| Greenspeed has been a family business ever since it started in 1990. Originally conceived by Ian Sims and started in the shed in the backyard, Greenspeed now has expanded into three factory units in a neighbouring suburb. Ian now employs nine fulltime staff, four of these are family members Christine, Paul, Mick and Rachael.
Greenspeed originally started by buiding each trike individually for each customer, around one trike per month. One of the first customers was in New Zealand, possibly a sign of the exports to come.
After some years of struggling away in the shed with three extra employees Paul, Scott and later Mick, Greenspeed took the big plunge and moved into a lease factory, meaning bigger overheads and Greenspeed's first big test to still break even.
With demand increasing and parts supply starting to burst at the seams, a mezzanine floor was constructed for parts storage upstairs, assembly downstairs that was protected from the fabrication going on outside the newly constructed walls.
A few employees came and went in the next few years with Harry in assembly becoming one of the current crew.
By this stage, construction was getting up to around 2-3 per week, and room was becoming scarce once again. It was decided and timely that the unit next door came up for lease, so next door became solely for manufacturing.
With welding going on next door, the assembly area became the factory offices of today and the outer factory became the new assembly/dispatch area.
Mello and Mick W joined the team soon after as sales were up to around five per week. Harry moved from assembly to fabrication and this was the team for the next few years.
A third unit was purchased (three in a row, believe it or not!) and the fabrication moved into this, assembly moved into where fabrication was to make more room for both assembly and parts storage. The original unit houses the factory offices and dispatch. Owen joined the Greenspeed team soon after. Mello moved onto another job and was replaced with Paul N. The original office still resides at Ian and Christine's residence in the bungalow out the back, with roadtests and consultation still going on from there until this day. At the time of writing, this is the current configuration of Greenspeed in Australia.
Greenspeed, in it's pursuit to get more trikes to more people with the same quality, started out sourcing one size of the GTO frame. A few companies were approached and it took a while to get the standards that they wanted to achieve. With GTO frames being made for around three years, it was decided by everyone to introduce a cheaper model that had no compromises to the Greenspeed name. The GT3 was this creation and is currently Greenspeed's best seller. February 1st 2005.
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