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Polestar excites strong opinion. Again.

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You know that old superstition about bad things coming in threes?

Polestar seemed to be having one of those happenings last week.

First, the group found itself making an appearance in the Sunday Times’ Prufrock column, which drew an unfavourable parallel between a Polestar party planned for last Thursday and the likely lack of partying for the group’s former pensioners.

Second, a fire at a storage facility at Polestar Bicester put the group’s disaster recovery planning to the test.

Third, come party night, a fire alarm resulted in Polestar’s guests being evacuated from the venue minutes before the speeches were due to begin.

I did have visions of a dissident group of pensioners standing underneath a fire sensor, brandishing cigarette lighters… however, after a short hiatus the event continued as planned.

There is no getting away from the fact that Polestar’s jettisoning of its pension scheme obligations has left a bad taste. But the unusual arrangement to spin the scheme off in the first place was rubber-stamped by the Pensions Regulator and the scheme’s trustees. So any blame game really should be three-way.

However tactless the theme of ‘no-one parties like Polestar” was, Polestar did do a good job of selling the sizzle when it comes to its planned web offset revamp. The actuality is still some way off, but by this time next year a brace of 96pp webs should be up and running, location tbc.

I have lost count of the number of people who’ve said “this is never going to happen”, but I remember hearing the same about the Sheffield gravure supersite. Polestar has something of a knack when it comes to pulling this sort of stuff off.

Crucial to it all is the drive of chief executive Barry Hibbert. I’ve also lost count of the number of people who’ve said “Polestar wouldn’t exist by now without Barry,” and I have to agree with them.

He really did electrify the room when he addressed the assembled customers.

What began as a bad week turned into something of a triumph. You can see why Kathy Woodward found him such a stand-out candidate all those years ago at BPC.

 


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