I'll admit it's been a while since I've spent more than a few short minutes in a cool room. While I clearly recall the evenings packing frozen pies into boxes after a staff member called in sick, in more recent years I've become Gold Coast-acclimatised. 20 degrees here is getting a bit nippy, and if it goes below that it's time to light a fire.

It's no surprise then that filming at APF Cold Storage & Logistics, in which the entire floor area (including where Tom works at his computer) is refrigerated, was quite a shock for my body. (His business is growing so quickly his office at this new site was still being built when we visited).

I remember one of the first times I spoke to Tom on the phone. It was late 2016 and we'd just come off the back of two very complicated implementations (I was still managing most of them myself back in those days). I was calling to check how things were going and clearly remember that our conversation was incredibly succinct. Tom was driving his car. In the time it would normally take to open with pleasantries and talk about the weather; Tom had asked me about 5 highly specific questions, we'd been able to quickly resolve all his issues, and the call had ended. I loved talking to this guy.

Tom Colyer was the first client we had who was a self-setup. He'd convinced us during the sales process that he would be capable of installing all by himself, and therefore wouldn't require our onboarding services. We had heard this before, but it had always resulted in a long-winded and very frustrating experience, so we were apprehensive about agreeing. Something about Tom seemed different, so we decided to give it a go.

All by himself he had been able to get his whole warehouse up and running, stock loaded, customers logging on, files automated, the whole thing - with little more than a couple of emails asking for clarification, and diligently reading our Knowledge Base.

From that point, I knew we were dealing with a true power user. Someone who would be the first to jump on a new feature, point out a knowledge base article which was outdated or immediately report an issue if something had gone wrong (thankfully, this hasn't happened for quite a while...).

It's no surprise that in the time I've known Tom, his business has truly stepped up and is really cranking along. He has multiple warehouses, all running CartonCloud. In the last 12 months his warehouse volumes have tripled. More recently, as he's built up his transport side, he's implemented CartonCloud for rate calculation and POD capture (once again, by himself).

It's been great to work with you Tom - our team are very excited to see what the future has in store for you :)