Most of you would have seen our email re updates on Toprock staff members, for those of you who haven't, here is a rundown on our team Nick - Rocks for breakfast, ,lunch, supper, dessert daily.. Madagascar, Namibia and Africa supplies and trips, sorting, pricing, emails. Occasionally answers his phone in between nick@toprocks.com
Gaynor and Renate- Admin, emails, freight, orders, accounts. Renate is German and we pity he who doth not respond efficiently! Gaynor is a qualified book keeper but runs with the Motorcycle clubs as a hobby but keeps everything accounted for and running on the farm. Kat corresponds with you lovely folk and is our metaphysical kitten. (and have known her from 9 years old!)
Brandon Kath and Adre upload onto the website daily and keep everything on the website running smoothly. Brandon is family of Brian and part of a rock family that we have worked with for many years. Adre keeps the website updated and loads, fixes all of our mistakes and also makes the special jewellery when she isnt loading (which isn't very often!) We still have no idea how Kath, Brandon and Adre read Nicks handwriting but they specialise in reading reverse Drunken Russian spider scrawl apparently!
Vusi runs Warehouse # 1 Manager , Rock Sheets, sorting, packing.. also known as Superman.. you have never seen anybody who can work this hard and we haven’t ever seen him without a smile yet ! Vusi bought a new car and now won’t work on Sundays anymore, so we may have to let his tyres down!
Jono and Brian - 800-1200 Photo’s daily...they get a little hot out in the sun, but we have built a beautiful undercover open natural studio and they do get to jump in the pool here now and again, or catch the odd snake to break the day up! Jono has gone from being the whitest guy in the world to being the reddest! Brian has a terrible sense of humour, but they both have a superb eye for the rock . They get abused daily and even seem to like it!
Gavin works on the computers and does some of the photography and is in charge of getting emails out and also is our in house goat herder and drummer. Kat - Admin, Freight, enquiries…of dozens of other activities that arise daily. Super friendly, extra ordinarily happy and extremely efficient kat@toprocks.com.
Wayne runs warehouse # 2 and works with Tsepang and George He is our happy body building powerhouse who is built like a sh brickhouse (just the occasional groan when we give him 12 orders to pack at once!) and we don’t know how we would manage without him and Tsepang packing. Tsepang is over 7 feet tall and can reach the tallest shelves and and we have to treat him well, otherwise the Basket ball teams will snatch him up in a jiffy! George is stock room control and anything that comes up and is the most reliable person you could find...our packing team have a 99% no breakage record!
Albert has been with us for over 16 years now and is Toprock Rock cleaner, unpacker and sorter and whips the rest of the staff into order when they get out of hand, and also recently found a beautiful deposit of Florescent Spearhead calcite and quartz in Lesotho which he mines in his spare time. There are some classic beauties coming out of here now, so well done to Albert for all of his hard work and inquisitive streak.
Tommy is from Madagascar but he comes from a Rock family that we have known for 30 years, and is our Warehouse 3 production manager, but also has excellent Videography and Photographic skills and is quite the cool cat. Some say that even the largest bushy trees around here are a little jealous of Tommy's Afro!
Ali and Thobeka make up the tens of thousands of boxes that we use! Ali - The smallest staff member with the biggest heart, much like an ant, Ali is capable of cheerfully carrying three times his own body weight when containers of new stock arrive!
Tudor fixes al of the broken items that come in from all over and is our Mini Clint Eastwood guy. Garie and Trudy are our Lapidary couple that spend half of their time in South Africa and half in Zimbabwe, but never stop making and polishing stones off all shapes and sizes. I have known Garie for over 25 years (We are absolutely certain that Garie dreams about polishing rocks in his sleep!) .
We also have Voahangy, Eddie, Vuluna, Jose, Raholy, Andy and Claude in Madagascar who are family and have mostly been permanently with us now for 24 years. We also have a team in Namibia that we work with, including my good friend Jakkie and we are busy building our new warehouse up that side which will be finished soon.
Tim Bishop, who is our webmaster and oldest friend works for himself and has set up systems from banks to the largest entertainment companies in South Africa and England, but manages the Toprock It and websites (and his son, Tate is THE Top racing driver South Africa and we are very proud of him!) Tim occasionally gets fed Brandy for his hard work!
We are extremely lucky to have such excellent staff of all shapes, sizes, nationalities, colours and textures. We have had a few changes of personnel over the years and have even had Russian and American personnel running our offices in Madagascar, but mostly, we have stuck it out together. .. and we also have an awesome wide array of many hundreds of miners and rock folks all over Africa and Madagascar that are either permanently or partly attached to us who work with or rely on Toprock for their rock mining/polishing supply systems....and we mostly know their Grandmothers and families if they get out of hand!
We are also very gratefully for the troops of monkeys that jump over in inside of our warehouses all day (and eat any food lying around!) multitudes of birds, bugs and critters large and small, herds of Nyala, Zebra, lizards and even the snakes that we are surrounded by in our beautiful natural bush that we live in. (although we could probably do without the Black Mamba's that likes to live in our warehouse!)
....And we are very grateful for our wonderful customers and clients who support us from all over the World. We get better international news than any news channels! Thank you to all of you who support Toprock.
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