About Us
Kathy Wayland
DIRECTOR & TRAFFIC CO-ORDINATOR
Having completed a career as a Personal Assistant to several well-known executives, it was time to use her exceptional project co-ordination skills and carve her own destiny in business.
Lauren Karlin
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
Her innate creative ability tempered with a keen eye for detail and an ability to hone in on ‘what-counts’, developed as a Homeopath, Lauren has a natural affinity and love for all forms of advertising.
Vuyo Stiya
DIRECTOR OF SALES & MARKETING
With a wealth of outstanding experience culminating as a Lodge Manager in hospitality, Vuyo has taken advantage of his innate people skills and high values and moved into advertising.
Phil Cooper
CREATIVE DIRECTOR & STUDIO MANAGER
A pedigree of Awards and recognition for his outstanding contribution to Gear’s 2011 and 2015 Amara Awards and a finalist at the 2012 Loeries’ Awards, as well as having 12 International Contest Gold Awards under his belt.
Our HISTORY
1978
Draftmore (Pty) Ltd
Jimmy Wayland, first an employee for several years and then as a part-shareholder acquired 100% of the shares in 1978 after the American & UK multinational of Davy McKee decided to disinvest from South Africa. The company specialised in identifying and placing specialist engineering personnel (temporary and permanent).
1981
Wayland Associates
Draftmore was renamed to facilitate a carefully planned move into a management and executive placements service, while continuing the former operation. As the new service grew, the engineering operation was slowly phased out. Wayland Associates introduced the concept of retained and exclusive assignments, while introducing a search process previously not seen in South Africa.
1994
Deloitte & Touche Executive Placements
Jimmy Wayland was approached to help found an executive placements service, which saw Wayland Associates being absorbed into this global firm. In 2002, following the USA Anderson / Enron debacle of 2001, the new Security and Exchange Commission legislation forced the remaining ‘Big 4’ Accounting and Auditing firms to ‘let go’ of services that could remotely threaten the independence of audits. Through an amicable and mutually beneficial agreement, the nucleus of staff from the Cape Town placement office were allowed to rebrand and become independent of their former company and employer.
2002
Executive ABAC Talenting
The service rebranded as Executive Partners (EP) and Academic Partners (AP) and continued serving all prior clients. Deloitte allowed this new entity to continue operating from its premises in Cape Town – a tenancy that lasted for a further 6 years. In 2008 Deloitte decided to relocate to the CBD of Cape Town, while EP/AP chose to remain in the immediate vicinity. Today the company is housed in its own property in Constantia and continues to help Deloitte clients who are in need of top-end appointment services.
2010
Gear Advertising
The brand was initially launched in May 2010 as part of Executive ABAC Talenting (Pty) Ltd., as a means to saving advertising revenues, while improving previously held external services. For the remainder of 2010, Gear Advertising only provided an internal recruitment advertising service to its colleagues. In 2011, the unique concept of attracting passive readers was shared and Gear’s service was quickly taken-up by many AP and EP clients. Within 3 short years, this new brand had positioned itself nationally as the third biggest recruitment advertising service in the private sector. Because of this unprecedented growth, it was spun out into its own private limited company in August 2013. It has since won numerous awards and is the only service in its sector to be accredited by both Media Credit Co-ordinators (financial accreditation) and the Association of Communications and Advertising (creative accreditation).