BQ National Summer 2017

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Celebrating and inspiring entrepreneurship

BUSINESS QUARTER Summer 2017

YORKSHIRE SHEPHERDESS IS THE BEST BAA NONE Amanda Owen has shown her entrepreneurial flair through diversification

GOING INTO BAT Stuart Robertson invented the Twenty20 cricket format and is now bowling over fans in Hampshire

A BUCKET FULL OF LAUGHS Expanding from domestic into commercial cleaning helped Rachael Flanagan to scale-up her company

Summer 2017

Fighting to be the

BEST HE CAN BE

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Jonathan Walker lost an eye to cancer but battled to build his Gambaru gym business

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“Uncertainty has become the only certainty since the financial crisis. Yet entrepreneurs have been unfazed by a coalition government, referendums on Brexit and Scottish independence, and crippling interest rates being offered to well-established small businesses.”

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As a dedicated supporter of entrepreneurship, BQ is making a real and tangible contribution to local, regional and national economic growth across the UK. We are unique in what we aim to achieve as a media brand, a brand that has established a loyal audience of high growth SMEs as well as leading business influencers. They wholeheartedly believe in BQ’s focus on people – those individuals that are challenging the traditional ways of doing things. They are our entrepreneurs. BQ reaches entrepreneurs and senior business executives across Scotland, the North East and Cumbria, the North West, Yorkshire, the Midlands, Wales, London and the South, in-print, online and through branded events.

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SUMMER 2017

Dealing with uncertainty is one of the key skills that all entrepreneurs possess.

Whether it’s the fall-out from a snap election and hung parliament, the unexpected foreign exchange movements that can affect export deals or the nagging doubts that surface while looking at a spreadsheet in the early hours of the morning, entrepreneurs use their creativity, their innovation and their nowse to overcome such challenges each and every day of the year.

And it’s just as well, because uncertainty has become the only certainty since the financial crisis. Yet entrepreneurs have been unfazed by a coalition government, referendums on Brexit and Scottish independence, and crippling interest rates being offered to well-established small businesses.

The summer issue of BQ magazine is full of entrepreneurs who have risen to the challenge of uncertainty. Amanda Owen – better known as the “Yorkshire shepherdess” – has diversified her business from farming sheep to welcoming tourists, helping her family to weather the storms that face our agricultural sector. On slightly shorter grass, Stuart Robertson has gone from inventing cricket’s Twenty20 format to going into bat for the game in Hampshire.

Former investment banker Anna Frankowska spotted a gap in the market for an app that could update partygoers on the best venues and has since won backing from the Bacardi family. Rachael Flanagan seized on an opportunity of a different kind as branching out from domestic cleaning into serviced offices has allowed her to scale-up her company.

Siobhan Cook built property firm Archco brick-by-brick and has been able to succeed in the property crash that followed the 2008 global banking crisis. Land is also the focus for Tim Viney… but in a different context; he aims to double the size of his company as it maps every single graveyard plot in England.

A year on from the Brexit vote, Dame Anne Glover – the first chief scientific advisor to both the Scottish Government and the president of the European Commission – reflects on politics, spin-outs and entrepreneurship. Uncertainty doesn’t come bigger than the UK’s future outside the European Union.

Richard Pierce has good reason to be screaming about his ice cream – or rather Italian gelato – as he’s sold 40 million scoops of it in the UK. If you’re in search of something a little warmer then Kasim Ali, founder of the Waterloo Tea Company, has the answer.

Food is also on the menu for Mark Timmerman, who took the cake shop chain founded by his father and turned it into a catering business with more than 1,000 staff. Meanwhile, Henrietta Morrison has been busy cooking up treats for our four-legged friends, growing Lily’s Kitchen into a £30m business.

Health is high on the agenda in this issue too: Jonathan Walker explains how overcoming cancer has helped him to run his Gambaru gym business, while Susanne Mitschke shares the story behind MindMate, an app to help people with dementia and their families.

Finally, we have a tale of two handbags: one set repaired by Ben Staerck, who branched out from restoring leather furniture; and the other created by brother and sister James and Belinda Yu, who were inspired by their Chinese grandmother’s wicker work. While these two firms are starting out on their journeys, James and Henry Deakin represent the latest generation of entrepreneurs at the helm of Deakin and Francis, England’s oldest family jeweller.

Thank you to everyone who took the time over the spring to give me and the team feedback on the maiden issue of the newly-expanded BQ magazine. Please continue to get in touch to tell me what you love – or don’t love – about BQ. Peter Ranscombe, editor

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CONTENTS SUMMER 2017 42 FIGHTING BACK Losing an eye to cancer didn’t stop Jonathan Walker

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A DALE TALE Amanda Owen is much more than simply the ‘Yorkshire

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MIND OVER MATTER

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OPENING WINDOWS

Shepherdess’

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MAN OF THE MATCH now working wonders in Hampshire

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APP AND ATOM

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QUEEN OF CLEAN

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Anna Frankowska’s party app is painting the town red

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HELL FOR LEATHER Ben Staerck built a good idea into a worldwide business

OUT OF THE BAG James and Belinda Yu have transformed their wicker handbag business

Anthony Thompson leads the charge to change banking

Racheal Flanagan is mopping up the cleaning market

Robert Epstein of Microsoft tells us about the heart of the business

Stuart Robertson, who invented Twenty20 cricket, is

PARTY GIRL

Jonathan Walker fought cancer and built a gym business

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UP THE SLEEVE Cufflink firm that’s Birmingham’s best kept secret

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Celebrating and inspiring entrepreneurship 98 34

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WATERLOO – WHAT A BREW

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FINE DOGGIE DINING

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A TASTE OF ITALY

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Kasim Ali’s tea company is expanding across South Wales

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Henrietta Morrison has turned cooking for her pet into a £30m business

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Talking to Richard Pierce of gelato firm Joe Delucci’s

A GRAVE BUSINESS Atlantic Geomatics is mapping the nation’s graveyards

EVIDENCE BASED Anne Glover shares her views on Brexit, spin-outs and entrepreneurship

BRICK BY BRICK Siobhan Cook is growing her property firm at a great rate

HELPING HAND Susanne Mitschke’s business aids people with dementia and their families

PIECE OF CAKE How Mark Timmerman took his father’s cake shop chain and grew it into a £20m business

HIGH LIFE 71

Living it up with motoring, travel, equipment and drinks

CONTACTS SALES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Helen Gowland

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Rachael Laschke

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Mike Moloney

helenG@bqlive.co.uk

rachael@bqlive.co.uk

mike@bqlive.co.uk

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Hellen Murray

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Dave Townsley dave@bqlive.co.uk

hellen@bqlive.co.uk

DESIGN & PRODUCTION DESIGNER Stephen Ford

DESIGNER Craig Hopson

DESIGNER Oliver Hurcombe

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craig@bqlive.co.uk

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PRODUCTION MANAGER Steve Jessop

DISTRIBUTION ASSISTANT Sam Yard

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sam@bqlive.co.uk

DIGITAL SENIOR DIGITAL JOURNALIST Suzy Jackson

HEAD OF DIGITAL Leanne Miller

SENIOR DIGITAL JOURNALIST Bryce Wilcock

suzy@bqlive.co.uk

leanne@bqlive.co.uk

bryce@bqlive.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPHY KG Photography info@kgphotography.co.uk

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS MIDLANDS & LONDON Steve Dyson

YORKSHIRE & SOUTH EAST Mike Hughes

SUB EDITOR Peter Jackson

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mikehughes@bqlive.co.uk

p.jackson77@btinternet.com

NORTH WEST & WALES Maria McGeoghan

NORTH EAST & CUMBRIA Paul Robertson

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paul.robertson@bqlive.co.uk

GROUP COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR Bryan Hoare

EDITOR Peter Ranscombe

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“It doesn’t matter what sort of education you have got, if you are a bit of a plank and can’t work things out because you won’t lift a finger, then you’re not going to get on.”

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Shepherding

her flock Amanda Owen rose to fame through a series of books and television appearances as the “Yorkshire shepherdess”, but Mike Hughes pulls on his wellies to meet someone who’s much, much more – a mum, a farmer and an indisputable entrepreneur.

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t’s not that I envy Amanda Owen’s office – I crave it. Her workplace is 2,000 acres of the reason why we both love Yorkshire so deeply.

The breathtaking landscape of streams, rolling hills, pasture and stone walls is home for her and husband Clive and is where they have raised nine children – from Raven, who is 15, to eight-month-old Nancy – and hundreds of sheep.

Like my own back garden just an hour’s drive away, it is both beautiful and challenging but, while I think I’ve earned a beer after getting a nice clean edge to the lawn, Owen has fought to make a living at Ravenseat; at the head of the River Swale, about an hour’s walk west of Keld, the halfway point on the coast-to-coast footpath.

As well as looking after the sheep, she now has a shepherd’s hut where hardy travellers can lay their heads, she runs The Firs, a nearby rural retreat that can accommodate another big family, she offers cream teas – if she’s in, best to check beforehand – and the very way she lives her life has led to two books with a third already planned.

“When we were first starting out here,

people were always telling me, ‘Make sure you specialise… you have to concentrate on one thing if it’s going to work’, but that just wasn’t going to work with what we were doing because farming is so up and down, so hit and miss,” explains Owen, in-between herding her children as they shout back to the farmhouse from their chores outside.

“You can go to the auction mart with whatever your product is that day and it depends what another farmer is prepared to pay for it and that can vary so much from week to week, and even day to day, that a single approach does not work.

“You have to hedge your bets. To look at it in a very simple way, not taking all your products to the mart on one day. Doing it gradually means you can take the rough with the smooth and never need to take too hard a hit.”

This 42-year-old entrepreneur has changed, just slightly but noticeably, over the years. The strong woman is still there, and growing stronger with each additional direction her life takes her, but her business sense is a bigger part of her than before. It has had to be, as the idea

of making a living for 11 people only from sheep was never going to happen and the ideas needed to start coming fast.

She says she struggles with her book and newspaper deadlines because she is so busy doing the things that provide the copy for them, but that writing has also helped her build her presentation skills for speeches and interviews and a growing awareness of the lessons she can pass on about making the most of your products.

“I am a shepherdess, and we are a very hard farm and our job is to breed animals,” she tells me. “We get the sheep here and we get the cattle here and we sell them on.

“It wouldn’t make any sense to sow anything because we don’t have any arable, so we just grow grass. And as far as the other farms are concerned, we are at the very top of the scale, so if the trade for meat is bad, then they don’t want to pay us for the breeding stock.”

There is some help from the likes of the Countryside Stewardship scheme, which gives payments to farms in England that protect and improve their environment. Owen, Clive and their children build walls, dig ponds and clear

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“A farm like this can’t be anything else because the sheep come with the farm and they will stay here.”

ditches to keep the land productive at the same time as securing its long-term future as a landscape that has international importance, a home for animals you might only see in the wild a few times in your life, and also a place that walkers and visitors will come to for a glimpse of what their country is really made of.

“The fact that Ravenseat is a very traditional and very commutable hill farm, set in that wild landscape with the hills and moorlands, means we get a lot of tourists here, especially in the summer,” says Owen.

“We capitalise on that by providing accommodation from a cheap-and-cheerful shepherd’s hut for walkers passing through or lovebirds who want to go there to do who knows what – what happens in the hut stays in the hut – and a holiday house as well to cater for the family. I’m also thinking of doing guided walks to take people a bit further afield on the old tracks.

“We have to tick the right boxes because it can be a busy thing for us, but also allows us to have six months of people coming through when the world comes to me and then six months of solitude. As a business, we have to

take that opportunity and acknowledge that we are very lucky to have the chance to do something extra because with the financial times you are in you never know what will happen.

“We have a lifetime tenancy at the farm, so we know that our hands are tied in some respects, but equally, we wouldn’t want to build a campsite here and have a sea of caravans, so we have to make money using our brains instead of bricks.”

With the books bringing in an income, as well as more people drawn by that Google pin in the middle of nowhere, there could be concerns that such progress may be completely counter-productive and ruin the “product” she treasures so much, but this very special place is safe in Owen’s hands.

“I don’t think much will change,” she says confidently. “A farm like this can’t be anything else because the sheep come with the farm and they will stay here.

“The sheep are a constant, so nothing will change there and we have a lot of rare birds and the hay meadows that people want to see, so I think it is all about striking a balance

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between having the right stock on the ground and making a living. There are no other options as to what Ravenseat is and how it is farmed.

“So, it is no good having sleepless nights about it or sticking your head in the sand, you just get up in the morning and get on with your jobs. Because of that, I don’t see myself as a businesswoman, but more of an opportunist – I spot gaps in the market.

“I never came here to do anything other than chase after sheep. I never came to be turning the bedsheets over for visitors, or to pick up a pen and write like some Emily Bronte, I was just a very normal person who was prepared to go with the flow.

“When I look at the thousands of people who come here every year, I could start shouting and telling them to put their dog on a lead or ‘Get off my land’… or I could see them as a captive audience looking for somewhere to stay for the night or asking questions about the farm. I tell the kids that communicating is

how you get on in life and that if you are a people-person who is prepared to listen then you will get somewhere.”

The flock she feeds, nurtures and guides starts with those nine who usually live in the house. With a 2,000-acre back garden, the children can run wild to burn off some energy, but they always know Mum will need their help when there is work to be done – they probably just don’t know it is work.

“I think this kind of life is a great foundation for whatever you want to be,” she says, as the children shout in through the kitchen door, letting her know they are going to sell some eggs at the gates.

“It is all happening out there this morning.

Reuben has got 200 trees to plant over his holidays, one of them has two lots of sheep to feed and the other’s off with his eggs. For me, it is about gaining some common-sense and confidence, learning how to stand on your own two feet – they know it’s a lie to say ‘Where

there’s muck, there’s money’ and as I tell them, how do you appreciate a good day if you haven’t had a crap one?

“It might sound like I am running some kind of military campaign – and sometimes I suppose I am – but you never know what is around the corner and it’s the same with life, whatever the children decide to be. They are all different characters with different ways about them, but we all sit down at dinner time and discuss the next plan of action.

“It doesn’t matter what sort of education you have got, if you are a bit of a plank and can’t work things out because you won’t lift a finger, then you’re not going to get on.”

There is a practicality about Owen that would be a good addition to any boardroom.

It’s instinct blended with common-sense, but with a hefty dose of Yorkshire grafting – something I’ll try to take on board as I “farm” the borders in my more modest back garden at the weekend. n

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THE

GAME CHANGER Mike Hughes wouldn’t dare say he was ‘bowled over’ by the impact Stuart Robertson has had on cricket – but he was. Having invented the Twenty20 format, Robertson is now weaving his magic in Hampshire.

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“Throughout it all, we have been 100% commited to the fact that, whatever we do, is purely to protect Hampshire cricket for the next 150 years.”

ll industries need their convincing innovators. Not just someone who can come up with a game-changing idea or process, but who can also sell the idea and lead sometimes reluctant colleagues to believe in what he or she is doing and put their faith in them.

Stuart Robertson – now commercial director of the Ageas Bowl, the home of Hampshire Cricket – is one such innovator. When he suggested to the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) that a new short-form version of the game played with 20 overs per side would be a bold new direction that could massively broaden its appeal, it backed him.

The move followed the end of the Benson & Hedges Cup and a concern about falling crowds and wavering sponsors. In Robertson’s mind, the new Twenty20 format would mean that each team would have a single innings, which is restricted to a maximum of 20 overs, with a typical game taking a couple of hours at the most. That brought it into line with other popular sports, but it was always only a means to an end – securing the long-term future of the whole sport.

“I am very proud of my role in that whole process and the research I commissioned and managed into the potential of Twenty20,” he says. “There were a lot of other people as well, but I think I was able to stand back and look at it through a consumer lens.”

In his current role, that openness to diversification and courage to push accepted boundaries have led to little short of a revolution at the Bowl, with a hotel and an 18hole golf course among the most important recent developments.

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“I had nine years at the ECB and then three years at Edgbaston in similar roles before I first came here in 2006,” Robertson says.

“KPMG had just been asked to look at the feasibility of a 150-acre site that became the Rose Bowl and is now the Ageas Bowl. That study was based on the fact that cricket alone was not going to sustain those acres as a longterm viable operation.

“KPMG came up with a few options like football parks, a driving range and a major conference hotel, because there was a dearth of facilities in the area and the location was great. I saw the plans and knew there was no better place to work in cricket, nowhere so innovative, so it was a no-brainer for me and I came down to take the job.”

Robertson’s focus was still on the cricket side of the operation, maximising interest and revenue by sweating the assets down to the last drop. During his first spell there from 2006 to 2010, the ground was awarded Test status and was impressively upgraded to become a national challenger to Edgbaston and The Oval.

“We put in two new spectator stands, improved the media facilities and introduced an innovative new debenture scheme – the first one to offer an interest rate over four or five years, which put at least a few million into our coffers to crack on with the stand while the hotel financing deal was done with Eastleigh Borough Council, and all the time we

“

“It is all about wrapping a 365-day business around a seasonal sport that has big changes in revenue depending on who the international opposition is.”

were building our spectator base,” he explains.

“Throughout it all, we have been 100% committed to the fact that, whatever we do, is purely to protect Hampshire cricket for the next 150 years. Our chairman, Rod Bransgrove, speaks passionately about how he vowed, when he stepped in during 2001, that never again on his watch would he allow Hampshire Cricket to come to the brink as it had done.

“People may look at it and think it is all about commercial activity, but it isn’t – it is all about wrapping a 365-day business around a seasonal sport that has big changes in revenue depending on who the international opposition is. We now have a successful year-round business and we will continue to innovate and come up with new things to do, but we will not do anything that could compromise the cricket.”

His principles will chime with many BQ entrepreneurs who are shaking up their own sectors with changes that might have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. But whether the business is digital or manufacturing, finance or logistics, the protection of the core product is paramount and you need to keep the audience that believes in it at the same time as

offering some new signposts when the route gets challenging.

And it’s working. Of the group’s £16m turnover, around £7m is from Hampshire Cricket, the clear result of less talk and more Robertson. “This is a huge industry now, which is one reason why Eastleigh Borough Council was able to help,” he says.

“They can’t just dole cash out left, right and centre – it has to be done through major investment and development opportunities.

So, this is around developing an economic impact, and a study we had done said that was valued at around £50m, with all the multipliers of the supply chain effects. That is not all on site, but understandable when you think of the hotel and all the catering it does and the jobs created and the effect that sort of development can have.”

Alongside Robertson, his local council is clearly also an innovator. Instead of unrolling red tape, it has cut through it and voted to support a hugely-important local business and cultivate the influence it can have on the whole region.

Its strategy supports the belief that there is no such thing as a lone inventor and that

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instead the great names that have influenced British business always needed support from the managing directors, purchasing managers and ruling bodies that can either throw a lifeline or a millstone. The Ageas Bowl avoided the millstone.

“Part of KPMG’s original plan was to create what we are now calling a destination resort, so that, as well as a commercial business hotel, there will be an 18-hole golf course to add more leisure to that offering along with a 15,000-square foot spa and a restaurant.

“There is clearly a big leisure market in this region because it is such a lovely part of the world, so this all links together as part of that wider plan and is a key part of our own corporate social responsibility and being a good neighbour to our local communities.

“Hilton is an amazing global brand, and one of the things we wanted to attend to was that people should start saying ‘I am going to the Hilton at the Ageas’ or ‘I am going to watch cricket at the Ageas’. From a marketing perspective, it is taking time and I am aware that repetition is reputation and we just need to be consistent at how we deliver this.

“We need to support the cross-selling of everything we have here and look at the different touchpoints that people have at the venue. It makes absolute sense to cross-

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“As we have seen with Twenty20, cricket can’t just stand alone anymore.”

reference each different side of the business and co-ordinate them rather than have disparate businesses, while delivering a hotel with Hilton as the first and foremost aim.”

If such an enlightened approach starts to rub off on the rest of the region then there will no limit to how much support and investment the Ageas effect could attract. Robertson summarises it as “a thriving region”.

“I had a meeting with the airport just before this interview and we were both talking about some real optimism,” he says. “They had just had more visitors than ever and it feels like a vibrant place and even when I first came down here I wasn’t aware of the friendly rivalry between Portsmouth and Southampton, which is a really good thing because there are cities vying for attention while we are surrounded by a leisure tourism market with the New Forest and South Downs on our doorstep.

“Then, among all that, there are the speciality areas like maritime, aerospace and technology that will always remain here. It is a good place to be right now and we will play our part in that wherever we can.”

There hardly needs to be more evidence of Robertson’s innovations, but just in case, let’s

look at Cage Cricket. This is a “street” version of the game, played inside a small fenced area on a pitch marked with coloured squares and targets on the walls. Everybody gets time in each position for this solo game, with points being gathered for targets hit or balls caught.

“It was the brainchild of former Hampshire player Lawrence Prittipaul and Trevor McArdle, who had been talking about cricketing opportunities in the inner cities and was born as an opportunity to utilise existing play spaces,” he explains.

“We were mentoring them a bit in the early days and I just loved the idea and was happy to lend my support where I could. As we have seen with Twenty20, cricket can’t just stand alone anymore.”

He plays himself, but just for the wonderfully-named “Nomansland” village in the Hampshire Regional Division One South, on a pitch with four oak trees and a war memorial, where you can hit a six from one county into the next.

That’s many people’s idea of perfect cricket, and it has its place at the heart of the game.

But it – and UK plc – needs innovators like Robertson to see beyond the four oaks. n

Profile

Prevention is better than cure Aziz Rahman, of award-winning solicitors Rahman Ravelli, explains how preventative measures can help those in business meet the legal challenges now facing them.

www.rahmanravelli.co.uk

This year, Rolls-Royce and Tesco have paid hundreds of millions of pounds and international banks have been fined huge amounts for wrongdoing in business.

Business is subject to greater scrutiny and more farreaching legislation than ever before. Companies can benefit, therefore, from seeking advice regarding the likelihood of them being prosecuted and the measures available to prevent this; see it as a little investment now to prevent a costly, damaging future.

For example, the Bribery Act is used to prosecute a company if it fails to prevent any person committing bribery on its behalf. Unlimited fines, up to ten years in prison and assets confiscation can follow a conviction. Preventing this must be worthwhile.

Conducting internal investigations, devising antibribery procedures and taking action if corruption is identified are areas where the right, proactive legal advice is crucial. Having been involved in many of the UK’s major bribery and fraud cases, I’ve seen how well thought-out efforts to prevent wrongdoing can be the difference between prosecution and an alternative approach.

If the authorities believe a company has shown a genuine will to tackle wrongdoing, they can offer a deferred prosecution agreement. This involves certain conditions being imposed on a company rather than it being prosecuted.

The importance of prevention can also be seen in the new Criminal Finances Act, which creates the corporate offence of failure to prevent tax evasion being committed. This makes companies liable if their employees encourage or assist others to evade tax.

Investigations under this Act will lead to companies being asked difficult questions about measures they had – or didn’t have – in place to prevent such activity. Being able to prevent the wrongdoing is preferable to being one of the first to be prosecuted under the new Act. Another new piece of legislation is the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which creates tougher penalties for those who, for example, ignore financial market restrictions or orders to cease trading with someone in a particular country or business sector. Fines of £1m or more are possible – which is much higher than the relatively modest cost of introducing measures to prevent such behaviour.

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“Taking advice to prevent prosecution is far shrewder and more cost-effective than waiting until it is too late.’’

All three Acts, as well as many others not mentioned here, emphasise the fact that taking advice to prevent prosecution is far shrewder and more cost-effective than waiting until it is too late.

No one likes to spend more than they have to when it comes to running a business. But a little time, effort and expense put towards assessing your business’ vulnerability to white-collar crime could lead to immense savings later. n

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Partner

PSI Global

Together we can make it Mike Hughes heads to Teesside University to hear it is setting new standards for knowledge transfer partnerships.

THE need for industry to work side-by-side with universities has been a long-standing principle in every region across the country, leading to huge benefits from the development of tailor-made training and skills that keep businesses at the cutting edge of their sectors.

This collaboration recognises the wealth of expertise and innovation on campus, from students and lecturers who are making breakthroughs that are moving from the lecture room and labs, to industries keen to develop game-changing new strategies and products.

Teesside University has been nationally recognised for the quality of its relationship with businesses, and is now a pioneer of high quality knowledge transfer partnerships (KTPs) that are helping small and larger companies improve their competitiveness and productivity.

Over recent years, 75% of its KTPs – typically lasting for two years and part-funded by Innovate

Partner

UK – have been independently assessed as “Outstanding” or “Very Good” with 62% graded as “Outstanding”. Contrast that with national figures where 58% of KTPs achieve the top two grades and only 17% are graded “Outstanding” and the gap starts to become clear.

Every success at this level means a business is able to take a huge step forward using technology and knowledge that simply didn’t exist out in the market, but came from deep, focused, research from some of the brightest minds in the UK. The key role of the University’s business partnerships was underlined in its digital blueprint for the region, which is becoming an essential catalyst for growth.

Professor Jane Turner, pro vice-chancellor, enterprise and business engagement at the University, said among the key strategies forming the foundations for sustainable success were unlocking growth potential through digital innovation, transforming sectors with digital knowledge and providing businesses with the research and expertise they need to improve their competitiveness and preparing businesses for “Industry 4.0.”

Turner told BQ: “The continuous creation of new businesses and the scale-up of existing businesses is the lifeblood of any region. They help underpin our strength in new sectors and drive innovation and competitiveness in our existing industries, while a vibrant start-up economy will keep valuable talent and skills in the region.”

That innovation and competitiveness has been highlighted through four recent partnerships the University has completed, two of which – at PSI Global and Hodgson Sayers – have been classified as outstanding by Innovate UK. This rare accolade turns a national spotlight on the University’s expertise and its client-centred ethos and shows why businesses are queuing to take advantage of Teesside’s stateof-the-art facilities and skills.

At PSI Global, based in Bowburn, County Durham, the KTP was graded as “Outstanding” for its research into how advanced computer simulation can be used in product testing. PSI Global manufactures filters and separators for the compressed air and vacuum industries and the KTP will enable the company to reduce the time and labour used for product testing by up to 70%.

Lloyd Cochrane, technical manager at PSI Global, said: “The KTP has had an enormous impact on our company. Prior to

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“The KTP has had an enormous impact on our company. Prior to this, we had to rely on physical prototyping and testing which was extremely labour, time and cost intensive.”

The University has an unrivalled depth of knowledge that is making a huge difference to the region’s companies. As one of the experts collaborating on KTPs, principal lecturer Joao Ferreira gives an insight into the work he is doing.

Joao Ferreira is a principal lecturer (research & innovation) in the School of Computing, and is a leading expert in virtual reality, a key part of many technology strategies for the UK’s leading companies.

He said: “As a university, Teesside is committed to improving the current status of software reliability by developing innovative research, by transferring knowledge into industry, and by adequately training the next generation of software engineers.

“We have extensive experience working with companies, helping them with expert advice and helping them attract external funding to solve their software challenges. There is also a plan to launch a cyber security clinic that will provide cyber security services to the community. Services will include advice and security assessments on software safety and other security topics.

“The issue of effective software or a cyber security strategy for businesses may seem simple on paper, but getting the right software verification systems in place in the first instance can save a lot of future headaches. At Teesside, tools and methods have been developed that enable and support the construction of reliable, safe and secure software systems.”

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Yifeng Zeng, a reader in the School of Computing, explains how the University is providing vital information for companies to help them make critical decisions and develop new strategies.

Zeng said: “I am currently involved in a KTP with a company that specialises in recording calls from businesses’ contact centres, providing clients with the ability to retrieve, score and analyse performance, to find ways to improve the customer experience of the service they deliver.

“By applying these principles to the customer experience market, we are looking to transform call-recording functionality via software that will help businesses to record and score every element of a call – from the agent’s tone of voice to time waiting on hold while a call is re-routed. That data will then be available for automatic retrieval and analysis.

“More and more of this type of work is expected in call or contact centres, with companies able to achieve new insights and learnings that would formerly have been invisible to the human eye.

“Businesses are increasingly keen to extract valuable information so they can use that knowledge to make predictions, optimise decisions and develop policies.

“This is particularly the case in the customer service industry, including call or contact centres, where organisations are seeking to improve the customer experience by investigating what and how their behaviour influences customer evaluations on their business.

“The technology behind these data extraction innovations is known as machine learning, which I’ve been researching for the past ten years. Machine learning has been used to develop driverless cars and effective web search among many other innovations, and is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. It is believed by many researchers to be the best way to make progress towards human-level artificial intelligence.

“Customer experience is an important measurement of service and is said to be a transformation from customer-organisation interactions to the customer’s personal feelings on the interactions. With a wealth of data available in call or contact centres, text message and short-chats in existing social networking platforms, we aim to find a set of informative features that fully capture the quality of interactions, and then develop predictive models for customer experience improvement.”

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“The demographics of the population are changing and we’re seeing a lot more multigenerational homes with an increased need for specialist products.”

this, we had to rely on physical prototyping and testing on a bespoke testing rig, which was extremely labour, time and cost intensive. We now have a system whereby early stage design of new vacuum pump systems can be trialled, improved and validated much earlier than previously possible by modelling the system virtually, prior to prototyping.

Dr Faik Hamad from the University’s School of Science & Engineering, said: “This was an extremely interesting project, which I am sure will have huge benefits for PSI Global. The findings from the research are already being utilised in teaching our students here at the University.”

Over at building and roofing specialist Hodgson Sayers, the KTP partnership has helped the company double its revenue – earning it another “Outstanding” rating.

The KTP has enabled the company, based in Stanley, County Durham, to develop a new range of patentable security doors after looking at ways in which building information modelling (BIM) strategies and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software could be integrated into its systems and processes.

By implementing BIM approaches – involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics – Hodgson Sayers has been able to operate much more efficiently and has been able to bid for much larger contracts, including valuable public sector contracts, as a tier one contractor.

The company’s financial director, Mike Wade, said: “The KTP has massively improved the company’s operations and has allowed a more collaborative and cross-generational acceptance and understanding, which has galvanised and quickened cultural change and encouraged more open thinking.”

Professor Nashwan Dawood, an expert in BIM from the University’s School of Science & Engineering, said the work would also have a lasting effect at the University: “This KTP has generated fascinating amounts of research and knowledge, particularly in the field of BIM for manufacturing (B4M). It has helped us develop case studies, which can be used in the teaching of both postgraduates and under-graduates and we will be expanding

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Hodgson Sayers

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“The KTP has massively improved the company’s operations and has allowed a more collaborative and cross-generational acceptance and understanding which has galvanised and quickened cultural change and encouraged more open thinking.”

our teaching in the area of industry 4.0 in relation to design for manufacturing.”

The University has just finished two other highly successful projects at Billingham-based NYMAS, which manufactures bathroom and toilet equipment and at Stockton firm Hazard Detection Solutions (Hazdet).

NYMAS works with care homes, hospitals and the hospitality industry and worked with the University’s Schools of Science & Engineering and Design, Culture & the Arts on two knowledge exchange internships to research ways in which the company can streamline its systems and processes as well

as developing new product designs and implementing new design processes.

Craig Anderson, NYMAS’ managing director, said: “The demographics of the population are changing and we’re seeing a lot more multigenerational homes with an increased need for specialist products to ensure their bathrooms are fully inclusive. As a company in order to meet the demands of this new market we need to function as efficiently as we can and we need our product to be more than purely functional but also have a quality design aesthetic.

“Working with Teesside University is helping

us to achieve this and we’re looking forward to the benefits it will bring.”

At Hazdet, managing director David Orr said the KTP was “a great learning experience”, which had led to the development of a new and innovative product now being demonstrated to customers.

The company has drastically reduced the time it takes to carry out vital assessments of gas and fire detector coverage. By using computer games technology, Orr’s company, which works in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, can carry out detector coverage assessments in one week – a process which previously took up to 10 weeks. n

Theforge@tees.ac.uk tees.ac.uk/theforge 01642 384068

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IT’S MY

PARTY Ever fancied going out but decided against it because you’re unsure how good the venue might be? The new Nightset app could solve all your problems, as Steve Dyson finds out from the entrepreneur behind it, Anna Frankowska.

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nna Frankowska had always been a party girl. Even as a child at school in Warsaw, Poland, she was the first one to suggest get-togethers, then outings to social gatherings and discos.

When she arrived in London to study for her degree in economics as a 19 year old, she was soon known as the person to be with if you enjoyed your night life.

“I love going out and went out a lot when I was studying at University College London,” says Frankowska. “And I quickly spotted a gap in

the market – communications.

“I was partying five nights a week, but I soon realised that people didn’t know where to go out, or what’s happening tonight, or which clubs had the best scene. Here was the great, vibrant city of London and there was no immediate way to find out what’s happening in the city right now.

“Communications were fragmented, timeconsuming and old-fashioned, like bill-boards, adverts and listings. This meant people didn’t

know about who was enjoying what and where.

“They didn’t know about each other, so were often missing a great night out. What people wanted was instant information – both ahead of the night and then on the night out itself. Like when they’re in queues in front of a club – should they go in or not? What’s the party like? Is it any good in there?”

On graduation in 2012, Frankowska first focused on earning some money. She turned an internship at Royal Bank of Scotland into

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a graduate job in the bank’s capital portfolio management division, spending two years working in the financial City by day, then partying across London by night.

But the continued lack of real-time information on London’s nightlife inspired her to start thinking about a business solution.

Once her brother, Andrzej Frankowski, graduated in computer science, they combined their skills to come up with a prototype app, initially called Party Hype, now called Nightset.

Frankowska knew she needed some real data on which to base the business, so went undercover for six months working as a club promoter for some of London’s biggest nightclubs, gathering intelligence from venues and partygoers. Meanwhile, her brother put together the technical side of the app.

“The app tells us in real time where the best parties are,” says Frankowska, now aged 26. “Other start-ups had looked into this but they’d approached it from the wrong angle.

They started with bookings, whereas we based

our app on people, engaging that community and then connecting them with business owners. A marketplace based on a social network.”

The app’s trick is being “dynamic”, she says, because the night life sector changes day to day, and year to year. Therefore, the app is based on real-time communications, using comments, pictures and videos, serving the audience by helping them find out what’s going on, what clubs are like inside right now, booking tickets and getting into the right venues.

And once partygoers are inside, the app continues with a dating feature, using heart, drink, dance and discard emoticons to indicate “Do you want to meet?”, “Can I buy you a drink?”, “Let’s dance” or “I’m not interested”.

“People today can be more and more secluded,” says Frankowska, “Nightset allows them to enjoy the moment. And there’s an element of safety, as you’re able to see who the person you’re about to meet is on their app history.”

After much design and testing, the app had a beta test launch in autumn 2015 during London’s Freshers’ Week, when tens of thousands of students were out every night.

It hit a problem with the London School of Economics, which banned the app for “promoting too much of a laddish culture”.

“Every failure presents you with an opportunity for success,” recalls Frankowska, who told the “crazy” story on Facebook and was then spotted by Adrian Clarke, one of the many family members of the Bacardi drinks business. In March 2016, after bidding meetings with a number of potential investors, Frankowska and her brother accepted a seed investment offer of £500,000 from Clarke, and the real business development began.

Clarke is now the main investor and partowner of Nightset, bringing the start-up real credibility, and helping the Polish-born siblings to build a company that they hope will “revolutionise and disrupt” the nightlife industry.

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“In five years’ time, my vision is that if you’re in a city anywhere in the world and want to go out, you use Nightset to discover where to go.”

“Thousands were involved in the test, which was excellent,” says Frankowska. “Now, after the angel investor deal, we’re working with top performers on branding and marketing to take Nightset to the next level.”

She says the app has been welcomed by the Night Time Industries Association, which sees its “huge potential” to create a new community for its sector. “It’s going to be disrupted by technology,” she says.

“Club owners were always very old school, focusing on leaflets or at best targeted social media for communications. But Nightset is a one-stop shop.”

The app’s revenues are set to come from the likes of nightclubs, both through specific promotions and a subscription model. Nightset will take commissions on bookings, triggered by

push notifications for events like happy hours.

Then there will be sponsorships and brand partnerships from lifestyle brands and drinks businesses.

“But, at all times, the app will be free to users,” Frankowska says, “because it’s genuine content still curated by real people, improving the whole ecosystem for people who want to socialise. You simply download the Nightset app to find the best places to party, to meet party people like yourself and to instantly share your experiences.”

The potential is huge, according to her figures. She tells me that the nightlife sector is estimated to be worth some £50bn a year across the UK, with London alone worth around £24bn. And more than 250,000 people pass through Leicester Square every weekend,

with nearly every adult in London going out at least once a week.

“We’re now focusing on aggressive growth, brand propulsion and identity,” she says. “In 2017, it’s London, then potentially Barcelona, Paris, New York – because it’s easily replicated in any party city.

“In five years’ time, my vision is that if you’re in a city anywhere in the world and want to go out, you use Nightset to discover where to go.

It makes sense that everyone is connected with one platform wherever you can travel.

“Our priority is a global expansion to become the de facto guide to the world’s nightlife, but we will include cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Brighton. Basically, anywhere where the good vibes are happening.”

Nightset currently has a staff of ten people – five full-time, five part-time – and a revenue target of up to £1m for year one, after which it plans to seek more seed-funding for faster growth.

“We will be making profit in year one,” says

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Frankowska, “but this app will take investment to enter new markets and sell quicker. It’s a balance between time and equity – proving the concept, getting the investment and scaling the product.

“Choosing your investors is one of the most important parts of a deal – it’s like a marriage.

My background in investment banking has helped to give me a really good understanding and experience of the finance world, which is a real advantage.”

Frankowska comes from a business family.

Her parents, Teresa and Marek, are architects and property developers, working together as entrepreneurs, so it felt natural to set up a business with her brother.

It’s a partnership that she feels will withstand competition: “It’s all in the execution, developing the brand partnerships, and our teamwork. It’s difficult to replicate me and my brother. I am the people person but I also love maths, and Andrzej is the technical genius.

Plus, now we have Bacardi involved, and so

“

Nightset’s a very powerful brand.

“And it’s about people, not just finance and tickets. The colours, the identity, the lifestyle brands. Life is a party. I am the brand ambassador. This company and brand is the only life I have. I want to help people celebrate their moment.”

Life certainly is a party for Frankowska. She and her brother live in a four-floor apartment near Marble Arch, where they recently hosted 120 people for her birthday bash. The guests ranged from 18 to 80 years old.

“I’m into my people, my music and my dancing,” she says. “I like many different clubs depending on what my mood is, what the buzz is that particular night and many other factors.

The people also make a night and that can vary from day to day, and that’s why I love Nightset.

I can see what the mood is in a particular venue on a particular day, which often influences my choice.”

But Frankowska insists that regular clubbing doesn’t mean too much alcohol: “I know who

I want to be with, I might have one drink, and then I dance, for four hours a night. That makes it affordable, and there’s no hangover.

“Life is a party and drink is part of the culture. But it can be about tasting, maybe getting a little bit loose but not getting absolutely wasted. Nightset distances itself from too much alcohol. But live for the moment. Let’s enjoy. Explore. Let’s experience but not abuse alcohol.”

Drinks or no drinks, Frankowska must be exhausted if she’s still going out five nights a week, but she quickly corrects the assumption.

“No, these days I party just twice a week, although if you’re talking about restaurants then yes, if that’s going out then I’m out every night.” n

With thanks to The Jazz Cafe, Camden, for hosting the photo shoot. www.thejazzcafelondon.com

“Life is a party. I am the brand ambassador. This company and brand is the only life I have. I want to help people celebrate their moment.”

Profile

Learning on the job – are degree apprenticeships the answer?

Combining work and study at York St John University

University degrees ain’t what they used to be. Gone are the days where a privileged few got academic qualifications that left them ill-equipped for the real world and everyone else learned at the University of Life.

For more information on chartered management degree apprenticeships contact Alan Johnston, director of undergraduate studies at York Business School, a.johnston@yorksj.ac.uk For more general enquiries about degree apprenticeships, contact Zoe Wilde, business development coordinator at York St John University, z.wilde@yorksj.ac.uk

Higher education these days goes hand in hand with the demands of businesses of all sizes, and qualifications are increasingly aligned with industry needs. The introduction of degree apprenticeships in the past couple of years aims to go even further in bridging that gap between what employers want and what education institutions offer. The UK Government certainly believes that combining a paid job with training towards a qualification is the best way to meet the needs of both employers and employees and has set a target of three million new apprenticeships to be underway by 2020. Funding is available to employers that want to pay for apprenticeship training and following the launch of the apprenticeship levy in April this year, 1.3% of the UK’s employers will have to commit to paying into the degree apprenticeship pot.

But can degree apprenticeships really deliver a solution to businesses facing a skills gap, or struggling to retain key employees? Alan Johnston, director of undergraduate studies at York Business School, thinks so.

“Lower level apprenticeships have been around for a long time”, he says. “But the introduction of degree apprenticeships means that employees combining on-the-job training with flexible study can now get a foundation degree, bachelor’s degree or even a masters degree in some sectors.

“For employers who see apprenticeships as an integral part of their talent strategy, degree educated employees can become a vital part of addressing higher level skills gaps. Degree apprenticeships are set to become a fact of life for both businesses and universities so it’s incredibly important that we work together to create a wellqualified workforce.”

A good apprenticeship programme can enable employers to attract employees with potential, enabling them to recruit from a larger pool of talent. Also worth considering is the use of degree apprenticeships as an opportunity to train existing staff in new knowledge and technologies, or to retain high calibre staff who are motivated and engaged.

With this in mind, York Business School at York St John University is developing a range of higher

education options, including the chartered manager degree apprenticeship which incorporates a bespoke BA (Hons) in management and leadership and Level 5 diploma in management and leadership.

With 63% of employers expecting to need more staff with leadership and management skills in the future, the CMI-accredited courses reflect the knowledge, competence and professional values required for management roles.

Working in partnership is key, and York St John University is well positioned to respond to the needs of businesses that want to shape the direction of the qualifications on offer. Employers committed to responsible business practices will value the university’s ethos of social justice and sense of community and employees will benefit from the student experience on campus: library, sports facilities, students’ union and a range of specialist support. With a newly-launched business school at the heart of York that offers innovative and responsive opportunities for both students and its business partners and future course options that include qualifications in occupational therapy and computer science, the delivery of degree apprenticeships is well underway.

The door is open for businesses interested in matching their needs to degree courses. Get in touch with York Business School to find out if degree apprenticeships could work for your business and we’ll either arrange a visit to your workplace or look forward to welcoming you to our award-winning campus. n

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“For employers who see apprenticeships as an integral part of their talent strategy, degree educated employees can become a vital part of addressing higher level skills gaps.”

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ATOM bank is young but it has already established a reputation for springing surprises on a startled financial world.

It first raised eyebrows when it was founded in 2014, a new challenger bank when banking’s reputation was still reeling from the crash. It headquartered itself in Durham, rather than the City of London, and it introduced a new appbased banking model that is proving strikingly popular.

Few would have expected that in just three years it would have grown to the point where it had 300 staff, just shy of 19,000 savings customers and a balance sheet of more than £570m.

Then in April, underlining that it’s far from having exhausted its capacity to surprise, Atom announced that it had signed up the Black Eyed Peas founder/rapper will.i.am as its first strategic board advisor.

It was only a few days after this that I met Anthony Thomson, the bank’s founder and chairman, in Durham’s Flat White Kitchen, a stylish eatery popular with the young and forward thinking – very much in the Atom image.

Thomson, an engaging man, relaxed and informal in dress and manner, explains the appointment.

“I’m a marketer by background and I

MEET THE MAN BEHIND THE BANKING REVOLUTION

Atom bank wants to change the face of banking.

Founder and chairman Anthony Thomson explains to Peter Jackson how the challenger business is going about it. was sitting at home one evening thinking, were Atom a person, what would be its characteristics – an old marketing exercise. It needs to be somebody who is highly digitally literate and has a real grasp of technology,

someone who understands the power and role of social media and how it’s changing how people work, somebody with a real understanding of the popular culture and the zeitgeist.

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“Then will.i.am popped into my head and the more I thought about him and the more I researched him I learnt – what I hadn’t realised – that while he’s been an incredibly successful musician he’s also very active in technology, with his own technology company, employs roughly 150 people around the world in artificial intelligence, and he’s a regular speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos. So, he’s an incredibly well-connected individual, connected both to technology but also to millennial consumers. When we met, he really got what we were trying to do and was very keen to be part of it.’’

The star’s technological knowledge and his understanding of Atom’s target markets will help inform the bank’s strategy.

Thomson adds: “I think he will be particularly helpful in business banking because, above all, he’s an incredibly successful entrepreneur and I think people in business will relate to that.”

Atom bank’s identity is about more than new technology and youth appeal. It is a bank that was born in the wake of the banking crisis and that was conceived as a reaction to the philosophy and ethos that had been prevalent in the banking sector for decades before the Lehman Brothers collapse. It is a bank that declares different and distinct values.

Thomson recalls how these underlay the foundations of Atom.

“I had the idea for what became Atom in 2012 when I wanted to create a new bank but there are certain things that are very important to me as an individual. First and foremost, I believe that one of the great malaises in UK plc in general and banks in particular is that they think they exist to make money, whereas I believe absolutely that profit is a by-product of giving the customer a better product, service or experience.’’

With this conviction, he pulled together the original team of founders: including Mark Mullen, the chief executive; Dave McCarthy, chief financial officer; Edward Twiddy, chief innovations officer; Craig Iley, managing director of business banking; Sophie Haagensen, head of strategy and planning; and Paul Hanks, Atom’s first chief technology officer.

“We spent our first few months just talking about what mattered to us, and it was about creating a customer-centric organisation that would do those things.’’

Clearly the new bank had also to make money – to reward its shareholders, to

generate the capital to grow the business and to survive.

“But, it needed to be that way round,’’ he adds. “So, we spent a lot of time talking about values before we started to talk about what the business itself would look like. I wanted to work with people I liked, I wanted to work with people who shared the same belief, with people who were very open and very honest, I didn’t want it to be an organisation of politics and I’m really pleased to say, here we are three years in and it does feel like a values-driven organisation.

“This morning I was addressing a bunch of my colleagues who’ve just joined the bank about what was important to them and why the values and business were important and I said to them, as I say to everybody who joins Atom, ‘If you don’t buy into our values, then you shouldn’t be here, it’s not good for you, it’s not good for us’.’’

This should come as a breath of fresh air to an industry that, in recent years, has had – to put it mildly – an image problem.

“Whenever I’m asked, I say, I’m not a banker, but I don’t know how long I can keep saying that, having been involved for 10 years,’’ jokes Thomson. “But it comes back to this original point, this belief that profit is a by-product of doing something well for your customer. I think we can change banking for good, that is to say, we can change it permanently, for the better.’’

The North East’s last great bank, Northern Rock, collapsed and left a bitter taste for many, but it also left a pool of talented and experienced people that Atom could draw upon. In attracting staff, Thomson, a proud North Easterner, believes that Atom’s location in the region is also an advantage.

He explains: “A lot of people want to move out of London and it’s an area that’s very attractive in terms of education, in terms of quality of life and in terms of what you can get for your money.’’

He also points to the region’s burgeoning technology sector, driven and encouraged by the universities and including a thriving gaming sector. Last year Atom acquired IT business Grasp, headed by North East games pioneer Brian Jobling, who joined Atom as business development director as part of the deal.

Thompson adds: “The region has a fantastic reputation in terms of innovation. If you look at the innovations and inventions that have come out of the North East – from the Davy Lamp, through to the steam train, the turbine

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engine, the windscreen wiper, Lucozade – the area has a fantastic history of innovation and that comes from the entrepreneurial nature of people here and the support that the community has given to businesses that have been built here.’’

It is also the case that by not basing itself in London with the associated high cost base, Atom is better able to offer competitive deals to its customers.

“Because we are a very low-cost operation, both from the advantages that come from being based in the North East, plus the advantages of being a technology-led business, it means we are very efficient and that efficiency is reflected in a couple of major areas – we can give better savings rates and we can give better loan rates, whether that’s business lending or mortgages,’’ says Thomson.

This has allowed Atom to grow its depositor base and its lending base without resorting to wholesale funding.

“Usually for a bank it’s very hard to be attractive on both sides of the balance sheet because in essence it’s depressing your margin, but because we have such an efficient business we can square that particular circle and give good rates to savers and good rates to borrowers.’’

The bank has also been successful in raising capital, having received a total of £219m since incorporation with further raises planned.

Currently Atom offers three primary product lines: a savings account, residential mortgages and business loans.

In the UK 70% of mortgages are bought through an intermediary, which is how Atom bank’s mortgages are distributed through the Digital Mortgages brand.

Industry experts say there is room for new players in the mortgage market, as long as they target a niche. What is Atom bank’s niche?

“People who want to do their mortgage incredibly efficiently, at low cost, through an app,’’ he says. “It comes back to this – can we give our customers a better product, service or experience? Well, customers love the experience of banking with Atom with customers scoring it incredibly highly through tools like Reevoo, with 9.1 out of 10 consistently.’’

In fact, one of Atom bank’s recent deals, which charged just 1.29% fixed for five years – at the time, the UK’s cheapest-ever 5 year fixed rate mortgage deal – was so popular it was pulled after just nine days.

Thomson says: “It was the amount of demand we had for it. We can only lend the money that we’ve taken in in deposits and also we have to ensure we have a balanced mix of products in our portfolio.’’

And current accounts?

“They are on the road map. The whole market, in terms of technology and personal financial management products, the introduction of application program interfaces (APIs) is changing, so we are studying that very closely. We have the advantage of being a very agile business, so, as it becomes clearer where the market is going, we will be able to meet those needs.’’

In business banking, Atom bank, again using the Digital Mortgages brand, is willing to secure loans against assets other than bricks and mortar, such as an occupational lease or plant and equipment. While it is a highly-automated bank, it still places great emphasis on oldfashioned manual underwriting to properly serve the wide variety of small business borrowers.

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However, the process is still extremely streamlined. The borrower is not required to go through a series of meetings with the bank, meeting demands for more and more financial reports then waiting for the application to jump the various hurdles of the bank’s bureaucracy only to be asked for more information, a process that could take six weeks.

Atom bank aims to give a lending decision within 72 hours of receipt of a completed application form.

It does this using its UK-wide network of intermediaries, made up of small businesses’ trusted advisors such as financial advisors, brokers and accountants and Atom’s “Digital Bridge”, which provides a ‘door’ that the customer opens to send information digitally.

The door then closes, meaning that the customer has full control of what they send.

The information can then be fed directly into the underwriter’s analysis tools. To date, Atom bank has approved £118m of business loans.

“Small businesses are the backbone of

“Small businesses are the backbone of the UK economy and we are really proud to be doing our bit.”

Partner

the UK economy and we are really proud to be doing our bit to support them,’’ says Thomson. “Our customers come from a wide geographical base, which we need because we have to avoid geographical concentration risk and we have to sector concentration risk, so it’s a fairly wide mix of business.’’

He says that the use of intermediaries allowed the bank to gain a nationwide footprint at an early stage but that “at some point” it will be going directly to businesses.

These are Atom’s three initial product areas but – apart from current accounts – it has more offers in development.

“Our intention is to have a complete range of products for business and consumers and a broader range of savings and lending products,’’ says Thomson.

He then indicates that Atom bank will have some more rabbits to pull out of the hat.

“We have a road map for these. I don’t want to say exactly where we are right now, we’d like some of these to come as a pleasant surprise to our customers and perhaps not such a pleasant surprise to our competitors.’’

We meet on a day that ransomware has paralysed much of the NHS and attacked various organisations across Europe, which has to prompt the question of cybersecurity.

“It is an issue, but the reality is, it’s an issue for everybody who uses a computer,’’ he says. “In the so called traditional banks with branches, everything that’s done is done on computers; when you log onto internet banking, it’s all done on computers, so it’s a challenge for everybody in financial services.

“I think we are as well placed as anybody to deal with that threat because Atom is delivered through an app. All of the challenges that have arisen to date have been internet based and we are not internet based, we’re app based, which is an important distinction. But that’s not to say we are complacent, it is a real and present danger to all businesses.’’

Atom uses biometric identification, such as facial and voice recognition. In this, as in other areas, technology is central to Atom bank and Thomson insists the bank will continue to innovate and data, data analytics and artificial intelligence will be the key drivers of the business.

Atom bank is positioning itself for tomorrow’s banking and Thomson is clearly a man with an eye on the future.

He says: “For me Atom is a bit like building a monument, something that will outlive me and, while I had an original idea, there are a lot of people building it and every person who joins the business helps improve Atom. I’m very proud to have been part of it.

“I’d like to think, when I’m gone, my kids and – if I’m lucky enough to have them – my grandchildren, will look at it with pride and say, my dad or my grandad was part of building that.’’ n

atombank.co.uk newsroom@atombank.co.uk

Atom Ant Anthony Thomson grew up in Heaton in Newcastle and his first job was working for the city’s Evening Chronicle newspaper, which first gave him an interest in advertising and marketing. He moved to London in 1983 where he started a marketing services company, City Financial Marketing, which specialised in financial services and over an 11-year period grew to be the largest financial services marketing agency of its kind in Europe.

He sold the business in 1998 and then co-founded the Financial Services Forum, a membership organisation for senior executives, which he ran until 2007 when he became chairman.

In 2010 he founded Metro Bank, the first high street bank to be granted a licence in the UK for 150 years. He chaired Metro for three years before leaving in 2012, when he stepped down to begin work on what became Atom bank.

He is a non-executive director of Agiliti, a software as a service company. He is Goldman visiting professor of innovation and enterprise at Newcastle University Business School and he is the chairman of the National Skills Academy for Financial Services, a nationwide employer-led charity that helps create employment opportunities and apprenticeships in financial services.

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THE

QUEEN of clean

Branching out from domestic cleaning into servicing offices allowed Rachael Flanagan to scale-up Mrs Bucket Cleaning Services, as Maria McGeoghan finds out.

C

olleagues describe Rachael Flanagan – the founder of Mrs Bucket Cleaning Services – as a “ball of energy”. And it’s easy to see why.

When we meet at Bucket HQ in Llanelli, she excitedly shows me a message a customer has posted on Instagram calling her cleaning team “legends”. “I love it when we get great feedback like that,” says Flanagan, 29, who presides over the £3m business.

She is so passionate about the power of cleaning to bring peace and order in to your life that, by the time I head off for another BQ interview in Cardiff, I’ve resolved to get a

cleaner. Once I’ve tidied the house, of course.

Flanagan, back at work part-time after maternity leave, is the driving force behind this growing business, which now employs 300 people and provides both domestic and commercial cleaning across South Wales. A fleet of Mrs Bucket liveried vans line up outside the office, and a busy team is gathering outside for a sales and marketing meeting.

And it all started when a cleaner let her Mum down. “When I was 18 I was coming home from college early and I saw my Mum’s cleaner heading down the road,” says Flanagan. “I knew

my Mum was paying her for four hours and she had left early.

“My Mum was teaching and I knew how important it was to have the house looking clean and nice. She didn’t really have the time to do it herself.

“I said to my Mum, ‘You give me £40 and I’ll do the cleaning for you’. She agreed and I could see how happy a really clean house made her. That’s when it all started. That was the ‘why’ of my business.”

At 18, Flanagan had no idea what she wanted to do with her life and had a moment of

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“If everything is clean and organised in your house you just feel better, imagine not having to worry about getting the house straight at the weekend.”

inspiration during her business A-Level exam. “I used to swim for the Welsh team, but I wasn’t good at just one thing,” says Flanagan. “I was doing media, art, IT and business, with no idea what any of it would lead to.

“When I was sitting my business A-level, you had to do a case study and I just wrote out my plan for my business instead. I knew it was going to fail the paper but it was important to me to get it down.”

Part of that plan was to spend £20 on flyers, which proved to be a great first investment.

“They were plain black and white A5 flyers and I put them through the letterboxes near where I lived,” she says.

“I was going to call it RF Cleaning, but my best friend’s mum, Jean, said it would have to be something that stood out. We called it Mrs

Bucket Cleaning but when anyone rings it’s Mrs Bouquet. It makes you smile.

“I delivered flyers all day and waited. Then slowly people started calling. I worked from 8am until 8pm. I couldn’t afford cleaning equipment so I always used the customer’s.

I hadn’t had any training but I knew that I wanted people to have that clean hotel room feeling. It makes you feel nice.

“If everything is clean and organised in your house you just feel better. We’ve all got much busier and Mrs Bucket is giving you the time back. Imagine not having to worry about getting the house straight at the weekend.

“I started to take people on and give them their own round. At 21, I had 18 staff and my own little workshop where you paid for the electricity by a meter. I’d sit there planning and

doing the books, wearing three coats to keep warm. I loved it.”

The business really took off when Flanagan joined a business networking group and soon found out that she had been nominated in the young UK entrepreneur awards. “A judge came out to see me in my workshop in her Mercedes and then I found out that I was in the finals at Claridges in London,” she says. “That was massive.

“I took my Mum and my boyfriend, who’s now my husband. We didn’t have enough tickets for my Dad and sister so they stayed in their room. I thought it was nice to have a new frock and some champagne but never thought for a moment that I would win it.

“I was in the ladies’, talking to the housekeeping woman, when my Mum ran in

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yelling ‘You’ve won, you’ve won.’

“We were sitting at the furthest table at the back so I never thought I was going to win it. When I walked in, everyone stood up and clapped. That was like turning on a light switch for me. I finally started believing in myself.”

It was a transition that spelled a new, more confident direction for Flanagan and her business. “I thought now I really can be a businesswoman,” she says.

“I bought myself a new notebook on the way home and decided what I was going to stop doing. I was being a busy fool. I was selling time for money so I had to stop cleaning myself.

“I started hanging around with other business owners who were very generous with their advice on everything from marketing to sales. I sat in on webinars, went to events, read books and realised that we needed to be different to stand out.”

She decided to target commercial cleaning, which proved to be another excellent strategic move for Mrs Bucket.

“When I was 22, the business was worth £500,000 with 10% profit,” she says. “I’d worked my arse off so I deserved it.

“I loved sales and marketing and I decided to get out of my comfort zone and break in to commercial cleaning to scale up. I would drive around all the business estates and count all the cars outside each business to work out how many people they had.

“I started doing targeted mail, like sending a white glove and asking companies to put it on and run their fingers around once their cleaner had gone. We got invited to quite a few meetings where the glove was there on the board room table looking really dirty “I also posted out KitKat bars and said it was time to take a break and even sunglasses that they would need to cope with the shine once we had finished cleaning.

“In commercial cleaning, people have gone home and you can zoom around and give it a really good clean. In domestic cleaning, people still leave their pants on the floor and don’t flush the loo.”

And, as the business grew, Flanagan was spurred on by anyone who thought she couldn’t make it big. “I remember when I was about 23 or 24 I stood up at a business gathering and said that I was going to double my business in a year,” she says.

“You could see them thinking, ‘Aww, isn’t

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“I liked earning money, I liked handling money. When I was 14 or 15, I used to wash the pots at the local pub.”

she sweet’. That was my drive and that’s exactly what I did.”

Now, her domestic cleaning business is worth £500,000 with commercial cleaning worth £2.5m, and she has just expanded into Bristol. And Flanagan has a clear strategy for the future.

“I don’t want to be a national cleaning company,” she says. “I don’t want us to be cleaning airports or fighting over margins for tenders. We just want to do a good job in the market that we know.

“We want to win and retain the right clients and have the confidence to say no. We’ve had no investment. This is all my own cash.

“We’ve got good processes and systems, a really good team, and we always try to treat everyone right. I think we are the Waitrose of domestic cleaning and the Marks & Spencer of commercial cleaning.”

And what advice would she give to young

entrepreneurs who are toying with a business idea but not sure where to start? “By the time you’ve thought about it you could have done it.” Flanagan says.

“And watch out if your child is doing what I did starting up their own little business. They could be an entrepreneur.

“When I was young, around seven, I used to have a little shop in my Dad’s office using one of his old tills. We used to go and buy a big tub of penny sweets and then I would sell them to my friends for real money.

“I liked earning money, I liked handling money. When I was 14 or 15, I used to wash the pots at the local pub. I always had a job.”

And finally, the most important question of all. What is the Holy Grail of cleaning?

That magic, secret product, that can make a shower sparkle and a floor look like new? I wait with bated breath. Flanagan pauses, smiles and replies: “It’s just bloody scrubbing really.” n

Profile

Get your head in the cloud with Clive Owen Managed Services Clive Owen Managed Services director Ian Jarvis

Business leaders are being urged to put their heads in the cloud to meet the needs of a corporate world driven by technology.

www.cliveowen.com Tel : 01325 349700

Experts at Clive Owen believe that in a digital world information reigns supreme and access to it needs to be instant.

Clive Owen Managed Services (COMS) recognises that with more and more business conducted in relaxed settings, out of the office, in cafes, restaurants and expos, portable digital devices have become the tools of successful operations.

“The concept of nine-to-five Monday to Friday in front of a single desk is just not a reality for most entrepreneurs,” said COMS director Ian Jarvis.

“Business is now 24/7 and senior figures are just as likely to check their affairs at 11pm on a Sunday night as they are on a Wednesday at 3pm.

“While computers have consigned ledgers to the dusty bookshelf, having key information back at the office on a hard drive no longer cuts it in the modern world of business, which is why COMS uses apps to run accounting functions remotely.

COMS is a key element of the independent firm of chartered accountants and business experts, which operates offices in Darlington, Durham and York. Specialists in cloud accounting, COMS offers expertise, support and allows businesses instant access to key financial information “on the go”, via the secure internet, using tablets, smartphones and laptops.

This “virtual” service offers support and increased efficiency in a range of areas, including: Payroll Accounting Auto Enrolment Management Information Financial Forecasting Accounting Officer Support The service uses leading software from QuickBooks, Xero and Sage Drive, boasting real-time updates, the ability to budget on a monthly basis and easy to grasp operating systems.

In an increasingly complex world, with so many changes in the payroll arena and strict penalties for non-compliance, more and more business owners

“

“Cloud accounting is easy, cost-effective and supremely accessible offering real benefits to business.”

are looking to full service providers to take over the management of this key area of administration to relieve the burden.

Jarvis said: “COMS is more than just outsourcing.

We understand clients’ individual needs and focus on providing a bespoke service. Control, accuracy and accountability remain fundamental in our approach.

“One of our key goals is to reduce their administration on record keeping, freeing up time and allowing them to focus on the business itself.”

The rapid development of technology could also see digital tax accounting become compulsory in the near future with cloud accounting being the easy way to prepare for this.

Jarvis said: “Technology is the future and as advancements continue our managed services team are here to help look after financial functions and move business forward.

“Cloud accounting allows businesses to keep records up to date, saving them time and money and allowing them to concentrate on developing their business, make quick and informed decisions and flourish in a competitive market.

“Cloud accounting is easy, cost-effective and supremely accessible, offering real benefits to business and is becoming the mainstay of modern administration.” n For more information on COMS and cloud accounting visit www.cliveowen.com/ managedservices

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Promotion

How fast funding saved a hotel and heritage centre Daniel Owen-Parr, commercial sales director at specialist lender Together, explains when SMEs can benefit from using specialist finance.

For more information visit www.togethermoney.com

We have provided £1m to an established leisure operator that needed to boost cash flow to finance its project to make a grade one listed manor house into a luxury resort as part of its UK holiday property portfolio.

The client had plans for substantial refurbishment to create a state-of-the-art hotel and heritage centre, whilst also continuing to manage its existing commercial ventures, but needed funding fast, in order to secure the property with a clear development strategy in place.

The client turned to us as a specialist short-term finance provider, and after reviewing the case, we agreed the required funding of £1m.

The listed manor house, which will be added to the company’s existing property portfolio, is to be transformed into a five-star, 50-bedroom hotel and accompanying museum, which will focus on the heritage of the building and local area.

As well as providing a fantastic attraction for tourists and local residents, the plans will also deliver an immediate increase in the value of the property, which the client will refinance with a high street bank once the refurbishment is complete.

However, as the client didn’t need all the funds immediately, we adopted our usual common sense approach and agreed the loan could be drawn down at £100,000 a month for 10 months, reducing interest costs for the client and ensuring a steady flow of capital.

This is a great example of how alternative finance can help businesses to realise their ambitions.

Whether it’s for property development, generating cash flow, facilitating business expansion or purchasing commercial or office space, specialist lenders like ourselves can assist in many instances where businesses may find it difficult to secure funding from the high street.

When speed and flexibility are of the essence, as in this case, specialist lenders can take an individual approach and act much faster than a traditional

lender, providing short-term finance that is tailored to the client’s needs.

We also work alongside the banks as part of the Bank Referral Scheme, so if there is a business banking customer they can’t assist directly, we are one of the selected panel of alternative finance providers that the customer is referred to, so we see ourselves very much as a complement to the traditional lenders.

Decisions in principle can be agreed quickly before a confirmed written offer following valuations. We then underwrite the case, before legal documents are provided to solicitors, and funds transferred. In some cases, this process can be turned around in extremely short timescales.

Together offers a wide range of finance including short-term finance, auction finance, residential, commercial and buy-to-let mortgages and secured loans, operating across the UK. It has a current loan book of £2bn, and total new lending in 2016 stood at just under £1.1bn. n If you’re looking for finance to assist with your business plans, find out how Together can help at: www.togethermoney.com or contact 0333 987 3922

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“When speed and flexibility are of the essence, specialist lenders can take an individual approach and act much faster than a traditional lender, providing shortterm finance that is tailored to the client’s needs.”

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Cancer has ruined and cut short so many lives. But fighting back from it can unlock deep, deep resources and be a beginning rather than an end. Jonathan Walker tells Mike Hughes about the effect it had on him and his Gambaru gym business.

W

hen he was growing up in Newton Le Willows near Bedale in Yorkshire, Jonathan Walker always knew he would be leaving the Village of the Year 2009 to make his own way in the business world. He loved the surroundings but the future lay elsewhere.

Harrogate, as it turned out.

“I always felt that I needed to be out of there and doing bigger and better things,” he says. “I was never going to end up living in a village because I felt that the world was a lot bigger than the area I grew up in.

“My mum and my stepdad split up when I was 18 months old and I used to see my dad about once every couple of months, but I was always inspired by the fact that he had his own business and was in charge of his own destiny.

When I was making my plans, I couldn’t see anything other than sport that would get me

away from sitting behind a desk every day, but at first I didn’t understand how I could bring that into my life as a career.”

Teaching was a possibility, as was the army and the fire brigade, but nothing struck quite the right balance he wanted of working in sport but also feeling that he was helping people with their health and their lifestyles.

Eating well and exercising had always been a big part of his life, and with an uncle playing rugby up near Leyburn and a granddad from farming stock, the Walker men were a formidable team who would give any opponents a run for their money.

“They were all big eaters, but stocky guys who either played rugby or were always active somewhere,” he remembers. “So, as I started getting a bit older and enjoyed my sport, I always thought of that balance of keeping in

shape but not missing out on the good food I liked to eat.

“By this time, I was playing county football, running with the county athletics team, setting the area record for the 200-metres sprint when I was 17. Then I went to college at Scarborough and university at Newcastle and all the time I thought playing competitive sport was something everyone should do for the escapism and the mental boost it gave.”

The need to also pay the bills on top of spending time in the gym or on the track or pitch forced him to move into pharmaceutical sales. Still looking after the body and selling a healthy lifestyle, but not the real Walker. It gave him a good grounding in selling and marketing, but after four years it was time to take the big step and fulfil a dream he had started having as a kid back in Newton Le Willows.

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“For a time, I thought wearing a suit and having a shave every day was going to be me and that wearing a tie was my future, but I knew I would go back to a tracksuit.”

“For a time, I thought wearing a suit and having a shave every day was going to be me and that wearing a tie was my future, but I knew I would go back to a tracksuit,” he says. “Ten years ago, I handed in my notice and haven’t looked back since. I got a job at Knaresborough swimming pool, then a duty manager’s role and after that I did my personal training course and started to develop a real interest in weights.

“But I needed to have my own ideas and when I first got the keys to the gym building there was a great excitement about the possibilities and opportunities, mixed with some fear – and a lack of sleep for about six weeks.”

The office was now 17 Station Parade, Harrogate. The Gambaru brand, which covers a 24-hour gym and an up-market healthyeating restaurant, is named after the Japanese principle of “Being the best you can be”. But the deeper cultural meaning that Walker lives by is more about going beyond what you think are your normal limits and finding those deeper resources.

He was already going beyond the normal

limits of a suit-and-tie job, but all the dreams and plans he was building towards were about to be put sharply into perspective as Gambaru came to have a hugely personal meaning and would set him a goal he might never have thought he could reach.

Two years after he bought his gym, problems with his eye led to trips to the doctor and the diagnosis no one wants to hear. In 2008, when he was 33 and had a silver medal from the British Powerlifting Championships, he lost his left eye to cancer.

“Being diagnosed was obviously a very big blow,” he says with an eyebrow-raising understatement.

“I don’t think it registered with me at first, if I’m being honest. I was so focused on the powerlifting that when the surgeon in Harrogate hospital said the lump in my eye could be a tumour, I said ‘But I’ve got to compete in six weeks’.

“He sat me down and said, ‘You need to get it in your head now that you are not going to be in that competition’. That’s when I realised it was serious and was going to be more traumatic than I had hoped. I had many

questions then – and still have them now – about why it should happen to me when I was trying to be so fit and healthy.

“But, as I started to look for more information, I read about elements like environment, stress and nutrition. The food we eat may be organic, but over-farming in a bid to feed the nation means there are elements missing from our soil now and our water supply can contain oestrogen and antibiotics.

“I was in my own business, training very hard and barely sleeping, so maybe I wasn’t looking after myself as well as I thought. Sleep is a massive thing in our lives, with some people doing very well off a few hours but the vast majority need it to relieve the stresses that can lead to so many problems.

“I have been working with life coach Mike Pywell for the past three years to move Gambaru into being a personal development model, incorporating health, nutrition and fitness. After I came out of hospital and had a business to run and was in the middle of expanding, which I had to put on hold, I put an eyepatch on and was back at work within a week.

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“I was learning there was more to health and fitness than just the aesthetics and weights, it was about the mind and how it can be strengthened by the release of endorphins and taking control of how your body can work.

“I was learning there was more to health and fitness than just the aesthetics and weights, it was about the mind and how it can be strengthened by the release of endorphins and taking control of how your body can work. After ten days of being told I couldn’t exercise for the next three months, I came here and did 30 minutes on a bike. I could feel the anaesthetic and medicines being sweated out of me and was absolutely exhausted, but I had a smile on my face because I knew I could get through it and be in charge of my own destiny.”

It is interesting to note that is the same phrase he used to describe his admiration for his dad. Both men had taken a grip on their lives, knew what was needed to make all the cogs fit together and were pumping those endorphins because they were creating their own success.

“That was a defining moment for me,” says

Walker, now aged 41. “When I look back at it, I realise it was not about me being able to ride 100 miles or bench-press 300kg, it was about my own mind feeling better and me being able to do something other than sitting in a corner rocking myself to sleep.

“The little things in life don’t bother me anymore because they could be taken away at any moment. I feel I have to explore every opportunity, because it will always lead somewhere.”

The New York marathon followed recently, raising money for Yorkshire Cancer Research.

He trained for ten months to do it and “went to some dark places” handling the emotion of it all, but came out the other side with even more positivity about what life now held for him.

He comes pre-packed with that attitude, and it spills over into every corner of the

business. The gym is open 24 hours a day, new equipment has been installed - including a German app-based system called Egym - and a good friend has moved to be the head chef at the business’s café, NJ’s. Gambaru also has its own adversity awards, working with local schools to identify young people who have used sport to become the best they can.

Walker followed his instincts when he was a child, followed his love of sport as a young man and has now followed his drive to run a successful business. It is a difficult thing to write, but perhaps his cancer made him a fuller person.

Like so many things in our lives, we never quite know what we are capable of until we are pushed almost to breaking point. It’s a lesson that so many entrepreneurs have learned – the journey can be tough, but the rewards are worth it. n

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Improving airport attracts British Airways With more than £100m invested in improved passenger services and plans for new hotels, British Airways has decided to return to Birmingham Airport. Steve Dyson reports.

Passengers using Birmingham Airport will soon see the results of a £100m investment aimed at making their journeys quicker, safer and more enjoyable.

That’s the promise from the airport’s chief operating officer David Winstanley, who explains the investments are aimed at ensuring Birmingham retains all the extra passengers it’s attracted in recent years.

The improvements range from a new choice of car parking to the latest self-service check-in points, and from improved bus facilities to faster security technology. Meanwhile, plans

for a new four-star hotel have been revealed – along with long-term aspirations for a five-star hotel.

Winstanley says: “We’ve experienced unprecedented growth and it’s come at a higher rate than we and our airline partners predicted.

The challenge now is how quickly we can focus on key areas to keep those passengers, because aviation is a highly competitive environment and people have choice. If we don’t attract and maintain them, they will vote with their feet.”

The first development at the airport focuses on passengers’ initial arrival when they are driving

to – or being dropped off at – the airport.

Winstanley explains that a new, free drop-off point has been created just five minutes’ walk away from the airport terminal, with a covered walkway to protect passengers in poor weather.

Operating from September, the free walkway will be in addition to valet-parking facilities and the premium drop-off zone, which costs £2 for the first ten minutes.

He says: “Since introducing paid-for drop-off zones, we had complaints about the charges.

We have listened to passengers, and have now reacted to them with this new, free facility.

Some people are comfortable with paying to be closer to the terminals. But we have now given passengers a genuine choice on whether or not they want to pay.”

Another development at Birmingham Airport is a brand new self-service check-in and “big bag” drop-off point, currently used by Air Lingus, Ryan Air and Thomas Cook, with the airport also talking to five other airlines about using it.

Winstanley says: “We’ve had loads of good, positive feedback about the new self-service points. Around 95% of passengers are now taking less than one minute to use it, which is real progress on the old system of face-to-face check-ins, which used to take several minutes.

“But we realise that we serve a wide demographic of passengers, from the IT-savvy to people less computer literate, so we’ll always host these machines with a smiling face, asking: ‘Do you need help?’

“Again, our aim is to give people choice – check-in yourself or we can help you if needed.

But our strategic plan is to move to the vast majority of passengers being self-service over the next five years, as this means we can be more efficient in time and space, servicing three times as many people in the same area.”

Winstanley says the airport is also providing better information to people queueing to get through security, and acknowledges that refined communications are needed to suit both regular travellers and those who are perhaps only occasional users.

He says around £40m of the new investment is in areas that passengers won’t see. This includes the latest X-ray equipment to increase the accuracy, speed and standards of baggage checks, and laying over seven miles of new baggage conveyors capable of carrying up to 4,500 bags per hour – more than double the rate of old conveyors.

He says: “We’re also investing in better facilities for baggage handlers, and together with the

new equipment this means we’re reducing incidents of lost baggage to the smallest possible level.”

Other improvements include a £2.5m investment in a new bussing lounge on the airport’s international pier, and the insourcing of airport buses. “We know customers can get frustrated with poor bus services,” says Winstanley. “So we said if we care, we should do it ourselves.”

The new Birmingham Air Service bus operation joins other insourced operations at the airport, such as the fire service and air traffic control.

Winstanley says that the airport is also working with an organisation called “One Combined System” to better assist passengers with disabilities like autism and Alzheimer’s.

And he adds that the airport is working closer with the UK Border Force on a new system of providing actual passenger queue data to help refine staffing levels. It’s also introduced 10 e-gates to speed up the passport entry process for incoming passengers.

For business flyers, Winstanley says the airport is working on improving frequencies on what are already popular routes from Birmingham, as well as refining fast-track lanes for easier check-in and security.

He says business flyers can also benefit from a range of three business lounges at the airport – Emirates, No 1 and Aspire – with improved wifi and better broadband for executives needing to download files.

New quality hotels are also in Birmingham Airport’s plans, with a fourstar Hilton Garden Inn able to house 178 guests opening on the site of the airport’s current Diamond House offices by July 2018, creating some 70 jobs.

Winstanley says: “The Hilton Garden Inn will add to what is already a fantastic range of current hotels, and we’re also in longer-term discussions about a new five-star hotel.

“All these improvements mean we’re offering real choice to our customers in all sorts of ways, and this competitive approach means overall quality is getting better.” n

Paul Kehoe, chief executive of Birmingham Airport, pictured with British Airways’ Captain Richard Humphreys, first officer Claudia Zonneyville and cabin crew Rina Ottsman and Michael Fish

British Airways take off from Birmingham again When flight BA7025 took off from Birmingham Airport for Florence on 20 May, it marked a significant return to regional flying for British Airways.

It was the first of four new regional routes and the first time British Airways’ colours have been seen at the airport for a decade.

The airline last flew from Birmingham in 2007 when the regional airline business was sold to Flybe, although Vueling and Iberia Express, subsidiaries of British Airways’ parent company, International Airlines Group (IAG), started up services and Aer Lingus has continued to operate to Dublin from Birmingham since 1984.

The inaugural British Airways service to Florence was the first of the new routes to take off followed by flights to the popular Spanish sunspots of Malaga, Ibiza and Palma, providing more than 17,000 seats to the sun from Birmingham this summer.

Flights are operated at weekends by modern Embraer 190 jet aircraft, with Eurotraveller and Club cabins and two-abreast seating so everyone can have an aisle or window seat, with each way fares starting from £29.

Luke Hayhoe, British Airways’ general manager, says: “We’re really excited to be back at Birmingham, which is such a good location for the whole of the Midlands.

“It’s got great train and road links, improved infrastructure and really strong year-on-year passenger growth, which all gives us confidence that British Airways can drive similar numbers.

“Our new destinations will hopefully do well, and as long as they do we’ll look at future opportunities from Birmingham. With the forthcoming HS2 high-speed train, growing exporters and the whole region generally up, it all feels positive when we’re looking at future expansion outside of London.

“British Airways is constantly looking at future opportuntities, and Birmingham is very much in the frame for growth. The airport already has a great relationship with our owner IAG and has worked really well with us on launching these new routes.”

Paul Kehoe, chief executive of Birmingham Airport, adds: “To see the British Airways’ tailfin back on the ground after ten years is great news for the region.”

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Windows of opportunity Robert Epstein, Windows product marketing director at Microsoft, tells Mike Hughes how the partnership strategy of Bill Gates and Paul Allen 42 years ago is still at the heart of the company.

IF you need proof of the global reach of Microsoft, then here’s a statistic for you. Robert Epstein, who is “the Windows guy” for the company, tells me that since its release two years ago, Windows 10 is now used on 500 million devices… in 192 countries.

I find that very, very impressive – but then I wasn’t even sure there were 192 countries on the planet.

But perhaps even more impressive is the amount of hard work and passion

Microsoft puts into living up to its mantra of “empowering every organisation and person on the planet to achieve more”.

It’s a bold mission – one that new chief executive Satya Nadella is particularly supportive of – to persuade hundreds of millions of users that each one is more than just a Wikipedia stat the company can put on a screen at the latest product unveiling. Users have to matter as much as programs.

The big signal back when the company was

founded in 1975 was that the two men who were hoping to become successful working with Basic code for the breezeblock-sized Altair 8800 microcomputer, decided not to sell their work to one bidder, but allow it to be used by anyone who licensed it.

“It was only through that approach that the company grew and it continues to be the foundation for what we do,” Epstein tells me.

“Forty years on, whilst the breadth of technology we provide has expanded, the

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beauty of how it has moved on to be provided as a set of cloud services means users now have greater opportunity at their fingertips to use powerful software that previously would only have been available to huge corporations.”

The breathtaking growth of Microsoft (quarterly revenue of US$23.6bn at the last count), still relies heavily on the collaboration and partnership model. The company can pump out version after version of its operating system (OS) – as much as its R&D labs can cope with – but it needs a global army of technology provider partners to make it all happen.

“We have always been about working through IT professionals, and specialist partners.

We now have 23,000 partner companies in the UK that employ more than 500,000 people,” Epstein explains.

“What that means is that somewhere out there is a technology expert in every industry, in every type of company and every part of the country. The beauty of this is that while the underlying technology being provided will be that same hyperscale cloud technology – like Windows and Office – that users are familiar with and have used for decades in some cases, but it will be tailored and customised as required by an individual organisation to get what they need but with the same trustworthiness.

“You also get the scale of our investment in our data centres and our cloud infrastructure to provide an incredible level of computing power and storage, available where you are, whatever size you are and whatever you want to do. It’s as simple as buying with a credit card.

“Whatever you want to do” could be another very applicable Microsoft slogan. To be the OS of the people, Windows has to appeal to all, from the kids learning about coding so that they can become digital leaders and drive the UK economy into the next decade, to the business start-ups who want to keep their accounts safe and the conglomerates who want to influence global markets.

Epstein tells me: “Any organisation of any size gets access to the same scale as the largest enterprise, and when it comes to supporting all those customers of varying sizes and in different industries and different parts of the world, then our partner channels prove once again that they are such an integral part of Microsoft and the way it operates.

“As our users would expect, those partners

are all certified in various parts of our technology and there are now more than 75,000 Microsoft certified professionals in the UK who have taken training and been assessed by us.

“That network means we are able to support customers who want to move to new technology like Windows 10, the most modern operating system, operating on a huge variety of devices and for a huge number of people.

They will all be able to work more productively at home, in the office or on the move because Windows 10 is so cloud-enabled, which makes it very easy to store data and find it again, putting the customer at the centre.

“It also helps drive user productivity with elements like Cortana, our digital assistant, which helps with more natural interaction, or devices where you can just pick up a pen and write on them. But the whole industry is also very aware that cyber-security is an evergrowing concern and the security threat has changed enormously since Windows 7 was designed, a decade ago.”

About half of online adults were cybercrime victims in the past year, with attacks costing the global economy up to US$500bn annually, including one in five small and medium-sized businesses being targeted.

Microsoft has been fighting cybercrime and stopping its spread for some years. Leading the battle is its Digital Crimes Unit formed in 2008, now working from a restricted-access

Cybercrime Center on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, where a sponsored team of international legal and internet security experts employ the latest tools and technologies.

“On a more day-to-day level, if one of our users isn’t sure of something, type ‘tips’ into the Windows 10 search bar and you will find videos and online help. Even if you just can’t set up a printer, just type ‘printer’ into the box, or ‘user account’ or ‘bluetooth’ or whatever you need help with and it will find those settings for you. All of this is just us trying to simplify the user experience.”

There’s that word again – user. It is too easy to just say it without meaning, but Nadella has put it at the centre of the operation and turned a bright spotlight on it.

“We always need to be very user-centric, and I have seen the transformation over the 14 years I have been with Microsoft,” agrees Epstein.

“The way Windows 10 has been built is a point-change from before and we now release new versions of code almost every two weeks to people who have opted to be early testers.

We have a programme called Windows Insiders where we push out the latest version over the internet and work with that community to get feedback from around the world.

“This is for technical enthusiasts who are prepared to accept that sometimes things will go a bit wrong because it is an early version,

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but we are developing with the public with genuine feedback for months on end before we formalise a release.

“As we have transformed into a company driven by that single mission to power every organisation and person on the planet to achieve more, there is a genuine excitement about what we can do for businesses and for the single users.”

The Microsoft of the seventies was groundbreaking in the way it made science fiction into useable fact, and I sense that same spirit inside every box with that familiar red, green, blue and yellow badge. But that also has to come with astonishingly high levels of skill – the very best in the industry – from R&D bases around the world who are creating the DNA for the next big change.

“The UK is in a good place at the moment, with the amount of innovation coming from here and the number of tech start-ups, both of which are a combination of research coming out of our great universities coupled with the kind of entrepreneurial spirit we see around the country,” says Epstein.

“When I look at many of our technologies, the UK Government and our early adopters

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“We believe in working with all sectors of education, starting with the amount of software we give away for free to schools to excite kids about technology.”

have shown a great passion for the benefits that can be gained from going digital.

“We are hugely invested in education and in terms of the UK we have one of our six global research centres based in Cambridge and there is some great technology coming out of there.

Similarly, the new version of Microsoft Paint, which is one of the most loved applications in Windows, which allows businesses to work in 3D, was created in London by one of our studios.

“We believe in working with all sectors of education, starting with the amount of software we give away for free to schools to excite kids about technology and coding as they come through the education system, through to the 11,000 Microsoft apprentices in training across our partner network, thanks again to our Microsoft partners.

“One of the most recent advances is with

the Minecraft game, which will be familiar to the youngest kids as a place where they are learning to build their own worlds and use their computers to be creative. It is also an incredible teaching application which has been used to help with history lessons by looking at how Roman villages were built and used, for example.

“Well, now we have just announced the ability to code in Minecraft, so the children themselves can make the characters move around and create parts of the game. These young people will be running our companies and leading our research, because they were immersed in technology from such an early stage.”

Who knows what remarkable products this generation will be working on – and try to imagine what technology the newborns of 2018 will be using as they grow up. For me, Epstein is

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one of only a handful of people who can look ahead with the sort of experience that makes you listen to him and jot down a few notes for the future in your old-fashioned spiral-bound notebook (sorry Microsoft).

“The future is exciting, and even trying to look a year or two ahead is difficult because that is a huge length of time in tech, with so many developments happening so quickly.

But we already know that you will certainly continue to see devices of all shapes and sizes having much more natural inputs, like voice and writing which are so natural for us as humans – Microsoft is already more than 95% accurate with voice recognition.

“The shift from 2D to 3D is also going to become very important, with the ability for a company to make 3D objects and insert them into a real world scenario to see how they would work. That naturally transitions to what we call ‘mixed reality’, which encompasses a wide range of ways we interact with the real and 3D worlds. Windows 10 supports mixed reality and later this year we will be announcing, with our partners like Acer and Dell, a variety of headsets that will work with a reasonably-powerful home computer and will retail at around £300.

“So at one end of the Microsoft mixed reality spectrum is virtual reality, where you put a headset on and your entire world becomes digital, and at the other end is holograms which we work on through our ‘HoloLens’ product.

“As the world’s only self-contained holographic computer, this doesn’t need tethering to a computer or phone, you just

put on the glasses, and see the real world, but with holograms on top of it. The headset has the ability to read the world around you and interact with it, like throwing a ball at a wall and seeing it bounce back, off the table and onto your floor.

“We are only just starting to see the potential uses, from medical schools doing fullscale training on what is effectively a human body to collaborations that mean engineers can work on jet engines and put information on top of that engine without having the expense of taking one offline.

“It is also a huge benefit for people who work in hazardous environments, like lift engineers who can go into lift shafts and send back images of what they are working on, using the forward facing cameras on the HoloLens.

Back at the head office, colleagues can draw on those images and the engineer will see that advice appearing on the component they are working on.

“These are all exciting advances that are here today, and we haven’t even mentioned the possibilities to come from artificial intelligence, which will start coming to life through the digital assistants we have on our devices. Or the next development, which will be the use of AI ‘bots’ which will start taking over customer service and simple queries as they start understanding the natural language of a user request and supply the right answer.”

His enthusiasm is infectious and makes me think what the desk I am sitting in front of will look like in a few years, armed with the sort of firepower businesses are still only

dreaming of. With the scale of the cloud giving instant computing power and storage, BI and rich analysis that can give serious competitive advantage is a click away and information mining about markets, customers and competitors becomes possible at a microscopically granular level.

“This is a fourth industrial revolution revolutionising and digitally transforming UK businesses,” says Epstein.

“We have had steam, electricity and the microprocessor, and now we have an age driven by the arrival of the cloud and the huge data centres that provide our massive, hyperscale, low-cost storage to allow us to utilise those vast amounts of data.

“Businesses like Netflix, Amazon, Airbnb and Spotify have all disrupted their businesses using cloud technology. They have built business that generate huge amounts of cash flow while requiring minimal investment, and their success is proving how disruptive digital transformation can be. However, it isn’t just about start ups, it is for any business that wants to empower its employees and engage more with its market and optimise its operation.

“We are at an incredibly exciting time watching the world learning to adapt to an absolute rennaisance in what the user will be experiencing in computing. Yes, there is a rapid transformation in the use of cloud technology, but we are still only at the early stages, and as that power to tap into the resources there, without needing to spend millions on development, becomes more democratised, it will just become more exciting every day.”

If this was a Microsoft product launch, I could picture Gates and Allen applauding from the back seats of the auditorium with pride and reassurance that the innovation they started is still so exciting and that their model is still so central to the company they founded.

Thanks to visionary people like Epstein, and the user-first philosophy driven by Nadella, Microsoft and its products have never been in safer hands – ours. n

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r o f l l e h g n i o G

r e h t a le Restoring and repairing leather furniture or expensive designer handbags is common today but its origins can be traced back to Ben Staerck, then a teenage entrepreneur on Tyneside, as Paul Robertson explains.

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en Staerck is going places – literally. While the business he started with his father when in sixth form spreads across the world, he too is moving from where he has spent all his life – the North East of England – to oversee expansion into one of retail’s biggest names, Harvey Nichols.

It is a big move for the 30-year-old and his wife, Charlotte, buying a house in London, but he has no intention of relocating the headquarters of Furniture Clinic and Handbag Clinic from Newcastle even though it has outgrown its current premises.

“I am fortunate to have a good management team in place at Furniture Clinic – the place runs itself,” says Staerck. “My job is increasingly looking at new opportunities to take the business forward. Handbag

Clinic on the other hand is growing very quickly. Most of the business comes in and from London so I will be better based there to drive it forward.”

Furniture Clinic manufactures a unique range of leather cleaning, repair and restoration products used in many industries including furniture, automotive, clothing, handbag, luggage and many more. It mixes and blends specialist chemicals, paints and dyes to achieve safe to use and effective products in the 16,000-square foot factory on the Hobson industrial estate near Newcastle and can produce up to 1,000 bottles per hour.

More than 20 technicians work from strategicallylocated workshops throughout the UK, offering a repair service to many companies that need

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nationwide coverage such as furniture manufacturers, car dealerships and removal companies. The service covers leather, fabric and wood on items such as furniture, car interiors, upholstery, clothes, footwear, handbags, and luggage.

Handbag Clinic has four stores throughout the UK where customers can bring in their handbags to be cleaned or restored with new and used handbags available to buy.

The two companies currently operate as one with 65 staff, a turnover of £4m growing at 30% a year and still maintaining the family feel – Staerck’s brother, Adam, is training manager for Handbag Clinic, while Charlotte operates the retail side of the business.

“It is a really exciting time,” says Staerck. “We have opened the first concession of Handbag Clinic in Harvey Nichols in Manchester, quickly followed by Knightsbridge. We have a new store in Qatar and plan to open another one in Harvey Nichols Qatar in late summer to go with our stores in Chelsea and Islington.

“I am really confident it will generate great sales for the business. Although we have stores repairing a lot of bags and we have a good name and reputation, some customers are

reluctant to pass over a £2,000-£3,000 bag, something that they love, and trust us with it.

“Having a shop affiliated with Harvey Nichols is going to give customers that confidence and so will help increase sales across our stores.

Our plan is to open retail outlets in all Middle East cities and ship the bags to Qatar to be repaired – in the same way in the UK that they are shipped back to Newcastle from across the country.”

While much focus on growth is on Handbag Clinic, Furniture Clinic and product development is not standing still. Having made mistakes with franchising in the past, Staerck believes the lessons learned mean it can be a way to successfully grow the business.

“Furniture Clinic can grow much bigger than what it is,” he says. “We can control the growth of Handbag Clinic by opening more stores whereas with Furniture Clinic it is finding more corporate customers, overseas partners and we can’t make that happen quickly. Having said that, we are opening franchises in Germany and Bulgaria to drive growth – especially Germany where they use a lot of leather in cars and homes.

“We have recently set up with a partner in

Saudi Arabia and we are working with them to distribute the products across the Middle East. In England, we franchised the concept of repairing furniture in people’s homes and set up 20 branches but some didn’t have the same principles as us – everyone was competent and offered a good service but when something went wrong they didn’t handle it the way we do in Newcastle so we slimmed it down.

“I was 21 and willing to sell to anyone as it was easy money – I went out and bought an Aston Martin – but we stopped doing domestic franchising due to issues with customer care, although we have relaunched using an expert in the field. We will be very picky who we take on board, learning from last time, and they will all do it our way.”

The business has come a long way since his time at Whickham Comprehensive School in Gateshead, where the idea for Furniture Clinic was born. His father, Keith, had a business where he took leather cleaner and wood cleaner around the UK, demonstrating it at car shows, county fairs and events like the Ideal Homes Exhibition.

“I tried to encourage him to get people to reorder from us direct via telephone or

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post,” says Staerck. “I then learnt how to build a website while at school, promoting the products, using search engine optimisation, selling on eBay and I built it up to £10,000 a month in sales while in sixth form.

“We were making the products at the house and selling online so it was almost all profit. I thought ‘What can I do at university where I will end up earning over £100,000 a year?’. It was pretty simple, so I decided not to go to uni. Unfortunately, I have not maintained that type of profit margin but I have no regrets.”

In 2012, Staerck took on the role of managing director from his father and continued to oversee impressive growth.

“The business has always grown very well naturally – we offer a good product and service that people need,” Staerck says. “When we first started doing it, we were pretty much the only ones in the UK – lots of people do it now – but we have almost created an industry in the past

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10 years. People are aware you can clean and repair leather whereas years ago, especially on the repair front, they were most likely to chuck it out and get new.”

Of course, expansion across the world comes at a time of political uncertainty but it is not something that phases Staerck, though he admits opening stores in Europe is something he will not do until the outcome of Brexit is known.

“Unless we get an awful deal, I don’t think the outcome of Brexit will ever prevent me from doing business – we already do business outside the European Union (EU) where there are custom duties and taxes to pay,” he says.

“Free borders are important to me – I am not sitting worrying about something I can’t control – but it will prevent me opening a store in Europe until we know the terms. The cost of setting up a new repair centre with people you can trust in Europe would run into the

“What can I do at university where I will end up earning over £100,000 a year? It was pretty simple, so I decided not to go to uni.”

hundreds of thousands.

“For every store opened, we recruit four people at Newcastle – we can probably open 10 stores in England so we would be looking at 50-100 in Europe, which is 200-400 potential jobs on Tyneside.

“The workforce has built up knowledge and skills – Furniture Clinic is such a specialised thing we do, it doesn’t matter where we are.

People come to us, we ship it to them, location is not as important as it once was, but the skills are in Newcastle.

“We had a guy who drove his Rolls Royce up from Kent to have the leather restored and one from Nottingham to refurbish a double decker bus – even now we get car interiors and furniture from Europe.

“It is so easy to ship something into Europe.

We set up a French website for Furniture Clinic a year ago and this month it will do €10,000.

We make all the products in Newcastle and ship it out there – that’s why post-Brexit it has got to be free borders. If we don’t get that it will be a pain. Germany and Bulgaria might not have happened.

“Being close to the market is extremely important and it’s the same for Handbag

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Clinic – we want to open our own stores in all the major European cities and ship back to Newcastle for repair. We can send a 20kg box for £7 from Newcastle to Germany, France or Belgium but it is £36 to Switzerland for the same box. If we get the same deal with the EU as Switzerland has then it makes the expansion very difficult – I will have to consider opening a repair centre within Europe, which has an impact on future employment in Newcastle.

“My own company in the United States and a joint venture in Hong Kong were instantly successful because they do it how it is done in England so there is now a franchise package following this model that will hopefully drive further international success.”

Furniture Clinic has a store in New York and the States is a market in which Ben sees great potential. “We are launching a range of products for leather crafters who make small leather goods and carve intricate patterns – dyes, finishes and paints to customise products,” he says. “In England, there is about £100,000-worth of business but I believe in the States the value is US$10m-plus.

“In researching it, I found one chain has 200 stores supplying knives and tools for people who make things out of leather – the cowboy culture – creating things like gun cases, knife sheaths and customised saddles. We have recruited a couple of sales people for business-

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“I keep seeing opportunities to do business and I enjoy doing it. If I have got something I want to do but not the finance and manpower I have sleepless nights.”

to-business and are looking to establish new bases.

“We can ship anywhere in England for a fixed price but can’t do that in US – the shipping fees vary – ultimately we want three centres in the States, one for east, one for west and one for the bits in the middle, which is how mail order companies work to offer customers the same shipping fee across the country, and allows us to be competitive.”

Staerck has picked up numerous awards, including being named North East young business executive of the year and scooping BQ’s national emerging entrepreneur of the year title. He will be spending three weeks of the month in London, coming back to Newcastle for sales and management meetings, and remains focused on growth.

“I want to be more removed from the day-to-day business so I can focus more on strategy – I like to come up with the ideas to grow the business,” he says. “People come to me with problems that they can fix themselves or someone else could when I am not here

but because it is my business it is difficult not to do it myself. We will eventually create a more corporate structure, there is potential for Furniture Clinic and Handbag Clinic to keep getting bigger and bigger.

“I keep seeing opportunities to do business and I enjoy doing it. If I have got something I want to do but not the finance and manpower I have sleepless nights. What really drives me is seeing an opportunity and not doing anything about it – I have to move on it.

“The steepest learning curve has been not to jump on the ideas as quickly, slow down, research them – the business has lost money trying to do things that haven’t worked as well. Most things I have tried haven’t failed but, because I have been doing three or four things at once, it has taken a lot longer for the original idea to become profitable than if I had prioritised and concentrated on one idea at a time.”

Staerck is certainly one man going hell for leather to ensure his business is a great success. n

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Retaining skills in your business post-Brexit LEGAL BRIEFING With the UK leaving the European Union (EU), how will this affect companies looking to recruit and retain skilled overseas workers?

Flora Mewies, employment and immigration solicitor at law firm Ward Hadaway, looks at the issue.

Flora Mewies flora.mewies@wardhadaway.com 0113 205 6797

Our clients often discuss with us the difficulties they face recruiting and retaining both high and low skilled workers from within the existing UK workforce. This is a common problem across all businesses but the struggle is even more pronounced in industries such as manufacturing, hospitality, agricultural, technology and social care.

At present, nationals of another (EU) member state can move to the UK to work, be self-employed, self-sufficient or study. At the time of writing, the UK Government has indicated it wants to protect the status of European Economic Area (EEA) nationals currently in the UK but there has been no guidance on how this will work. Therefore businesses relying on EEA workers are concerned about them leaving in the run-up to Brexit and continuing to operate effectively post-Brexit if access to the EEA labour market is removed or restricted.

To prepare for Brexit, businesses need to act now.

Firstly develop a communication strategy to show EEA workers your commitment to them, reassure them that at present nothing has changed and allow them to share their concerns. Secondly gather information on your workforce, including workers’ nationalities, whether they currently hold a visa or an EU registration or residency certificate, whether their right to work is dependent on a spouse or family member and when they first arrived in the UK. From this, you can identify EEA nationals who may consider applying for a registration certificate to demonstrate their current right to live and work in the UK or applying for a document certifying permanent residency in the UK if they have been in the UK for five continuous years. This puts the EEA worker in the best position to remain in the UK post-Brexit and the business in the best position to retain their skills and talent. There may also be workers within the business who are unaware they can apply to become a British citizen.

You may want to consider offering financial assistance for such applications through a loan agreement. You can protect your business by

making it expressly clear that if the employee leaves pre-Brexit, you have the legal right to deduct the value of the loan from their salary.

You may find non-EEA workers living and working in the UK as a spouse or partner of an EEA national.

Here, businesses may encourage their non-EEA workers to consider other options, such as applying for a visa under the UK’s points based system. One visa worth considering is the tier one exceptional talent visa. Applicants require endorsement as an emerging or recognised leader in the fields of either science, humanities, engineering, medicine, digital technology or the arts. Following endorsement, they apply for their visa and, if granted, can be employed, self-employed, volunteer, study and apply to bring their family to the UK. Some roles in your business may qualify for sponsorship under the UK’s tier two general visa category, for non-EEA workers who will fill a vacant skilled role within the UK. No drastic changes to the UK’s points based system for non-EEA workers have yet been proposed post-Brexit. Although the cost of sponsorship of a tier two general worker is likely to increase (the Conservative manifesto proposed doubling this from £1,000 per person per year of their visa to £2,000), this is still a very effective option for filling skills shortages.

For many businesses, attracting and sourcing the required level of labour will be a key long-term operational issue affecting their business model.

In particular, the hospitality, agricultural and manufacturing sectors will never have dealt with immigration issues at the volumes that may be required in the near future. You need to be clear about what steps you need to take and how to put your workers at the start of the queue with immigration applications and your recruitment processes. n

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“To prepare for Brexit, businesses need to act now.”

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“Buyers are becoming so much more conscious about quality these days, they are fascinated about the story behind it.”

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IT’S IN THE

Brother and sister James and Belinda Yu used advice from an experienced entrepreneur to help them transform their wicker handbag business, moving it up the value chain while retaining their philanthropic outlook, as Janet Tansley discovers.

W

ith success in their sights and a growing reputation, siblings James and Belinda Yu were on their way to bagging a booming business empire. But an off-the-cuff comment

by Innocent Smoothies founder Richard Reed caused the duo to down tools and re-think their plans just two years in.

Their business, Wicker Wings, designs and produces handmade wicker handbags using traditional Chinese skills. “We were really doing well,” says James.

“Although we were primarily online, we were being stocked in eight shops in the North West of England and in London, and we were in the final ten of Virgin’s ‘Pitch to Rich’ competition, vying to pitch our idea to Sir Richard Branson in a bid to win a £150,000 marketing campaign.

“It couldn’t have looked better. But, when Richard Reed looked at one of the bags we produced and said he could see it in Harrods, it caused us to think again about where we were and where we really wanted to be – while we were already good, we could be amazing.”

Re-launching after just two years, the pair were united in their belief that it was about more than “making a quick buck”. It always had been backed by a philanthropic ethos to give back as well as take.

“The re-launch came at a particularly good time,” adds James. “Buyers are becoming so much more conscious about quality these days, and they are interested in what’s gone into creating a product, they are fascinated about the story behind it.”

James and Belinda’s story is more interesting than most because it fuses together their family’s past with their present and what will hopefully be their future. “Our inspiration came from our grandmother, who wove wicker handbags for a living back in China, before the family migrated to Liverpool 33 years ago, in search of a better life for themselves and their children,” explains Belinda, 33.

“They had no money when they arrived but they started their own business, a fish and chip shop in Wavertree, and regularly sent some of the money they earned back home to help those who were less fortunate,” adds James, 24.

“We were just sitting around the kitchen table one night, talking about our history, and Belinda mentioned that our gran used to weave

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baskets. I found that amazing and did a Google search and found there weren’t any major wicker brands.”

It was like a plan was coming together. James had just graduated in business and economics at the University of Liverpool and was considering his career options. Encouraged by their family’s story and inspired by the example of their parents, James and Belinda decided to team up.

“We get on really well so it made sense to look at ideas for working together and Belinda had already had a business and she had learned a lot from that,” James says.

“Neither of us had a fashion background so that side was quite challenging but we came up with our own designs and then it was a question of finding the right people to work with,” Belinda adds.

“The business took a year to establish, working around Belinda’s schedule following the birth of her second child – Belinda has two girls, Amelia, six, and Ava, three, and I am in awe of her,” says James, interrupting his train of thought. “I don’t know how Belinda does it, I don’t know how any woman does it, juggling work with being a mum but it’s phenomenal.

She – they – are phenomenal.”

Wicker Wings was born and was thriving.

Originally the bags sold for £60, with every stage of the process carried out in China. But, following the relaunch last year, everything except the wicker weaving is carried out in the UK, at the siblings’ respective homes in Liverpool and Sale.

That way, they can combine the meticulous weaving craft once honed by their gran and now carried out by artisans in the home of their forefathers – as they put it, “Ensuring the tradition of hand-weaving is kept alive” – with the control of putting the product together, ensuring the quality and perfection of the finished item.

“We are not talking about the Louboutin of handbags, but certainly the affordable-luxury end,” explains Belinda, drawing the comparison with the high-end shoe brand. “Everything is sourced in-house, from the leather that has replaced the pleather we used to use, to the buckles and fastenings, and assembled by ourselves and a team we have put together.

“It now seems strange that we had such finely-crafted wicker bags to which we attached other fittings that, while good, didn’t really complement their quality. That has now changed. We use Italian leather, which only

gets better over time, and the product is now an even more beautiful one, one people will want to hold onto.

“Not coming from a manufacturing background, I don’t think we realised quite how much work went into just one bag. It takes a whole day just to weave the basket. And, from start to finish, it takes a day and a half to create and put it together.

“That’s why our brand philosophy is ‘Know the story. Understand the process’. Wicker Wings was and is about so much and so we needed to condense it into one simple tagline, which captures our essence and our ethos. And that does it perfectly.”

They now make five shapes of bag in five sizes and five colour schemes, ranging from £160 to £195. The basket work has stayed black.

“We might bring out a natural shade – we could even dye it any number of colours – but initially at least we want to concentrate on changing the perception that wicker is only for hampers or picnic baskets,” Belinda adds. “It’s

for all year round, not just summer.”

While this is the year that James and Belinda aim to send Wicker Wings flying into stores like Selfridges and Liberty, their quest is concentrated not just on building a better bank balance but on developing an exclusive product and a go-to brand for customers from 21 to their late 40s.

“Though that’s not to say it is not designed for anyone who simply likes style, and to be a fashion item to treasure,” adds James. “Yes, we all like to buy things that are cheaper, that we only expect to wear or use a certain number of times, but we also like to buy things that we know are going to last. Belinda has had her wicker bag for years and it just gets better with age.”

James and Belinda are constantly being asked about a male version of the bag and have not ruled that out as they expand, but the aim is to concentrate on getting a foothold in the affordable luxury end of the market and highend retail side of things, as well as continuing

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their parents’ tradition of helping others through their work.

They have a “bag-for-bag” mission, which means that, for every bag they sell, they donate another little bag containing books to children in poorer areas of Asia. And customers are also invited to write a letter to the youngsters so the charity link is personal.

“Our parents have taught us to remember that you may not have much but you will always have more than some, so you should always help when you can,” James says. “They also instilled in us that education comes first, that it was the foundation for our future, so that was where the bag-for-bag mission came from.”

The wicker bags have changed the way James looks at his own life too. “The world we live in is so quick and fast-paced, with the sudden impact of social media, the quickchanging fashions,” he smiles. “Seeing the effort that goes into one bag and the time it takes has made me want to slow things down.

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“We are trying to make this business a success not just for us, but for our parents and family.”

“I never imagined Wicker Wings could change my whole outlook on life. I didn’t expect that to happen, but it has. I’m probably the same as everyone else, I’m impatient, but I’ve learned to slow down and appreciate things, the quality of life and time as much as material things.

“In business in general, people want that quick-and-easy buck, they want to make money and go. Belinda and I need a purpose, we want to create something more meaningful.

If you look at the likes of Apple and its increasing philanthropic work, you can see that people expect more from a company. It goes beyond the product.”

Belinda says: “And people invest in that as much as anything. That’s why our story is so important – people buy into that as much as they buy into our bags. But this is the year we

want to get into one of the retailers we have in mind.

“Where do we want to be in three to five years? I don’t know, it’s hard. I suppose we want to be a recognised brand, a go-to brand and one that puts wicker on the map of fashion.

“If I’m honest, I get caught up in doing things. You have a vision but that changes every so often. But it will always be about family. It was inspired by family and that will remain so.”

James adds: “Belinda and I are trying to make this business a success not just for us, but for our parents and family. We have come full circle. We want to create something that our parents can be proud of and which Belinda’s children, my nieces and nephews, can get on board with if they wish.” n

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Stability isn’t everything – diversification is Dean Turner, economist in the UK investment office at UBS Wealth Management, tells Mike Hughes how a new UBS report shows confidence in the UK economy from an influential sector.

WORKING in a local, national and global economy that is facing considerable change, perhaps the most we can say is that stability is desirable, but not essential.

Uncertainty can be dealt with if there are sources of trusted guidance to turn to. One of the illuminating findings of a new UBS report, titled “Is unpredictability the new normal?” revealed that two-thirds of Britain’s high net worth individuals – those with over US$1m in investable assets – suffer from information overload, highlighting the need for clear and well-informed advice.

UBS interviewed more than 2,800 millionaires in seven markets around the world – including over 400 in the UK – to assess how unpredictability is shaping their attitudes and actions.

The election of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote and tensions over North Korea are among the many unexpected events with major political, economic and social consequences.

As the report tells us: “Opinions differ on whether or not this is anything out of the ordinary. Some feel we live in very unpredictable times, while others consider such events to be no different to those experienced by previous generations.”

One of the key voices in that unpredictability debate is UBS economist Dean Turner, who told me: “We have some relative stability in the West compared to some of the emerging markets, but policies, governments and economic conditions change all the time, So, in reality, unpredictability has always been with us. In my experience, successful businesses are those that are open-minded and adapt to that change.

“Experienced business leaders are used to assessing and dealing with risk. Firms that have endured multiple economic cycles demonstrate that they can be pretty good at being adaptive and reacting well to change”.

The report UBS has launched tackles a notoriously tricky sector – getting millionaires to discuss their money or their concerns – but the breadth of findings here is an illustration of just how much investors can differ in their approach to securing their financial futures.

There are many revealing findings in the UBS report, including that 81% of British millionaires consider their domestic market to be a safe place to hold or invest their wealth. Turner argues it’s important to avoid domestic bias when it comes to investing, but that the UK remains an attractive place for investment.

“Diversification is the mantra of UBS, and is

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“Experienced business leaders are used to assessing and dealing with risk. Firms that have endured multiple economic cycles demonstrate that they can be pretty good at being adaptive and reacting well to change.”

the first rule of investment because life is not always certain, therefore the only way we can reliably hedge against that is to diversify.

“When looking specifically at the UK economy, notwithstanding the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, I believe the UK will remain an attractive place for both domestic and international investors. The UK is still likely to be regarded as an attractive place to invest and start businesses. This is because it has the institutions and the legal framework that facilitate this; moreover, they are trusted globally. This is unlikely to be under threat, no matter what trading relationships the UK ends up with post-Brexit. So, it doesn’t surprise me that the number came out that high.”

The confidence of our own successful businesses is clearly reflected globally, with more businesses looking to Britain for security and reward for innovation and investment.

Turner points out that the UK’s current account deficit means we are reliant on the flow of overseas income in order to match the balance of payments, but he adds: “Although we are seeing the balance of payments adjust

naturally, the fact that we have not seen the pound much as low as many forecasters – not UBS Wealth Management – had predicted, suggests that there does seem to be a level of confidence in investing in the UK. “Without question, we have a number of the high-profile announcements from companies such as Apple, AstraZeneca, and Google who are pushing ahead with their investment plans in the UK.” The UBS report, conducted by international research firm Censuswide, concluded that confidence is high when it comes to navigating risk, and that there were steps to be taken to deal with unpredictability.

The report found that uncertainty comes from many angles – the financial system, various forms of politics and government, new and traditional media sources.

It also said: “Short-term thinking is dangerous. Long-term risks are abundant.

Unpredictability is more of a threat than an opportunity. Yet, confidence is high in dealing with our uncertain world. The critical question is how we translate this confidence into

tangible results for our wealth.”

It suggests that businesses and investors should focus on the long-term and “cut through the noise” of short-term events and distractions. More so than any other market surveyed, businesses in the UK are seen to ignore long-term challenges and focus too much on the short term. Shareholders and investors are just as guilty, said 85% or respondents.

As Turner mentioned, diversification is seen as key. The report said: “Exposure to a broad range of assets and geographies is essential and helps to avoid the risks of domestic biases.”

But is cash still king? Not according to the report, which advises: “Be wary of overestimating the safety of cash. Cash may always be attractive, especially in an unpredictable world. But inflation erodes its value, meaning that cash assets can damage your financial health in the long term.”

UBS underlines the value of trusted advice in the report when it says: “People have relied for centuries on an outside voice offering a sober perspective and considered advice. In an

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Some other key findings of the UBS report were: 79% of the UK’s wealthy believe elected governments can only respond to short-term dangers – more than any other international market.

87% believe voters today make their choices based on emotions, not facts, compared to 82% of millionaires globally.

74% of British millionaires get distracted from long-term financial planning by short-term risks. Half will base more of their decisions on short-term events following Brexit.

British millionaires feel mildly positive about the ability of technology to make the world more predictable. At 49%, big data is seen to be the most effective tool to reduce uncertainty compared to artificial intelligence (37%), robotics (34%) and social media (32%).

30% of wealthy individuals have already reviewed their investments as a result of recent uncertain events. A further 45% plan to do so.

86% say property and other physical assets offer financial safety – the highest rate among the international markets surveyed. Over a third invest more than 25% of their wealth in property.

Globally, five times as many millionaires expect to see an improvement in their finances over the next 12 months as see a decline. Nearly two-thirds believe they will reach their financial goals in the long term.

“Trends in prices and wages that have been identified for some time, are going to be felt by consumers as the year progresses.”

unpredictable age, that advice appears even more important.”

With so much minute-by-minute information being analysed and acted on, Turner is well placed to give an upbeat assessment of the economy that our entrepreneurs will be facing.

He told me: “I remain relatively optimistic. The economy has proved far more resilient than even those of us at the more optimistic end of the scale would have thought. We hadn’t expected a recession if we voted to leave the European Union EU, but there will be some short-term impact.

“Trends in prices and wages that have been identified for some time, are going to be felt by consumers as the year progresses.

Assuming we get a relatively smooth path towards a new trading relationship with the EU, then the UK economy should be able to return to a growth rate comparable to the pre-referendum trend rate.

“In the meantime, we shouldn’t overlook the importance of the global backdrop. As a nation, we focus very much on the domestic story, and while that is very important, we mustn’t underestimate the importance of the resilient global economy to a small open economy like the UK. This should be another factor that eases any headwinds the UK may face as it transitions to a trading regime outside of the EU.” UBS’s research found that our nation’s wealthy are also optimistic when it comes to the future. Only 17% of millionaires think that the economic outlook in the UK will deteriorate over the next 12 months, and over the long term, confidence is even higher.

The breadth of the coverage UBS offers and the access to information globally is one of its unique selling points and a strong reason why people go to UBS to manage their wealth.

The company employs 200 people in the chief investment office alone and, together with its regional bases, gives the balanced view continues to win industry awards for.

That scale of operation also means that entrepreneurs working with UBS can contemplate a global potential as they start to grow, building a firm foundation for their futures and in turn boosting the UK economy. n

A third of British millionaires believe they are fairly taxed, but a fifth feel the opposite.

www.ubs.com/investorwatch-uk www.ubs.com/wealthmanagement-uk

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Is unpredictability the new normal?

UBS Investor Watch.

Discover how hundreds of UK millionaires make decisions in an unpredictable world and how they plan to protect their wealth in our latest investor watch report.

Download your copy now at ubs.com/investorwatch-uk

The value of investments can fall as well as rise.

You may not get back the amount originally invested.

Š UBS 2017. All rights reserved.

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THE CREATORS of £1m cufflinks

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They make posh cufflinks for everyone from rock stars to royalty from their historic base in Birmingham, but they remain one of the UK’s best-kept secrets.

Jon Griffin meets Deakin and Francis directors James and Henry Deakin.

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eakin and Francis is England’s oldest family jeweller, producing the world’s finest cufflinks for everyone from royals to small jewellery shops. And it’s been doing this for more than 230 years.

The company has survived world wars, depressions, recessions, silver price crises and radically changing consumer tastes. But it is still delivering the goods in elegant, time-honoured style from the heart of Birmingham’s worldfamous jewellery quarter.

A few years ago, it even sold a pair of diamond-encrusted cufflinks to European royalty for more than £1m. But such is its discretion and loyalty to its customer base that managing director Henry Deakin remains frustratingly coy over the identity of the regal purchasers.

“It wasn’t our royal family… that was our biggest ever order, but I really can’t say any more,” says 35-year-old Henry with a smile. Old habits die hard at Deakin and Francis, after seven generations of consistent family rule.

The management of this unique slice of UK manufacturing passed on from original ancestor Charles Washington Shirley Deakin to its latest generation a decade ago, in the shape of brothers James and Henry Deakin, more than 230 years after the firm was founded.

The Deakin and Francis saga is packed with heritage and history, from the atmospheric company boardroom where industrial pioneers James Watt, Matthew Boulton and their peers met to launch the industrial revolution, to the cufflinks supplied today to the likes of Harrods, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols. But James says the business ethos has remained constant for 230 years – with quality at its heart.

“We have been described as England’s best kept secret,” he says. “We knew that we were old and unique, but didn’t realise we were England’s oldest family jeweller until we did the research.

“We made our first cufflinks in the 1800s and have a great reputation

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“It can be hard out there but we have sold more cufflinks in the last year than ever before. We do not want to miss a sale, people will not wait for anything now.”

in the industry for quality. There are people who collect our cufflinks, people whose grandfathers wore our cufflinks. We are England’s oldest family jeweller and at the same time its youngest brand.

“We are not mass-produced but are very competitive on price. The market is filthily competitive but we feel we have a unique selling point. Our cheapest cufflinks are £100, we have got some for £45,000, and we have sold a pair in Harrods for £13,000. We have even sold handcuffs in Hong Kong for 45,000 dollars.”

But no company can rest on its laurels for very long by relying entirely on heritage and history in an increasingly cut-throat business world, as Henry is only too willing to admit.

“We are letting old methods of working go,” he explains. “We realised that we had been

busy fools for many years. We never said no to people, quite frankly we have been too polite.

“We have old friends in the industry but we need to be a bit more professional. We are looking for people who will stock the brand and support the company by marketing it, pushing it out on social media.”

Henry cites the company’s switch to nextday delivery and its growth in internet orders as examples of how this most traditional company is embracing the 21st-century marketplace.

And it must be working: Deakin and Francis has enjoyed double-digit sales growth in the past 12 months, with UK turnover up by 30%.

“It can be hard out there but we have sold more cufflinks in the last year than ever before,” says Henry. “We do not want to miss a sale, people will not wait for anything now.”

Customers had previously faced waiting

times of between six to eight weeks for delivery, but the two brothers realised the firm needed to sharpen up its act in an evercompetitive world.

“We now do next-day delivery – we have got 35,000 pairs of cufflinks in stock for customers’ orders. We have seen huge increases in the web, where we’re now looking at between 15% and 20% of turnover.”

The firm is also looking to spread the Deakin and Francis word by opening its first retail outlet outside its jewellery quarter base in the upmarket environs of London’s Mayfair.

“This will be our first ever retail shop,” Henry says proudly. “It is a huge financial commitment to the company – but we need that flagship presence for the brand to get stronger and gain greater recognition.”

Meanwhile, attendance at exhibitions and

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trade fairs remains crucial to the health of the firm’s order book. Henry recently jetted over to Switzerland for the Baselworld fair, the world’s biggest watch and jewellery event, attracting the likes of Rolex and Patek Philippe.

Whilst quality is indisputably paramount to the continuing success of Deakin and Francis, Henry says the Birmingham firm has largely reinvented itself since their father, David, retired 10 years ago.

“Dad always used to say to us: ‘You can let people [rivals] make it cheaper, but do not let them make it better’. We put our success down to quality, but this company is now unrecognisable from when James and I first took it over.

“James and I are very different people – James is very creative, whereas I am much more focused on the business, on strategy. We were trying to do everything together as joint managing directors for the first years of working together and realised that that was impossible.”

Today the brothers have more clearly defined roles, with Henry managing director and James creative director, while cousin Tom has arrived as the new sales director.

“When we were joint managing directors, it held us back,” says Henry. “We are both equal shareholders but if we were to agree on everything, it would be a very poor affair. We both have the same goals, but there is more than one route to success.”

Occasional brotherly differences apart, it is clear the two men are equally committed to the stylish centuries-old tradition of wearing cufflinks. James, 40, who learnt his trade at the Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica, California, before taking over with Henry, describes manufacturing as his “passion”.

“Cufflinks are seriously cool,” James says. “They’re a statement that you care, they’re fun. If you’re on a date with a good pair of shoes and cufflinks, you’re wellarmed. If you do not get cufflinks, you do not get Deakin and Francis. We’re not in it for the quick buck, we’re in for the long haul.

“The trade is in the blood, we absolutely love it. The market is tough but we are unique. Everybody is looking for something different, and we can offer something that is unique. We have the largest collection of precious metal cufflinks in the world.”

Henry adds: “Fashions change, ties get thinner or fatter, suits are more tailored, but cufflinks have stood the test of time. You can wear cufflinks with jeans, jackets or jumpers.

“This is not a nine-to-five job. It is 24/7. When you are not in the office, you are on your phone, thinking through strategies. On my honeymoon, I didn’t miss a single email, which annoyed my wife somewhat. I have missed so many friends’ weddings, 21st birthday parties and so on. I am very passionate about the job.”

The firm boasts a 23-strong workforce, with a turnover of £2.7m, exporting its hand-made products to the likes of the United States, China, Kazakhstan, Kiev, Doha, Athens and elsewhere. Its biggest US market is New York, with a presence in every major American city, and 10 sales agents recently recruited across the Atlantic.

Back in Brum, half of the workforce at the jewellery quarter offices is engaged in manufacturing, including highly-skilled silversmiths and goldsmiths with decades of experience. But both brothers recognise that those specialist skills are in danger of being lost if new generations of skilled workers are not nurtured.

“The average age of the guys [on the shop floor] is higher than I would have wanted it, at about 50,” says Henry. “Three guys retired 18 months ago with combined service of 151 years. People tend not to leave, it is a family business and people look out for each other – we have got a great team.”

With industry estimates that as many as 5,000 jobs have been lost in the jewellery quarter in recent years, the Deakin brothers are anxious to safeguard the

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future of the firm by taking on apprentices and encouraging talent into the sector.

Henry says: “We have got empty units in the building and are developing them to offer like-minded ex-students or postgraduates opportunities for having a go at creating their own jewellery or running their own business.

“We are happy to be giving something back. As Hatton Garden in London gets more expensive, more people are looking to move to Birmingham.”

Whilst the current generation of Deakins looks to the future, they are also reminded of the company’s rich and colourful past on a daily basis.

Their Regent Place offices were once the private home of steam pioneer James Watt, and members of the Birmingham-based Lunar

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Society met within the confines of the current boardroom to discuss the extraordinary industrial processes that were to change the working world.

And the firm has retained the Francis banner out of respect for former boss Captain John Francis, who lost his life in the trenches in the First World War. “There are slices of history that will have been made in this very building,” says James. “Each generation has dealt with all sorts of challenges, from wars to recessions. Before Deakin and Francis, there were Deakins making swords, and some were supplied for the American Civil War. “Watt and Boulton used to meet in the boardroom here once a month as the Lunar Society. Steam may even have been invented in this room,” adds James, with justifiable pride. n

“There are slices of history that will have been made in this very building. Each generation has dealt with all sorts of challenges, from wars to recessions.”

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DAWN A Rolls-Royce has to be a work of art, not just a car, and the new Dawn is no exception as designer Giles Taylor explains to Josh Sims.

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’d be lynched by Rolls-Royce fans if I messed with it,” laughs a cautious Giles Taylor. “After all, established values are what allows the brand to thrive.” And thriving it most certainly is. Taylor is the head of design at, arguably, the most famous name in British automotive history: that bastion of tradition, of luxury, of hefty, two car-park space-taking vehicles that somehow each seem worthy of the grander name “motor car”. But Taylor is also a designer. And he wants to try new things.

“We can do as much as possible to change how the cars look and reach a wider demographic, as we are,” he says. “Besides, my mandate is to bring more expressiveness to the design, and, looking back over Rolls-Royce’s history, there actually used to be so much flamboyance. Sure, I think the perception of Rolls-Royce being stuffy has already changed, but we could still do with loosening the tie and coming out of the shell a bit.”

That is what he’s done with the marque’s latest offering, the Dawn – perhaps the closest Rolls-Royce has, in recent years, come to making an everyday car, if anything “everyday” can be said to apply to a six layer soft-top with a 122.5-inch wheelbase, 563 horsepower V12 engine and £250,000 price tag. It is, perhaps, one step closer to the “Vision Next” car-of-the-future proposed by Taylor last year – think home-from-home interiors, giant screens, canopy roof, lightweight aluminium structure and wheels and electric powerplant, all very Lady Penelope.

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“I like to think of any Rolls-Royce as being the expression of damn good manners – but in metal.”

Certainly Taylor concedes that designing a convertible, notably one that claims to be the most rigid four-seat convertible on the market, does have its challenges, and not just structurally – which is why 80% of the Dawn’s body panels are new – but aesthetically. It has raked lines leading from the recessed grille with the roof up, and an appealingly uncluttered linearity to it with it down. Either way, it’s still – as Taylor suggests the diehards demand – very much a Rolls-Royce.

“I like to think of any Rolls Royce as being the expression of damn good manners – but in metal,” he explains. “Yet whether it’s a design brief for a Citroen or a Rolls-Royce it’s not

about, say, the distinction between taste. Of course, both cars are equally expected to be useable and practical. But ultimately the difference is that at Rolls-Royce we get to do things that other brands on the automotive spectrum can’t, and that’s what makes the cars special – we get to think in terms of transforming a technical object into art. With Rolls-Royce you get more art – I think that’s what people are paying for now.”

It’s an interesting proposition, that Rolls-Royce, among a few other brands, is re-moulding the incentive to buy such a vehicle: away from expressions of status, away – most certainly – from the need to get from A

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“Cars are private spaces and I think will increasingly give that sense of offering protection from the chaos, climate and traffic outside – the car will offer the driver some mental room, a place to stop and do some thinking.”

to B, and more towards the pleasure in enjoying a craft object for its own sake, much as one might a painting or a piece of jewellery. That, clearly, if embraced, would represent a shift in the perception the layperson may have of Rolls-Royce too – as outsized, ostentatious and out of keeping with the times.

“But there’s a place for a socially-responsible expression of luxury, that’s an expression of the exquisite, of something that beguiles,” Taylor counters. “There are flashy motorcars for flashy people, but I feel the future of Rolls-Royce will be more a focus on that part of it that’s more discreet. I’d love to think of Rolls-Royce cars as connecting with their owners on an almost spiritual level, not them just being big toys for rich people. I think that sense of meaning is the only place in which luxury will be be able to exist in the future.

“Clearly there are now many different ideas of what you might call ‘mobility solutions’ – electric cars, car sharing, the Apple solution of keeping a car minimalistic, utilitarian, connected,” Taylor adds. “But Rolls-Royce is in

the world of luxury, unashamedly, and we’re sure there will still be a place for that. The difference may be that we don’t want to be perceived as designing the kind of luxury for those fat cats who want to consume for its own sake.”

The Dawn, coincidentally or not, has a genuine subtlety to it, a sense of relaxation, especially in comparison to its imposing forebears, the Phantom, Ghost and even the Wraith coupé – of which the Dawn looks somewhat like a decapitated version. Of course, that subtlety is relative. And the Dawn is also, for its size – which is unequivocally big – remarkably drivable. It’s an easy cruiser, rather than a outright battleship, but light on its rubber feet, three tons shifting to 60mph in 4.3 seconds – even if Taylor describes the car as being for the driver more inclined to a leisurely coastal drive out to dinner rather than burning anyone up at the light, who, truth be told, likes the attention, but not too much.

It’s become a cliche among automotive companies to talk of their making “a real driver’s

car” and yet here it is, albeit one that zips through its eight speed automatic transmission almost imperceptibly, albeit one that cossets amid all the usual glossy walnut and buttery leather – quite literally, since there’s some notion that the cows Rolls-Royce stretches over its interiors are fed a butter-rich diet. The build quality, inside and out, is – unimaginatively on Rolls-Royce’s part – second to none.

“Cars are private spaces and I think will increasingly give that sense of offering protection from the chaos, climate and traffic outside – the car will offer the driver some mental room, a place to stop and do some thinking,” Taylor argues. “That said, there’s definitely still a joy to be had through actual driving. While I do think there is sense in having a vehicle so intelligent that it can take over if you get into trouble, I wouldn’t want being in a car to become just a back-seat experience. I still believe in steering wheels. Why am I so sure we’ll still want to drive? It goes back to why the car was invented – the pleasure of the wind in your hair. Driving is just cool.” n

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WAVES

Josh Sims sets sail with yacht restorer Pendennis.

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ike Carr quietly laments the lack of space in vintage yachts. “Refitting them does come with its technical challenges,” says the joint-managing director of Pendennis, the Falmouth-based restoration firm that specialises in classic sail and motorboats.

“Today that classic exterior still requires all the modern systems – from communications to air conditioning – that the yacht wouldn’t have had back when it was built. You need very skilled people and careful design to make it all fit.”

Which Pendennis does. Certainly, if other companies are wellversed in building yachts from new, Pendennis is fast winning a reputation as the go-to expert in reviving and revamping the yachts of yesteryear, winning international awards for extensive restoration projects such as its work on classic motor yacht Malahne.

There are seven motor yachts on site right now undergoing refit

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“Today that classic exterior still requires all the modern systems – from communications to air conditioning – that the yacht wouldn’t have had back when it was built.”

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work, one of them a whopping 72 metres in length. A number of Pendennis-built or restored yachts will be proving their mettle in the America’s Cup Superyacht Regatta this year, as well as projects that the yard has refitted competing in the J Class Regatta, that gathering of arguably the most beautiful, and among the rarest sailing boats ever made.

“Not many companies around the world can rebuild a yacht from very poor condition and with the same emphasis on style,” suggests Carr, who trained as a naval architect and who oversees the training of many a young apprentice, some 200 having passed through Pendennis’ yard to date. “The fact is that most other companies only look at rebuilds and refits when there’s nothing else to do.”

Indeed, Pendennis might not only be capitalising on its rare expertise – founded in 1988, 19 years ago it launched a progressive apprenticeship scheme that has given the company a competitive advantage when it comes to having the right skillset for what can

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“Do you want just a big, new white yacht, or do you want a piece of nautical jewellery?”

be extremely delicate work – but also on the zeitgeist. Yes, its clientele have often bought a yacht they want overhauled to meet their taste or their lifestyles. But Carr senses a shift.

“My feeling is that there’s a rising interest in sympathetic yacht restoration over new builds, in keeping with the perceived value in vintage things, as we’re seeing in the car market too,” he argues. “Do you want just a big, new white yacht, or do you want a piece of nautical jewellery?

“Demand for the latter is growing because there are fewer and fewer such boats available in a condition that can be restored. Of course, you can build a new yacht to look old, which we sometimes do, but it’s not the same thing – such yachts lack the originality, the character, the stories…”

This isn’t to say new builds can’t be spectacular. One trend in this market, for example, is for glass-sided and even glassbottomed boats. “The yachting industry is looking ever more to take cues from architecture, and using its materials for a structural role in yacht building,” as Toby Allies, the company’s sales and marketing director notes. “And that means that glass is more and more prominent, within the hull itself. It gives great visual presence for the ocean – to see out through the water if it’s clear enough.”

Functionality is another trend shaping the way such new craft look too: Allies speaks of the desire “to bring the outside inside”, which is seeing, for example, larger tenders and bigger swim platform areas, “for easier use of the toys”.

“We’re seeing more and more modifications

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being requested to improve that water interface,” he adds, “right down to cutting aft sections off vessels”. He cites the design of Hemisphere, the world’s largest privatelyowned sailing catamaran, which Pendennis built, as an example of this blurring of spaces.

But such spectacle and such utility often somehow lacks charm. Pendennis’ re-launch in March 2015 of Malahne is a demonstration of how smaller and older can, in sheer personality – and even in the age of the mega yacht – be better. The 50-metre classic motor yacht was built by Camper & Nicolsons 80 years ago this year, making it one of a very few pre-war motor yachts to have survived into the 21st century. Pendennis’ 30-month restoration is arguably one of the most ambitious seen to date, seeing the recreation of many of the yacht’s original features, including its hull shape, while modernising the workings to meet Lloyd’s Register and other maritime codes.

It’s a bit of history brought back to life: Malahne was commissioned by the chairman

of the Woolworths retail empire, was owned by movie producer Sam Spiegel – who used it as a floating production office while filming Lawrence of Arabia – and was the basis of many a Hollywood A-lister party during the 1960s and 70s. Other notable refits of international acclaim by Pendennis have included: Adela, a 55-metre schooner; Dona Amelia, a 72-metre motor yacht; and Shamrock V, one of the few remaining original J Class yachts. Right now, it’s working on the Odyssey, a 1967-built yacht that arrived at the Pendennis shipyard on the back of a barge last October. It’s a returning customer, having had its interior refitted there a decade or so ago.

While Carr argues that Pendennis’ Britishness is also now playing to the company’s benefit – both the UK’s historic reputation for engineering, and the fact that many classic yachts of that pre-war period were built in Britain, which then dominated the market – it is not resting on its laurels. The growing demand for restoration work is seeing Pendennis expand

too: it has recently completed a three-year rebuilding of its shipyard and has seen a major boost in business having constructed a 7,564sqm, non-tidal basin – effectively its own harbour. The shipyard’s direct access to the Atlantic – competitors in Germany and the Netherlands are more likely river or canal-based – is also helping draw clients.

They are loyal clients too – Pendennis is starting to build something of a reputation through its own Pendennis Cup, a regatta held every other year, initially open to those clients who had worked on their yachts with the company, but now open to all. In 2015 – appealing more to those who like a bit of sun on their spray-kissed faces – it even launched a cruising rally in St Kitts.

“We do that kind of thing first of all because it’s great fun, and we want to make it fun for our clients,” says Carr. “We want to be able to give something back to them, a way to enjoy their yachts. After all, nobody needs a yacht – it’s pure luxury.” n

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HIGH LIFE

Secret luxury in Regent’s Park Renewing an old acquaintance, Steve Dyson is delighted to find that changes have been for the better.

S

hhh. Let me tell you a secret. Marriott is spending several million pounds completely renovating its Regent’s Park hotel.

And this is no simple, quick makeover.

Having stayed at the hotel back in 2015, I struggled to recognise the place when I arrived earlier this year.

Even the frontage has changed thanks to the addition of Carluccio’s as the hotel’s onsite restaurant, also offering in-room dining, a breakfast buffet and a new, extended bar menu.

But more of that later. First, the hotel’s

surprises continue in what used to be a fairly anonymous entrance lobby. Now this has been transformed into a lounge, work-and-play zone with a mixture of comfortable seating and hotdesks, where guests can unwind, relax, socialise and network.

For more private meetings, guests can pay to use the “M Club” executive lounge, with free refreshments. And the hotel also boasts new meetings and events space with the very latest technology and flexible working environments for corporate delegates.

This includes an additional four meeting

rooms at lobby level, while Primrose Hill – the largest event space – now has natural daylight flooding into a contemporary, stylish design.

This room offers a capacity for up to 300 people, with remote-control projectors and screens, and an integrated sound and public address system.

Marriott is restyling all its bedrooms, complete with 49-inch smart TVs with Apple TV, international power outlets and walk-in rain-dance showers. This luxury refurbishment – with interior design inspired by local London and neighbouring villages and parks – is on schedule for completion in September.

The new rooms certainly feel refreshed, with the most comfortable mattresses, linen and modernised air-conditioning. Having relaxed downstairs and then rested in the bedroom, it felt exciting to know that Carluccio’s was just a lift-journey away.

This popular eatery offers modern Italian all-day dining, a deli and food shop, and a green outdoor dining area in what is the brand’s first ever hotel partnership.

We enjoyed: homemade ravioli, delicate pasta parcels with spinach and ricotta, served with butter and sage; penne alla luganica, pasta tossed in a tomato sauce with pieces of spicy luganica sausage; and pasticcio di cioccolato, warm chocolate bread and butter pudding with vanilla cream.

If you’re spending a lot of time in London, you’re often faced with spending a lot of money staying at busy, soulless hotels in the noisy centre of the city. And when you’re there, you’ll often be in a quandary about where to go to relax, where to eat and – with health and fitness in mind – where to exercise.

The new Marriott Regent’s Park is the perfect alternative. It’s just 20 minutes north of Euston and Kings Cross, and a few minutes from Swiss Cottage tube station, and comes with complimentary wifi, a well-equipped spa and indoor swimming pool.

On a nice day, you’ll enjoy the nearby markets of Camden Town, and the chic shops and quaint cafes of Primrose Hill, with its panoramic views across London. This hotel will soon become a popular “secret”, in terms of its food, luxury new décor, and more restful location away from London’s usual hubbub. n London Marriott Hotel Regent’s Park is at 128 King Henry’s Road, London, NW3 3ST, where double rooms with breakfast start at £189. To book, call 0207 722 7711 or visit www.marriott.co.uk

HIGH LIFE

Taking the bull by the horns A relaxing train ride and home-away-from-home hotel off London’s Bishopsgate make for an enjoyable trip south for BQ editor Peter Ranscombe

O

ne of the oldest clichés about hotels is that they always lie just a ‘stone’s throw’ from a railway station – but if I had a rock in my hand then I think that even me with my lack of handeye coordination would have a fair chance of hitting The Bull & The Hide from London’s Liverpool Street terminus. After a relaxing journey from Waverley to Kings Cross in one of Virgin Trains East Coast’s first-class carriages – complete with new leather seats and a menu developed by television chef James Martin – and then a short hop on the tube to Liverpool Street, staying at The Bull & The Hide puts you in the heart of the action in the City, with the Bank of England, the Gherkin and Lloyd’s of London all within striking distance.

Staying at the hotel isn’t all about business though. If you’re down in the big smoke for any length of time then you’ll want somewhere you can properly relax and unwind, and often the big chain hotels just don’t tick those boxes.

Tucked away off Bishopsgate on Devonshire Row, the hotel consists of The Bull pub on the ground floor, with The Hide dining room on

the first floor and seven boutique bedrooms above. The accommodation includes two suites – the Devonshire and the Hush Heath – each with its own balcony, with table and chairs to soak up the hubbub of the City.

The Hush Heath suite has a giant bed, with the branch of a tree suspended from the ceiling as a clothes-rail-cum-wardrobe. It has a separate lounge, while the en-suite bathroom has underfloor heating, as well as a doubleended bath and a separate rainwater shower.

The Bull & The Hide is billed as a homeaway-from-home and part of the attraction is the pantry to which guests have access to make tea and coffee or help themselves to soft drinks from the fridge or crisps or biscuits from the cupboard. Sadly, the beer on offer in the fridge was a dull European lager and not one of the scores of British craft beers, but that’s a small complaint when the pantry is complimentary.

That home-away-from-home feeling is helped by the selection of Sky channels available on the massive televisions in the suite’s bedroom and lounge. Although it’s in the centre of the City, Devonshire Row was

surprisingly quiet. What impressed me most about The Bull & The Hide was the food.

The menu is split into three, featuring dishes inspired by the Smithfield meat market, fish and seafood from Billingsgate and fruit and vegetables from Spitalfields. It’s a concept that works really well and the classic British fayre is delicious, from a homemade sausage roll with thin pastry and plenty of meat through to whitebait served in a paper bag. Game pie and a trio of desserts that included apple crumble were other culinary highlights. The hotel is owned by Hush Heath Estate, the vineyard in Kent that makes Balfour sparkling wine, along with still wine, cider and apple juice. That means there’s a superb selection of English wines available by the glass – a real treat, and it means you can try different tipples without splashing out on a whole bottle. n Rooms at The Bull & The Hide start from £150 per night. Find out more at www.thebullandthehide.com or by calling 020 7655 4805. Details about Virgin Trains East Coast’s first class tickets are available at www.virgintrainseastcoast.com

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M

aking wine is all about finding the right balance: a balance between what goes on in the vineyard and what goes on in the winery; a balance between the science of fermentation and the art of blending; a balance between the fruit flavours of the grapes and the spicy notes of the wooden casks in which the juice can age.

Over the years, Californian winemakers became known for picking grapes when they were over-ripe and being heavy-handed with their use of new oak barrels, resulting in wines with jammy flavours and more vanilla than a tub of ice cream.

Fast-forward to the present day and Northern California is full of talented vintners who want to capture a sense of place in their wines, using the elements that make their vineyards special, to craft drinks that reflect their soils and climates.

Escape from the hot central valley and head north across the Golden Gate Bridge and you’re into the beautiful countryside of Napa and Sonoma, with a wealth of different styles from which to choose.

California isn’t just about full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon or creamy Chardonnay either; the state boasts a wide range of varieties from Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc all the way through to Pinot Noir, Syrah and Zinfandel.

Buried beneath the mountainside above Calistoga in Napa lie the caves of the Schramsberg winery, the first in California to make sparkling wine from the noble Chardonnay grape.

Hugh Davies, the son of founders Jack and Jamie, makes vintage wine to capture some of

2013 Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs (£28, Vineyardcellars.com)

2014 Littorai The Haven Vineyard Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir (£79.62, Fine Wine Company)

California

dreamin’

In the past, California’s wines had a reputation for being over-oaked and over-ripe, but drinks writer Peter Ranscombe finds high-end bottles with a sense of place. the characteristics of each season, rather than blending wines from different years to smooth out variations in a non-vintage bottling.

His 2013 Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs (£28, Vineyardcellars.com) is packed full of green apple, pear and lemon flavours, with the concentration of the fruit standing up to the fresh acidity.

Further south in Carneros, another family descended from German immigrants, the Schugs, are making Pinot Noir in a distinctly European style. The red fruit flavours in the 2014 Schug Carneros Pinot Noir (£30, Wine Treasury) are crisp and clear, with enough refreshing acidity to even pair with an intensely-spicy Mexican lunch.

Pinot Noir is also the order of the day at Littorai, a vineyard and farm founded by Ted Lemon, one of the leading figures in the biodynamic movement.

Farming biodynamically – by not using

2014 Schug Carneros Pinot Noir (£30, Wine Treasury)

factory-made chemicals but instead producing natural alternatives to ward off pests – comes at a price and the 2014 Littorai The Haven Vineyard Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir (£79.62, Fine Wine Company) is by no means cheap, but it does offer oodles of intense red cherry and red plum flavours, along with firm but velvety tannins and a long fruity finish.

For those seeking a red with more body, look no further than the 2013 Seghesio Sonoma County Old Vines Zinfandel (£47.99, The Wine Reserve), with its smoky, roast meat and cherry notes on the nose and velvety vanilla and bramble flavours on the tongue.

And for something lighter and whiter, try the 2013 Ramey Ritchie Vineyard Russian River Valley Chardonnay (£31.99, AG Wines). Back in the 2007 vintage, 65% of this wine was aged in new oak, but that’s now down to 30%, revealing more of the zesty lemon and grapefruit freshness, balanced by creamy butter notes. n

2013 Ramey Ritchie Vineyard Russian River Valley Chardonnay (£31.99, AG Wines)

2013 Seghesio Sonoma County Old Vines Zinfandel (£47.99, The Wine Reserve)

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e m i T for tea

Maria McGeoghan sits down for a chat with Kasim Ali, founder of the Waterloo Tea Company, which is expanding its chain of shops across South Wales and extoling the virtues of a proper cuppa.

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I

f it all ended tomorrow – as long as I wasn’t in prison – then that would be fine,” declares Kasim Ali, the founder of the Waterloo Tea Company and the most laid-back entrepreneur I’ve ever encountered.

We meet at his teahouse in Cardiff’s lovely Wyndham Arcade, which is full of tourists, friends meeting for lunch and a particularly high-spirited group of women gathering for a plush afternoon tea. It’s smart yet cosy, and the sort of place you could happily while away a few hours with a nice pot of Oolong. And many do.

Ali now has three teahouses in Wales – Cardiff city centre, Pen Y Lan and Penarth – with a fourth one in the planning. It’s a recipe for success, with 45 staff, £1.35m turnover and a profit target of 8%. But it’s all a long way from his first career in pharmacy.

He worked as a research scientist at AstraZeneca before doing a degree in pharmacy at the University of Nottingham, which he followed with a master’s degree in international relations.

“I worked in pharmacy and travelled,” he explains. “My parents are from Pakistan and we always think we are just passing through.”

Ali’s travels fired an interest in food and drink from around the world, and gave him an idea when he saw that his Cardiff neighbourhood was lacking a local community watering hole.

“Where we live, there was a little row of shops but nowhere to go and have a coffee,” says Ali, 41, who was born and brought up in Cardiff.

“There was a post office, a hairdresser’s and a butcher’s, but nowhere to go and meet. We thought it would be great if we had a café there and then the butcher’s shop closed in 2008 and we thought we would do something.”

Yes, that’s 2008 when the bottom dropped out of markets around the world and the news was full of brokers leaving New York skyscrapers with all their belongings packed in a cardboard box.

“For some, it was an odd time to open a new venture, but we went ahead,” says Ali, who is married with three children. “I was still working

in a pharmacy and thought I would do it as a side-project.

“The crash coincided with the birth of speciality coffee and the café sector started booming. People only had seven or eight quid for lunch so cafés did well and restaurants didn’t.

“I used money from the house that my Dad said I should buy when I was 21. That was good advice. If it failed, it failed. It wasn’t all about the bottom line.

“We wanted to have a venue of outstanding quality that was welcoming to people from all backgrounds. No airs, graces or pretence – just a relaxed atmosphere with something different to offer from the norm.”

It’s hard to remember a time when a coffee menu didn’t cover an entire wall of a café, and before we happily handed over more than three quid for a hot drink on the way to work.

But Ali saw the tide was turning and our tastes were changing.

“People weren’t taking sandwiches to lunch anymore,” he says. “There was a real change in culture. You can be running late for work, and maybe not even have your make-up on, but you’ll still stop for a coffee.

“And it also coincided with people wanting to know more about exactly where their food was coming from – even down to the name of the farmer’s dog.

“Caffeine became the acceptable high. If you went out for a cigarette then you came back smelling of smoke and you couldn’t come back from lunch smelling of alcohol. So, we set out to make our café the best that it could be.”

Ali invested in the best Italian coffee machines, Japanese filtration boilers for tea and, after eight months, he won the best coffee shop in the UK award.

And he then turned his attention to making tea Waterloo’s unique selling point. “Whenever we used to go out and ask for tea, we would invariably be served something that was close to undrinkable,” he says.

“We tracked down the best teas that we could get our hands on, involving many hours of research, meetings, travel and tastings – research that is still ongoing. Our list of teas would, we hoped, offer something for everyone.

“Some people laugh at us and how we are with tea in the UK,” adds Ali, who is passionate, very knowledgeable and almost evangelical on the subject of tea. “Pouring boiling water over

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stale tea and then adding a lot of milk.

“So, this was about changing people’s mind-sets. It was about getting the best tea and brewing it to perfection. Then we tried to capture the speciality coffee crowd with loose leaf teas.

“We didn’t expect everybody to suddenly drop coffee in favour of tea, so we ensured that the coffees served were as good as you could get. If you normally drink coffee in one of the large coffee chains, then we’d like to show you to how coffee should taste.”

He went to the world tea championships for supplies so that Waterloo could advertise that they sold the best tea in the world. Quite a claim.

“We were saying ‘come and check it out’,” he explains. “People drink green tea because they say it’s good for them and then say it tastes terrible, but it’s a delicious tea.

“It doesn’t have to have boiling water. In Japan, the tea cups have no handles. It’s not too hot for them to hold.

“Some teas can be brewed at 45 or 65

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“This was about changing people’s mind-sets. It was about getting the best tea and brewing it to perfection.

degrees centigrade. It’s about dose, plus temperature plus time.”

In the spring of 2011, Ali started looking at the wholesale tea business. “We were really careful about who we traded with,” he says.

“We had no salesmen, discounts or freebies.”

Again, Ali’s recipe worked and Waterloo Tea can now be found in Edinburgh, London, Dublin, Adelaide, Amsterdam, Berlin, Budapest, Dubai and Paris, while a range of loose leaf teas from English breakfast through fennel to jasmine pearl are sold in the tea shops.

Despite the company’s growth and success, the community-feel is still there, with a commitment to local artists who can exhibit their work in all three tea houses, with 20% of all sales going to the artist’s charity of choice.

And the awards have kept on coming.

Waterloo was recently named in the Daily Telegraph’s 30 best coffee shops and last year Ali was named as the Wales Food & Drink entrepreneur of the year. Waterloo’s Philip Blake was also last year’s winner of the world tea brewer’s cup, which was held in Dublin.

And the future? “We hope to grow,” says Ali. “All the teahouses need love and care. They’ve all got a manager and a head of kitchen and all the staff really care about what they do.

“Waterloo is committed to an ongoing exploration of the world’s finest teas and our aim is to present you the best teas of each origin and processing style and for those teas to be brewed to perfection.”

And with that’s he’s off to organise a teatasting with 25 visitors from France. No-one is laughing at our tea obsession now. n

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Partner

Giving research and development a Jumpstart Jumpstart has already helped its clients to claim nearly £100m in research and development tax credits. New managing director Scott Henderson is now expanding the consultancy’s presence throughout the UK. VISITORS to Jumpstart’s headquarters in Edinburgh know there’s something special about the office as soon as they walk through the door. In reception, they’re greeted by a giant plastic zebra wearing a black hat, while a sign on the wall points to the door-entry button, saying “Go on – you know you want to push it”.

Inside, there’s a bright and vibrant colour scheme, with multi-hued ropes acting as partitions in some of the rooms and a lot of orange splashed through the décor and the corporate branding. In the meeting rooms, there are blue stools and green chairs, while a

weird and wonderful array of lamps lines the corridors.

It’s not what you’d expect from a consultancy firm that specialises in research and development (R&D) tax credits. Yet this is no boring accountancy practice – instead, Jumpstart is staffed by technical experts, with more than 80% holding master’s or other higher degrees and over half of them having doctorates.

“It sometimes feels a bit like herding cats,” jokes Scott Henderson, the new managing director at Jumpstart. “These are really intelligent and capable people – that was one

of the attractions of joining the company.”

A quick flick through Henderson’s CV and it’s clear that his varied career history has given him the right preparation to lead such a free-thinking and creative team. After cutting his business teeth as a commercial manager at insurance company Scottish Widows, he was managing director at Strachan & Livingston, the unit of newspaper publishing company Johnston Press that included the Fife Free Press, before taking over as chief executive at Law at Work, a niche employment legal practice.

“I was trying to corral five editors and 30 journalists, and then a group of a dozen senior

Partner

lawyers,” he explains. “So, it’s not dissimilar, being challenged in your thinking in that way.”

Henderson’s team uses its intellect and analytical skills to help its clients to claim corporate tax relief based on their spending on R&D, a form of tax credit introduced in 2000 by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer to stimulate innovation. Each year, British businesses – from pharmaceutical giants through to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – claim some £2.5bn in R&D tax credits.

Jumpstart works directly with companies of all shapes and sizes to claim R&D tax relief. It also works with accountancy firms to help their clients reap the rewards.

“On one hand, you have companies that really have a thorough understanding of their technology and their business, and on the other hand you have their accountants, who understand the tax system,” says Henderson.

“Jumpstart is the oil in the machine – we sit in the middle of those two because we have the technical expertise to understand what R&D is eligible for tax credits.

“To receive tax relief, R&D work must be new and innovative – there has to be a discovery at the end of it and there has to be a chance that it will fail. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) issues hundreds of pages of guidance to explain what is and what isn’t eligible.

“Companies and their accountants can’t read and understand all those hundreds of pages, but we do. That’s down to the expertise of our staff and also the efforts our team puts into staying on-top of new developments, through continuous professional development (CPD) and going out to meet clients and learn about their businesses and their R&D. “Members of our team also undertake training and assessment as part of our quality assurance processes, which are ISO9001 certified. Our technical analysts look back over their work each month so they understand what counts as cutting-edge and what doesn’t.

“For example, HMRC has already ruled that website design is no longer R&D – it’s all been done.”

Jumpstart shares its technical reports with its clients, so they understand its thinking on what does and doesn’t qualify for R&D tax credits. If HMRC queries an application then the firm is also on-hand to help its customers.

“If an accountancy firm makes a mistake when applying for R&D tax relief then the

“

“Jumpstart will defend any challenge to its tax claims – that challenge rate for the industry isn’t disclosed but our figure is less than 1%.”

liability still lies with the client,” Henderson explains. “But Jumpstart will defend any challenge to its tax claims – that challenge rate for the industry isn’t disclosed but our figure is less than 1%.”

Three months after being headhunted to join Jumpstart – following spells at pensions giant Aegon as head of client services and at Royal Bank of Scotland as a senior finance partner – Henderson is ready to help the firm expand. The business already has offices in Edinburgh and Slough, and is now opening a base in Birmingham.

The firm’s headcount is climbing towards 50 members of staff, who together support more than 600 clients.

Those clients are spread throughout a broad range of sectors, from agriculture and food and drink through to life sciences and recycling. Customers that have benefited from Jumpstart’s help include beer maker BrewDog, Beverston Engineering and stem cell specialist AvantiCell Science.

“The R&D tax credit market is maturing and so we are continuing to develop our expertise in a number of key areas,” Henderson adds. “One of them is manufacturing, engineering and electronics – especially in the concentration of companies between Leicester and Leeds – and another is software and information technology.

“Software is a key focus for so many companies nowadays. Think of aeroplanes for example – prototypes for wings aren’t tested in wind tunnels anymore, they’re created on computers and tested using software. It’s the same in the automotive industry too.”

Jumpstart’s expertise in manufacturing, engineering and electronics has been recognised by the EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation previously known as the Engineering Employers’ Federation. The company won a competitive pitch to become a partner for the EEF’s “Advantages” scheme, providing R&D tax advisory services to its members.

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xpect the EST RESULTS 90

Partner

r your business, me after time.

g the best people and processes in the ss and the experience gained from over successful claims means that we:

mise the demands on your time;

mise the complexity of the claim process;

mise the risk of under or over-claiming and ing an HMRC enquiry; and

mise the accuracy and value of your claim.

ng the best results, time after time.

ree R&D tax credit anddirector’s role from Brian Williamson, who It was also recentlyconsultation a finalist at the 2017 Tolley’s taxation awards in the best s of the potential returns you mightjoined Jumpstart in 2012, initially as a consultant independent consultancy firm category. and then as a director and shareholder. , contactOne the Jumpstart team: of the important drivers for Jumpstart’s Williamson was given the all-clear from cancer

own growth came in 2014 when it raised £3.4m in equity funding from the Business w.jumpstartuk.co.uk Growth Fund (BGF), the £2.5bn investment vehicle launched in 2011 by Barclays, HSBC, inghand@jumpstartuk.co.uk Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered. BGF initially invests 0 218 7226 between £2m and £10m into a business in return for a minority equity stake and a seat on the board; the companies it backs are privatelyowned or listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and typically have revenues of between £5m and £100m.

As well as providing cash to help grow the business, BGF introduced the company to Jim Faulds, who became its chair. Faulds is best known for founding his eponymous advertising agency, which became the largest in the UK outside London.

Henderson has taken over the managing

last year and is refocusing his business interests, although he’ll remain on Jumpstart’s board and is currently serving as its interim sales director.

Williamson is no stranger to innovation himself. He started his first company in the automotive sector in 1995 and – after building the business over three years to £5m of revenues before selling his stake to his fellow shareholders – he switched into oil and gas, where he started his next business. He sold the company to its management team in 2004 and began investing in start-ups.

Along the way, he had become chief executive of The Learning Organisation (TLO) in 1999 and led a management buyout in 2000.

TLO helped more than 80,000 people to start their own businesses and provided training for a further 25,000 each year, with Williamson selling his stake in 2007.

“Brian is a fantastic salesman and gets on very well with the clients,” says Henderson. “It’s great to be able to draw on his expertise and that of Jim Faulds and BGF.” Henderson has joined Jumpstart at an exciting time in its development, as it cements its position throughout the UK. While there are no guarantees of plastic animals standing guard in reception at the new offices – whether they be zebras or lions or rhinos – the company’s latest bases will certainly be filled with members of staff boasting the same technical expertise that has set the firm apart from its competitors. n

Jumpstart your R&D tax credit claims

Web: www.jumpstartuk.co.uk Email: helpinghand@jumpstartuk.co.uk Tel: 0370 218 7226

Expect the BEST RESULTS for your business, time after time.

Having the best people and processes in the business and the experience gained from over 3,000 successful claims means that we: Minimise the demands on your time; Minimise the complexity of the claim process; Minimise the risk of under or over-claiming and inviting an HMRC enquiry; and Maximise the accuracy and value of your claim.

Ensuring the best results, time after time.

For a free R&D tax credit consultation and analysis of the potential returns you might expect, contact the Jumpstart team: www.jumpstartuk.co.uk helpinghand@jumpstartuk.co.uk 0370 218 7226

Jumpstart your R&D tax credit claims

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“

“Our recipes are now sold nationally through hundreds of independent retailers, vets and farm shops.”

A real

dog’s dinner All dog owners are guilty of saving small portions of their dinners for their pooches to enjoy. But, for Henrietta Morrison, cooking for her pet has become a £30m business. Steve Dyson reports.

W

hen Lily the Border Collie developed a severe skin allergy back in 2008, she refused to eat her usual dog food. Her owner, Henrietta Morrison, was so worried that she cooked special dishes for Lily, who fully recovered within a couple of weeks.

“I really enjoyed cooking for her,” says Morrison, “but I didn’t really have the time to do it and dreamt about being able to have a ‘ready-made’ wholesome meal for her that I could dish up and trust that everything in the recipe would be good for her.”

And so it was that Lily’s Kitchen was launched, Morrison developing a unique range of home-cooked food for pampered pooches. This meant no fibrous leftovers, as all her products are made only using fresh meat, fruits and vegetables, and specially-selected botanical herbs.

Fast-forward nearly ten years and Lily’s Kitchen now employs 65 staff, most of them full time, and is turning over £30m annually from its base at Hampstead in London. But thing weren’t that easy in the early years.

“2008 was probably the worst time to launch a premium pet food,” says Morrison.

“Lots of retailers I talked to asked me to reduce the price of my food due to rising economic pressure, however to do this would have meant I had to drastically reduce the quality of the ingredients.

“This was something I simply was not prepared to do. My recipe contained more than 60% freshly-prepared meat. There was no way I was going to reduce this or replace the meat quality for meat-meal or cheaper fillers.

That was the root cause of Lily’s problems and I had confidence in my recipes and the

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difference it could make to other pets.

“So, I stuck to my guns. All you need is one retailer to give you a chance and one pet owner to try your product and then you’re up and running. After the first two weeks, we had customers asking how quickly could we get another delivery to them.”

Lily’s Kitchen first built a dedicated customer base of independent traders, such as small organic delicatessens, pet shops and local vet clinics. But the breakthrough moment came in 2010 when it launched with online supermarket Ocado. Then came Waitrose, followed by Tesco and most recently Pets at Home.

Morrison’s key to her success was “growing slowly”, as the business’s supply chain is complex: “Getting hold of the best quality fresh organic meat for our different tray recipes can be extremely challenging, so we spent time working with a number of producers and built our distribution slowly in the independent channel.

“Our recipes are now sold nationally through hundreds of independent retailers, vets and farm shops and also through supermarkets, but it takes time to build up to that.”

For most pet owners, a bit of spare meat and a few dry biscuits are fine for their dog’s dinner,

“

“Pets are family and as we are becoming more aware of the health benefits of our diet, so we are now thinking more about our pets.”

but Lily’s Kitchen products are described as “proper food for pets”. Is that really needed?

“Absolutely,” insists Morrison. “We only use proper ingredients. That means real food with an ingredient list you can understand and trust with each ingredient serving a specific purpose.

Our recipes are created alongside nutritionists and vets to ensure they are complete and balanced.

“The most common ingredients in pet food are cheap fillers such as meat-meal, animal derivatives and wheat or maize. These are not easy to digest and provide less nutrition than freshly-prepared meat, fruit and veg, which is why we never use fillers and only the real deal.”

But do pets really need such posh food?

“Our food is by no means posh,” she retorts.

“It’s just proper: meat, veg, fruit and herbs. Pets are family and as we are becoming more aware of the health benefits of our diet, so we are now thinking more about our pets.”

Morrison gives me a few examples of the different types of food she produces, from the

everyday to the more exotic-sounding, and what it sells for. For dogs, this includes: cottage pie with carrots and peas, costing consumers 99p for a 150g tray; chicken and turkey, at £2.19 for a 400g tin; surf and turf, £2.49 for a 400g tin; chicken and duck dry food, £6.99 for a 1kg bag; and super foods natural snack bars, at £1.99 for two bars.

Then there’s Lily’s Kitchen food for cats: catch of the day, at 80p for an 85g tray; hunter’s hotpot, also 80p for an 85g tray; delicious chicken dry food, £9.95 for an 800g bag; and little lovelies’ treats, £2.95 for a 60g bag.

Morrison was born in Beirut in 1968 and educated there until the age of 12, when her family permanently moved to England. She read oriental studies at Cambridge and, before Lily’s Kitchen, she set up and ran a magazine publishing company, producing recruitment magazines for students and graduates. Her first publication was for graduates with a disability.

Today, she’s obviously proud of the way Lily’s

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Kitchen has developed its range: “Last year, we received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation. Not only did this recognise the hard work the team puts in every day to push the boundaries of what’s possible, but I had the chance to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

“Innovation is in our blood here at Lily’s Kitchen. We believe all pets deserve proper food, because they are family. This underlying mantra drives our thinking and helps us deliver the unexpected and seemingly unachievable.”

This is the sort of thinking that Morrison advises for other would-be entrepreneurs: “Only choose something you are totally passionate about. You spend so much time working day and night that you need an endless amount of enthusiasm to get you through those early days.”

Lily’s Kitchen is still privately owned, although L Catterton, a United States consumer private equity firm, invested in the business in 2015 to help its expansion. The company is still growing in double-digits yearon-year, expanding into key markets such as Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. There are also plans to develop the environmental side of the business, which is already the UK’s “number

one ethical pet food company”, as named by the Ethical Company’s good shopping guide.

“While we’re on a mission to feed pets better, we want to ensure we protect the planet while doing so,” says Morrison. “We work hard to ensure our environmental impact is as low as possible and make decisions based on this. For example, we don’t sell our wet cat food in pouches as they are not recycled and go straight to landfill, regardless of the commercial opportunity this represents.

“I just couldn’t sleep at night knowing the impact this has on our beautiful countryside. A cat would go through 1,460 pouches per year alone – that’s 11 billion pouches to landfill if you consider how many cats there are in the UK. We are the first pet food brand to become a B Corp [a certification of for-profit businesses that meet rigorous environmental standards] and are a founding member of B Corp UK. “We are also recognised by key retail partners, for example we won the ‘Waitrose Way Award for Treading Lightly – Packaging’.

These all reflect the amount of dedication and responsibility demonstrated by the team to ensure making our food does not have negative effects on the planet, from recyclable and compostable dry food bags to providing

completely biodegradable dog waste bags free of charge with our food.”

Lily’s Kitchen also donates food to animal charities, last year giving away more than 650,000 meals to dogs and cats in need as part of its “Dinner’s on Us” campaign. This year, the company has joined forces with vet charity PDSA to support its work in providing pet healthcare for families who can’t afford to pay private vets’ fees. The company also supports smaller charities: for this April’s “Good Deeds Day”, the team at Lily’s Kitchen gave up its free time to sew 50 dog jackets for Street Dogs Matter.

Meanwhile, Lily the dog who gave the company its name is still great company. She was 15 years old in May, but despite her age she still comes to work with Morrison every day, from where she’s lovingly walked on Hampstead Heath. And no new Lily’s Kitchen recipes are created without what’s called Lily’s “official paw of approval”.

“She’s a great source of inspiration,” says Morrison, “and provides a sense of purpose for the team and me. She’s the reason we exist as a brand and have helped so many other pets become healthier and happier with better diets.” n

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Profile

The bank that solves complex funding needs Shawbrook Bank focuses on providing financial solutions for complicated businesses, and has already funded tens of thousands of small firms.

Steve Dyson interviews Steve Pateman, the bank’s chief executive.

When top banker Steve Pateman first came across Shawbrook Bank, he was impressed with how it was helping businesses whose complex needs meant larger banks had stopped serving them.

At the time, Patemen was head of UK banking at Santander, but in early 2016 he moved to become Shawbrook chief executive, and he’s very clear on what enticed him to join the challenger bank.

He says: “What I saw at Shawbrook that interested me was a bank that was doing things I’d been doing 15 or 20 years ago but that mainstream banks were no longer doing. And that’s solving complex financial challenges.

“Today’s mainstream banking has become so technically calibrated, using the least amounts of capital to help support the production of the highest amounts of revenue.

“Basically, all high street banks are after the ‘perfect customer’ because that’s how they get to use the least funds for the greatest growth with the lowest risks.

“But the problem with that approach is that it leaves out all those small and medium-sized enterprises whose borrowing requirements are not that simple. And there are loads of really good customers who are being left by the wayside because they simply don’t match high street banks’ modern, low-risk strategies.”

What Pateman saw in Shawbrook was a detailed and bespoke approach to risk management, looking into potentially difficult areas served by complex businesses and solving them with the correct financial packages.

“It’s all about the management of risk rather than playing the capital arbitrage game,” says Pateman.

“In short, Shawbrook is paid to provide solutions that other banks are no longer providing, and those are not crowded markets because mainstream banks are all chasing the same safe customers.

“There’s plenty of support for start-ups and large corporates out there, but we’re seeing strong demand from those in the middle – smaller, established, regional and specialist businesses who seem to fall through the cracks.

“They are businesses who might be working in difficult areas, but we can create financial packages that work, which is something we believe the banking industry should be putting money into.”

One example Pateman gives is the work Shawbrook Bank has undertaken to support a group of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment clinics that were finding it difficult to offer a finance package suitable to support their patients wanting to undergo a course of IVF. Shawbrook’s experts carefully worked with the clinics to produce a financial arrangement that was only triggered if patients’ IVF treatment was a success.

Profile

“This was all about the morals and ethics of loaning money, and helping people sensibly manage the costs of IVF treatment,” says Pateman. “It was a dilemma the main high street banks shied away from.

“Through careful and considered collaboration, we helped to create a financial package that is only activated if and when the IVF is successful; and if its unsuccessful the debt is written-off.

“That’s what we’re good at – listening to the story, addressing the problems and coming up with solutions that make the economics work.

“This was too complicated for other banks, but I thought: ‘Why shouldn’t people be able to borrow for IVF?’ and ‘How could we make this work?’ It’s these neglected ‘too difficult to do’ areas that Shawbrook Bank excels at.”

Another example Pateman cites is a Scotch whisky company that needed funds but found it difficult to engage with conventional banking because of the demand for short-term repayments.

The whole economics of whisky is based around the age of the product, which means that what’s been produced one year might not be on sale for another 12 years.

“It’s all about looking into the problem and coming up with a solution that’s not crazy,” says Pateman. “We simply sit down, listen and figure out an answer using our experience from many years of banking.

“In this case the conventional finance model doesn’t work because the company was producing far more Scotch than it was selling, but still needed more finance. We had to work on the long-term plans, and were able to fulfil a market need that commoditisation had left behind.”

Another scenario that Pateman describes is the owner of a tugboat in Hull, wanting new funding to help plans for servicing offshore windfarms.

He says: “Six years ago, any bank would have loved to finance such operations. Today, there’s not a business manager in a main high street bank that could do anything for the tugboat owner except open them an account and refer them to a call centre.

“And there’s not one mainstream call centre that has ‘tugboats’ on their list of products and services, which leaves the business desperately asking: ‘Where do I go?’ That’s when they ask their accountants for advice, and they introduce Shawbrook Bank.

“We’ve got the experts to assess the challenge and to solve such problems. We’re a bank that takes time to understand the needs of our customers and to find the solutions they need.

“It’s what complex businesses need. Mainstream finance is as cheap as chips, but customers that can’t access that need Shawbrook Bank. We grow by providing those solutions for more complicated banking issues that are difficult to understand.

“Our approach is to be seen as a bank that customers go to when they can’t get their needs met elsewhere. After all, if the big banks were still providing credit in these more difficult areas, Shawbrook wouldn’t exist.”

Shawbrook Bank was launched in 2011 as a collection of various finance businesses, and floated on the stock market in 2015. Its profits that year were £49m, a figure that it more than doubled in 2016 when pre-tax adjusted profits reached £104.5m.

The bank is now worth around £840m, with private equity company Pollen Street owning just under 40% of its shares. The bank has already loaned funds to tens of thousands of SMEs across the UK. Shawbrook Bank’s main offices are in the City of London, with around 100 staff, and in Brentwood, serving the South East, which houses some 500. Another 50-odd staff are spread across current offices in: Glasgow, serving Scotland; Greater Manchester, serving the North West; and Dorking, which serves the Thames Valley.

As it continues to grow, Pateman is keen to build its brand with a new network of business centres in selected locations.

The bank will soon launch new business centres

in Edinburgh to help serve Scotland, near Leeds to serve the North East, in Birmingham to serve the Midlands, and near Bristol to serve the South West.

Pateman says: “In the past, Shawbrook built its asset and invoice finance by word-of-mouth and referrals. I felt we needed to move away from being peripatetic by putting down some roots in markets to say: ‘We’re here to stay, we’re not just passing through.’

“We want to work with businesses in communities across the UK, with people on site who know the regions and business sectors.

Until now, we’ve been a bank that does not have a branch network, so our business centres will start to promote our direct business operations for the first time.

“This will come on top of what we already offer through introducers, intermediaries and accountants, and through partnerships as varied as retailers, home improvement companies and the likes of Saga and the RAC. “We’re perfectly happy to work with other distributors to get our product and solutions to the market, and soon we will have offices covering all regions as well.

“We will be targeting niche sectors that still value a superior, bespoke service – particularly where asset classes are highly complex and wouldn’t fit a standard model.

That’s what impressed me, and I’m confident that this approach is what will continue to help us grow.” n

For more information on how Shawbrook Bank can help your business grow please contact: Nick Leitch, managing director, Midlands Email: Nick.Leitch@shawbrook.co.uk Jonathan Rostron, managing director, Yorkshire & North East Email: Jonathan.Rostron@shawbrook.co.uk Simon Carrier, managing director, North West Email: Simon.Carrier@shawbrook.co.uk, Terry Wolfendale, managing director, South West & Wales Email: Terry.Wolfendale@shawbrook.co.uk, Andrew Rutherford, managing director, London,Thames Valley & South Email: Andrew.Rutherford@shawbrook.co.uk Tel: 0330 123 1740

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l l a e W

m a e scrf or m a e r c ice

He’s sold 40 million-plus scoops of Italian-made gelato in the UK. Steve Dyson samples a few of Joe Delucci’s flavours with owner Richard Pierce.

I

magine the scene: the owner of an ice cream brand asks if I want to try his gelato, and of course I say “yes”.

“Which flavour?” asks Richard Pierce, whose Joe Delucci’s company has sold more than 40 million scoops of the Italian-made treat to the UK, and counting.

“Well, they all sound lovely,” I reply. And before you can say chocolate mint chip, a waiter in The Farm pub, Solihull, gracefully arrives with a huge tray containing 12 large scoops of gelato.

Rum and raisin, toffee, fruits of the forest, chocolate, lemon, banana, mascarpone, mango… I can’t remember all the flavours, and with both hands holding spoons I can’t be expected to take notes for this part of the interview.

But I can remember the face of a female diner as she jealously stares at my feast, not believing the sight before her eyes. And I remember my favourite, coconut, a choice that delights Pierce: “I just love it that you like that flavour. It’s one of our best-sellers.”

Oh, eating gelato is such fun. But it’s not

always been a laugh running a business for Pierce. In the 2008 financial crash, when his Joe Delucci’s brand was made up of two AmericanItalian restaurants, he had to sell his posh detached home and swish new Range Rover to pay his bills.

But we’re rushing ahead, because to tell the story of the rise and fall and rise again of Pierce the entrepreneur, we need to start at the beginning. Born in Birmingham in 1969, Pierce grew up in Stourbridge, Hall Green and then Solihull, before leaving school in the mid-1980s when he recalls the jobs market was “horrendous”.

Nevertheless, he left school on a Thursday and started work on the Saturday, on the old Youth Training Scheme (YTS) for a travel company. “It was a case of doing anything,” recalls Pierce, whose early job-hopping included spells at various Birmingham hotels before becoming a bar tender at TGI Fridays.

He then spent nine months living in New York before setting up a security equipment business with an old school friend, which saw him “out all hours, all over the country”. The

partnership didn’t last, but Pierce learned a lot about how passionate and labour-intensive owning your own business was.

At this point he was in his early-20s, and struggling to find a job, so he thought he’d try selling cars after hearing that one or two pals had done well in this sector.

“I started at Renault in Shirley, having never sold a car before,” Pierce remembers. “A chap there had held the sales record for nine years.

I beat him in the first month, and every month thereafter.”

Selling cars came naturally to Pierce, who approached the job in his own way: “I talked to customers and got to know what they wanted.

But I wasn’t prepared to sell anything to anyone unless I thought it was right for them.”

After becoming top salesman at Renault, Pierce was head-hunted, first by a prestige car dealership, then by a Nissan dealership. But he was already starting to think: “I’m not going to sell cars for the rest of my life.”

Pierce’s developing personal mantra was “You’ve got to keep on challenging yourself”, something he first applied at TGIs when he

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determinedly memorised 300 cocktail recipes.

“I was good at selling cars, but I was asking myself: ‘How do I get to see more? What’s out there?’ I decided I needed to be in a community of successful people to see what the formula for success was.”

Pierce applied for a top sales job at Porsche in Little Aston, near Sutton Coldfield, pitching himself against far more experienced salesmen from the likes of Aston Martin and Ferrari dealerships.

He says: “Two bosses at the interview said: ‘Why should we pick you?’ I told them I could sell more cars by being genuine and authentic.

I wrote them a cheque for £1,000 each, challenging them to take me on for nothing for three months so I could show them what I was capable of.”

Fortunately, the Porsche bosses didn’t cash Pierce’s cheque, but they did take him on, and within three months he was the top salesman out of 99 across the marque’s UK dealerships.

“The whole point was to be involved dayto-day with the kind of people I could learn from about what made them successful,” Pierce explains. “As I got to know them, I’d just politely ask how things worked.

“There were nouveau rich, some nice, some horrible. Old rich, some arrogant but others lovely people overflowing with grace and humility. An eclectic mix of people with the ability to buy Porsches.

“And if I didn’t think the car was right for them, I’d be honest and tell them. Some would come in saying they were thinking of buying a

“

“The whole point was to be involved day-to-day with the kind of people I could learn from.”

Ferrari instead, the kind of wavering person that some salesmen wouldn’t waste their time with.

“But I’d say: ‘Try them all out,’ and I’d ask them the right questions. ‘Who’s going to be driving the car? How many miles will you do?

What does the car mean to you?’ And on a few occasions when I really thought they’d prefer another brand, I’d even set up a test drive for them too.

“They would tell other people: ‘That guy gives you the best advice ever. He won’t sell you a car you don’t want.’ And I built relationships, educating myself about their success.”

After Porsche, Pierce launched his own car sales firm called Lapworths, a niche personal service for high-worth individuals, where they didn’t even have to leave their home or business to try cars out. It was a booming success for seven-plus years, making Pierce his first serious money, which he ploughed into opening a couple of American-Italian restaurants in the West Midlands, under his new Joe Delucci’s brand.

“This swallowed a huge chunk of cash,” Pierce says. “It was a great concept – steak and pasta, quality products, authentic sauces. But it was at the wrong time: a sudden recession and then mad cow disease, which put everyone off steaks.”

The financial environment dramatically changed. He had to close the restaurants, selling his house and car to make ends meet.

“I lost my £1.2m house in Hatton, near Warwick, and I had to take my Range Rover back to the dealership,” he remembers. “The house was the worst thing – it had stables, paddock, gated drive, but it had to go. I was more disappointed for my Mum than anything, because she was so proud of what I’d got, although she’ll tell you she’s never stopped being proud.”

Despite the collapse of the restaurants, the Joe Delucci’s name survived. Pierce and his then business partner, Nigel Langstone, had discovered a gelato made by Menodiciotto, an Italian manufacturer, a product so delicious they had started diversifying into it as a separate business.

“It overlapped with our restaurants, as we quickly had other restaurants asking for it,” Pierce recalls. “And then we tried our own ice cream parlour in Leamington Spa in 2006, which was a success. But the 2008 recession was an enormous roller-coaster, emotionally and financially.”

When Pierce says “emotional roller-coaster” he means it. Today, he’s settled down with a long-term partner and two young children. But back then his personal life suffered, leaving

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READY TO ENHANCE YOUR CAREER? SO ARE WE Business is changing and we’re changing too. York Business School at York St John University now offers a bolder, broader suite of postgraduate courses designed to give you the skills to challenge convention, spark innovation and bring out the best in yourself and others.

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“

“Even the more-indulgent flavours are lower in fat, which makes for a healthier way of eating ice cream. It’s what people want.”

him with a grown-up son from a previous relationship.

“Let’s just say that the pressures of business, the ups and downs of the recession, didn’t particularly help my complex personal life,” Pierce says grimly. “The sacrifices have been huge. Everyone around you is affected, including yourself. But you never give up, never give in.”

Fast-forward nearly ten years and Pierce is now 100% owner of the gelato-focused Joe Delucci’s company, every week importing up to 20 tonnes of the Turin-made product to the UK. The company has three divisions. The first is retail kiosks, with around 20 in upmarket shopping malls across the country. The second is wholesale, supplying Nando’s restaurants, various hotel chains, gastro pubs, bistros, cafés and ice cream parlours. The third is grocery, with Joe Delucci’s now sold in 600 Tesco stores.

Joe Delucci’s annual revenues are more than £6m, with 130 staff nationwide. Around 15 are based at its head office in Lighthorne, near Gaydon in Warwickshire, where the company also has a huge, drive-in freezer to store its ice cream.

It’s not a bad turnaround for Pierce, who puts his success down to remembering principles from his car days: “I don’t sell anything people don’t want. As an indulgent refrigerated treat, Joe Delucci’s gelato is the

healthiest ice cream you can get.

“The fruit flavours are non-dairy, fat free, with huge amounts of natural ingredients. Even the more-indulgent flavours are lower in fat, which makes for a healthier way of eating ice cream. It’s what people want.”

Pierce also has a clear strategic vision to expand his wholesale and grocery divisions.

The current business began with its own retail kiosks, once making 80% of revenues. Now the kiosks make 64% and are plateauing, whereas wholesale is now 25%, growing by 40% a year, and grocery is 10%, growing by 20%.

Pierce has recently appointed a managing director called Vickie Milligan, who has a wealth of experience from 25 years in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, including various senior roles at Coca-Cola.

“I’m just the owner,” Pierce says, “and I’ve brought Vickie in to steady the ship as we grow. It’s all well and good owning a plane, but if you’re only capable flying it at 25,000 feet and someone else can fly it at 50,000 feet, why wouldn’t you? Egos are not needed in business.”

Pierce’s plan is to double revenues in the next five years, possibly expanding abroad and perhaps even launching manufacturing sites to cope with demand. He says: “Who’s challenging the likes of Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerrys?

There’s no reason why the go-to gelato in the UK and Europe can’t be Joe Delucci’s.”

It’s at this stage that Pierce invites me to

plunge into 12 flavours of Joe Delucci’s, and as my eyes close in pleasure at the tastes, he explains why he feels his gelato is the best.

“We’re on the crest of a gelato wave, with loads of different brands. But our supplier’s method of making it in smaller batches and blowing less air, which is called overrun, makes it special. Our gelato’s anything from 30% to 50% air. It has to have that proportion because of the chemical structure of the flavours and ingredients.

“Cheap ice cream is made with inferior products, artificial flavours and preservatives.

They don’t use whole fresh fruit. And they blow anything from 70% to 100% overrun… to them, it’s all about making money.

“Joe Delucci’s is how it’s always been made, how ice cream should be. Everything else is a bastardised version. Ours tastes clean, whereas inferior products need a glass of water afterwards because of the oily, tacky taste.

“Inferior products have anything from 16% to 30% fat, whereas ours is 0% in fruit, and between 7% and 11% in indulgent flavours like toffee and vanilla. Gelato is not a sorbet, which has more water for an even cleaner taste. Ours tastes creamier because it’s a denser product, with less air, and you feel like you’re biting into fruit.”

And as I try to force myself to stop eating the most luscious ice cream I’ve ever tasted, I find myself furiously nodding and agreeing. n

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Scaleup and grow: North East LEP seeks entrepreneurs for mentoring programme Entrepreneurs looking to grow and scale their business are being sought for the North East Local Enterprise Partnership’s (LEP’s) “Growth through Mentoring” programme.

Contact Helen Lee, Mentoring Co-ordinator on 0191 338 7451, email Helen.Lee@nelep.co.uk or visit northeastlep.co.uk

Six months after launching, a bank of experienced North East business leaders are ready and waiting to act as mentors for business owners keen to learn from others’ experiences.

Companies experiencing rapid growth or rapid growth potential need to learn to cope quickly with changing demands, but many find it hard to develop their managerial and leadership talent while their organisations are growing so fast.

It can also be lonely at the top and having someone to talk to outside of the business, that recognises and understands these challenges, can be invaluable.

The programme is led by North East LEP mentoring co-ordinator Helen Lee, who matches mentors with mentees based on each person’s individual skills and experience.

Lee said: “The programme is off to a great start with mentors actively working with North East businesses with high-growth ambition. Importantly, all the mentors we’re working with have first-hand experience of growing and scaling business. There is a phenomenal range and depth of experience within our pool of mentors and the pool is growing.

If you are the leader of a growing business and would like to be matched with a mentor, we want to hear from you.

“These mentors can help people to gain the skills and knowledge required to scale up their businesses, which is vital for the growth of the regional economy and an important part of the North East LEP’s strategic economic plan.”

Pamela Petty, ex-managing director of family-run business Ebac, is participating in “Growth through Mentoring” as a mentor and has been matched with Sam Wass, from the Great British Meat Company.

“I’m really passionate about the North East, and feel that if I can help grow the economy by sharing my experience then I should,” Petty said.

“I love people that are passionate about what they do, so working with people like Sam is a pleasure.”

Wass has benefited from Petty’s background in manufacturing and selling online. The company is an online butcher, which has taken a traditional business and diversified into digital retail. As a result, it is currently on target to increase revenues by 50% this year.

Wass said: “After just one session I knew I had a good and positive match and in fact we’ve already honed in on an issue that we are likely to focus on.

“It really helps when there are lots of comparable experiences, and your mentor has the same mindset as you – for us that’s in terms of manufacturing. I’m looking forward to continuing with the programme and seeing where this dedicated support takes the company next.” n Are you a business owner or manager with ambitions to grow your business? Find out how you could be matched with an experienced mentor through the North East LEP’s Growth Through Mentoring programme at www.nelep.co.uk.

“

“These mentors can help people to gain the skills and knowledge required to scaleup their businesses, which is vital for the growth of the regional economy and an important part of the North East LEP’s strategic economic plan”.

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BRAIN POWER Karen Peattie meets Susanne Mitschke, co-founder of dementia support app Mindmate and one of the graduates of New York’s Techstars programme.

S

usanne Mitschke looks much younger than 27 but when she starts talking about MindMate, a free app designed and developed in Glasgow to help people affected by dementia live more independent lives, she exudes a maturity beyond her years. Dementia is a serious subject and one the award-winning entrepreneur wants to see more widely discussed.

Mitschke, MindMate’s German-born chief executive, and her co-founders Rogelio Arellano, 29, from Mexico and Patrick Renner, 27, also from Germany – all graduates from the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde – are quietly focused and ambitious. The fact the app already has more than 150,000 monthly active users and is ranked in 17 countries as

the number one health app in Apple’s store is remarkable given it was only launched last September. It has also claimed a clutch of prestigious awards.

Mindmate won last year’s much-lauded Converge Challenge, the business creation competition open to staff, students and recent graduates from Scotland’s universities and research institutions. The fledgling company won £30,000 in cash and £14,000 in business support, sharing the top prize with Edinburghbased MicroSense Technologies, a company that has developed a sensor system aimed at reducing waste in the food and drink industry.

Last summer, Mitschke and her co-founders won a place on Techstars, billed as the world’s

top tech accelerator programme, in New York.

MindMate was one of only 15 early-stage companies selected for the renowned scheme, which saw the team spend three months receiving mentoring from some of the tech world’s leading entrepreneurs.

According to Techstars, more than 90% of firms accepted onto the programme go on to receive more than US$2m in follow-on funding.

“Techstars really opened our eyes to what is possible,” says Mitschke. “We are building a global brand and an international product so exposure to the great contacts we made during our time on the programme was invaluable and has helped us fast-track our entry in the United States market.”

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With 850,000 people in the UK suffering from dementia and numbers set to increase to more than one million by 2025, it’s certainly time to talk about the disease for which there is currently no cure. According to the Alzheimer’s Society, one in six people over the age of 80 have dementia and there are more than 40,000 people under 65 with dementia in the UK. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia, affecting 62% of those diagnosed.

“The facts – and the figures – are stark,” says Mitschke, who studied business and economics in Vienna before completing a master’s degree in international management and leadership at the University of Glasgow. “In the US, there are more than five million people suffering from dementia. It’s a very cruel disease that affects families and carers too and it was our own different experiences of cognitive decline that led us to develop MindMate.”

While Renner, the company’s chief operations officer, had experience of working in the care system in Germany and Mitschke developed expertise in both digital health and Alzheimer’s, Arellano’s association with the disease is particularly close to home – his grandfather had the condition and he helped care for him for seven years, witnessing firsthand the everyday struggles not just of his grandfather but his family.

“We had a whiteboard on the wall with

“

“In the US, there are more than five million people suffering from dementia. It’s a very cruel disease that affects families and carers too.”

family pictures on it to help my grandfather remember who everyone was,” explains MindMate’s chief technical officer. “He would sometimes forget who I was, or confuse me with my father. It was very difficult for all of us. He would see that board every time he went into the kitchen and there would be sticky notes reminding him to take pills or eat breakfast – that type of thing.

“So, we thought if we could put all these prompts into an app and make it interactive with games, reminders – things like that – it could be such a valuable tool in stimulating people’s minds and helping them stay active.

We didn’t have anything like that to help my grandfather.”

The trio, which founded the company and started developing its app two years ago, carried out market research and found that, while there were several apps designed to help people with memory loss, there wasn’t one that provided a one-stop shop solution in a user-friendly way that was also intuitive and medically backed. “That’s our point of difference,” Mitschke points out. “But, in particular, we were determined it had to be

easy to use.”

MindMate has several features, including interactive games to stimulate a user’s cognitive abilities, as well as chat and video functions to help family and carers keep in touch with dementia sufferers. “People suffering from dementia can be very lonely and confused,” says Mitschke, “and this leads to isolation.

“We describe MindMate as a guardian angel, a friend who is always there to help you by giving you everything you need at your fingertips. Other apps provide brain games or advice on nutrition and exercise but if you are struggling with memory loss and are using several apps for different things and maybe Spotify for music then it can be overwhelming.

“With MindMate, you don’t have to use different apps for music, games, photographs and so on because you can access it all on our interface. It’s an empowering tool because it helps people manage their lives without having to rely on family, friends or carers all the time – it increases their quality of life and that of the people around them.”

One of its many features is a “My Story”

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area that allows users to store happy memories – photographs of family, friends and pets, for example. Click on the music button and there’s a host of great tunes going back to the 1930s.

There are also healthy recipes, games designed to improve your brain health and exercise workouts. Reminders to help manage hospital appointments, to-do lists and a notes section are also invaluable tools for people with earlystage memory loss.

While MindMate is targeted predominately at the baby-boomer generation who like the convenience of having everything they need in the one app, it has wider appeal because everyone’s brain health can be boosted by keeping the mind active. Its benefits have also been recognised by the National Health Service, which became its first paying customer after NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde bought the care home version of the app to run on iPads following a two-month trial with a postdiagnosis dementia support group.

MindMate is currently based at the University of Glasgow’s Thomson Building in the city’s leafy West End, but would Mitschke be tempted to relocate from Scotland – and

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the UK – in light of Brexit and the wider political uncertainty? “Absolutely not,” she states emphatically.

“Scotland is the best place to start a business,” she believes, pointing to the early support from Enterprise Campus West, linked to the University of Strathclyde. “In Germany, for example, it is very difficult if you don’t have loads of cash but there’s excellent support in Scotland for start-ups and it’s also easy to recruit because of all the talent coming out the universities, and cheaper.

“Scotland’s very innovative when it comes to encouraging start-ups – the University of Glasgow has supported us with premises for two years, which has allowed us to get on with developing the business,” she adds. “There are very high levels of collaboration and that encourages you to think beyond your own ideas and consider going in directions you hadn’t previously thought of.”

Mitschke also points to the many inspiring people here who have started from very small beginnings and now run global organisations.

“Many Scottish businesses are very well respected around the world and that opens

doors,” she says.

The trio’s time spent in the US, meanwhile, taught them to be more confident about scaling up. “There’s such a can-do attitude there,” says Mitschke. “The people are so enthusiastic and that helps you believe in yourself and your capabilities. After Techstars we felt that anything was possible.”

Having already raised funding of £1m, Mitschke, Arellano and Renner make no apology for their lofty ambitions. “We’re a high-growth business and we want to see a MindMate app on the iPhone or iPad of every 60-plus person in the world,” says Mitschke.

“We’re collecting a massive amount of data on people who have dementia and Alzheimer’s and the number of sufferers is going to double until 2050.

“People are getting older and living longer so we shouldn’t be surprised,” she says. “It’s not just dementia sufferers our apps can help – older people also need help to live independently and there are people who have been ill and still want to live at home but need help. That’s where we see MindMate developing in the future.” n

“Scotland is the best place to start a business... Scotland’s very innovative when it comes to encouraging start-ups.”

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New mayor Andy means business for the West Midlands Andy Street made history by becoming the first elected mayor for the West Midlands with a manifesto of creating the right environment for business to thrive.

Here the former John Lewis boss explains to BQ how he aims to attract the big names but also how small businesses have a part to play in transforming the region into the free trade capital of the UK.

For more information please contact Andy.Street@wmca.org.uk and for more details on becoming a Mayor’s Mentor please visit www.wmca.org.uk/mayorsmentors

No doubt many in the business community would have considered Andy Street’s decision to quit as John Lewis boss and stand for West Midlands mayor as too big a gamble to take.

In a region that historically returns a Labour majority, the odds were not exactly favourable so it must have taken significant self-belief and conviction to step down from one of Britain’s bestknown retailers.

But perhaps it was also indicative of Street’s passion for the West Midlands and his determination to nurture and accelerate what he saw as an emerging economic renaissance in the region.

“It’s true, I loved my job at John Lewis,” the new mayor says. “But as a proud Brummie I also care deeply about this region.

“We have so many assets and strengths from advanced manufacturing and creative industries to a wonderfully vibrant and diverse community.

“We have much to be proud of but I think too many us don’t actually realise it. We need to change that and rediscover our sense of pride.”

His role of mayor and chair of the West Midlands Combined Authority is part of a devolution deal with the UK Government that will see more than £1.1 bn made available for investment in the region over the next 30 years.

As mayor he will oversee that budget with powers over transport investment, strategic planning, skills and housing.

But his key priority is to help build a strong economy that can provide better and more secure jobs, which he feels is the only sustainable way to raise people’s living standards.

Street points to the affluence once seen in many parts of the West Midlands during the manufacturing heyday of the 1960s but which has ebbed away after years of decline and lack of attention.

He says that for too long there was no single voice to make the case for the West Midlands either in London or around the world. Consequently

the region was left behind by other parts of the country.

“We’ve certainly had our share of hard times but I saw the role of mayor as a unique opportunity to help drive forward the steady economic transformation I had witnessed across the region in more recent years.

“It’s why I was prepared to leave John Lewis for the chance to work with MPs and councillors to provide a powerful voice for the West Midlands and help safeguard and grow that economic renaissance.”

Street comes to the role of mayor with an impressive track record. During his time as managing director of John Lewis he oversaw a major expansion of the business.

He is also a politics, philosophy and economics graduate, valuable disciplines for a Mayor, and his time as chair of the Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP) gave him a unique insight into the economic strengths and weaknesses of the West Midlands.

But he also has a keen eye for effective communications and marketing, as the John Lewis Christmas adverts demonstrate.

“This region has so much talent, industry and innovation yet we have not been very good at telling that to the rest of the world.

“Maybe it’s a reflection of the self-effacing nature of our regional character but we must – and we will – get much better at telling our story. That will

“

“We have much to be proud of but I think too many us don’t actually realise it. We need to change that and rediscover our sense of pride.”

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Andy Street’s Mayor’s Mentors programme aims to recruit 1,000 volunteers to guide and advise young people.

“

“Small businesses need to tackle new challenges all the time, but they create a huge amount of prosperity and I intend to champion their interests not just here in our region but also with the UK Government.”

help us immensely as we compete on a global stage against the likes of Berlin, Barcelona and Boston.

“Indeed, with Brexit on the horizon it’s more important than ever to get out into the world and bang the drum for the West Midlands.

“One of my key responsibilities as mayor will be to act as an ambassador for the region and I’m determined to attract companies here that can bring secure, well-paid jobs with them.

“This will help build the strong economy we need to raise people’s quality of life and provide the sorts of jobs we used to see at the great factories and offices of the West Midlands.”

To help bolster this outward facing philosophy he wants to make the West Midlands the free trade capital of Britain and will be calling on the UK Government to prioritise trade deals with the region’s key export markets.

There is much in his manifesto – or “Renewal Plan for the West Midlands” – about creating the right environment for businesses to thrive.

The plan talks about focusing industrial strategy on the sectors where the West Midlands already leads the world while helping businesses to market themselves and gain investment from overseas.

“We will be working with big employers like Jaguar Land Rover, HSBC and National Grid to make sure businesses have what they need to create jobs,” he adds.

“We also need to make sure there is enough employment land available for businesses to set up and expand.

“Yet all of these commitments are not just about new office buildings. They are about closing the productivity gap and fostering innovation. They are about providing wellpaid jobs for people, their children and grandchildren.”

Support is also offered for small businesses and entrepreneurs. The new mayor is working with banks, venture capital firms and other investors to make it easier for small businesses to access capital.

He also intends to raise awareness of existing business support schemes and make sure small and medium-sized companies have a fair chance when bidding for goods or services being commissioned under mayoral control.

“Small businesses need to tackle new challenges all the time, but they create a huge amount of prosperity and I intend to champion their interests not just here in our region but also with the UK Government.

“It’s the small businesses that create jobs and if we maximise the talents of entrepreneurs we maximise their contribution to the economy.”

One small business sector the mayor is particularly excited about is digital. There were 550 digital start-ups in Birmingham last year and the industry is expected to be one of the region’s biggest growth areas over the next decade.

The city is now recognised as the UK’s premier tech and digital centre outside of London and this cluster effect has created a local talent pool with 89% of digital companies recruiting from the region’s workforce or universities.

While the future looks increasingly bright for some young people and the number of youngsters not in work, education or training has halved since 2013, Street has still set the target of eradicating youth unemployment by the end of his three-year term.

He has also launched his “Mayor’s Mentors” programme so volunteers from across a range of jobs and industries can offer advice or a helping hand to those who are struggling to get started in life or looking for a new direction.

“I hear every day, people in the business community saying they want to play their part in the ongoing success of the region,” he adds.

“Mayor’s Mentors is a great opportunity to do just that.

“We are looking to get 1,000 mentors in 100 days and the response has been incredible. We had several hundred people sign up in the first week alone.

“I’d like to think this is a reflection of the newfound optimism generated by our region’s economic renaissance.

“We now need to embrace this renaissance and grow the economy in a way which benefits everybody and in all parts of the region.

“The business community has a critical role to play in achieving this and by working together, speaking with a united and powerful voice, I believe we can become Britain’s beating economic heart.” n

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Cateri ng for the masses

Mark Timmerman, managing director at Mellors Catering Services, tells Maria McGeoghan how he took his father’s cake shop chain and turned it into a business with more than 1,100 staff and sales in excess of £20m.

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t all began with a splash. When Mark Timmerman’s father, Tim, was just a little boy, he fell into the canal behind his family’s home in the Netherlands. He was pulled out to safety by a neighbour and, when he went to thank him later in the day, his life changed for ever.

“The man who pulled him out of the canal was a baker and when my Dad got to the bakery it was warm and smelled nice – so he decided to be a baker,” explains Timmerman.

“In those days, you had to decide early if you were going down an academic or vocational route.”

It was the start of a catering dynasty that now employs around 1,170 people, has net sales of £23m and feeds 80,000 people a day

across 209 sites, 85% of which are schools and colleges. The boy who fell in the canal came over to Southport on an apprentice placement at Mellors cake shop, and then headed back to the Netherlands to do his national service.

“He returned to Southport, swept my Mum off her feet and, when the cake shop came up for sale, bought it and turned it into a chain of 12 shops,” says Timmerman who set up the contract catering arm of the business in 1995.

Timmerman now jointly owns the firm with his father, who is chairman of the company, which has its head office in the smart Lancashire Manor Hotel between Skelmersdale and Wigan where we meet. So, how did they move from cake shops to contract catering?

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“

“I was living the dream in London and working at Sodexho while my Dad bought a couple of hotels, the Royal Clifton in Southport and Lancashire Manor.”

“I was living the dream in London and working at Sodexho while my Dad bought a couple of hotels, the Royal Clifton in Southport and Lancashire Manor,” explains Timmerman. “I was working for London Underground in muck and bullets in a highly-unionised environment running 24 different canteens.

“Then in 1995, when I was 27, my Dad suggested setting up a contract catering business.”

It was a new direction for the company, which has more than paid dividends, but the beginnings were humble.

“I remember there were green marble steps at his bakery and they set up a tin box on the landing as an office,” Timmerman recalls. “It had windows – it was posh. I had a computer – with floppy disks – and I had to go and get stuff printed in other parts of the building.

“I set up all the systems and the procedures and then I realised that I needed a sales person.

It was really hard at the start. We went to sites and offered our catering better and cheaper.

It was mainly sole traders. After 18 months, we broke even.”

His very first contract was in Skelmersdale at a factory that sewed on buttons for Marks & Spencer suits and the first service sounds like a challenge straight out of television’s Masterchef finals.

“All 130 of the staff would come for breakfast at the same time and they only had 15 minutes,” Timmerman says. “That was a lot of bacon and sausage sandwiches. A really busy service – but we made it.

“We made £183 profit from that first job and we were off. Then I started to take on staff. I remember going to Southport market to buy uniforms and the ladies didn’t like them.”

More smaller sites followed and the company soon had seven garden centres on its books and started looking for bigger businesses and industrial sites.

“I had to do a lot of pitching in,” remembers Timmerman. “I’d be in a big meeting and I’d get a call saying that someone hadn’t turned up to a site, so I’d say ‘I’ve got to go’. I buttered a lot of barm cakes in those first few years, but it was exciting as well.

“When you start a business you soon get

to know what you don’t know. I took on Tony Efstathiou to look after sales and Steve Davies who looked after operations. They were my right-hand men and the bedrock of the business. We needed to think bigger and they helped me do exactly that.”

Mellors has grown by 10% year-on-year for 22 years, aiming to add 10-15 sites a year and then moving up to targeting 25 sites a year – with many of them schools.

“It’s expensive to feed children in school so it’s a good idea to do it with good, fresh ingredients and then they take that in to adulthood,” says Timmerman.

So, how did Mellors fare during the Jamie Oliver healthy school meals debate, which started in 2005 and went all the way to Downing Street?

“We were well ahead of the turkey twizzlers debate – we are a fresh food company,” Timmerman explains. “Our chicken nuggets are always freshly prepared on site – not preformed nuggets.

“It was a good idea but it soon got completely over managed, with long check

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lists of nutritional contents. It didn’t take in seasonality of produce. If one of our suppliers had a good deal on broccoli we’d buy it and make something out of broccoli.

“Thankfully the over management has been dropped. There are still guidelines but there is a good middle ground now.”

Now 85% of its contracts are in schools, with 15% in staff restaurants and a 93% retention rate, which is a lot better than the industrial average. Over the years, Timmerman has seen a change in our eating habits with fewer and fewer people having their main meal at work and opting to “graze” on smaller meals instead.

And the awards have come thick and fast, scooping the contract caterer of the year title at the Cost Sector Catering Awards in London and getting to the finals of both the British Sandwich Designer of the Year competition and Red Rose Business Awards – and that’s just this year.

An impressive 57% of its food is bought locally and 76% is prepared from scratch in the kitchen. And, to encourage feedback from customers, Timmerman’s mobile number is on all packaging and marketing.

Mellors is still aiming high and is in its second year of a five-year plan to double in size, with an annual growth rate of 15%. The profit target on its £23m sales is 4.5%, just under £1m.

Plans include expanding its mobile offering

“

“When I was a University of Surrey hotel and catering graduate, its executive training programme chose one person to represent each country and I represented the UK.”

for construction sites – “It’s a good business and not many people want the hassle” – and to carry on landing more sites.

With a new baby daughter, Timmerman’s week is divided between visiting sites, working from the office and sometimes a day working from home.

So, what is the secret to catering success?

“We’re still all caterers at heart,” says Timmerman.

“We should all have the ability to roll up our sleeves and do a service. I still pick up the rubbish in the car park on my way into the office. Profit is not our only driving force. We do a lot of back-to-the-floor stuff and we always ask: ‘Does it move the dial?’

“It’s hard to establish a unique selling point in this sector, but I suppose we aim to be a good fit culturally, and we’re geographically centred.

We want our customers to feel that they can do business with us. We want them to feel that they are loved.

“Having fun is important too. Our new biomass boiler is called Bertie Bog.

“I like challenging the norm and looking at things from different angles. I like challenging Groundhog Day. “When I was a University of Surrey hotel and catering graduate, its executive training programme chose one person to represent each country and I represented the UK. “You had to do a presentation that had something to do with the hotel and catering industry and I did mine on HIV and AIDS in hospitality. I suppose it made me stand out. I like to challenge.”

And how does someone who makes a living out of food cope with eating out? “It’s hard to be a customer when you work in catering so I always sit with my back to the kitchen,” he says.

“I never ever send food back because I know how hard it is to work in a busy kitchen.

“Our favourite restaurant is Il Mulino in Hebden Bridge. It’s a family-run Italian restaurant and they always seem to be celebrating someone’s birthday. Our baby daughter loves to see all the candles on the cakes as they go by.” n

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PEOPLE FIRST Paul Houghton, who runs Grant Thornton’s Sheffield office, explains to Mike Hughes how a close relationship with Sumo Digital and its chief executive, Carl Cavers is having wider implications for the region.

Playing a video game on your own – man or woman versus machine – can be an exciting experience, but to fully appreciate it, you need a partner.

The same applies to many of the clients working with Grant Thornton. As we have found in the other interviews for this fascinating BQ series, the group works with people first and then looks at the books further into the relationship.

Like the best-selling games developed by one of its newest clients Sheffield-based Sumo Digital – such as the latest in the Hitman franchise or the upcoming Crackdown 3 – the full potential is only realised when you work as part of a team (much like Sumo has asked Sackboy, Oddsock, Toggle and Swoop to do in LittleBigPlanet3, as I am sure you already knew).

Grant Thornton’s strategy has always been to know its clients before they become clients, so that it can work with the right people at the right time in their company’s growth. Often a relationship will start at a networking event, on a recommendation, or at one of the private dinners Grant Thornton holds with business leaders that have become key influencers and can be part of a collaboration who will share best practice and pool its resources for the wider good of the region.

“We had been watching what Sumo was doing well before a mutual friend introduced us fully in 2014”, said Sheffield office leader Paul Houghton.

“We spent a lot of time getting to know each other and understanding the Sumo business and its direction of travel and when the opportunity came six months ago we wasted no time and were thrilled to talk to chief executive Carl Cavers about how we could work together to be their auditors and tax advisers.

“For us, it has never been about just looking at the books. Yes, we are appointed to do a job in terms of accounting support, but it is far more than that and goes much deeper to allow Grant Thornton to fulfill the passion it has for the people who are shaping such a vibrant economy.

“Carl and the Sumo team were a perfect fit for Grant Thornton because we have always had this passion for working with dynamic businesses that we know will be going places.”

But for that team to really gel, the assessment of potential needs to take place on both sides. Caver’s company had already had quite a journey, and he wanted to find someone who had a shared passion for the sector and the impact it could have on the Sheffield city region.

He told me: “We started Sumo from the ashes of Gremlin Interactive, which was one of Europe’s largest games publishers, so what looked like a new business when we set up 14 years ago was really an accelerated start-up.

“We had already established relationships with the likes of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and decided to do something different by walking away from publishing, which was a risky part of the service, and focus purely on development to provide a premium

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offering to other publishers.

“We have now been working with Microsoft for 14 years and Sega for almost as long because we believe in building partnerships over a long period rather than just having our clients for a single project. After a long-distance relationship with an investor in San Francisco, we felt that we needed someone very local who we could contact on a regular basis and get the right level of support. So we bought the business back in 2014 and were immediately able to reinvest some of the proceeds and accelerate the growth over a very short period.”

Sumo now has three locations, with 300 staff here in Sheffield, a small satellite office in Nottingham with 50 people and then 70 more staff in Pune, India. There is growth at each of those sites, with each having clear strategic goals. That level of activity and business acumen does not go unnoticed, and the fact that Sumo and Grant Thornton both have offices in Pune meant that a business relationship was always on the cards.

Houghton said: “Our Pune offices are only two or three miles down the road from Sumo, which makes it very easy for us to work together, but our relationship would have thrived wherever we were. We pride ourselves on our global reach, which is essential if you are going to be working with growing businesses and be of practical help in their markets.

“The last thing we want to do is run after a lot businesses where we don’t have a relationship.

We look for that foundation first to build into a growing pipeline of businesses we can work with when the time is right – just as we did with Sumo.

“We don’t formulate a strict pattern of how we should work together, but Carl knows he can call me at any time on any day and we will have a chat. I have clients now who might even call me at 10pm on a Sunday evening – but if they do I know it is important to them.”

Cavers is clearly pleased to have found his Grant Thornton solution and to already be reaping the benefits.

“With Paul being local and a very strong advocate for businesses in the Sheffield region, we knew each other for three or four years prior to that and had always looked at what Grant

Thornton was doing and how it was supporting Sheffield and we thought it was a business we would like to work with,” he said.

“Its global connections were one of the key factors for us, a something that had hugely impressed us. We had an office over in India and needed a partner that understood that kind of location and could help us navigate through a minefield of different laws, regulations and processes.

“With all those markets to work in, another thing I really value is a high level of confidentiality. A lot of the work we do can be very exciting, with people keen to discuss it all because these are very recognisable brands. But we all appreciate a high level of sensitivity around the seven or eight projects we might be working on at any one time, particularly when only two or three might ever be announced.”

The last thing businesses like Sumo need is the distraction of trying to ensure that everything is running smoothly on the support side. They need to plan future finances and get targeted levels of support to keep on growing, whether that is by acquisition or organically, without becoming distracted by the “noise” of a problem.

Entrepreneurial, innovative and ambitious firms need a trusted partner to give them the freedom to push forward with the business and make sure that growth comes from being focused in exactly the right areas – facing forwards, not looking backwards.

“The digital and gaming sectors are changing almost by the week, and while we wouldn’t pretend to know everything about everything, we know that Carl and his team understand their business. So we can have a breadth of knowledge and use our connections to think around it in quite a different way and stimulate growth for the company and the region,” says Houghton. “Grant Thornton has an instinct and a responsibility to look at that wider region. Who are the people who are going to work for Carl in the next five years – where will they come from and where are they going to live? Through my work on the Sheffield City Region LEP, I can help shape the housing, transport and skills policy agenda. People need places to live, to be able to get to work, and to have the right skills.”

“This is a not just an audit process,” agrees Carl.

“We like to work with Paul on something that is much broader than a usual functional client relationship, which means we are often talking about supporting the digital economy locally, attracting talent to Sheffield and working with the university to ensure they are offering the right courses with the right entry levels that means people go on to achieve their degrees.”

More than any other sector, digital changes at an eye-watering pace, and its innovations change our lives month by month. Companies like Sumo that are at the cutting edge of that change need agility, foresight and an open mind to capitalise on every new opportunity – and they expect their partners to be on the same wavelength.

“The video games sector has looked bright for a long time now, and the growth has been phenomenal, along with the pace of technological change and the sheer scale of the sector,” said Cavers.

“We have proven we are particularly agile and are able to satisfy the requirements of any new technology breakthrough. That does get challenging and it is often ‘edge of the seat’ stuff. When you are small and want to go in a different direction it is like turning a speedboat, but with 400 staff it is more like turning a tanker.

But having the right support alongside helps us make that turn a little bit quicker.”

Paul has a more personal experience – but one that may chime with many parents and chief executives: “In the 80s I spent hours programming my ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro – both still up in our attic – so I feel I have some affinity for the UK’s techy past. Now having Sumo as a client has prompted us as a family to get an Xbox One, but more importantly it helps to give me even greater appreciation of the astonishing levels of creativity and technological capability that go into creating modern-day games. It’s all about understanding my client better. At least, that’s my excuse.

“But it’s not just me – every business, large or small, local or global, is looking at things differently now. Attitudes have changed including ours – to appreciate and help develop the true value of businesses who are setting up our regions for long-term sustainable success.” n

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A

MAPPER OF LIFE AND

DEATH

Atlantic Geomatics is embarking on an innovative project to map every single plot of each graveyard in England and in doing so double the size of the business. Founder and chief executive Tim Viney explains all to Paul Robertson.

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magine being able to find out at the click of a button everything you need to know about where and when an ancestor was buried, availability of plots nearby, the flora, fauna and trees – preserving the past, while embracing the future. By using the knowledge of cemetery managers and working closely with burial ground users, entrepreneur Tim Viney and his team has done just that by creating a solution that will facilitate complete burial ground management, protect the heritage this information contains and maximise the potential it offers.

Having started the project in Cumbria, with commissions from Northumberland, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire and London among others, Tim’s company Atlantic Geomatics is in advanced discussions to roll out the system England-wide and, in the process, transform the business.

“I was approached three years ago by local parishes to map churchyards,” says Viney. “One wanted an electronic record so I asked them why and they said they wanted to keep it up to date but didn’t know how.

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“It is also a great tool combining history, technology, geography, heritage and culture.”

“We developed a prototype by mapping and creating a digital record of every grave. We could say where the space was – the shortage of burial space is well documented – where the trees were, how old they were and type, as well as the current graves.

“We then thought others may have a need so sent a questionnaire to 300 churches across Cumbria. We had 120 replies and 90% didn’t have a map. Most only had one copy of their burial registers, which obviously would be a risk and so I saw an opportunity.”

Viney secured a grant for £90,000 from Innovus, which works in partnership with the University of Manchester, and developed a web-based prototype. He is having ongoing discussions with the Church of England and the Commonwealth War Grave Commission – amongst others – about mapping every single one of the 11,000-odd churchyards in England, with interest also from the Church of Scotland and the Church in Wales.

He enthusiastically demonstrates his brainchild, producing at the click of a button amazing electronic images, pictures and full details of everything within the graveyard from the oldest person to the newest plant. It is a record now protected from theft and fire, a sophisticated, intuitive database that can be easily updated.

“We have worked hard to create an effective workflow, we can now do four graveyards a day, therefore we can bring the costs down,” says Viney. “We have developed a system so the client can employ volunteers or even schools to help them manage it and keep it up to date.

“We went to a secondary school at Wigton and spent a day with 35 GCSE students, showed them the old books, how we map the churchyards, etc. They then tested our system – they were a great testing ground because they didn’t do what they were told. From an educational perspective, it is also a great tool combining history, technology, geography, heritage and culture.

“Currently, if you contact a church they have to find the old register, write it all down then send out the information asked for to the client – our system can do it in 10 seconds. All you need is a computer and a browser. It can

be a good revenue earner for both the church and us.”

Viney is also targeting a public platform by the end of 2017, with a systematic roll out over four or five years. He is projecting his workforce will double from its current 20 and turnover to increase significantly from its current £850,000.

“We want to build a team energised by this fascinating project, it is innovative,” he says. “We’ll need people for customer service, logistics, training, IT, software developers as well as more surveyors. It is taking the business to a whole new level. We want to make information available in an easy-to-use format.”

Atlantic Geomatics is a company Viney formed in 2002 after 22 years working overseas in a variety of countries. His journey is fascinating.

Born in Reading, he was four when his father was moved to Cumbria, which is where he is now once again based and regards very much as home. Having studied surveying at the University of East London, his passion was to apply his trade overseas. His chance came in 1981 and a job in Iraq, then ruled by Saddam Hussein.

“I had married Julie by this stage and we had two small children so I was not quite sure whether to go,” he recalls. “I was offered it on single status so turned it down but then they offered it on married status.

“I went on my own for three months and when I got to Baghdad they were at war with Iran – the only way in was via Iraqi Airlines to Damascus. We had to close the blinds and the lights went out in Iraqi airspace as we were escorted in by fighter jets.

“We stayed on a compound just outside Fallujah and had no connection with the UK. I was based next to a customs yard so got to know a few drivers. There was one from Carlisle who could exchange goods and messages home in return for giving him a shower and a beer.

“After three months, I thought ‘I can’t bring my wife and family here’. The only way you could make a phone call was by Cable & Wireless from a single room on a Friday [their day off]. I went down to the office and it was packed with people – there was one man at

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a desk with one telephone and you could see the wires out of the wall. You wrote down on a slip of paper your name and telephone number then waited. Sometimes it was five minutes, others five hours.

“I was eventually called and said to my wife I think I will do another three months then come back as I don’t think you should come out. She replied: ‘We discussed this I am coming out and that’s it’ and put the phone down. I had been waiting hours to speak to her.”

They stayed there for two years. Viney worked for a contracting company from Kuwait mapping an area the size of the Netherlands for irrigation – a huge project. They were taking water out of the Euphrates then channelling it across the desert and into the Tigris.

In 1984, they moved to St Lucia. “Of all the projects that was the most exciting,” says Viney. “We recruited and trained 120 locals to determine who owned all the land – it took three and a half years. We got to know so many people and the inside of the island. We now had three kids and had a wonderful time.

“The land didn’t have good title or secured tenure, there were no records of who owned what. There were all sorts of disputes over

whose was what but, out of 1,000, only eight went to the High Court, thanks to getting to people on the ground, resolving disputes – it was a massive business lesson for me in terms of dealing with people from a client relationship perspective.”

It was back to the Middle East and Qatar in 1988, a similar project to St Lucia, dividing the land for future developments that have since transformed the country and Viney’s first exposure to technology. “In St Lucia, it had been 100% paper,” he says. “Here we got to use and develop geographic information systems (GIS) – an intuitive way to build up pictures of people and places using maps.”

Then, in 1994, it was Bermuda for eight years and it was here the idea for Atlantic Geomatics was born. “As a chartered surveyor, I didn’t make huge sums of money but the quality of life and working in such diverse places, with people from all around the world, was amazing,” he says.

“While in Bermuda, I ran the survey department converting all mapping into digital format and then started to manage the government property more efficiently by developing a property information

management system (PIMS).”

A Canadian company called Atlantic Geomatics was commissioned to build the PIMS, Viney became friends with the directors and had initial discussions about setting up a UK branch. His friends then left the company but he still went ahead and registered the company in the UK. He bought a house in Pooley Bridge. “I love the area,” he says. “I met my wife at school and it is where we wanted to settle.

“Atlantic Geomatics began by working out of a small farm building but has evolved,

“

“I didn’t make huge sums of money but the quality of life and working in such diverse places, with people from all around the world, was amazing.”

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weathered the storms and grown. I took over a small surveying business run by an old friend with three employees. I had 22 years working overseas, signed a deal, with zero handover and was confronted with pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) and national insurance, all of which meant nothing to me.

“Everything was manual, the accounts, ledgers for letters being posted, one for sales, purchase, payroll – it was a good way to learn.

We could transform it into a modern business.”

So, in a nutshell what does Atlantic Geomatics do? “We measure the environment, natural or built, providing information for consultants, architects, engineers about what is where,” says Viney. “It is high-level, detailed information. Adding attribution to digital mapping makes the data more powerful and supports better decision making. Add the roads, trees, buildings – a database to click on that tells you how high the tree is, where the lamppost is, when it was serviced – and it is an intuitive, interactive tool.

“It can be used to map stagnant water, record cases of malaria and pinpoint where the outbreak was, allowing much more informed decisions to be made. Utility companies can see if they cut a cable exactly who will be affected. We want to make this software available for everybody, web-based, easy and friendly to use.”

“

“Our burial ground management system is the first ever complete solution of its kind, offering a comprehensive, high-quality and secure tool.”

His firm was involved in assessing much of the flood damage and reinstatement works needed in and around Cumbria in 2015, including the collapse of the A591 between Grasmere and Keswick, producing a three-dimensional (3D) model so it could be strengthened when rebuilt.

At 63, Viney has been married to Julie for 40 years. Their eldest son Jonathan is a teacher, daughter Rachael a doctor in Newcastle while youngest son Ollie is financial director of Atlantic Geomatics. He also has eight grandchildren, aged zero to five. He continues to be an expert witness in boundary disputes, but it is attracting more investment, interest and making the technology created by Atlantic Geomatics more accessible that keeps him fired up.

“I love the business and the burial ground management system is my big driver,” he says.

“It is an ambitious, transformative project.

We also want to create a Northern geomatics body for surveying, working with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Chartered Institute of Civil Engineering

Surveyors to create awareness about what we do. Everywhere else I have worked our industry had to be licensed but not in the UK – I don’t think that is right.

“Our burial ground management system is the first ever complete solution of its kind, offering a comprehensive, high-quality and secure tool that will become a world leading resource.

“Future developments will include a publiclyaccessible website, which will be a secure platform to complement the burial ground management portal.

“This sister site will become the ‘go to’ online resource for public research, either for general interest, genealogy searches or to arrange visits to the graves. Data will be accessible through a secure website and mobile applications, making it easy to locate a grave, view images and to search the historical data.

“This will streamline interaction with the public, attract visitors and even have a future income-generating potential for maintenance and management purposes. As a proud Cumbrian company, we’re really excited.” n

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JOIN THE PARTY! CELEBRATING AND INSPIRING ENTREPRENEURSHIP ACROSS THE UK 21ST NOVEMBER 2017 ~

The Boiler Shop, Newcastle ~ 6.00pm - 10.00pm

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BQ NATIONAL

ENTREPRENEUR FESTIVAL POWERED BY

You’re invited to the most inventive event of the year!

Our National Entrepreneur Festival, powered

by Atom bank and featuring the emerging entrepreneur awards, will once again scour the UK to uncover some of the country’s up-and-coming entrepreneurial stars, placing the spotlight on individuals making their mark in the business world.

Entrepreneurs from across the land are gathering in the heartland of the industrial revolution, Newcastle upon Tyne, the birthplace of Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’ for the BQ Entrepreneur Festival at the Boiler Shop on 21st November 2017.

The emerging entrepreneur awards which are part of the festival are open to all emerging entrepreneurs who can demonstrate their tenacity, creativity, innovation and determination to scale.

Sounds familiar? Recognise yourself or colleagues?

Then submit a nomination today. From Glasgow to Guildford we want to celebrate entrepreneurship across the UK. This years festival will also include a new Outstanding Entrepreneur Award. This very special award is designed to recognise established entrepreneurs that have achieved exceptional success or have contributed materially to the success of others over a sustained period. Our nominees will all have demonstrated the kind of entrepreneurial flair and vision that makes them role models and possibly mentors for the emerging entrepreneurs with whom they will have shared their experience.

Craig Iley, Managing Director of Business Banking at Atom bank, said: “This is about entrepreneurs receiving the support and recognition they deserve for challenging norms, taking risks and ultimately powering our economy as they develop into SMEs. This year’s festival will be truly innovative, reflecting and celebrating entrepreneurial spirit.”

Our stellar line up of featured BQ entrepreneurs will descend on Newcastle to celebrate entrepreneurship and forge new relationships in business.

You are part of the ‘entrepreneurial revolution’, so get involved, enter the awards, or socialise and recognise that you’re in great company.

For all your event, ticket and sponsor details visit www.bqlive.co.uk/NEF17

ENTER NOW at www.bqlive.co.uk/NEF17 for your chance to win

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Special Report - International Trade

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE

AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE CAMPAIGN 2018 BQ is delighted to announce the second PD Ports Northern Powerhouse Export Awards and International Trade Campaign 2017/18 The PD Ports Northern Powerhouse Export Awards and International Trade Campaign brings together businesses from across the North to recognise and celebrate their entrepreneurial exporting achievements as well as encourage others to increase their export potential. Exporting and international trade remain central to the UK’s economic growth agenda and this campaign and export awards are about recognising those entrepreneurial, wealth creating companies that are selling their products, services and expertise in scores of overseas markets. It is vital that we appreciate and recognise those exporters who have made the transition from great local companies to potentially world class exporting businesses.

Exporting continues to present an opportunity for the North of England to bring immediate and sustainable growth to its economy and with this in mind we need to encourage SMEs across the Northern Powerhouse to consider exporting as a realistic opportunity for growth.

Kirsten Donkin, PD Ports’ PR and communications manager, said: “We are proud to be sponsoring the Northern Powerhouse Export Awards alongside BQ magazine for the second year running. As one of the UK’s major port groups headquartered in Teesside, we know only too

well the critical importance of exporting to the economy; with the North East being the only continuous net exporting region in the UK. The awards reflect our firm commitment and investment to supporting further growth of exports and the associated value to drive economic prosperity across the North; exporting will undoubtedly be a major catalyst in delivering the Northern Powerhouse.

“We would encourage exporters from across the entire north, large and small; those new to exporting as well as those scaling up their export activity, to enter the awards and help to showcase as well as celebrate the strength and diversity of our Northern exporters.”

BQ is a national brand recognised for celebrating and inspiring entrepreneurship to help businesses succeed and grow. Encouraging businesses to explore exporting opportunities is central to BQ’s ethos and one which Bryan Hoare, group commercial director believes will really help stimulate economic growth.

“Having successfully delivered other international trade campaigns across the UK, we’re delighted to once again bring you the PD Ports Northern Powerhouse Export Awards,” said Hoare.

“We would like to invite any business in the North actively trading overseas to get involved

in the awards and export campaign to help us encourage others to increase their export potential. This is a vital time in the UK economy where we need to provide inspiration and stimulation. BQ is investing in this 12 month campaign across the North East & Cumbria, Yorkshire and the North West to help stimulate growth and profile some of the North’s top exporters.”

“It’s important to recognise that this international trade campaign isn’t simply about the show-piece Northern Powerhouse awards.

Instead, this is a year-long opportunity for entrepreneurs to talk about the successes of their companies in overseas markets, not only promoting their own businesses in the process but also encouraging fellow entrepreneurs to consider exporting.

“Some of the tales that BQ has uncovered during previous international trade campaigns have been absolutely incredible. Our entrepreneurs have fantastic stories to share and I can’t wait to find out whose stories we’re going to be able to share this year, across all of BQ’s media channels. BQ’s mission is to celebrate and inspire entrepreneurship and nowhere does that crusade come more to life than during the Northern Powerhouse Export Awards and the

Special Report - International Trade

international trade campaign.”

The Export Awards and international trade campaign include two new categories this year – emerging markets exporter of the year title and the prize for the scale up exporter of the year. The two new trophies come in response to the way in which the competition has grown since last year.

Helping to nurture scale-up companies is a big focus not just for the North but for the whole of the UK’s entrepreneurial support system.

While start-ups are essential to growing our economy, it’s the scale-ups that will create many of the jobs of the future.

That’s why this year’s awards and campaign will include a special scale-up category,

acknowledging the effort that goes into scaling-up a business so that it can access overseas markets. Many customers abroad want to see evidence of success at home in a supplier’s domestic market and so scaling-up services or production is often key to satisfying consumer demand.

“With these new categories and the existing range of awards, there’s never been a better time to enter the competition,” Hoare adds.

“Last year we welcomed contestants from across the Northern Powerhouse and this year we’re looking forward to receiving an equally broad spread of entries, both geographically and from all the different sectors that make up the North’s thriving economy.” n

THURSDAY 22ND FEBRUARY 2018 CATEGORIES ECOMMERCE EXPORTER OF THE YEAR MOST ENTREPRENEURIAL EXPORTER OF THE YEAR MICRO EXPORTER OF THE YEAR SMALL EXPORTER OF THE YEAR LARGE EXPORTER OF THE YEAR EXPORT TEAM OF THE YEAR EMERGING MARKET EXPORTER OF THE YEAR SCALE UP EXPORTER OF THE YEAR HIGH GROWTH MARKET EXPORTER OF THE YEAR PD PORTS NORTHERN POWERHOUSE EXPORTER OF THE YEAR

Nominations for the 2018 PD Ports Northern Powerhouse Export Awards are now open and you can enter FREE online at www.bqlive.co.uk/northexportawards18

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IN SEARCH OF

EVIDENCE Dame Anne Glover served as the first chief scientific advisor to both the Scottish Government and the president of the European Commission. She shares her views on Brexit, spin-outs and entrepreneurship with Peter Ranscombe.

F

irst there was Brexit. Then there was Trump.

And then, to cap it all off, the Oxford English Dictionary declared its “Word of the Year 2016” to be “post-truth”: an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.

Dame Anne Glover isn’t a fan of the new word though. “Call a lie, a lie,” she says with a shake of her head.

“I’m getting increasingly angry about this post-truth thing because that’s a very sanitised phrase, saying, ‘post-truth’. People are lying.

“I’ve said to fellow scientists that they need to start behaving badly. Call a lie, a lie. Because there’s a taboo about this, where people ask, ‘Are you sure about your facts there?’.

“In the House of Commons, you can’t call somebody a liar. Perhaps that’s because it’s such a shocking thing to call someone. But when someone is clearly lying, I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh you’re going a bit into the post-truth there’, I’d say ‘You’re lying, there’s no evidence to support what you’re saying’.

“People understand what a liar is, whereas this ‘post-truth’ thing sounds very sanitised. It’s

like the difference between saying to someone ‘You’re very well-rounded’ or ‘You’re obese’.

You’re not allowed to call people ‘fat’ because it’s so shocking. And that maybe makes it acceptable for people.

“Words are very powerful indeed and I think we have to be a little more straightforward in our use of language. When people are lying, and we know they’re lying, let’s ask them for the evidence. Because otherwise, we always pat ourselves on the back and say, we’ve got a great democracy here, in the UK. I’m not so sure anymore.”

Lies aren’t the only topic that has angered Glover. The way in which politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have undermined evidence has also struck at the very heart of the scientist’s beliefs.

“Michael Gove said that people in this country have had enough of experts,” she says.

“That was a chilling thing for somebody to say because I think it was deliberately dishonest.

“I imagine that, if Michael Gove had a brain tumour, he’d want a neurosurgeon to treat him, and not a theatre director or clothes salesman. I think his comment was designed to try and undermine people’s openness to

listening to what experts had to say. People with knowledge, people who had depth of experience.

“Jacob Rees-Mogg came out with a very similar phrase later in the year on Newsnight – he said ‘Experts, soothsayers, astrologers are all in much the same category’. No, they’re not.

“Again, a quite cynical – in my view – attempt to try and undermine people’s regard or at least willingness to have an open mind as to what a specialist or an expert might say.”

Glover knows the importance of clear communication and the need to present evidence more than most. She served as Scotland’s first chief scientific advisor between 2006 and 2011 and then fulfilled the same role to the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, from 2012 until 2014.

She now serves as vice-principal for external affairs and dean for Europe at the University of Aberdeen, where she also holds a personal chair as professor of molecular and cell biology.

She became a dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in the new year’s honours list in 2015 for her services to science and she also sits on the boards of Scottish Enterprise and the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult,

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as well as chairing the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

Her close links with the European Union (EU) made last year’s Brexit vote a particularly bitter blow for Glover. “Before I went to work in Brussels, I would have voted to remain – after working for the commission for three years, if I’d been given ten votes then I would have used them all to vote remain,” she says.

“When I came home every two or three weeks to the UK I realised just how little news about the good things the EU was doing was getting reported back here. The press blamed the EU for blocking the UK, but often it was the UK using its veto to block the EU – people ask why banks aren’t more heavily regulated and it’s because of the UK, for example.

“It was a real eye opener. The whole time I was there, it was clear the UK was not really a very good member state. We were always carping and wanting special treatment, even though we were one of the richest. We were always going cap in hand. In a way, it was a bit embarrassing.”

A year on from the Brexit vote and now that Article 50 has been triggered, Glover is concerned about the impacts on the UK. “If you look at the UK’s contribution to the EU as

a whole then we contribute more than we get back in areas such as social inclusion, because we’re a richer country,” she explains.

“Yet when you look at our contribution to Horizon 2020, the EU’s science funding programme, then we get back a lot more than we contribute. After the whole Brexit campaign was framed around having more money to invest in the health service then it makes it difficult to articulate the case for investing more in science, even though that would boost the health of the nation in the long-term.

“But what’s even more important than the money is the access that the Horizon 2020 structure gives us to seamless partnerships, not just with collaborators in the EU but also in the United States or countries like Israel.

Post Brexit, if I put forward grant applications to collaborate with scientists in the US then there’s the risk that they or me or both may be rejected – with Horizon 2020, there was a framework in place and a much greater chance of getting funding.

“The other key issue is attracting talented scientists – around 20% of our students are from the EU and about 40% of our staff come from outside the UK. If I was one of those scientists then would I come to a country that’s

now seen as being xenophobic, a bit racist, where I might feel uncomfortable that me, my partner and my kids might be somehow picked upon if we’ve got a foreign accent?

“Even if those things didn’t happen, it’s people’s perception. And, if I’ve got the choice of going anywhere in the world, why would I come here? Why would I subject my family to that, or myself?

“The UK will still have great facilities and infrastructure, but it won’t have the best talent – and you need all three to be successful. It won’t happen overnight, but in five or ten years after Brexit, we’ll see the effect.”

Having worked under the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition and then Scottish National Party (SNP) minority and majority governments, one of Glover’s proudest moments came when she broke down UK data and found that the impact of the research done in Scotland relative to its gross domestic product (GDP) was number one in the world.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” admits Glover.

“I’d been looking for weaknesses, which could spark discussions about where we needed to invest and what we could do better.

“I took the data and showed it to First Minister Alex Salmond and he said ‘What?’. It was totally unexpected.

“Yet the statistic that always got quoted afterwards was that, excluding the adjustment for GDP, the impact of Scotland’s research was the second highest in the world, after Switzerland. It was almost like, people are going to think this is too good to be true, so let’s go for second not for first.”

She feels her other achievement with the Scottish Government was to stimulate more conversations about science among politicians and civil servants. “Evidence-based policy making – that became a mantra,” she says.

While evidence is a key factor for any scientist, Glover recognises that it cannot be the only consideration when deciding public policy. “I was on a working group that was convened by the Royal Society in London on the detection and decontamination of chemical and biological weapons,” she explains.

“We took evidence from a very wide range of people – the security services, but also scientists – talking about different biological or chemical agents that might be released during an attack. We ran various scenarios and one of them looked at a white powder being released in the London Underground.

“All the evidence said, unequivocally, that the way to minimise any risk to the population

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if that happens is seal off the tube. If there are people down there, what you’re saying is, that it’s unfortunate, but that’s what the evidence tells you.

“So, if you had purely evidenced-based policy then that would have been your policy.

But that isn’t our policy, because we’re human, and we find that unacceptable. What’s not legitimate is where you have evidence and the policy completely ignores the evidence and you’re not transparent about it.”

Looking for evidence has been at the very heart of Glover’s career. Born in Arbroath, she was educated at the High School of Dundee before gaining a degree in biochemistry from the University of Edinburgh and a doctorate from the University of Cambridge.

“I think that everybody’s born a scientist because everybody is incredibly curious and they’re interested about their environment and how things work and how things happen,” she explains. “I never grew out of that, I just remained insatiably curious, and still am.

“You might think that’s a nosy trait, but I don’t think I’m a nosy person. I’m just curious.”

That curiosity not only led Glover into a career in science but also to co-found a spinout company from the University of Aberdeen.

“

“You might think that’s a nosy trait, but I don’t think I’m a nosy person. I’m just curious.”

Ian George, her partner of 40 years and now her husband, worked with local councils to help them develop industrial property and suggested using her research to diagnose the contaminants on brownfield sites and suggest remedies.

Excited at the prospect, Glover and her fellow academics – helped again by George – raised business angel funding and launched Remedios in 1999. The company is still going strong today after being bought by ESH Group in 2012.

“It was a really interesting experience,” Glover remembers. “We were an odd company because we had a product from day one, which is unusual for biotech spin-outs.

“But I didn’t want to be a service company.

I wanted to make money so we could invest in developing the technology and it could be used in other areas. The angel investors weren’t so keen on that perhaps because they were from the property world.

“Would I do it again? No. Why not? Because

I’m not good at selling. I find it difficult to go out and tell you why you should buy that bag, and not that bag. I think it’s up to you, you’ll look at the evidence.

“I was keen on explaining to people how the technology worked and why it would give them an advantage, but then I’d leave it up to them to decide for themselves. But that’s not how things are sold in business.

“I was rather naïve. But, as I say, I really did enjoy the experience. And ironically, I know if I did it again, I’d make a much better job of it.

“I’m a real fan of serial entrepreneurship because every time you do it, you do it better.

We were lucky because we didn’t fail first time around, which is what a large proportion of people do.

“As a society, we’re rather unforgiving about failure. And it’s a real pity because, in a way, I’d put my money on the failures because now they really know what works and what doesn’t work, so unless they’re really daft, they won’t make the same mistake twice.” n

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“

“I made a decision to have a career change and looked back at my training as an interior designer.”

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Brick by

BRICK Siobhan Cook, managing director at property firm Archco, is building a slice of Essex, development by development. Mike Hughes meets the boss whose company has just recorded growth of 1,532%.

T

he fact that Siobhan Cook is a mum and a business leader is underlined by a few hiccups in our interview schedule. The first slot was written off because of a “nightmare” day at the office involving issues with sub-contractors and then the rearranged time was lost as well, this time because someone had run into her car – with the children inside.

Thankfully everyone is okay and her profuse apologies and friendly manner when we talk later that day bring out another big part of her character and her company’s success – she’s really easy to get on with. Cook is managing director at Archco, an Ilford-based developer that started out doing restorations and is now focused on new builds, including luxury homes at Kenley in Surrey and family homes at Abridge in Essex, both due next year, and apartments in Epping to be completed this year.

The astonishing 1,532% growth figure posted by the company won her an equallyastonishing title when the Financial Times named her, at the age of 34, as the boss of the UK’s fastest growing female-led small business.

It has been a rapid, but controlled, ascent from the moment she left her previous job on a trading floor.

“When I was pregnant with my daughter [now 11], I made a decision to have a career change and looked back at my training as an interior designer,” she says.

“I was working for some people looking over properties and the market was doing nicely, with places like Stratford and Walthamstow being developed, but still relatively cheap in comparison to now. After the baby was born, I started going to auctions and picking up some cheap properties myself to flip them.”

Cook had already built up a trusted team of tradespeople and sub-contractors and started looking at the next stage, buying plots and building the whole thing from scratch if cashflow allowed. The niche that Archco started to occupy was buying cheaper land without planning permission and taking the time to get the permissions in place for just one or two houses, rather than stretch their finances – already being carefully controlled – for prepackaged plots.

“The growth then was really fairly organic and steady,” she says. “The plots just started getting progressively bigger and the permissions we went after were now for three or four dwellings, and then up to five or six and

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now we are doing blocks of flats with mixed commercial and living space and some extreme growth.”

She talks of this in a calm and reflective way, as if describing a busy weekend of events. But this is a hard business already populated by a number of seasoned veterans – almost always men – who are protective of their business and their particular patch. Who was this young woman coming in and changing the landscape under their feet?

Her personality – so friendly and yet, I imagine, not the sort of person you would want to cross at the boardroom table – is important. Particularly as a relative newcomer, she needed to get on with people and build relationships at the same pace as she builds homes.

“In some ways, we have been fortunate that the market has gone with us and given us a really great run at a time when other developers were struggling so that by the time 2008 came along there was a lot of property available at the same time as we had a little bit of cashflow,” Cook says.

“Do you know what? I truly believe being a woman has worked in my favour. I think you will always get the element of people” – she pauses as she chooses her word carefully –

“pressuring you because you are a woman and there is not that instant confidence they might have for a man who has been working in the industry for a long time.

“But it is normally dismissed pretty quickly with me because I make an effort to talk to as many people as possible and they realise I know my industry. Once they get past the whole ‘woman’ thing and see that you know what you are talking about there is a newfound respect.

“There are a lot of high-testosterone men out there who can be difficult to deal with and are quite rude and aggressive because they feel they need to exert power. I think it is nice for people to see that they don’t get that with me.

“I also think that for some men it is all turnover, turnover, turnover but I honestly don’t want to grow too big. Our turnover will be about £6m, and I always aim for around 20%-30% to be profit, all without needing to be a mass developer and have my ego rubbed.

“I have a strong character, born out of a working-class family and a very East End

“

upbringing. My Dad had scrap metal yards my whole life and had always worked for himself. I started working early, after leaving school at 15 and going to work on a trading floor – another male-dominated industry – and I learned very quickly to get on with it and make my mark.”

She admits to not being the most skilled of students, and is therefore delighted that her 11-year-old daughter seems very promising and might even be university material, while her six-year-old son is either going to move into football or construction.

“I certainly have two very different children,” says Cook. “But I instil into them that a good work ethic is everything and can carry them through. They will want to make their own way, but I would love it if perhaps my son decided on the construction side of things and started moving into the business – but perhaps even that is a bit stereotypical.”

The landscape she’s changing goes north from her Ilford base to the Chigwell and Epping area and south to Sydenham, below the Thames. It’s a decent patch, with lots of

“I make an effort to talk to as many people as possible and they realise I know my industry.””

bqlive.co.uk

“

“You could be the greatest entrepreneur, but if people don’t like you it is very hard to do business.”

potential, and she feels at home there.

“Everywhere seems so busy at the moment that I have almost been tempted to go out and do some building work for other people because there has been such a demand,” Cook says. “The way the economy is going, I doubt there will be many lulls in the construction sector around for a while, and that confidence is reflected by most people I talk to, so I would be quite happy for my son to take on a trade because they are constantly working and often for really good day rates.

“For me, it is all down to work ethic, grit, determination and a positive attitude. If you do what you know you are capable of and believe in yourself then the people that you work with and that surround you will see that, and believe it as well. Otherwise, you are going into jobs and thinking ‘I’m not sure I can do that’ and that means you won’t be able to.

“You also have to build good relationships because people have to want to work with you. You could be the greatest entrepreneur in the world, but if people don’t like you it is very

hard to do business.”

The evident enjoyment she gets from her success and tackling the challenges of leading a 21st-century business is slightly tinged by regret that it is all happening as her children are growing, but the same ethics are at play here as well – building a strong relationship means people aged from six to 66 have a better chance of understanding what is going on and appreciating the reasons.

“It is so hard,” she confesses. “Of everything I do, this is the most difficult balance to find because, at my age, this is when I need to be working my hardest and it is a juggling act between my home life and my work life.

“The very fortunate thing is that I have a great family network and there are parents and aunts and uncles to give the kids time if I’m not around. I think it is so important for new entrepreneurs to have a support network because when I was first setting up the business I found it really hard to get it established and could never switch off at the end of the day, but now, with the support I

have, I am finding it easier to say, ‘I’ll talk about it tomorrow’.

“But the kids get it. They know this is what I have to do and hopefully as they go forward in life it will be something they will have as well.”

As the business grows over the coming years into something well worth the sacrifices, innovation will become ever more important as land becomes scarcer and competition tougher.

Cook’s mind is a sharp as any in the sector and a literally ground-breaking partnership with a Methodist church in Abbey Wood could signal one way she will keep ahead of her rivals.

With churches, charities and schools struggling to make ends meet and keep on doing their good work in the community, Archco is looking at the land they might have around their buildings and seeing if a deal can be done to develop spaces that might have seemed unusable and put some revenue back into the coffers. It’s a business deal, but an imaginative one that will be snapped up by communities that thought they had reached a dead end.

Companies like Archco, with their loyalties so deeply embedded in the region, are a vital player in the South East, if bosses like Cook can continue to make the most of the spaces that link a community together. n

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Profile

A decade of success for Durham Oktoberfest This year marks the ten-year milestone for Oktoberfest, which has become a proven platform to business growth.

The North East’s Premier Engineering & Manufacturing Show

2017

Call the Oktoberfest Hotline on 0191 303 7772 or speak to Ben Gilhespy on 07568 480693.

Ten years ago plans to create the perfect platform to showcase the North East’s growing strengths and capabilities within the engineering and manufacturing sectors were announced.

That platform was Durham Oktoberfest.

A decade on and not only is Durham Oktoberfest recognised as being the region’s leading event within these industries, two of the most economically important to the North East’s continued growth and prosperity, it is also a proven conduit to business expansion.

Companies around the region have won business on the back of attending, including Bowburn-based Altec, Stanley company Dyer Engineering, that has been involved from the start, E-Max Systems from Darlington, Blaydon-based Impress Group, EDM Zone from Newcastle and Newton Aycliffe logistics firm Stiller.

All come back year after year as they know the event, now held at Newton Aycliffe’s Xcel Centre, is the perfect opportunity to make connections and chat to businesses that could potentially require their services.

David Land, chairman of County Durham Engineering and Manufacturing Network, which organises Durham Oktoberfest, said: “Durham Oktoberfest is the perfect platform to showcase the North East’s vast capabilities within the engineering and manufacturing sectors.

“But more than that, it offers businesses the chance to meet potential buyers, suppliers and customers, which we know can and does lead to work.

“Just recently we revealed that logistics company Stiller had secured a six-figure contract with Marmax Products as a direct result of attending last year’s event. And it’s one of many businesses that have seen their portfolio grow from being part of our event.”

Marmax Products based in Stanley attended Durham Oktoberfest for the first time in 2016.

During the event, bosses met representatives from Stiller and after several meetings and a review of existing provision, Marmax decided to make

“

“Just recently we revealed that logistics company Stiller had secured a six-figure contract with Marmax Products as a direct result of attending last year’s event. And they’re one of many businesses who have seen their portfolio grow from being part of our event.”

changes to improve its own offering.

Production manager Paul King said: “I am always looking at ways to improve our efficiency and reduce costs, which ultimately means we can offer our customers a better service.

“After Oktoberfest I met with the team at Stiller to learn more and quickly became sure they were right for us. Appointing them as our distributors was an easy decision in the end.”

Marmax, which was launched 16 years ago and now employs 26 people, makes a wide range of products for companies and organisations across the country including the Dogs Trust, the Angling Trust and Battersea Dogs Home, as well as schools, theme parks, pubs, restaurants and local authorities.

The contract with Stiller is worth around £150,000 and means Marmax can guarantee a quicker turnaround in product delivery.

This year’s event is once again being supported

by Business Durham as gold sponsor, while Nigel Wright Recruitment has also come on board as an associate partner. n To find out more visit the website, durhamoktoberfest.org.uk.

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