website’s Resources section.
There a several common mistakes that funeral directors can make when cleaning or polishing a coffin, and we explain what these are and how to overcome them in our new video called, ‘How to polish a coffin for a funeral’.
In this new video we show you how to properly remove dust and polish a coffin. The video outlines the correct techniques and materials your team should be using to make a coffin or casket looks its best at a funeral.
This video can be found in our exclusive Resources section. Simply click on the Resources menu on the top of the website and login or register as a new user.
Ashton clients have exclusive, free access to our website’s Resources section, which contains:
Registration is required to access this section. Simply click on the Resources link at the top of the website and follow the prompts to register as a user.