18th March 2026
The Hop Pole in Limply Stoke has a lot going for it, recently becoming a community owned pub.
The renovation has been done well, it has opened up the old building and made it much larger. In my opinion it stands as an example of how the village pubs of the future can survive.
Community owned businesses could be a thing of the future. The village still has a small motor repair garage, a rare thing in today’s times.
It was an ideal venue to meet up with Bob Wood and Keith Baker. Both in their eighties and remarkably sharp, we reminisced, and as normal Bob had a lot to say, with Keith butting in where appropriate.
I never get tired about hearing about the early days, all the small details that I add to what I already knew, adds the colour to the painting.
We all agreed that our time with the company was the most exciting, as a fledgling company we had a lot to prove, and that gave each of us the incentive to be successful. Each increase in turnover gave us strength, and increased our market share without much effort.
We were in an era when furniture topped the list of business growth, long before Apple and the other big boys dominated the markets, for furniture, that will never happen again.
The company continues along a flattening curve where it tries to find innovation in a market where it’s no longer recognised. Different styles of working has dulled the blade, and new niche products do little to excite people.
Herman Miller has become a reproduction business, re-introducing classic designs from the early catalogs, it is gambling on finding new customers that appreciate mid century pieces, but with a CEO earning in excess of five million dollars a year, that a awful lot of product that has to be sold to cover that.
We talked for what seemed like an age, the lunch was good and the beer matched it.
As we all had a similar choice from the menu, Bob managed to get us to subsidise his coffee as we divided the bill equally, as only Bob does.
Another Lifetime to go 