DAVE WITHEY
DAVE WITHEY
ON 50 YEARS AT ARENA
Horse Guards Parade
Arena Group UK and Europe sales and marketing director Dave Withey looks back on a remarkable career at the company.
From a Newbury stables to many of the biggest global entertainment and sports events of the past half century, Dave Withey has had a remarkable career with Arena Group. In between working on major stadium projects, Withey takes time out to recount the many defining moments, including the development of the Clearview system for the London Olympics and working on no fewer than 22 Elton John tours.
You started working at Arena full time back in January 1977. How and why did you join the team?
I was at St Bartholomew ' s Grammar School in Newbury doing O-levels and then A-levels. Back in 1975, if you had anything about you, you got a summer job at Arena. Arena was tiny then. There were only a few full-time employees and most of them were part of the Smith family. We went out and built little grandstands around the country. It was a fantastic summer job. I did that for a couple of years, then went off to the Winchester School of Art for a year. My father had died during that period and my sister was ten years younger than me, so I thought I needed to come back and help. I went back to Arena and they said, " Yes, come back, the business is growing really quickly." It was run out of a Newbury riding school, out of the stables at the back. The rest is history. I never left.
Dave Withey
What were the early highlights of those early days at Arena?
[ Arena EMEA Seating MD ] Terry Smith ' s father, Ron, was chairman of the table tennis association in Newbury. Ron managed to attract an international event to the Newbury Corn Exchange, and then he looked at it and thought,‘ How ' s everyone going to be able to see?’ He was a design engineer, so he went up
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