Lesson 28 Presentation of the Company

All right, hello everyone, it’s nice to see so many people. I’d like to welcome you this morning to this presentation of the company, Platt & Sons Ltd. My name is Barbara Platt, and I’m the managing director. Now, as most of you know, we manufacture exercise equipment. We have a full range, all made to the highest standards. I’d like to say a little about how we began. The company was started in 1958, by my grandfather, Eugene Platt, who used to cycle competitively. Unfortunately, an accident put an end to his cycling career. That’s when he started his company. He started off by producing bikes. The bikes he made in 1958 were competition models, but he soon started producing bicycles for recreational use. In the early 1970s, we brought out our first cycling machine, which was very popular with general public, and a bit later on, we developed a range of these machines.

In the 1980s, we started producing other equipment, such as rowing machines and multi-gyms. With these, we saw our clients change from mainly private individuals, who wanted equipment for home fitness, to organizations likes ports centers, which now account for about 60 percent of our sales. We also sell to a lot of hotels.

We’ve recently started working with a sports doctor to design some machines specifically for use in hospitals. We expect to bring these new products out in the early spring.

So far, we’ve focused on the domestic market, here in Britain, but we intend to start exporting, first to other countries in the European Union. France and Germany are possible candidates.

And last, but certainly not least, you might have seen the recent reports in the local press. You might have read that Platt & Sons is suffering financial difficulties, because we lost an important contract to one of our competitors. I can assure that there is no truth in the reports. Of course, we were sorry to lose the contract, but we are healthier than we have ever been.

Vocabulary 词汇：

manufacture 生产；制造

equipment 设备

recreational 休闲的

rowing machine 拉力机

multi-gyms 多功能锻炼机

account for 占…

domestic market 国内市场

candidate 候选地；候选人

contract 合同