Celebrating Women in the Automotive Industry

AutoRaise Interview with Ruth Moring-Beale.

In recognition of International Women’s Day 2025, AutoRaise spoke with Ruth Moring-Beale, Director of Strategy & Growth, to discuss her journey, the importance of integrity in leadership, and how businesses can attract and retain the next generation of talent.

What first drew you to the automotive repair sector, and what has kept you passionate about it?

My parents, Slim & Win Moring, were the founders of Morelli Group in 1957, so I was born into the industry, living above our first shop in Southgate, North London, until we moved to Hertfordshire when I was 4. I was the youngest of four children, with 22 years between my eldest brother and myself. Whilst I didn’t intend to enter the business, going to Brunel University from school to study Psychology, my father became very ill and died in 1984, just as I was finishing my degree. As he had passed the business to the four of us, I had a choice to make about whether to join the business or give back my shares. My siblings were by then running the business, and they offered me an opportunity to come in as a salesperson and give it a try. I decided to give it a go and never looked back!

As a family, we are all passionate about Morelli Group, as we are now entering into the fourth generation of the family, with some of Slim & Win’s great-grandchildren now in the business. The refinish industry is one that pulls you in and never really lets you go! It’s a relatively tight-knit community with relationships that stretch back over many decades. We have customers who have been dealing with us for nearly our entire history, so these are very special relationships to cherish.

As a senior leader, what key leadership qualities do you believe are essential in today’s evolving industry?

I believe that integrity and honesty are the key qualities that any leader should live by. With long-term relationships such as ours with our customers, suppliers, and our staff, we have to be known as a company that can be trusted. We are respected as having defining family values that extend across our company, as many of our staff have been with us for many years, with a growing 25 year-plus long service group. We believe that our customers really admire these values and trust us to deliver what we promise. We also walk the walk, not just talk the talk, which is vital to us all.

What advice would you give to businesses looking to attract and retain the next generation of talent in automotive repair?

We believe that it is important that anyone joining our business has to understand the DNA of what makes Morelli Group the company it is today. This is difficult to communicate as a business grows and evolves, so we took a decision 3 years ago to put all of our sales team through a training programme called Being Morelli, devised by us with Robert Snook. This has been a two year programme that all of our sales team has gone through, splitting them into two groups of more experienced staff and younger or more recent additions to the team. The aim is to try to instil our family values, integrity and vision into the team that is at the forefront of bringing our message to the industry. We feel strongly that every business must be able to communicate its core values to anyone seeking employment as this is what will stand you out from the crowd when young people are looking for a job – providing you are true to those values.

How can repairers better future-proof their businesses in response to changing customer demands and industry regulations?

That’s a $64m question! As the market becomes more challenging, as we have seen at the beginning of this year, repairers are under pressure to deliver better service to their work providers, give their staff better working conditions at the same time as maintaining safe and sustainable environments within their businesses, all at a time when the costs of running a business are higher than ever. Retaining key staff by investing in training is important, as is giving younger entrants the opportunity to enter the industry to augment our ageing workforce. Initiatives such as AutoRaise, aimed at bringing young people into the industry with apprenticeships, are important, but repairers must recognise their role in training young people correctly and not leaving them to flounder because “we don’t have time for training”.

What roles do collaboration and partnerships play in driving innovation within the sector?

Our business success as a distributor is largely built on the relationships that we have built with our supplier partners over our nearly 70 years in business. By working together to promote their products using not just aggressive pricing but the key features and benefits to drive better working practises and efficiencies which have in turn delivered cost savings to the repairers, we have ensured that we are a trusted partner who will work with them in the market to grow together. We have a saying in Morelli that has become a mantra – “There are three things in a sales relationship: Service, quality, and price. You can only ever have two of those three!” Most of our customers choose service and quality, which will be remembered long after the price is forgotten.

Our Eyebox Training and Conference Centre is an excellent example of collaboration and partnership with our suppliers as it is now a hub for the industry to showcase their most innovative products in a professional, state of the art facility, at the same time as delivering training of the highest standard.

Looking back on your career, what’s one piece of advice you’d give to your younger self stepping into the industry for the first time?

The best advice I can give anyone entering the industry is to treat every day as a learning day. Absorb knowledge, ask questions, and strive to be the best you can be as that is how you will be remembered. I’m often asked about being a woman in a man’s world, but I don’t see the world in that dimension. I’ve spent 40 years making sure that I’m not noticed for being one of the few women in a room, but for being someone who knows my job and hopefully earns the respect of my peers for that alone. It’s OUR world, not a man’s world, and it’s a great industry for us all.

What’s been the most rewarding part of your career so far?

That’s such a tough question! There have been so many key moments in Morelli’s history, and therefore mine. If I have to choose one, the acquisition of Bancrofts in December 2000, nearly 25 years ago, changed all of our lives as it took Morelli from a southern-based business to a national business overnight. The amalgamation was probably the hardest thing we have ever had to do as a business and as a family, and it took a few years to get it right, but we are a much stronger business now as a result of that. Our recent expansion into Northern Ireland is another such key moment in our history.

I hope that we will see many more!