BQ autumn 2017

Celebrating and inspiring entrepreneurship

BUSINESS QUARTER Autumn 2017

DRAGON HEART

Hayley Parsons tells the tale behind founding price comparison site Go Compare

FOOT SOLDIER Sir John Timpson shares the secrets of his shoe repair and key cutting firm’s success

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Business Quarter Magazine

Ben Roberts took his father’s Welsh gold mining business and grew it into a national retailer

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Golden boy

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Sarah Greenwell celebrates the success of her little helpers

WELCOME

“These are the men and women who invent and develop the innovative products and services that not only create wealth but also transform lives and communities.”

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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.

All contents copyright © 2017 BQ. All rights reserved. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, no responsibility can be accepted for inaccuracies, howsoever caused. No liability can be accepted for illustrations, photographs, artwork or advertising materials while in transmission or with the publisher or their agents. All content marked ‘Profile’, ‘Partner’, ‘Special Report’ and ‘Commercial Feature’ is paid for advertising.

All information is correct at time of going to print, September 2017.

AUTUMN 2017

One of the greatest privileges when editing BQ magazine is to share the stories of the entrepreneurs who power our economy. These are the men and women who invent and develop the innovative products and services that not only create wealth but also transform lives and communities.

Hayley Parsons is a fantastic case in point – after launching Confused.com she missed out on a promotion and so decided to leave and found price comparison website Go Compare. There are echoes of her story as a serial entrepreneur in the tale of Sarah Greenwell; not satisfied with running her own creative agency, she created elf, a toy and play package to encourage children to behave in the run-up to Christmas.

Ben Roberts took over the running of Clogau, his father’s Welsh gold company, and turned it into a national jewellery business, while Sir John Timpson is in charge of a slightly older operation – his family’s shoe repair and key cutting business traces its roots back to the 1860s and has now expanded into fixing iPads and printing personalised gifts. Paul Everitt, the boss behind Farnborough’s world-famous air show, also has his eye on the future, with big changes to the international venue.

The drinks sector is full of industrious entrepreneurs: David Thompson, director of Spirit of Yorkshire, is creating the first single malt whisky from the White Rose county, while Steven Macatonia has put his money where his mouth is to buy higher-quality beans for Union Hand-Roasted Coffee and Dan Jago is guiding wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd into its fourth century in business.

Food entrepreneurs are being equally creative, with the family behind Mackie’s of Scotland diversifying from ice cream into crisps and chocolate, Tracey Matthews growing the Gaucho high-end Argentinian steakhouse chain and Nitesh Mall and Andrew Vaneziz promoting their seaweed as an alternative to our salt addiction. It’s all enough to make your mouth water.

Manufacturers continue to break fresh ground too, with James Taylor at Texfelt providing carpet underlays to film sets including Spectre and Transformers, while Farhad Seka at Linco Care is exporting sun cream and other personal care products to more than 60 countries.

On the services side of the economy, former Aston Villa duo Paul and Paula Rastrick have launched Physiyolates, which offers physiotherapy and yoga to improve health and fitness, Michaela Reaney at Gradvert is acting as a bridge between university and employment, and Bryan and Catherine Powell are disrupting a very traditional market with Pure Cremation.

Together, their stories demonstrate that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.

Peter Ranscombe, editor

CONTENTS AUTUMN 2017 14

SHE GOT MAD AND SHE GOT EVEN When Hayley Parsons was denied promotion she left and set up price comparison website Go Compare

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CUTTING CREW Sir John Timpson shares some of the business secrets behind his company’s growth

TRUANT TO TRAILBLAZER Skiving off school didn’t stop Hayley Parsons from building a multi-million pound business

ATOMIC CULTURE Digital bank Atom is revolutionising finance by building an exciting new culture

SPIRIT OF YORKSHIRE We get a taste of a business which is producing Yorkshire’s first single malt whisky

NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS Sarah Greenwell is captivating children with her new toy business

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GLOBALLY LOCAL International bank UBS has the local knowledge to help its customers prosper

TOP FLIGHT Paul Everitt explains how the company behind Farnborough’s airshow is expanding

SURFING CHICK Tracey Matthews is the woman behind the expansion of restaurant chain Gaucho

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LAND OF MILK AND HONEY

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GOOD AS GOLD

Ice cream brand Mackie’s of Scotland is building on its success to diversify

How a Welsh gold mine has grown into a jewellery chain with stockists around the UK

Celebrating and inspiring entrepreneurship 08 78

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102 110

DEGREES OF SUCCESS Gradvert helps both individuals and businesses to make the most of our graduate talent

DRINKS DRIVER Dan Jago is shaping a 300-year-old wine and spirits merchant for its fourth century

(COFFEE) BREAK FOR FARMERS Union Hand-Roasted Coffee imports, roasts and supplies top-quality coffee and gives its suppliers a fair deal

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FROM THE ASHES

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PASS THE SEAWEED

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Sun screen producer Lino Care suffered a catastrophic fire but recovered to shine again

Two entrepreneurs are battling to save lives by persuading us to switch salt for seaweed

IT’S YOUR FUNERAL

Pure Cremation is changing the way we treat death and mourning

BODY AND MIND Paul and Paula Rastrick are building a business that takes a holistic approach to health

UNDER THE CARPET A Yorkshire success story that features in films but is never seen

HIGH LIFE 63

The best in motoring, fashion and hospitality

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PHOTOGRAPHY KG Photography

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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS MIDLANDS & LONDON Steve Dyson

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NORTH WEST & WALES Maria McGeoghan

NORTH EAST & CUMBRIA Paul Robertson

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GROUP COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR Bryan Hoare

EDITOR Peter Ranscombe

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“

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“Due diligence? Due diligence? We do it all ourselves. You should know what you are buying. You should know the people.”

success

THE K Y TO

Sir John Timpson shares some of the secrets of his success with Maria McGeoghan as he explains how his £160m shoe repair and key cutting business has expanded into fixing iPads and printing customised photographs.

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here’s something a bit different about Timpson. Not just the big smiley face painted on the ground as you enter the car park at the company’s head office in Manchester or the “Reserved for colleague of the month” parking space right by the front door.

It’s not the reception area that doubles as a key cutting shop, Duke the dog who lives there playing with his toys, or the many noticeboards groaning with “thank you” cards.

It’s not even the 10-foot tall red sparkly stiletto shoe that adorns one of the openplan office landings or the lifestyle model of

a camel resting in a corner. It’s that everyone I encounter is smiling and cheerful and seems happy to be there.

“Oh, I don’t know if the camel has a name, but I always thought it would be a good place to have a nativity scene at Christmas,” says Christine, who has been at Timpson for 35 years and is now personal assistant to Sir John Timpson, the chairman. “We’re very lucky to have such a lovely office.”

We go past the boardroom, glass on one wall and what looks like flock wallpaper on the other. “We call that Cobbler’s Cottage,” says

Christine, as we pass two original red phone boxes. “Really handy if you need to make a personal call,” she adds, as we go on to the gym and a quick chat with the in-house manicure and massage lady who is waiting for her next appointment. It’s a remarkable environment.

Timpson was established in 1865 and is still family-owned and run by Sir John Timpson as chairman and his son James Timpson as chief executive.

Something of a legend in the world of business, 74-year-old Sir John is a prolific writer on management style and has been the

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Daily Telegraph’s business agony uncle for nine years. He’s also renowned for his philanthropy and was knighted in the Queen’s birthday honours list for his services to business and fostering; he and his late wife, Alex, who died in January 2016, fostered 90 children over 31 years.

You can tell straight away that he loves what he does and is proud of how the business has grown over the years. The group continues to expand by opening stores – mostly concessions or pods in supermarkets – and growing its photo business, which now includes high street names like Max Spielman, Tesco Photo and Snappy Snaps.

Timpson is also expanding its national locksmiths’ business and introducing services such as mobile phone and iPad repairs.

“So, what do you want to know?” says Sir John, cutting straight to the chase. We start at the very beginning.

“The business was started by my grandfather in the 1860s. In 1949, we were making £600,000-£700,000 profit, which is the equivalent of £20m now.

“We were the best shoe retailer in the North. It was a very, very good business. Everyone got their shoes from us. We were in the main industrial areas but they were the ones that were going to suffer first.

“In 2003, we were making a £5.4m profit. We’ve now got 5,000 colleagues, 1,900 outlets, a turnover of £300m and £25m profit.

And that’s with no borrowing.”

He lets that sink in for a minute. A knack for spotting when a trend is on the up or down plays a big part in this success.

Who would have thought that photo shops would still be doing a roaring trade in this digital age? “Personalisation is a big thing,” says John.

“It’s growing all the time. Pictures on canvas, picture gifts, customers still get their pictures printed out. And we’ve got people there that can help you and that makes all the difference.

“You can’t park in a town centre and when you get there, there’s no atmosphere so you go out of town. Supermarkets are very, very busy. We’re opening three outlets a week out of town.”

Over the years, businesses have been bought and sold, but when I suggest that he must know a thing or two about due diligence, he laughs and disagrees, vigorously.

“Due diligence? Due diligence? We do it all ourselves. You should know what you are buying. You should know the people.

I once did a deal to buy some shops over dinner at St Andrews.”

He admits he is a business maverick and believes his own “upside-down management” is one of the keys to business success. “The secret is to let people do what they want, manage the way they want,” says Sir John.

“There’s no point doing all sorts of training if they haven’t got the right personality to deal with anything the customer throws at them.

“We are proud of our customer service but it only works with the right people. They need great personalities. I don’t care what they have done. The only useful thing on a CV is your name and address. It’s all about what you are like and how you behave. We

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like buzzy people.”

He recounts a recent graduation ceremony where he was joined on the stage by his son James.

“We were the nearest to the graduands as they came on stage. We watched them all come up and we agreed none of them seemed to be right for us. It’s their expression, it’s how they walk and talk.

“We have 51 managers with a team of six each. They are the engine room. We don’t hang on to anyone who we think is no good. We say, nicely, that your best isn’t ever going to be good enough but we’d like you to be happy somewhere else.”

“

And here’s a top-flight business executive who doesn’t believe in holding many meetings.

“We don’t do things because we think we ought to. It’s all about common sense. We don’t do many meetings here. They can stifle a business.”

To prove the point, he looks through his diary. “There, look. A pensions meeting today, nothing in August and then nothing until 28 September.”

When I ask about more of his secrets of success, Sir John gets me his book “Keys to Success” and we go though some of the chapter headings together.

Perfect day: “No shop can be tidy all the

“We are proud of our customer service but it only works with the right people.

They need great personalities. I don’t care what they have done. The only useful thing on a CV is your name and address.

It’s all about what you are like and how you behave.”

time so we have one ‘Perfect Day’ a year, when everything is just that – perfect. Some of the staff dress up. We’re also planning an ‘Amaze Me’ week where we will have one random act of kindness a day.

Buy poor performers: “There’s no point in buying a company that’s doing well. You need to improve it.”

Never make decisions at a meeting: “The best decisions are made in private and confirmed at a meeting.”

Be wary of outsiders: “Plenty of people think they know how to improve your business. Most of the people who work here started out as apprentices.”

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“

“My mentor was my wife but sadly no more. Mentors don’t tell you what to do but their support helps you make the right choices.”

Sit down with an A4 pad: “In the bath or on the beach – great ideas appear as a flash of the obvious.”

Have a mentor: “My mentor was my wife but sadly no more. Mentors don’t tell you what to do but their support helps you make the right choices.”

No head office: “Don’t let people who seldom go near a shop tell front-line troops what to do. We banned answering machines.

The nearest person picks up the phone and does what they can to help.”

“We’ve only got two rules in the shops.

Look the part and put the money in the till.

We don’t have a marketing or public relations department but most people have heard of Timpson. We don’t even have human resources – we call it colleague support. We like to break the rules.”

We turn to Brexit. “I thought it was a good thing not to be run by Europe but we are finding that it’s not going to be easy to get out.

We could finish up in a worse position than when we started. I don’t think anyone is going to be better off.

“I sort of despair now. It’s like going in to bat in a game where you don’t know the rules, how to play or how to know if you are winning or

not. And then I think does it matter to me? I don’t think it’s going to have much influence on our business.

“I think we should have an upside-down government. Let people get on with it. Help them to do things better, not tell them what to do. But then I always was a rebel.”

And with that I say goodbye and head out to the car park to find that I’ve been the recipient of a random act of kindness.

The cheery man at reception who took my car keys has turned it around so I can drive straight out instead of reversing. Now that’s what I call service. n

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“

“I think we should have an upside-down government. Let people get on with it.”

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HITTING THE

HIGH NOTES Hayley Parsons may have skived off school but she worked hard to transform the insurance industry, as Maria McGeoghan reports.

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ow I know what real success looks like It’s having not one but two personal Welsh dragons guarding your home.

And what a home it is. Perched atop a hill in rural South Wales is a glitzy and glamorous mansion owned by Haley Parsons, the woman who set up the Go Compare price comparison website.

She sold out two years ago for £50m, and she’s probably the cheeriest and most down-toearth millionaire I’ve ever met.

After our BQ photo shoot, she takes off her bright red high heels, makes me a brew and settles down in to her sofa to tell me how she transformed from a school-dodging teenager into one of our most successful businesswomen.

It’s a tale of bravery, loyalty, life-changing decisions made over champagne and an unerring instinct about when to move on.

She’s now on a mission to help other Welsh entrepreneurs realise their potential. But back to the beginning.

“I didn’t get on with school - it wasn’t for me,” says Parsons with a giggle. “I’d skive off at any opportunity. I craved for the day that I could leave school and have my independence.

“I think I held the record for six weeks of continual skiving. My mum worked in the afternoons and my skiving buddy’s mum worked in the mornings. We would watch them drive away. When the school called I’d answer the phone and pretend to be my mum. I pretty much pulled it off. My brother skived off just once and got caught by my mum. I was better at it than him.

“I’ve always been quite stubborn and determined. I wanted to make my own rules.

Yes, my mum was called to the school. It didn’t do me any harm.”

And looking around her bright, shiny and vast home - which features a bar that wouldn’t be out of place in a top end hotel, and a six foot model of Betty Boop - it’s hard to disagree.

Parsons, 43, who is married with two children, sat her GCSEs but never bothered to go back to school to pick up her results. “I wasn’t bothered.

I’ve never really needed them on my CV. I got my first job straight from school and after that I was usually head hunted for other jobs.”

So is that good luck or charm or both? “Oh, it’s all of that,” laughs Parsons.

“I’ve always been an extremely hard worker.

I‘ve always loved the work environment.”

Her first job was with an insurance broker making the tea and coffee, doing the filing and writing out cover notes. Remember them?

“It was just half a mile from my home in Cwmbran. I could roll out of bed and get in to work. I wanted to push myself forward to dealing with customers. I loved working with people.”

She stayed there for two years until she had a call from an insurance chain to run a branch in Caerphilly at just 18.

Even as a teenager her reputation went before her. “My reputation has served me well throughout the industry. I think I’m someone who makes things happen and gets things done.”

And nice with it? “Not always,” says Parsons with a grin. “I remember someone saying that I would do whatever I could to get my own way, which is a bit harsh. I have mellowed over the years.”

From there she went to work for Admiral insurance in Cardiff working on the sales team where she pestered the managers to set up an insurance broker for them. So she set up Gladiator insurance, which is still going strong.

A big change in the industry was on its way

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“The group that was launching Confused, we were in our 20s. We were single. We were out on the town. We were having lots of fun.”

and Admiral was at the forefront with the idea of Confused.com. “The next evolution was to quote the whole market in one place. This was a really fundamental change in the insurance distribution market. It completely turned everything on its head,” says Parsons.

“There was nothing in the market place already. Technology was a lot easier and we’d moved from face to face, to telephone, to the internet.”

She started work on Confused in 1999 and it was launched in 2002.

“It took us a long time to get it off the ground. My job was to convince the insurance companies and brokers that this was the next big thing. That was the hardest job I’ve had in my life convincing them.

“There was a shift in power, and it was all for benefit of the customer. It gave them more and more control.

“It completely rocked the industry. Bit by bit I ground the insurance companies down. I said ‘Just trust me. Give it a shot. I promise you that we will make this work’.”

Parsons worked hard, had a lot of fun, and met her future husband while working on the

launch of this insurance game-changer.

“The group that was launching Confused, we were in our 20s. We were single. We were out on the town. We were having lots of fun. We would go to work. Go straight out in to town.

Stay out most of the night. Get a couple of hour’s sleep and then rock up in to work again at 7am the next morning. I met my husband during those Confused days.

“I told him I would go out with him but not for months. I didn’t have the time before the launch. He waited two and a half months. Two kids later we are good and fine.

“By the time we got to Go Compare we were settled own, we were married, we had kids. No staying up all night unless it was for baby sick and poo.”

The spark for leaving Confused to set up Go Compare is both breath-taking in its audacity and the perfect story for anyone who has failed to get an internal promotion and dreams of some sort of spectacular revenge.

“I was really peeved,” says Parsons, still looking annoyed all these years later. “Really, really peeved. It should have been me. I worked with the new person to make sure everything

was ok and then thought ‘What is the next thing for me?’ I knew the price comparison market better than anyone else in the industry.”

A meeting in 2006, and two bottles of Champagne, changed her life.

“I was out one night with a business contact at Celtic Manor, and we drank a couple of bottles of Champagne. I was feeling really miffed with the industry, with not getting this job.

“We got drunk and chatted about the future. I told him I wanted to launch my own comparison website because I could do it better than anyone else could do it. We drank more champagne, we laughed. And we shook hands and said we would set up our own site.

I’ll say something and then I’ll think ‘Shit, I’ve said it. I’d better do it now’.”

Even though she was told that there was an investor who would back her, she wouldn’t see him until she had completed a big project at Confused six weeks later.

She talked to her Confused colleague and best friend Lee Griffin who agreed to come with her even though they had no business plan, name or office. She added IT expert Dan

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Cassell to the team and met her investor.

“Within 20 minutes of meeting him he had agreed to back me for £1.5m. He’s called Tom Duggan. I knew he was the one for me. At the end I told him we were resigning the next day.

My loyalty wouldn’t allow me to do something in the background while carrying on working. We were all ready to move on. People overthink and scare themselves off doing things.”

Her news was met with shock, disappointment, and a bit of panic. “They asked me to leave straight away and come back the following day. It was a really tough time, I had a cold sweat come over me and I thought I’m responsible for Lee and Dan for the rest of my life. They are proper, good, true friends. They still are.”

Go Compare was started with nothing but an idea, a lot of drive and a willingness to succeed.

“We had nothing. No office. No laptops. We started planning while sitting around my dining room table in my little house in Newport.” Her son was just three at the same and great support from her husband and her mum allowed her the time to make everything work.

Remembers Parsons: “We didn’t have a clear plan. We were making it up as we went along.

“

The name took us a long time. It was really bloody hard.”

When they hit on Go Compare the domain price was US$10,000 but they negotiated it down to US$3,000.

It’s now priceless.

The do it yourself theme continued when they bought books on how to develop in .NET, SEO and PPC for dummies. “We learned how to do it all ourselves,” says Parsons. “We all worked remotely but we used to meet at the local pub to plan everything out, mainly because the boys liked the clotted cream ice cream they had there.”

The next step was to buy office space in Newport and start to fill it with people and equipment. “I remember standing in this big space and thinking how are we going to fill it.

We bought desks from Ikea and every new member of staff had to build their desk.”

Steadily and surely, in between space hopper races and games of poker, they got the business ready to launch.

Parsons’ second bout of cold sweat happened when she took out a £30m loan to build up the business. “I remember the

cold sweat. This was an exciting moment. We decided to go aggressively for market share and we got stronger and stronger. Our timing was right. Our proposition was right. It was a beautiful thing to see an amazing thing to be part of.”

They then heard on the insurance grapevine that Tesco was about to launch its own comparison site and they took their business up a few gears.

“I thought this could be the end of us. There were flashing lights. Danger, danger, danger. We had to become the dominant player in the next six months before they launched.

“We spent four years of budget in a year.

We predicted a £10m loss but it came in at £8.5m. I was delighted with that. We threw the kitchen sink at it. Their plan was to take us out so we went as big and crazy as we could. We’d had that time to really build our brand and dominate the market. Having that threat really made us change our plans.”

The now iconic – yet annoying – opera singer ads were unleashed, and the rest is history.

When Hayley sold out two years ago the

“We had nothing. No office. No laptops. We started planning while sitting around my dining room table in my little house in Newport.”

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turnover was £100m with £36m profit.

It was the right decision for her but tough to do. “Go Compare was a well-oiled machine.

It was time. It was always about build it, grow it, and sell it, but it was heart-breaking to walk away.

“I try and deal with my emotions separately to the business. I never look back and regret anything. Everything happens for a reason. I cried the whole day that last day and stayed to turn the lights off.”

She spent the first year concentrating on her health and wellbeing and lost more than eight stones. She still has a strict 2,200 calories a day, works out every day and completed a charity

bike ride around the Canadian Rockies.

She helps, mentors and invests in some businesses and is part of Be The Spark, a Welsh Government project to boost the entrepreneurial agenda.

Parsons is also part of Inspire Wales, where she and 19 men invest and help in businesses.

She has a reputation for helping and supporting people, spotting skills they haven’t seen in themselves.

“They are a fantastic group of people. We invest in high-risk exciting things. I have no intention of running anything myself but I see my role as bringing through the new, young entrepreneurs. I won’t do the work for them,

“

but I will help them on their journey.

And her advice for those upcoming entrepreneurs? “Don’t think about it for too long. You can convince yourself not to do it.

Shit is always going to happen. You just have to deal with it and move on. Strap your balls on and go for it.

“I walk around this house and I appreciate and enjoy everything that I have.”

I ask if she would like to be part of the Dragons’ Den panel – which she would be perfect for.

Her answer is typical Parsons.

“Oh no. I like to go to the Harvester with my family and no-one know who I am.” n

“I have no intention of running anything myself but I see my role as bringing through the new, young entrepreneurs.”

Profile

Rose Aldean, Director of MELLO - one of two Innovation Showcase Competition winners - receives the award from host Vikas Shah and Business Growth Hub Director Richard Jeffery.

Venturefest 2017 mixes Manchester spirit and international flavour Venturefest symbolises what the Business Growth Hub and The Growth Company are all about: bringing businesses together, sharing expertise, and stimulating economic growth through innovation and collaboration.

For more information visit www.businessgrowthhub.com

Venturefest Manchester 2017 attracted 648 people from across the UK, providing further evidence of the North West’s place as an emerging force in the global economy.

The event, now in its fourth year, was held at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on September 14th and was organised by Business Growth Hub, part of The Growth Company.

The region’s influence on the world was also reaffirmed by Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham’s welcome to delegates, in which he underlined Manchester’s position as a city that has long been recognised as innovative, while calling for stronger links between businesses and universities.

Event host Professor Vikas Shah, CEO of Swiscot Group, set the tone by encouraging collaboration, saying that in his experience three of the most important factors in success are building strong networks, learning from others’ experiences and harnessing the latest innovations.

Other speakers included Lasse Sørensen, Senior Business Advisor at Vaeksthus Copenhagen; Keith Morgan, Chief Executive of the British Business Bank; and Pippa Hall, Director of Innovation and Chief Economist at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

At the centre of the event was the annual Innovation Showcase Competition, spotlighting the most innovative business ideas from across the region. Ten finalists pitched to the audience, with Beatstream Media winning the Early Stage Innovation Companies category and MELLO scooping the Established

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“The whole event has epitomised the creativity, innovation and ambition that define our region”

Small and Medium-Sized Growth Companies prize.

Each receives more than £20,000 worth of business support.

Richard Jeffery, Director of Business Growth Hub, said: “Venturefest Manchester is going from strength to strength. From the competition pitches to the advice clinics, break-out sessions and expert panels, the whole event has epitomised the creativity, innovation and ambition that define our region.

“Venturefest symbolises what the Business Growth Hub and The Growth Company are all about: bringing businesses together, sharing expertise, and stimulating economic growth through innovation and collaboration.”

Venturefest Manchester 2017 was sponsored by Appleyard Lees, Avensure, Catax, Lombard, NatWest and Pomegranate Consulting.

Venturefest Manchester is part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the GM Business Growth Hub’s innovation service. n We’re passionate about supporting your business.

Visit www.businessgrowthhub.com or call 0161 359 3050.

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Atom: a bank that dares to be different New digital bank Atom is challenging the old order of finance. And to bring about revolution it is creating a whole new culture, as Peter Jackson discovers.

WHEN I arrive at the new headquarters of Atom Bank I fear my satnav has let me down.

The building, not far from the heart of Durham City, is unlike any bank’s headquarters I’ve seen. There’s no great Palladian portico, fronted by a colonnade of imposing pillars, no highly polished brass plaque or daunting stone steps, nothing to intimidate or deter.

Rather the Rivergreen Centre’s appearance is welcoming and in harmony with the gentle greenery that surrounds it. This award-winning building was designed to be sustainable, including features such as a central ‘earth rammed’ wall, recycled rainwater, natural and stack ventilation and an extensive growing roof. Atom bank moved here in the earlier part

of the year, having already outgrown its first premises, barely half a mile away.

Established in 2014 as a new challenger bank operating an app-based model, Atom has already grown to the point where it has 300 staff and a balance sheet of more than £500m, hence the new home.

The Rivergreen Centre reflects its new occupier in its boldness and its originality, its readiness to upset the norms. Inside, the reception area is flanked by a bustling café area full of the Atom personnel, dressed informally and chatting animatedly.

If this is banking – it’s banking with a completely different culture. And I’m here to talk to three people about that culture.

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“There’s no reason why banking has to be boring and dull. This is about engaging people on a new level with their financial needs.”

Stewart Bromley brandishes a coat hanger at me...

Atom Bank’s chief operating officer has pulled it out of a carrier bag as a prop to illustrate an important point. It’s the kind of hotel coat hanger which slots onto a ring that slides across a wardrobe pole - useless if stolen.

He tells the story of how, some years ago, he stayed in a plush, highly expensive West End hotel which provided a suitably high level of service in immaculate surroundings.

“Everything was perfect, then I opened the wardrobe and this happened,’’ he recalls. “What is this?’’ He waves the hanger. “This is a stress induction device because it’s almost impossible to get these things off the hook when you’ve got your clothes in your hand. What’s the main design criteria behind this, who did they think I was? A thief! They thought I was a thief! So I stole the hanger.’’

Not what you would normally expect from a bank’s chief operating officer. But then he is most definitely not a red braces sort of banker – more a pair of baggy shorts sort of banker, which is how he is clad on this July day.

It’s significant that he was one of the early key players who developed Atom’s culture.

The point of the coat hanger story is to underline the importance of a culture running right through an organisation.

“If you’re trying to deliver a customer experience, you have to do it all, you have to think about the whole end-to-end experience you are creating and you can’t leave little things to chance.’’

From the same carrier bag he later produces a pair of voluminous Y Fronts and skimpy knickers. We’ll draw a veil over that.

I ask: how do you go about developing a culture? First of all, he explains, the intent was

never to be like a conventional bank, which meant adopting a values system to underpin that strategic intent, and that value system had to be more than a mere wish list.

“Most companies define a values system but most of the time it tends to be motherhood and apple pie that’s very high level and has no sense of what it means to the individuals and customer,’’ he says.

He concedes that being a startup company was a big advantage to Atom in being able to define its own values and culture and being able to recruit people from the beginning who would embrace those values, which are: respectful; pioneering; courageous; energetic; joyful; and sharing. These values were identified by looking at Atom’s target customers.

He explains: “We then looked at the psychology of the everyday progressives and their psychological cravings and, based on that, we defined a values system that we hope would appeal to them. That makes it very powerful because if you then start to hire on that value set, you start to create a symbiotic relationship between your brand, your customer base and your employee, which is a very strong system.’’

Respectful, as a value, refers to individuality and respecting people’s individuality, motivations and preferences. “Respectful for us is all about the celebration of individuality.

It’s not about us, it’s about you as an individual customer and how we treat you and respect you for who you are.’’

So employees dress as they wish and customers can tailor the app to suit their own taste.

Pioneering is an Atom value which is self-explanatory. It has been one of the first banks to introduce face biometrics, the first to use a 3D animated engine to create the app experience and it currently has six patents pending.

Sharing is about collaboration and

relationships and finding and making use of talent wherever it exists.

“Sharing is a verb that everybody understands and if you are prepared to share, you’re prepared to learn from others, you are prepared to help and support others, then it drives a set of behaviours that everyone understands,’’ says Bromley.

Courage for Atom, he emphasises, is nothing to do with testosterone but rather “about being prepared to stand up for what’s right”, which, given the distrust with which the traditional banks are regarded post-crash, will strike a chord. Atom, for example, does not pay cash bonuses.

“Energetic,’’ he says, moving onto the next value, “is all about pace. Darwin said survival is all about those who can adapt to change and that’s very apt in a digital world because the technology is constantly changing, customer demand and behaviour are constantly changing and unless you can move at pace across all those dimensions you are going to be left behind.’’ He points out that to become an Atom customer and set up an account in the app takes less than 10 minutes.

Finally, joyful is a value which aims to capture the excitement of the bank and its desire to put a smile on the faces of the Atom team and customers. “There’s no reason why banking has to be boring and dull. It’s about engaging people on a new level with their financial needs,’’ he says.

These values, he insists, cannot be taken in isolation but must work together to create the Atom culture. Which is where the coat hanger came in. He accepts that some people want “a traditional risk free type of bank’’ – like the Y Fronts – which is fine, but for “the digital, unique experience, built for speed and which is more exciting’’, as illustrated by the skimpy knickers, then Atom is the bank for you. Again, it’s about respecting differences.

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and using the theory of multiple intelligences to develop its own framework.

First is IQ. Lister explains: “This is your technical intelligence, what you need to be good at your job, your professional, technical expertise. Emotional Intelligence is EQ. Organisations don’t pay a lot of attention to this but it’s absolutely core to what we do. It’s around being self aware, understanding other people, the environment we work in and the relationships we have are key.

“OQ is ‘organisation intelligence’. This is the glue that holds us together, the skills and knowledge which are important to all of our success.

“MQ is your ‘me intelligence’. This is very particular to Atom in that we want people to be themselves at work, continue to be the unique individuals they are and celebrate that.

We don’t necessarily know what somebody’s ‘me intelligence’ is when they come to the

“ Anne Marie-Lister is Atom bank’s head of people experience...

This role, she tells me, covers “all the people stuff’’, including recruitment and resourcing, learning and development, human resources and organisational development. “It includes our PA team and front of house team, who are part of our people experience because they help to create the Atom vibe,’’ she says. She previously worked for a power utility, as head of change and employee engagement.

“It was a completely different organisation to this, in that it’s steeped in decades of history with very traditional working practices.’’

Before that, she was in London working for the ACCA, the Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants – again a body not noted for its funky, off-the-wall way of operating.

But, working on ACCA programmes overseas brought home to her the difference in people and cultures. There are many different ways of doing things. The HQ corporate stance applied to everything and everyone doesn’t always get

the best results.

She explains: “I’ve experienced many different cultures and working practices in organisations, which has led me to the conclusion that many businesses tend not focus on individuality. They prescribe what their ‘staff’ need to do to be successful. There’s no individuality in that, no freedom and no creativity. I see this as a missed opportunity in what individuals can then bring to a business.”

So, when she got the chance to join Atom at an early stage, in October 2014, to help shape a new culture and a new way of doing things she jumped at the chance.

“It’s our people who are helping us shape this business and by identifying and celebrating the uniqueness and individuality in those who come to work for us we can create something great for customers. Something that no organisation can prescribe.’’

An important tool in putting that vision into practice is the Atom Intelligence Framework, Atom’s version of a competency framework, to define the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for people within an organisation.

Characteristically, Atom went about this in its own way, examining the concept of intelligence

“We always want to encourage people to take that time out.”

organisation. It may be something that’s business related, it may be something that isn’t in an area that we’ve recruited them in, it might be that they’ve got some fantastic and unusual skill or experience that makes them who they are and we encourage people to build that into how they work here at Atom. All of that together makes your Atom intelligence, your AQ, and everybody’s AQ is completely unique. The Intelligence Framework underpins everything that we do.” As to how this works out in practice, it starts with recruitment.

“We employ people that want to challenge the norm’.’’ she says. “We do lots of things differently and we like to take a different approach and challenge the approaches that are out there but we don’t change things for change’s sake.’’

It all looks, sounds and feels different. It’s certainly not like a bank, or any other business, but more like a buzzing college campus. It has, for example, a selfie wall to which anyone joining the organisation submits a contribution.

“People paste them proudly on our wall a very short time after they’ve joined,’’ says Lister. “It’s a celebration, everyone downs tools, people leave meetings we gather round and celebrate

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the arrival of our new family members with music.’’

There is a table tennis table in the social room, a bottomless fruit bowl and an old fashioned tuck shop which operates with an honesty box and the money raised is doubled and given to charity every month.

During the bank’s health and wellness day in January, along with yoga and meditation, it brought in a petting zoo with goats and sheep in the carpark and hens, rabbits and a tortoise into the social area.

“We always want to encourage people to take that time out and give themselves a bit of space,’’ she says. “Work hard, play hard.’’

So Atom has developed its own distinctive culture which informs the way it treats its employees and customers but how does it work when it meets a more conservative sector?

Maria Harris, director of residential mortgages, describes the intermediary mortgage market...

“I’ve been in intermediary mortgages for about 10 years now and it’s an amazing industry, it’s really dynamic but probably in those 10 years nothing new or innovative has happened in the industry. It’s predominantly price driven and it’s pretty traditional.

“The majority of mortgage intermediaries are still predominantly white, male, of a certain age, suit and tie and very formal and probably quite intimidating for customers, especially new generations of customers, and there’s not a huge amount of tech in the industry.’’

Not then an arena which you would think was a natural fit for Atom bank. And yet Atom’s mortgage business is booming. It only launched its first product campaign in April but, by the time of writing, it had done £500m worth of lending to more than 2,000 customers from all over the UK. Success has partly been down to Atom’s completely digital process for the intermediary and the customer. “The intermediary can key in an application and get an offer for their customer in less than an hour. The industry average is about 16 days,’’ says Harris. “It’s a much slicker, quicker, more straightforward process.’’

The products are relatively simple with, for example, no buy-to-let and the automation keeps the overheads down and so the price

is attractive. The Atom approach to business also seems to have had a positive impact in this conservative marketplace. The bank’s business development managers (BDMs) take the Atom culture to the intermediaries and it’s proving popular.

“We’ve recruited our team for personality and values as much as for their industry knowledge,’’ says Harris. “They don’t wear suits, they go out dressed as themselves. One of my regional BDMs is based on the South Coast and will wear shorts and flip-flops on a regular basis because that is him and how he’s comfortable.

He can be himself at work and take that personality out. The intermediaries absolutely love that.’’

If they are not typical business development managers, neither is Harris your common or garden mortgage industry executive. “Look at me, I’m a bit of a maverick in my industry,’’ she says. “There aren’t many people at my level who are female and who look like me – a bit rock chick, with hair extensions and tattoos and I’m a half Spanish Geordie girl, so I am a bit of an anomaly.’’

She has certainly made an impression in the sector, having won the title of Banker of

the Year in HM Treasury’s inaugural ‘Women in Finance’ awards over the summer, nominated by her peers in the industry.

She says: “The reason for winning the award was put down to a genuinely disruptive approach to mortgage lending, along with mentoring team members and hiring for diversity. Because of all of this we have delivered something completely unique, from scratch and luckily people took the time to write in and nominate. It was a great accolade to win. I was shortlisted against some really formidable competition and I was genuinely shocked when I won.’’

These are three different characters who, in their very diversity, represent the culture that Atom bank is creating.

In the words of Stewart Bromley: “We are trying to create something different and the more different it is, the more chance we have of succeeding.’’ n

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Mike Hughes puts down his Jack Daniel’s and reaches for the newest drink on the shelf – Yorkshire’s first single malt whisky – to toast Spirit of Yorkshire with its managing director, David Thompson.

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troll through the fields of barley at Tom Mellor’s farm near Hunmanby and you can feel and smell Yorkshire. There is a spring on the farm as well, so I suppose if you were some sort of home-grown entrepreneur with a passion for brewing and maybe even a crazy idea to make Yorkshire’s first single malt whisky then you might have a game-changing combination.

So, say hello to David Thompson, who has teamed up with his good friend, Mellor, founder of the Wold Top Brewery, to launch Spirit of Yorkshire and do just that. It’s early days – only one year on from the first still firing – but the signs are good; Mellor and Thompson may just have made not only the region’s first single malt, but a damn fine drink.

But even though the visitor centre is open and Yorkshire folk with good taste are seeing

the product and eagerly snapping up preordered casks at £2,850 a go, no-one knows how the finished product will taste because it needs at least three years in the cask before it can even be classed as whisky.

“We’re at the stage now where we know the distillate is spot-on and we’re very happy with the maturing malt and the way the new spirit is coming off the stills,” Thompson explains. “We have had reports from the top whisky writers that are very promising.

“That is very encouraging because we were always very keen not to just replicate a Scottish distillery, we wanted to put a bit of a twist in there, so we have the traditional pot stills from Scotland, but have put a column still next to it to rectify the spirit to a level that is very fruity and very quick to mature.

“It is a massive point of difference for us

and, as far as I am aware, there is nobody else with both a pot still and a column still linked together in tandem. When we do the tours and people get to taste the very young maturing malt they just want to buy it there and then.”

In a way, the move to whisky may seem bold, but it has a certain logic to it. Mellor had plenty of experience of the brewing process, and when they were looking for a project together they were able to quickly rule out gin because it is one of the region’s booming smaller industries, meaning Yorkshire has lakes of the stuff. So, why not try whisky with the innovative double still process giving it the uniqueness they were looking for?

“We also always wanted a traceability and provenance to what we made from the field to the bottle,” says Thompson. “The whisky market generally has become more

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sophisticated and younger people are drinking it, with whisky bars starting to open up, and it is one of those things that people are becoming more knowledgeable about – it’s not just the bottle of Bell’s that you picked from your dad’s cupboard and got a headache from.

“Both Tom and I are of the age when maybe this is our last chance to set something up that is different. Unfortunately, with whisky we have this lead time issue, so perhaps we are doing something for the next generation, but it is very exciting.

“A lot of surprised people will look at businesses like this and ask, ‘What are you doing?’, and we love that, we feed off that sort of challenge. If we just fancied ‘doing something’ we would have looked at gin because that has low capital investment, you buy your spirits in and that is why there are bootleg gin manufacturers out there.

“We have banned the word ‘craft’ here because that builds a picture of a hobby and a garage-type operation, but the stills we’ve got are the biggest outside Scotland and future-proof us against the demand, although our consultant, Jim Swan, told us we would be needing more at some stage.”

Swan is a deeply sad note in all this celebration. A revered legend to whisky makers and drinkers, he conducted ground-breaking

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“Both Tom and I are of the age when maybe this is our last chance to set something up that is different.”

research and was an adviser to countless distilleries, particularly helping start-ups, so his death in February aged 75 was a huge blow and many glasses of fine whisky will have been raised around the country in tribute.

“We had Jim on board right from the concept, before we had even decided to do it we employed him to do some research and, to be honest, he was so infectious that once we had him with us there was no way back,” says Thompson.

“His knowledge of the business was unbelievable and you put Jim Swan’s name to any new distillery and the credibility goes through the roof. He came up with the concept of the flavour wheel for whisky [a visual representation of how much of each flavour and taste is in each whisky], and we needed that knowledge and experience because we were starting from scratch with no idea of how to make it.”

The friendship and experience that Swan brought to Spirit of Yorkshire is irreplaceable, and now his presence is lost. But what Thompson and Mellor learned and the progress

they have made since has been distilled into something he would be so proud of.

So, here’s a big question – what does it taste like? “When Jim first started dealing with us he asked us what we wanted to create and we said something drinkable for the majority of people, so nothing too heavy or peaty, something light and fruity and from that we built our pot and column stills around that concept, which would become our signature spirit,” explains Thompson.

“We are casking off the pot separately to the column and will bring them back together at the end to bottle it in a single malt marriage of the two distillates – body with the pot and lightness with the column – which will be uniquely Yorkshire. We are also going to brand our maturing malt as ‘Callow Spirit’, which will be on the shelves for Christmas. It will be a very small bottling and we can’t call it whisky because it isn’t three years old.”

After that, the bottling of the whisky will take place in its own time, although the casks that are flying off the shelves come with a ten-year storage plan that can be extended to

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“Unless you physically get your hands dirty you really don’t know what business is about.”

accommodate personal tastes, taking care to factor in the 2% “angel’s share”, which is lost each year as part of the process.

Spirit of Yorkshire will be available to buy online direct from Hunmanby as well as through top-end stockists capable of providing a market for the £50-£55 bottles.

As well as the perfectly-timed art of the perfect whisky, the recipe also asks for just the right amount of friendship. Too much and the business acumen loses its edge, too little and the working relationship is sour. Mellor and Thompson have put a lot of their own money into it, and have then had remarkable support from Yorkshire Bank, which became a key element of all the planning.

The business model then needed the boost of the visitor centre, where events are also scheduled to draw in even more of the east coast tourists, to maximise the return on investment. There is a global market out there, with a sliding scale of “Yorkshireness” to be utilised depending on the market they are working in.

These guys trust each other and wanted to work on this life-changing project together, and have even brought in their families to work with them: Mellor’s daughter, Katie, runs

the farm, bottling and brewery side of the main business with her husband; Jenny Mellor is down in London doing the marketing; Max Thompson has done all the electrical work on the visitor centre and buildings; and his brother Harry, although based in France, has reported that the country is now the biggest drinker of whisky, so he has his eyes firmly on that market for his dad.

“Tom and I are very close friends and one point that is often made is ‘Don’t work with friends or family’, so we wanted to prove people wrong and show we can work together and be successful,” says Thompson. “Also, we wanted to do all the distilling ourselves, at least for the first year-and-a-half because, unless you put your heart and soul into something, you can’t then then go out and sell it as being yours, so we have learnt the whole process from the bottom up and can pass on what we have learned from Jim. “Business-wise, I think you can sit in an ivory tower and look down on it all, but unless you physically get your hands dirty you really don’t know what business is about. One of the beauties of running your own business is that we don’t have to turn around a tanker each time we want to add something and our board meetings consist of me and Tom looking at each other over the stills with a bacon sandwich and a coffee saying, ‘That sounds good – yes, let’s do it’.”

That might as well be the company motto at Spirit of Yorkshire and one for the walls of so many Yorkshire companies: “Is there a market?

Do we believe in it? Then let’s do it.” n

Profile

Clive Owen LLP – talking your language Accountancy has often been described as the language of business and when you are leading a company in today’s complex economic climate, it’s wise to be financially fluent.

www.cliveowen.com Tel : 01325 349700

Finance remains an ever-present concern for those who are leading commercial organisations. Steering business activity successfully towards growth, profit and positive social impact, whilst navigating the unknown impact of Brexit and austerity measures along the way, can be helped with expert advice.

Clive Owen LLP celebrates 35 years in business next year, due in part to the fact that its team embraces change in a world where the role of accountants is changing rapidly.

The firm’s longstanding partners understand the challenges of running a successful organisation, having developed Clive Owen LLP into one of the leading independent accountancy and business advice practices in the region.

The team comprises ten partners and over 100 staff across three offices in Darlington, York and Durham, each providing a range of services from general accountancy and specialist tax advice to forwardthinking business advice.

Meeting the needs of clients in a highly competitive environment demands more of today’s accountants.

Darlington partner Chris Beaumont outlines his view of the complex demands faced by business: “Strategic vision is vital to the continued success of any business. No-one can stand still and expect to thrive in the fast-paced competitive marketplaces in which we all operate today.

“Having a great vision aligned with your business objectives is a good starting point, but developing strong processes and creating team engagement to deliver can be more difficult.’’

Clive Owen LLP has had to adapt to the changing needs of clients and the introduction of cloud accounting systems, while supporting businesses through the impact of government plans to digitise tax.

Chris explains: “The role of accountancy is evolving with the advent of new technologies, such as cloud accounting, that give clients real time access to current position financial performance figures online, anytime, anywhere. This means big change for clients and some will adapt better than others, making our advisory role even more valuable.

“We already provide this service but the

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“Basically, it’s a brave new technology driven world and our philosophy is always to be ahead of the curve.”

government proposals regarding ‘Making Tax Digital’, which will require all businesses to submit quarterly tax returns online in due course, will drive change and prove difficult for some businesses. Our teams have the expertise to advise which cloud system is best for each individual business, and to take care of the set-up and training.’’

The firm attributes its success to being prepared to take difficult decisions and putting clients at the heart of everything it does. Services offered are reviewed regularly to make sure they meet the test of solving clients’ evolving financial needs.

The firm has very successful grants and corporate finance teams in place, with the grants department having already successfully supported access to an impressive £180m worth of grants in the past five years.

Clive Owen Technology Services is based in the Darlington office providing IT solutions for business.

The team delivers everything from hardware to network management and software to cyber security protection, which is high on the business agenda right now.

Chris says the additional services make sense for clients, “Loyalty and proactive client service are critical aspects of what we do; it’s our job to strategically review what’s coming next and make the investment to support our clients. This is one of the reasons we have an IT business.

“We also offer a raft of cloud accounting solutions and payroll services in our managed services department. Basically, it’s a brave new technology driven world and our philosophy is always to be ahead of the curve.” n

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“I wanted something cute, loveable and which would appeal to my daughter but I couldn’t find anything.”

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An elf IS NOT JUST

for Christmas Sarah Greenwell has been inspired by her children to start two new businesses. Paul Robertson enters her world of pure imagination.

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ho would believe the North Pole was actually operated from the centre of Durham? Spend some time with Sarah Greenwell and you will believe anything.

Greenwell is a mum on a mission, inspired to create businesses to delight her own two children, Holly, four, and two-year-old Fin, as well as thousands of other little people. It has proved so successful her other “baby” – a digital marketing communications agency she established 10 years ago – was sold earlier this year so she could put all her efforts into the magical world she has created.

Her company, called Big Little Toys, designs, manufactures, distributes and retails children’s toys, gifts and books. It all began with an Elf for Christmas. “I was sitting at night feeding Fin looking around for something for Holly, who was two at the time – I wanted something cute, loveable and which would appeal to her but I couldn’t find anything,” Greenwell remembers.

“Holly loves anything magical and is great with her imagination. I would write her little notes saying they were coming from fairies. I then came up with the idea of a character for Christmas and realised what started out as something for her could be a product for all children.”

And so the elf was born. Greenwell developed the idea alongside running her agency, Glow Creative, spending every spare minute bringing her creation to life.

Elf for Christmas was accompanied by a magical reward kit with certificates, report cards and stickers to encourage good behaviour. Greenwell built a website and

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e-commerce store, which included an elf name generator so the child could choose what to call him, and launched in time for Christmas 2015.

“I designed the elf and the magical kit, ordering 3,000 units,” she recalls. “When they arrived, the volume was far greater than I imagined. I thought it was enough to last me two Christmases and joked I might end up selling them off at car boot sales.”

She needn’t have worried. In under 10 weeks, the whole lot had been sold. “It was a massive relief and absolute chaos,” she says.

“My husband Ian, mam, dad, mother-in-law, everyone was working flat out to fulfill the orders as everything was hand-wrapped.

“I was really surprised that it took off – but the character proved to be loving and endearing. It is all the magical stuff that works, so from a parent’s point of view it is really easy.

Once they have bought the kit, they don’t have to put the effort in, they just need to get out

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the little cards and letters. It engages the whole family.

“We get a lot of feedback from customers about how even the grandparents engage with what the elf’s brought. It is amazing how it works rewarding behaviour and keeps the kids believing in Santa – the magic is alive for that little bit longer.”

Interest from major retailers was swift though Greenwell didn’t have the expertise or resource to go down that route, but a trip to London Toy Fair in January 2016 was to help elf really make its mark.

She secured a distributor and further developed the concept, adding a girl elf to the range and wrote a book, “Elf’s First Adventure”.

Manufacturing was upped to 30,000 units, securing shelf space at Selfridges, John Lewis, Waterstones, a range of independent toy and gift shops as well continuing to drive sales through the website.

“It just went crazy,” says Greenwell. “Nearly

all the units were sold in time for Christmas 2016 – demand was enormous.”

It is all a far cry from the 35 year old’s early career. Having graduated from the University of Central Lancashire, she followed partner – now husband – Ian to Australia after he secured a job with a water company.

“I arrived in Sydney without a work permit and did some backpacker jobs, including driving the children’s train in the botanical gardens,” she says. “I then got my first job in marketing with a paper company and was promoted to marketing manager.”

Family circumstances meant a return to Durham in 2007 and Greenwell had gained enough confidence at 25 to start her first business. Glow Creative effectively acted as a marketing department for those small and medium-sized businesses that didn’t have one.

The first client was the company she worked for in Australia and it took off from there.

“When I had the children, running the

“There is plenty of competition in the marketplace but we have a strong brand that can be handed down through generations and evolve.”

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business became more challenging, especially as the elf idea took off,” she says. “I felt I couldn’t run both while doing justice to either the business or being a mum. It was a difficult decision – I loved Glow Creative as it was very much my baby – but I decided to focus full time on the toy sector.”

She has been able to create new accessories for the elf in the run up to this Christmas. There is now a personalised book featuring the child’s name on the front cover, with personal details threaded through the “Christmas Muddle” story.

There are advent letters, a little matchbox with 24 letters in, opened in numerical order telling the story of what is happening on that day in the North Pole throughout December.

There is a sticker set plus a magical elf door to install in the house – which lights up and is how the elf gets to the North Pole.

But an elf is not just for Christmas. We are chatting at Newcastle’s Crowne Plaza hotel during the school summer holidays and it just so happens the elves are spending a fortnight in the hotel, pictured on Facebook enjoying a sleep, dinner and even the jacuzzi.

“My kids love the elves and the stories,”

says Greenwell. “It is amazing when Holly picks my book up even in the middle of summer. For me it is about making it a tradition with longevity. There is plenty of competition in the marketplace but we have a strong brand that can be handed down through generations and evolve.”

Plans are afoot to launch a non-seasonal character in the first half of next year, promoting the same values of kindness, sharing and good behaviour, such is the demand for the concept. “On Christmas Eve, the elves go back to the North Pole and the children were getting really upset about that,” Greenwell explains.

“I am always being asked what the elves are up to. Parents bring them back for birthdays and special occasions. We think the new character will give them another option to keep the elves for the magic of Christmas and give the business stronger all-year round turnover.”

Sales for 2017 are expected to increase significantly with work going on at trade fairs, through the website and agents for the elves to travel to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Future targets include Europe

Dressed to impress A meeting in an ante-natal class was to prove the birthplace for another business in which Sarah Greenwell is a joint director.

“When I had the children, there was a trend for twinning where parents and children wear the same outfits,” she says. “I thought that was cute but you wouldn’t really want to be dressed the same as your children in public. However, I thought it would be nice for pyjamas as a fun family bond.

“I mentioned it to Heather Watkins who I met at ante natal class and we formed Great & Small Clothing. I do all the creative, so designs for the pyjamas such as mama, papa and cub in a bear design, we have a fox range, squirrel range and, while it is very much a separate business, we have done a collaboration with Big Little Toys, creating a Christmas Eve pyjama set with the elves.

“Heather is very much the driving force but it is a business I just love being involved in.”

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“

“I really love it and can’t believe this is what I do. All the feedback has been brilliant and when I hear the effect the elves have on some children I am often in tears.”

– translating the books to suit the audiences – the United Arab Emirates and the United States. Licensing the character could see it move to a whole new level.

“I really love it and can’t believe this is what I do,” she says. “All the feedback has been brilliant and when I hear the effect the elves have on some children I am often in tears.”

Managing the rapid rate of growth is a challenge. Greenwell has thus far taken part in every step of the process to ensure quality and customer service. Having worked with the manufacturer in China for two years and her distributor for one, she is ready to pass on some of the responsibility.

“I am looking to outsource fulfillment as it is a massive drain on time – up to now it has been done on the kitchen table,” she says. “We work around the kids being in bed at night packing the boxes, labelling them and posting to the customer.

“I wanted to physically see each product before it was dispatched to the customer. Last year they were all fine so now I can let that go.

“There is lots of time-consuming work in content and social media – so I draw in help from freelancers. I have accepted, rather than trying to do everything myself, I need

specialists to make sure we are the best we can be across the world.”

One thing Greenwell hasn’t made her mind up on is creating an app. “I am not sure how I feel about that,” she explains. “Of course, kids love their iPad and phones but the elf is a screen-free activity and engages the whole family. I am not sure I want to encourage the brand to move away from that.”

The elf and its values are also increasingly used in schools and nurseries throughout the country. Again, the business has reacted to demand by creating worksheets and resources for the classroom.

Greenwell’s passion and energy is infectious, as is her humility. She credits the support of her sales engineer husband Ian, all her family and friends for getting Big Little Toys to where it is today and her old boss in Australia for helping her make the most of her creative talents.

“My former boss held my job open when I had to return to the UK but said if I was staying back home he encouraged me to run my own agency, which I did,” she says. “I am very grateful for his advice and we have remained close friends.

“I have met a lot of entrepreneurs and see

people who can do it. A lot of people said when I bought the 3,000 elves that I was crazy and brave but I didn’t feel brave, I just felt I could do it.

“Getting outside your comfort zone is the only way you can move forward – if I had kept Glow Creative, the elves wouldn’t be in international markets. I was constantly told the toy industry is tough, and shelf space is harder than ever to get but because I haven’t experienced anything else I don’t have anything to compare it with.

“I am always saying to Holly if there is only one thing in life to remember it is to be kind – that’s the most important. ‘If you’re kind to others they’ll be kind to you’ is the motto of the books. It is simple – it is not about preaching to be good it is more about traditional values – it is light-hearted so parents can dip into it as much as they want.”

On top of everything else Greenwell is designing a children’s craft activity that is almost ready to go to market, helping a friend develop a new board game and setting up a consultancy to work exclusively in the toy and gift sector. I can’t help feeling I have just met Mrs Claus and that the North Pole is actually in Durham where we all should live happily ever after. n

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Partner

Global but still local Investment specialist Rikky Shoker and regional head Karan Sejpal tell Mike Hughes how the global reach of UBS is giving its clients the confidence and security to look further afield to find the best home for their portfolios.

IN a world full of investment potential, a little guidance from the experts can open an investors eyes to all sorts of new investment targets as markets and industries rise and fall in a wave of possibilities that crosses the globe.

At UBS more than 900 analysts in more than fifty offices around the world have been creating, discovering and expanding new investment opportunities for generations. Their success in using such a vast network of the world’s leading investment experts to highlight changing markets and advise investors to focus further afield is spearheading a key change in strategies for thousands of individuals and organisations.

“If you look at our philosophy and the way we construct portfolios, it is all about diversification,” says UBS Wealth Management investment specialist Rikky Shoker.

“If you look at Harry Markowitz, the founding father of modern portfolio theory, he said it was basically the only free lunch in

Partner

investing – and it pretty much comes caloriefree. The more diversification you have in portfolios, the better the chance of a strong return.

“But as well as that return, the way we look at it here at UBS is that diversifying the risk is also so important because what is at the top of our priorities for our clients is not losing money,” said Shoker, who joined UBS in 2014 after working at Rathbones, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

“People measure risk differently, but it is basically uncertainty about which outcome will occur and the possibility of loss when there is an unfavourable outcome. Wherever our investment experts are in the world, they have been telling our clients for many years that the best way to protect against that is by being diversified and managing risk first, and then returns.”

The reason that approach has been so successful is that more than fifty UBS offices in all the major international financial centers work in perfect synchronisation, building up an unrivalled matrix of information about the industries and regions that will provide the perfect combination for each investor.

What has always been at the core of the UBS philosophy is its relationship with its clients. Wherever they are based, knowing what sort of people they are, beyond the formal agreements that are being signed, means the investment advice can be targeted even more accurately; and advice which may differ from a client’s original instincts can be delivered in a constructive way that develops that relationship.

UBS analysts are already masters of behavioural finance, a fast-growing field based around knowing your client so well that you understand their behaviour and therefore what influences their spending and investing. These can be very personal, emotional and instinctive drivers of a person’s financial decisions, so redirecting those instincts without being dismissive of their importance to the client is a key skill.

That skill exists in abundance across the UBS group, which means that a client will get the same level of investment expertise anywhere in the world and the highest level of co-ordination between its offices allows a highly-prized matrix of information to be drawn up for every potential opportunity, from Edinburgh to Hong Kong and from Leeds to Brazil.

Shoker adds: “Investment advice is very

“

“Investment advice is very much an art as opposed to a science.”

much an art as opposed to a science, which is when managing a client’s investment psychology really comes into it. If you look at our principles as a bank, near the top of our list would be ‘challenge’ because we will already have built up a deep relationship with a client, so we will feel in the right place to challenge them if we feel there is room to do so.”

One regional expert in building up such relationships for UBS is North West & Yorkshire regional head for UBS Wealth Management Karan Sejpal, who says confidence in the quality of the group’s own information coupled with a strong client relationship means changes can be made and the best outcomes made and understood.

“There is a natural and understandable familiarity bias, where investors presume they know everything about a direction they might be taking because they have been following it for a long time, but financial and academic theory has proved that is not the best approach,” said Sejpal.

“When we take on a client, they generally come with pre-conceived notions about what

they want, and for UK investors property is a big element of that. Of course, we understand where that approach comes from, so we go through a process of explaining how different things react in different markets and why what we might suggest could be more suitable for them.

“Rikki is right, it is an art, but one that is always backed up with the science, and one of the biggest reasons I joined UBS was the way the group was structured, with each of us looking after only about 30 clients each, meant we were able to spend the time getting to know people, their families and what drives them. That is hugely rewarding for each of us.”

The mutual respect between client and adviser clearly plays a big part in how UBS has built its reputation, and Shoker say the success of any investment project is down to how the two sides work together.

“Essentially,“Essentially, we are trying to protect them from their initial instincts and the way we do that is by using the evidence our offices have gathered to show the benefits of diversification and looking further afield, away

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“

“I think people come to a place as huge and experienced as UBS because they want to be challenged.”

from some of those behavioural biases that can result in people doing what they feel is right rather than being open to another option.

“If you look at the UK market, it seems as if it is very domestic, but it is quite the contrary with 75% of FTSE100 earnings generated overseas. So that is quite a good bellweather for global growth and allows us to cater for a little of that home bias.

“Also, our clients are very intelligent, have earned a lot of money and are very successful and so they feel that they may have a full grasp of certain financial matters and can read markets and gather enough information.

That can lead to a home bias and a familiarity bias, which are often linked,

and our research has shown that it can be futile to address this approach head-on because you are trying to change a client’s behaviour and expose those shortfalls, and nobody likes to be told that.

“So we might suggest putting them into a discretionary portfolio – as we do with about a third of our assets in the UK – because that is the best way of having a full and proper process that limits the client’s exposure to those biases. It is systematic and is all taken care of for you, and when they look at our capabilities and resources, clients are reassured that we can make those decision in thousands of situations and with multiple asset classes on a global basis.”

For Sejpal, he relishes a challenge – and says his clients do too.

“As well as the brand recognition we have, I think people come to a place as huge and experienced as UBS because they want to be challenged,” he said.

“It is a personality trait that a lot of our investors have, particularly those who have built up highlysuccessful businesses themselves and want to be impressed by that same sort of innovation and drive at UBS. ““That high expectation of what UBS’s experience and reach can do for investments is just as strong in the regions, although our use of discretionary portfolios is higher there, emphasising the fact that the regional clients can be more open to accepting discretionary management of their funds and allowing us to implement a strategy.”

Brexit, and its uncertainty both leading up to a deal and after one

is in place, is a new influence on where people feel their money will be most productive and has sharpened an awareness of the possibilities and helped with the diversification argument.

A lot of UBS clients have businesses based outside the UK, or at least trade links with other countries, so there is a heightened interest in what the group can do and how it can give an insight into the perfect market timing.

Sejpal says: “As far as Brexit is concerned, people here have been more conscious of a home country bias and an active move away from it coupled with a need to diversify out of the UK.” Shoker adds: “The process is designed to ensure clients can demonstrate the best possible returns for a given level of risk and we have products and services available to offer that confidence in any situation. But the way we deliver that work is very human – and very rewarding for those of us fortunate enough to deal directly with our clients. We are there to empathise with our clients, understand their needs and deliver the best solution.

“And we are more than capable of doing that. We have attracted some of the best talent in the industry, with our Chief Investment Office having more than 200 analysts who work for them exclusively and globally more than 900 who have a hugely valuable input into the investment process.

“They are all collecting local views and feeding them back into the Investment Office for us to make a decision on asset allocation and the instruments we select so that we can react to any challenge anywhere in the world.”

Having a local view from anywhere in the world is what UBS is all about. With a knock on the door of any office that has the familiar crossed keys symbol outside, a world of investment opportunities will be unlocked, each personally tailored and globally supported. n

UBS AG is authorised and regulated in the UK by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority.

Markets move fast.

Markets move fast.

How will I keep up?

How will I keep up?

The world is more complex than ever before. Which makes it incredibly challenging to stay abreast of the latest news that could affect your investments. This is where our 900 can help.

Constantly monitoring the world’s markets, they challenging provide The analysts world is more complex than ever before. Which makes it incredibly our investment teams with the information they need to keep your portfolio on track. to stay abreast of the latest news that could affect your investments. This is where our 900 analysts can help. Constantly monitoring the world’s markets, they provide For of life’s questions, you’re not alone. our some investment teams with the information they need to keep your portfolio on track.

Together we can find an answer.

For some of life’s questions, you’re not alone.

The value of investments cananswer. fall as well as rise.

Together we can find an You may not get back the amount originally invested.

The value of investments can fall as well as rise.

You may not get back the amount originally invested. www.ubs.com/wealthmanagement-uk www.ubs.com/wealthmanagement-uk

© UBS 2017. All rights reserved.

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g. f deal-makin o b u h a d n of aviation a e of parent re iv t t n u e c c e a x e s a f y ie ll ho is also ch wned globa ic venue. w o n , n t o re it ic r is e e v h h t E g r l u u fo Pa Farnboro s on the way ’s chairman, e y g n n a a p h c m o ig c b The airshow ughes about H e ik M s ll e t S, company AD

Y

ou could say that £96bn is a nice big figure – the sort of money that can influence an economy. So, for that to be the amount of money made in one week on a single site in Farnborough is quite impressive.

That’s until you realise ETPS Road is where the Farnborough International Airshow takes place around the middle of July every two

years and that the headline figure is the value of orders and commitments placed during last year’s show.

That would make less-experienced people than Paul Everitt jump up and down yelling “Kaching”, but he is a calm, measured person, who is used to dealing in such mind-blowing figures, like the 1,500 exhibitors from 52 countries that

made it to the show, including 82 of the top 100 aerospace companies.

As well as being chairman of Farnborough International for just short of five years, Everitt is also chief executive of ADS Group, the national trade association for the UK aerospace, defence, security and space industries and the airshow’s parent company,

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so he is perfectly placed to sum up the sector.

“Aerospace in the UK is a success story with global growth in the sector running at between 5% and 6% per annum,” he tells me.

“The large civil aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, have forward orders books stretching out for eight years and a 20-year market forecast worth something in the region of US$5.5tn (£4.3tn). It is a great business and, in the UK, we have a market share of around 15%-17%. In 2016 that was worth £32bn in terms of revenue and the overwhelming majority of that business is export.”

That may be one of the most impressive statistical narratives I’ve ever heard. A £32bn contribution to an economy, whose gross domestic product in the first quarter of this year was £471.5bn, places aerospace in a rarefied atmosphere as an essential part of economic strategy.

“The sector operates successfully in all parts of the UK, but obviously it is particularly strong around the Farnborough area and the SouthEast of England is the traditional home for UK

aerospace, and has one big challenge and an opportunity ahead,” says Everitt. “The challenge is clearly Brexit, with a lot of concern about the uncertainty that we are likely to see over the next three to five years and we have been talking closely to the UK Government to see if it knows and understands our deep concerns.

“These are around being within the European Union regulatory regime and ensuring we have access to the skilled people we need and remain a part of the collaborative research and development activity, particularly in space and space-investment.

“We have to adapt to the changes that are coming but there is also a big opportunity with the UK Government’s commitment to an active industrial strategy. We have been working closely with it on that and investing in technology and supply chain productivity and skills – all to keep us ahead of the competition.

“Now we need to keep that going and raise the level of activity and commitment by the UK Government to ensuring that we continue this active approach to persuade companies

that, irrespective of the outcome of the talks, the UK will remain an important centre for the global aerospace industry.”

So, challenges and opportunities ahead, some things we didn’t want but may be stuck with, and some that are in our control if we plan ahead and together.

At Farnborough, where the famous airshow has been based since 1948, that forward planning is about to be displayed in a very big way with the new Hall One at the Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre, a 12,500sq m venue at the centre of an expansion that will also include multi-purpose function rooms and restaurants, taking the entire new facility to 20,000sq m of event space. There will be conference space for up to 2,500 delegates plus additional meeting and function rooms.

Its 69-week build illustrates the pulling power of the airshow and the good health of the entire sector, and provides a stunning new facility for the South-East of England. The boss is very happy.

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“

“

“The large civil aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, have forward orders books stretching out for eight years.”

“The primary driver was to ensure that the airshow had world-class facilities because it is both a tremendous platform for UK businesses to demonstrate their expertise to the world, but also it brings the world to the UK.”

“It is such a huge building and our goal has always been to be open for business at the beginning of February,” he says. “The primary driver was to ensure that the airshow had world-class facilities because it is both a tremendous platform for UK businesses to demonstrate their expertise to the world, but also it brings the world to the UK. “What that facility also does is provide us as a business with the opportunity of running other events here in this brand-new facility rather than the temporary halls, so our customers are very happy with a better quality facility all-year round.”

Even before the airshow in July, the expansion will give a vital boost to sectors across the region, with the Southern Manufacturing show being the first to use Hall

One in February 2018, the Security and Policing event the following month, then “The Big One” fishing show and the National Pet Show taking their turn in the new space. The Centaur Media Home Building & Renovating show has already booked it for January 2019.

“We are absolutely linked in to the local economy, firstly because from an ADS perspective our members and customers are predominantly based in this area, so working with them on good things is always going to be a high priority for us, but also Hampshire County Council, Rushmoor Borough Council and the Enterprise M3 LEP have been tremendous supporters of the airshow throughout its time. Working with them to maximise the benefit of the show and what will come from this investment is very important.”

With such a prize to be won for the SouthEast of England, skills are the ticket into the competition, and on this sort of scale what Farnborough International and ADS decide to do, and who they work with, becomes of national importance. Partners include Farnborough Technical College less than a mile from the airfield, which is making its own substantial investment in equipment and facilities and is the fourth most successful in the country for 16-18 year olds. Then there is the University of Surrey, where the hugelyinfluential SSTL satellite company is based to add to the skills infrastructure, working alongside very focused local authorities.

The 2018 airshow will reflect the region’s high level of emerging technology by featuring Aerospace 4.0, the digital transformation that

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is underway to revolutionise manufacturing industries through automation and data exchange and processes. There will be a dedicated zone for exhibitors showcasing advanced digital technologies in sectors such as cloud computing, the “internet of things” and augmented reality.

“We think it is a very exciting time,” says Everitt. “Farnborough is unquestionably a great town and we have good opportunities in the businesses located in and around the town, not only in aerospace, but also with companies like BMW now based here [bringing its UK sales and financial services subsidiaries together at the

former Nokia campus on Summit Avenue], we feel we are part of an exciting future.

“We are working together to create the right circumstances to maximise what is happening here and the opportunities that lie ahead.

I think we still have some work to do, but there are excellent relationships here and we can all see that collaborating provides more momentum and a bigger impact.

“One of those big opportunities is ensuring that there is a globally-competitive UK supply base, with the UK Government proving advice and mentoring to help companies invest in their own technologies and generate their own

innovation and bring forward new products.”

The chance for small and large companies to make an impact here is huge, with increasing cyber-security needs highlighting one area of rapid growth, boosted by the presence of the university’s Surrey Centre for Cyber Security.

There is a widespread awareness in the aerospace and defence sectors about keeping ahead of the game, particularly when there are such highly-sensitive relationships being built.

But with Everitt, Farnborough and ADS showing the way, the UK’s reliance on, and pride in, this sector is understandable and secure. n

Profile

TACKLING BUSINESS CRIME IN YOUR WORKPLACE Aziz Rahman, of award-winning solicitors Rahman Ravelli, explains how to identify wrongdoing and the options available when it is found.

www.rahmanravelli.co.uk

Failing to prevent business crime can lead to legal, financial and reputational problems; often all at the same time.

It is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to business crime. The risks are too great. In the UK alone, recent years have seen the introduction of the Bribery Act, increased measures to tackle money laundering, a greater onus on financial institutions to report their suspicions and tougher tax legislation, not to mention increased funding being made available to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the creation of the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

If, therefore, business crime is being perpetrated in your company, it may only be a matter of time before an outside agency starts looking into your affairs.

Some business people believe information about such problems will never “leak out’’. For the reasons we have just mentioned, that would be a costly mistake.

Others may want to investigate but don’t believe they have the relevant expertise. But legal expertise is available to anyone that needs assistance when it comes to seeking evidence of wrongdoing.

Such an investigation is the only genuine course of action to establish the facts regarding suspicions of wrongdoing by staff or trading partners.

It also provides the person or company that commissioned the investigation with a number of options.

If investigations indicate that wrongdoing has been perpetrated, a company can: • Report the matter to the police or other agency; for example, the SFO, who then decide whether to bring a criminal prosecution.

• Initiate civil proceedings against those believed to have committed the offence, to recoup what was lost due to the criminal activity.

• Bring a private prosecution, under the Prosecution Offences Act 1985, against those that the company suspects of wrongdoing.

A recent development in UK business law is the introduction of the deferred prosecution agreement (DPA). This involves a company admitting wrongdoing and then agreeing to meet certain conditions in order to avoid being prosecuted. This year, Rolls-Royce has paid £497m under a UK DPA after admitting bribery, while Tesco’s DPA saw it fined £129m for accounting irregularities.

A DPA avoids the cost and reputational damage of a criminal prosecution. But to obtain one, a company must show genuine desire to tackle its

“

“It is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to business crime. The risks are too great.’’

problems and know how to negotiate properly with the authorities. Ideally, a company will be able to identify the wrongdoing and selfreport it to the authorities in order to boost its chances of a DPA. The authorities do not grant DPAs to any company that wants one. Being involved in DPA negotiations for clients, I can say that obtaining one requires a shrewd, tactical approach and an awareness and experience of how the investigating authorities function.

Whatever line of business a company is in and whatever the nature of the suspected wrongdoing, the potential damage can only be minimised by taking a considered, methodical approach to assessing the problem and acting in the most appropriate way. n

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Surfing chick leads Argentina’s food invasion Argentinian-styled restaurant chain Gaucho has expanded by 500% since 2000, and now has 15 venues across the UK. Steve Dyson meets Tracey Matthews, the woman behind its growth.

S

he grew up on the Devon coast as a selfconfessed “surfing chick”, learning her trade as a seasonal waitress and chambermaid. Today, Tracey Matthews heads operations at Gaucho, a posh, Argentinian-styled steakhouse chain with revenues of £40m-plus – and more than 700 staff at 15 restaurants across the UK. Twelve of these are in London, with others in Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham – the latter opening earlier this year, and more are planned for the future. And yet in 2000, when she joined Gaucho, there were only three UK venues, which makes it a 500% expansion since she arrived.

Matthews, smartly dressed and drinking mineral water in the corner of one of her restaurants, certainly looks every part the efficient, driven boss. She can talk facts and

figures without any notes, and is able to name and describe each member of staff who passes our table.

But I’m more interested in the story of the woman behind such a fast-growing and complex operation, and slowly move the conversation towards when and where her life began, what made her what she’s become, and what motivates her today. Eventually, Matthews softens, smiles and allows herself to answer my probing questions.

She was born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, but grew up in Braunton, a village between Ilfracombe and Croyde on the Devon coast. “My teenage memories are of long days on the beach as a surfing chick,” laughs Matthews, now aged 45. “But my grandparents owned a bed and breakfast and so I also grew

up learning how to make beds, and waitressing in seasonal cafés and restaurants.”

After taking A-levels, she began working all summer and travelling in between, gaining experience at various local hotels and at the Jalapeno Peppers restaurant in nearby Barnstaple. She decided she wanted a career in hospitality but realised this wasn’t going to go too far in Devon.

“At 21 I moved to London,” Matthews recalls.

“I spent four years at a Mexican restaurant called Chi-Chi’s in Covent Garden, starting as trainee assistant manager and ending up as general manager.”

This was followed by more travelling, then management jobs at TGI Fridays and The Collection Chelsea, a restaurant popular with London’s socialites. By 2000 she began working

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at Gaucho, starting as general manager at the Gracechurch Street restaurant in London’s financial centre.

Matthews’ career at Gaucho moved fast: she opened the new Canary Wharf venue in late 2000, then ran the Chancery Lane restaurant from 2003, followed by Destino from 2004 – what was then a Latin American concept, but is now Gaucho’s flagship restaurant in Piccadilly.

She had her first child in 2005 – daughter Tate, now aged 12 – but was back at work after just nine weeks’ maternity leave.

“I was a single mum with Tate until 2010,” Matthews explains, “so when I came back to work I launched the Gaucho academy, focusing on the training and development of our staff. I set up the ‘school’ which everyone now attends in Leeds, Manchester and our City restaurant.

“This involves classroom training on everything from wines to food, from service to legal matters like alcohol, and even on staff style – like how you walk through the day. This

“

involves a tango lesson to help posture.”

It sounds fun, but the Gaucho academy takes such matters seriously, with an eight-day course to become a proficient restaurant host, ending with a practical test and exam. Staff are then re-tested every six months to make sure they’re still “living and breathing” what they’ve been taught.

Matthews says: “This naturally progressed to me developing a human resources (HR) department, building a team and then becoming HR director from 2008. Personally, this allowed me to balance the needs of being a single mum. And it helped Gaucho’s transition, re-positioning itself with the ‘greatest service ever’ revolution, setting ourselves up as more than just a steak restaurant, creating the service experience.”

It sounds like hard work, and Matthews nods in furious agreement. “It is! The best people are those who get the job under their skin. The best managers are those who know exactly

who the team is, what they do and how they’re doing it. Even I still like getting involved with the shifts.

“It’s something I picked up from a very early age – getting stuck into everything. I got this hands-on, strong work ethic from my grandparents and parents. They were a family of hard workers. And if you wanted something, I quickly learned you’ve got to work hard for it.”

Matthews has worked hard on her home life too, meeting and marrying Ben Matthews in 2012, who’s in the same trade as operations director of Jackson & Rye, part of the Côte restaurant chain. The family, who now live in Bushey, Hertfordshire, then expanded with the birth of son Jude, now aged four.

But Matthews’ career continued to develop at Gaucho: she became managing director in 2014 and then chief operating officer from September 2016, and was awarded her own shares in the business to give her a “vested interest”. But it’s not simply money that drives

“I got this hands-on, strong work ethic from my grandparents and parents. They were a family of hard workers. I quickly learned you’ve got to work hard.”

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this entrepreneurial boss.

“What keeps me going after 17 years with Gaucho,” she enthuses, “is a desire to always be better than we were. There’s always something else to be done, something else to understand.

It’s all about challenging people. Being able to inspire them. Wanting the whole place to be better than yesterday.”

The founder and ultimate boss of Gaucho is Dutch businessman Zeev Godik, and there’s also private equity involvement via a multimillion pound investment from Equistone. But operationally, it’s very much run by Matthews herself.

“Oh yes, it’s my baby,” she chuckles. “I make sure I split my time equally between visiting restaurants, assessing quality, spotting the rights and wrongs, and then one-to-ones with the trading team, the marketing boss, chef director, head of HR, and so on, bringing the business together.

“I spend three nights a week in the business as well. I like to just show up. I take its success very personally, some might say too personally.

I like to see people in the senior team, and I like to see them become massively successful. I

take a huge delight in making my success their success.

“I like to see people in Gaucho develop, progress and be challenged. Even in this room there’re people who’ve grown up in the business. It’s like watching your children grow up.”

Gaucho itself is well-liked by those who can afford to enjoy dining out regularly and in style.

The business community across London are prime customers, but Matthews is also proud that Gaucho attracts some of the big society names.

Who does she mean? And for the first time she thinks carefully before naming those she knows won’t mind: she says José Mourinho used to enjoy his “steak on a Friday” when he was at Chelsea; the entire English rugby team celebrated its Six Nations victory at Gaucho; actress Helena Bonham Carter is a regular; as is TV mega star Jonathan Ross.

What’s the biggest challenge Matthews has overcome at Gaucho? “The banking meltdown in 2008,” she swiftly replies. “Everyone’s spending tightened up, and the way we overcame that challenge was to stick to our

guns, to just focus on being brilliant.

“We told staff: ‘Focus on yourselves, and we will come out of it better than before.’ I think that helped us and is the reason we’re heading in such a strong direction. We retained our focus on detail, service, standards and quality.

We had to fight and become more brilliant, so diners said: ‘We’re going to pick you over the competition’. And it worked.”

But Matthews’ biggest challenge today, she says, is coping with the “new, young generation of workers”, who she says are more selfconfident than when she joined the trade.

She explains: “They say: ‘I want this weekend off, I don’t want to do that, I want to do this’.

They seem to want instant gratification. They’re just not used to having to do their time. They seem to lack that understanding that the best way to learn is with experience.

“So we’re finding ways to engage them and train them and we’re going to have to adapt the way we work to change this perception. It’s no longer a case of working 60 hours a week, we’re changing that. We’re taking mums on part-time, introducing part-time management, accommodating studies, and even sabbaticals for people who want to travel for four months and expect to pick up their jobs when they get back.

“Sometimes, you might want to smack your head against a wall about it, but if we don’t catch up we’re going to be left behind, as they’re the next generation to take us forward.”

Staff aside, Matthews is also enjoying planning what’s becoming the ongoing invasion of Gaucho’s Argentinian-style food across the UK. “We’d not opened one for seven years in the UK until Birmingham this year, and it’s been nothing short of an awesome experience, when we were welcomed with open arms. People seemed genuinely excited to see us come to the city.”

And will this be followed by more? “Yes, I’m excited to find out whether other cities will feel the same way,” she says. “We’re obsessed by finding the right location at the right time, and I’m busy starting to look at other cities.”

Matthews won’t confirm any future plans, but she does “like the idea of Newcastle”, is “excited to go to see Glasgow” and will be “exploring other elegant cities”.

It must seem like a long time since she was on the beaches as a teenager in Devon.

But while she’s no longer surfing, Matthews – having relaxed during the interview – certainly still seems quite chilled. n

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Partner

We want to make a difference Growth Capital Ventures is a fintech business which not only brings together businesses hungry for capital with investors looking for a return but it also seeks a positive social impact, as Peter Jackson reports.

BROTHERS Norm and Craig Peterson meet me in the baroque splendour of Redworth Hall, a magnificent four star hotel in County Durham.

It’s convenient for the office of their company, Growth Capital Ventures (GCV) a fintech firm based on the Aycliffe Business Park.

A business park might seem like an unlikely address for a company operating in the financial sector, but GCV is a financial services

firm with a difference. It is part of the new breed of businesses set up in the wake of the financial crash of 2007, riding the wave of technological innovation and the desire to escape the failed banking models of the past.

Coincidentally, we meet at around the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Northern Rock, an event Norm remembers well.

“I was on holiday and that weekend I picked up the Sunday Times and saw that Northern

Rock’s shares had dropped by about 25% in a couple of days and people thought it might be worth a buy. I was away for two weeks and the following Sunday they had gone down even further and I got a phone call telling me about the queues outside Northern Rock and it was then that I realised that there was something serious going on – but not as serious as it turned out to be.’’

At this time Norm and Craig owned a luxury

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housing and property company Carlton and Co and, foreseeing the effects that the banking crisis would have on housebuilding, they sold their land holdings and suspended operations.

The brothers were not only experienced in residential property – Craig was a residential project manager for Taylor Wimpey/Bryant Homes, becoming regional production director – they also had a lot of expertise in raising finance.

Norm had worked in project management for large scale telecoms and broadband infrastructure businesses. He later moved into the residential and commercial property sectors before becoming director of network strategy at Bell Cable where he was responsible for raising capital to fund construction of large broadband networks throughout the UK. He later bought into a European broadband start up and raised more than £60m for it from US based venture capital funds. Craig went on to study for an MBA and focused on the rise of the alternative finance sector as part of his research project.

So, following Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers and the subsequent credit crunch, they could observe with expert eyes as the credit market froze. On the one hand, banks stopped lending, not only to each other, but also to perfectly viable businesses which were desperate for growth capital. On the other hand, people with money to invest, could only get derisory rates of return. The Peterson brothers were sure there must be a way to bring businesses and investors together.

“When the financial crash happened it was a case of, where is the money going to come from? It was a huge problem for businesses, particularly in house building,’’ says Craig.

At the time, people were beginning to talk about the alternative finance sector and the brothers looked at how they could structure a fintech business.

“We had always worked raising capital, finance was core to everything we were doing, so it was a natural transition,’’ says Craig. “We looked at what was happening in the market and decided that we were going to diversify into financial services.

“We wanted it to be technology focused so it was scaleable. The market was changing and we wanted to be right at the forefront of that. When you look at fintech and alternative finance, it’s phenomenal how the market has changed in a 10-year period.’’

They became Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approved persons and then a FCA authorised firm and also became members

of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments.

The result was Growth Capital Ventures, a firm which brings together private capital and growing businesses which are looking for capital for expansion. Its online co-investment platform, GrowthFunders allows retail investors to buy shares in high growth impact companies alongside professional and institutional investors. All the investment opportunities are carefully vetted by GCV for their potential to deliver strong financial returns together with wider social and environmental benefits.

Through the GrowthFunders platform, investors can invest from £100 in businesses and projects alongside experienced investors and institutions. Once registered on the website, investors are kept up to date on forthcoming investment opportunities.

“Technology makes those deals – previously only really accessible to high net worth individuals – available to a wider investor base,’’ says Craig. “On the other side, businesses can then access capital from different sources.

A high growth SME should be able to raise capital, not just from a venture capitalist or an angel investment network, you should be able to raise from both and, in an ideal world, retail investors. If you can bring the three together and get that co-investment model to work, then you’ve got a very powerful way for

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businesses to raise money.’’

Norm points out another advantage to a business.

“A wider investor base correctly managed through a nominee structure can give you fantastic voice because you have all of those people as brand ambassadors.’’

GCV already has about 6,000 investors and it had an early stage involvement with Durham based challenger bank Atom with investors signing up within 24-hours. It has also successfully raised funds for start-up technology business Intelligence Fusion and for cloud-based software-as-a-service business HiveHR. Despite these successes, GCV has no plans to move from Aycliffe Business Park.

Craig explains: “it’s where the business was based originally and our view was that we didn’t need to move from Aycliffe to attract the talent that we needed to scale up. In the north east there are some very good software developers. Also, our investment team need to have a different mind-set as a co-investment platform and from a recruitment perspective it makes sense. Also, as an operational base it made perfect sense. We don’t need to be based in London and, if we are going to service the Northern Powerhouse area then Aycliffe is a decent location from where you can reach every major city easily.’’

“We wanted it to be technology focused so it was scaleable. The market was changing and we wanted to be right at the forefront of that.”

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It took time to build GCV and to familiarise the market with the business model, but it was helped by the enthusiasm of the then Business Secretary Vince Cable for the alternative finance sector. The FCA also came to see the potential in the UK pioneering this movement.

“When we started the institutional investors weren’t investing into the alternative finance sector but after a while they could see the opportunities,’’ says Norm. “The government also put the regulatory frameworks in place to ensure this could grow.’’

GCV saw the opportunities presented by funds such as the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund and the Finance Durham Fund and, while the firm was not a fund manager, it saw the potential to form a partnership to bid to manage such funds.

Its great breakthrough came last year when it secured a £1.1m investment from Maven Capital Partners, one of the UK’s leading private equity firms. Maven, which has taken a 28% stake in GCV, has more than £400m of assets under management and a nationwide network of regional offices.

In partnership with Maven Capital Partners, GCV, has now successfully bid to manage five investment funds, including £57.5m of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund and the £20m Finance Durham Fund, to support the growth of SMEs and high potential businesses across the North.

“Co-investment is a key part of the KPIs for these funds, they want to see private investment leveraged to match and the delivery and co-ordination of that co-

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“To get investment from a company of Maven’s quality, one of the UK’s leading small cap private equity firms, was a significant step forward.’’

investment can be done through our platform,’’ explains Norm.

He adds: “To get investment from a company of Maven’s quality, one of the UK’s leading small cap private equity firms, was a significant step forward.’’

But the brothers are resolved that, despite the backing and involvement of Maven, which also has two members on the GCV board, there will be no rush to chase deals for the sake of it.

“It’s very much a matter of quality as opposed to quantity,’’ says Craig. “We’d probably have between three and five deals open at any one time.’’

“Co-investment is part of Maven’s ethos,’’ adds Craig. “They have a co-investor network, they have VCT’s [venture capital trusts], so they have different pots of money, so if a business is looking to raise capital, they can provide a very powerful funding solution based around co-investment.’’

The Petersons plan to use their experience in property development to bring forward more projects using a revived Carlton and Co. Craig explains: “One of the things we are focusing on for our investors is the ability to diversify and invest not just in businesses and high growth SMEs but also to invest into projects such as residential developments.

“We are working on a number of investment opportunities with Maven which will open up a new asset class for our investors.’’

These will also be growth focused but will be asset-backed and would be in the form of a special purpose vehicle limited company.

“It will allow investment alongside the developer to get the type of returns the developer enjoys,’’ says Craig. “If we buy a site for say £1m and it costs £2m to build, our investors would generally invest £1m of equity to buy the site, we’d arrange the full finance package with senior debt from a suitable lender and, from there the profits would be split. We are targeting a one and a half times money on money return.’’

GCV will soon be launching its first property project: three residential sites, comprising 84 homes with a development value of nearly £24m. The Peterson brothers are confident that within four years GCV could have a £100m development programme being financed with the potential to deliver between 350 and 400 new homes a year. This would mean the creation of 500 to 600 new jobs.

“That’s going to create some real job opportunities within the supply chain, not just on the construction side and also what we are able to do, which we did in the past with Carlton, is to bring through a lot of good

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opportunities for apprentices,’’ says Craig.

This underlines a key element of the GCV business model – a determination that its investments and projects should have a positive social impact beyond the purely financial return on investment.

“We are looking at high quality, growth focused investment opportunities across property and growth SMEs but we really like, not just the ability to deliver the investment growth, but also social impact,’’ says Craig.

“Finance is a core part of what we do, but these projects can deliver both better risk adjusted returns to investors but also wider positive social economic and environmental benefits as well.

“We like to make a difference as a business, on the one hand to our investors to provide them with investment opportunities to help them build their portfolio and their net worth and then also to do some good. That’s the foundation of what we do, investing for growth and impact. We want to help people make money, but we want to help them do some good things along the way.’’

On the other side of the equation, GCV serves the businesses and projects that are being invested in, not only by providing a powerful funding solution but also in giving advice and support to make themselves investment ready.

“A lot of entrepreneurs out there still need a lot of help to understand how to structure their business for investment and we are very well placed to do that, having raised capital ourselves on numerous occasions and having supported numerous businesses through this process,’’ says Craig.

“We have an excellent in house investment team that works closely with entrepreneurs looking to raise growth capital. Working together we produce all of the investment documentation and financial forecasts to ensure the businesses we support are investment ready. Many of the entrepreneurs need additional support including coaching and mentoring, which is an area where the GCV team can add a lot of additional value.’’

Technology has been a driver and an enabler of GCV and that will continue to be the case.

“We Growth have a strongCapital in-house tech team Ventures and the platform is under continuous development,’’ says Norm. “In tech you can’t just build it and say, `it’s done’. You are always advancing and developing it. We are always looking to improve the user experience and features, integrating third party software and

anything to enhance it.’’

The investment from Maven has allowed GCV to expand its tech and programme management teams to develop new products.

In particular, it intends to build on the success of the GrowthFunders platform next year with the launch of a peer-to-peer lending platform, GrowthLenders.

“It will focus on asset backed property led investment opportunities.” says Craig. “We’re excited about this new platform, we have some very good deal flow starting with residential development schemes but we will branch out into commercial property too.

“GrowthLenders will allow people to invest using their ISA with a potential to enjoy some healthy returns secured against property, targeting returns of between 8% -10% in the form of a mini bond.”

At a later date GCV envisages the introduction of bridging finance products which could have a six to twelve month term. It is expected that GrowthLenders, as a peer to peer lending investment platform, will attract new investors, but will also allow GrowthFunders investors to diversify their portfolios. “Investing through GrowthFunders, gives our investors the opportunity to build a growth focussed portfolio whereas investing through GrowthLenders will provide the opportunity to balance a portfolio with a more income based approach.” says Craig.

The brothers give off a palpable sense of excitement over the possibilities for GCV and an eagerness to turn all their ideas into practice. But they are clearly as passionate about their business philosophy as they are about their products.

Norm says: “The ethos underpinning everything we do is making a difference. The values of our business and what drives us is: first and foremost to make money for our investors; to do some good; and to enjoy what we are doing.’’ n

Growth Capital Ventures

Growth Funders Co-invest in deals with real purpose.

To find out more about investing into high growth businesses and projects, or to find out more about raising capital visit www.growthfunders.com or call 0330 102 5525.

Hive of activity Growing company breaks the funding barrier One GCV investment is HiveHR, a cloudbased software-as-a-service business which helps organisations improve employee engagement with associated increases in business efficiency and financial performance.

It was incubated and developed by North East-based software company Visualsoft and was the first business to spin out of Visualsoft’s Innovation Lab. The funding target for Hive was £150,000, but £298,000 was raised through GrowthFunders. It is anticipated that another round of funding will be raised through GCV. “It has proved its business model, it has Growth Funders hit some key milestones and has a good blue-chip client base and is now poised for that next phase of growth,’’ says Craig. “We worked with that company from that seed stage, prepared it and supported it over the last 18 months.

“Hive wants to scale internationally and it’s an example of a company we can take all the way from seed investment to IPO.’’

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MILKING IT Mac Mackie, Karin Hayhow and Kirstin McNutt have taken diversification to a whole new level, expanding their Mackie’s of Scotland ice cream brand to include crisps and chocolate, with this autumn marking their move into retail.

Peter Ranscombe heads down to the farm to find out more.

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here aren’t many farms that have their own machines for making plastic tubs. But, then again, there aren’t many farms like Westertown, the home of Mackie’s of Scotland, a dairy business that’s successfully diversified into ice cream, ice, crisps and now chocolate.

The company is run by managing director Maitland “Mac” Mackie, marketing director Karin Hayhow and development director Kirstin McNutt, three siblings who form the fourth generation of the family to own the business, which now employs around 60 people and turns over about £11m a year. This autumn, the company will take its first steps into retail when it opens an ice cream parlour in Aberdeen’s flagship Marischal Square development, which could become a beachhead for expansion into other cities.

Tucked away in the rolling farmland surrounding Inverurie in Aberdeenshire, the 1,500 acres at Westertown not only house the family’s 330 milking cows, but also an ice cream factory, a chocolate manufacturing facility and a renewable energy powerhouse consisting of four wind turbines and a 7,000-panel solar array. Soon bees may be buzzing between the panels to make honey, while a field of mint is sprouting with the intention of being added to the chocolate, all part of the family’s strategy of growing and making as much as it can on the one site.

And that’s exactly where those machines for making ice cream tubs fit into the story.

Previously, Mackie’s imported its plastic containers from Sweden, before deciding to invest £1m to buy its own injection moulding

equipment, cutting its supply chain’s carbon footprint by 50,000 miles a year.

Each of the two machines applies two-anda-half tonnes of pressure and 250C of heat to turn plastic granules, a touch of colouring and a pre-printed label into the familiar one- and two-litre tubs that grace supermarket freezers throughout the country. It’s not what you’d expect to find in a former barn on a farm.

Mackie’s passion for innovation doesn’t end there though. Step through another doorway and members of staff are making honeycomb, with the bigger pieces going into the ice cream and the smaller pieces going into the chocolate.

“We haven’t found a way of using the honeycomb dust yet,” chuckles Karin. “At the moment, it goes to a local piggery.”

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“We wanted to develop new products that would give customers an exciting reason to come and visit us then keep coming back.”

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There must be some happy pigs on that farm. And the cows at Westertown look pretty content too, with a robotic milking system that lets the ladies choose when they want to be milked while also monitoring their output and their health, and another robot that trundles along the byre’s floor, sorting out the food when it’s needed.

Inside the new product development or “NPD” kitchen, members of staff are busy creating the ice cream flavours that will form the backbone of the offering at “Mackie’s 19.2”, the name given to the parlour at Marischal Square that will remind visitors of the short distance in miles between the farm and the shop. Plans include around 20 new flavours, alongside some of the brand’s existing bestsellers, as well as crepes, waffles and “ice cream lollies coated in Mackie’s chocolate”.

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“We couldn’t simply sell our existing ice cream flavours at our flagship store,” explains Karin. “Instead, we wanted to develop new products that would give customers an exciting reason to come and visit us then keep coming back.”

The company’s innovations also involve working with partners. Mackie’s has a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) with Abertay University in Dundee focused on its chocolate development, which has involved a study on the size and dispersion of particles at the micron or micro-metre level and how that affects the taste and texture of its chocolates, while it’s also working with Edinburgh Napier University to recover heat from its equipment, making the site even more energy-efficient.

Chocolate making also takes place in a factory built in a converted tractor shed on

“During the 1980s, semi-skimmed milk started to become popular and so we were left with lots of cream that needed to be used.”

the farm. New flavours and different sizes of bars are in the pipeline, along with gift boxes containing a new range of fresh cream ganache-filled chocolates that will feature at Mackie’s 19.2.

For all the technology on the farm, the Mackie’s business started from very humble origins. The company began producing ice cream in 1986 in response to changing milk trends.

“At that point, we had a milk retail business, supplying bottles to supermarkets and customers on about 60 milk rounds,” Mac explains. “During the 1980s, semi-skimmed milk started to become popular and so we were left with lots of cream that needed to be used.

“An ice cream company in Aberdeen had recently folded and one of its workers approached Dad and asked if he’d be interested in making ice cream. He saw the potential and so bought the equipment.”

The sibling’s father, Maitland, was chairman of the company until he died in 2014, just months after the death of his Norwegian-born wife, Halldis. Maitland was born at Westertown and worked all his life on the farm, and is buried in the arboretum that Halldis planted after retiring, with 147 trees of 112 species adding to the 150 acres of the farm given over to woodland.

During the early days, managing director Brian Pack – another of the North-East’s bestknown business and farming faces, who went on to become chief executive of Aberdeen & Northern Marts and chair the Rowett Institute – was also instrumental in developing the ice cream brand, along with sales director Denis Emslie, who signed the company’s first supply contract with supermarket chain William Low and after whom the fourth of the family’s wind turbines is named in tribute.

Today, ice cream remains at the heart of the business. Mackie’s traditional cream flavour still accounts for 67% of sales, but has been joined by a host of permanent and limited-edition tubs, including this summer’s “St Clement’s Ripple”, which featured orange and lemonflavoured ice cream with an orange ripple.

As well as producing frozen treats under its own brand, the company also makes some own-label dairy ice cream for upmarket grocery chain Waitrose. The farm has its own water source and so making ice seemed like a natural extension, with the cubes packaged under both the Mackie’s brand and the Co-op’s own label.

While the transition from dairy business to ice cream maker – and the subsequent

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sale of the retail milk business to Wiseman Dairies – was Maitland’s great contribution to the family’s legacy, the further diversification has been down to his impressive children.

Mac, Karin and Kirstin teamed up with George Taylor at Taypack in 2009 to launch Mackie’s at Taypack, a joint venture that produces the Mackie’s of Scotland-branded crisps and turns over about £5m a year.

Founded as a 50-50 partnership, the joint venture is now 75-25 in Taypack’s favour, with Taylor growing the potatoes and producing the crisps, with a joint focus on marketing and a continued license to use the Mackie’s of Scotland brand. “The crisps have opened a lot of doors when it comes to exports,” says Mac. “They’re exported to around 25 countries, with the Philippines and Ukraine being the latest places to be added to the list. We also export our ice cream to a number of markets in the Middle East and Asia – Costco takes around £500,000 of ice cream each year for its stores in South Korea and Taiwan.”

Chocolate followed in 2014, marking a natural progression from ice cream and allowing the

family to manufacture another product on site.

The chocolate is made using raw ingredients of cocoa liquor and cocoa butter, meaning Mackie’s has the equipment to refine, “conche” – kneading or grinding the chocolate to remove some bitter tastes and aromas and create the desired chocolate taste – and “temper” – perfecting the crystal structure that gives good chocolate its “snap” and gloss – the ingredients before adding flavours to the final mix.

“The chocolate and the crisps could work well together in export markets,” Mac adds.

“For example, we can now offer a mixed chocolate and crisps shipment – a container full of chocolate would be too high in cost for some of our customers.

“The other benefit is that we can partially insulate the chocolate from excess heat with the crisp boxes. The customers benefit from a wider brand selection and a higher margin on the total container.”

Mac’s son, Maitland Mike Mackie, is the fifth generation of the family to be given Maitland as his first name. So, has the fifth generation of the family shown any interest in joining the

business yet?

“Well, we have nine children between us, so we’ll have to grow the company if they all want to get involved,” laughs Mac. “Mike has just left school, so it’s early days yet.”

It’s not just the family that’s dedicated to the business though. In the ice cream factory, one of the walls is decorated with plaques that salute members of staff who have served with the business for 20 years and more.

The hard graft of those workers and their colleagues is also now celebrated on the company’s website, which features a “Faces of Mackie’s” page, containing photos of everyone who works for the firm. From operations director Rhona Wight playing her drum kit through to sales support executive Sadie Barrie pictured with a foal, the images tell the story of the staff behind the brand.

Judging by the smiles on their faces, the firm is well on the way to delivering its mission statement, which hangs on the wall of its boardroom: “to be a global brand from the greenest company in Britain created by people having fun”. n

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ALL THAT

GLITTERS Ben Roberts has grown Clogau, his father’s Welsh gold business, into a jewellery chain with stockists throughout the country, as Maria McGeoghan discovers.

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t sounds like the start of a Famous Five book. When he was just a small boy, Ben Roberts was taken out of school to have a look at his dad Bill’s latest acquisition: a gold mine.

It had been abandoned for years and Bill’s big idea was to transform it into a tourist attraction where visitors could pan for gold.

But, due to its location within the Snowdonia national park, planners stood firmly opposed to the idea.

So, as a Plan B, Bill decided to gamble that there might be some undiscovered gold still buried within the mine. And to say that gamble paid off is something of an understatement.

It was the start of Clogau, the classy Welsh jewellery brand that has grown into a multimillion-pound business. Its headquarters is in North Wales, where I met managing director Ben in the boardroom, the door to which is kept open by what looks like a gold ingot.

“Oh, that’s not real,” says Ben, who knows a thing or two about gold. “I remember being

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taken out of school to have a look at a hole in the ground. It wasn’t that impressive.

“My dad Bill wanted to open the mine as a tourist attraction. He thought that people might want to see where the royal family had their wedding rings made. This was 1990 and Snowdonia tourism was far from receptive to the idea. They took public objections quite seriously.

“Bill had just sold his frozen food business to Iceland, so he was doing OK financially. He probably spent £2m on that project. He’s very good at starting a business and getting his way.

“I like to think I’ve got enough people around me now who will tell me if I’m going too far.”

As Bill struggled with the Snowdonia planners, he employed three miners who were related to miners who had worked the original site. They did odd jobs but then started to work down the mine and there really was gold in “them thar hills”.

“Dad used to bring home one of those plastic 35mm film cases full of bits of gold,”

Ben remembers. “It’s called Dore gold and is 80% pure.

“I remember there was a miner called Jack who had worked with geologists at the site years before and Bill took his advice.

“Jack remembered where they had found the gold originally. It was called the ‘Grandfather’s adit’ – or seam. They found gold and Bill flew down there really, really excited but when he got there the seam had gone again.

“Jack said that mining for gold was like looking for the jam in a Victoria sponge, but mining for Welsh gold is like looking for the sixpence in a Christmas pudding – because of the Welsh terrain. I’ve always thought that’s a great analogy.”

There was enough gold to keep Bill’s new idea of creating jewellery going for the first year, and then he came up with the idea of diluting the gold and mixing it with world gold.

Their first range of jewellery was launched in 1994 and consisted of just five pieces that were sold through a handful of small gift shops near the Clogau St David’s gold mine.

“Jack said that mining for gold was like looking for the jam in a Victoria sponge, but mining for Welsh gold is like looking for the sixpence in a Christmas pudding – because of the Welsh terrain. I’ve always thought that’s a great analogy.”

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“We are a good story.

We are authentic. We were the only people with a mine.”

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Due to its scarcity, only a small amount of Welsh gold can be included within each piece of Clogau jewellery, which ensures the longevity of Welsh gold supplies and the affordability of the jewellery.

“A lot of people looked down on that, and said you can’t dilute it,” says Ben. “There was a lot of scepticism in the market.”

The company started to build up its brand, while Ben studied marketing at university and started work in Southampton.

“I was earning £32,000 a year and Bill offered me £8,000 a year to join the team. I said I would give it six weeks.

“We set about establishing Clogau as the word for Welsh gold. The loose translation is gold rock.

“Bill had started a new business making health and safety videos and he left me to follow it through.

“We are a good story. We are authentic. We were the only people with a mine.

“We established really quick delivery and good quality workmanship. We set up a workshop in 2000 and bought machines that made the job of extracting gold from the rock so much easier, like belt furnaces and laser welders.”

Another big turning point for Clogau came when it started to make coin jewellery for the Royal Mint and realised that it couldn’t compete on price. It started to investigate manufacturing in China.

“It was very good quality and very fast from

order to delivery six weeks later,” says Ben. “The manufacture was very specific to us, which was very important.

“By then, Clogau had 200 stockists, sold on QVC and people began to recognise us as a Welsh gold brand.”

The move to production in China meant the closure of its own workshop and redundancies, but, as a business move, China was a game changer. Turnover went up from £2m to £5m with a 20% net profit.

“Gold was cheap, it was two dollars to the pound,” Ben says. “Returns reduced from 7%, to 1%. It was the right thing to do. We’ve been quite recession-proof and by chance we’ve been growing through recessions like in 2008.”

Bill is still involved as the majority owner

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“Everything drives me to find the perfect information, I don’t want it in six weeks’ time, I want it now. We’ve worked hard on that.”

and chairman. “Well, that’s what he shouts across the pub to me,” says Ben. Clogau now has more than 340 stockists and eight of its own shops, 130 staff, and turnover of £16m with 20% net profit. And, for the first time this year, it will maintain profit and turnover levels rather than the steady growth it is used to.

“It’s a combination of things,” says Ben. “There’s the election, terror attacks, the dollar and Brexit. For the first time, we are staying at £16m turnover.

“Luxuries are down. I think we are niche but mainstream.”

Future plans include concentrating on retail

by looking at sales hotspots and opening shops there.

Clogau also support designers by sponsoring design competitions, and now produces 50 new designs every six months, many with its now famous “tree of life” motif.

“Some designs do well and some don’t,” says Ben. “It’s 80-20. You don’t really know what’s going to take off. We used to launch just two products a year.”

And, rather than writing off products that don’t sell, they are now sold in “soon to be discontinued” stores where profits are good.

So, what is Ben’s secret to running a profitable and successful business? “Everything

drives me to find the perfect information,” he replies.

“I don’t want it in six weeks’ time, I want it now. We’ve worked hard on that. The information shows us how we are doing and everything is live. And I know it’s a cliché but we have a very good team. And consistency is also really important.”

And is there such a thing as gold fever that can take you over and turn your head? “Oh yes, definitely,” he says. “When we were kids we used to pan for gold flakes and when we found one we would ask dad how much it was worth. We would just want to keep going and going to try and find more and more…” n

HIGH LIFE AUTUMN 2017 MOTORING

TRAVEL

FASHION

DRINKS

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COMBINING

FUNCTION WITH FORM Creative head Marek Reichman tells Josh Sims why the DB11 is kicking off a decade of innovation at Aston Martin that will make the company’s sports cars unrecognisable in years to come.

HIGH LIFE

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M

arek Reichman, the creative head of Aston Martin, has given his new car what one might call the “11-year-old test”. “Irrespective of how the car is reviewed, I know the response I get from an 11-year-old if I’m driving a Vanquish,” he says.

“And it’s very different to the one I get when driving this car. They go a bit bat shit crazy, like they’ve seen their favourite pop star.”

The car in question is, of course, the DB11 – of course because the DB line is, in no small part thanks to the association with James Bond, unarguably the British luxury car

“The thing is, whatever any of it does, all this just looks so good too.”

manufacturer’s most famous, even among those who know little of cars. And, according to Reichman, the DB11 is a game changer, at least for Aston Martin.

“It represents a shift in mindset in terms of how our customer will perceive the design language of Aston Martin,” he says. “Look at its predecessors and there’s quite a feline, amorphous form – it’s that holistic approach that cars of a latter generation took. Look at the DB11 and it’s technology that defines it. It’s a real form-follows-function approach, rather than maintaining the pure line of the DB9.”

To the lay driver, of course, this grand tourer experience is somewhat oblivious to the technology. Sat in a surprisingly spacious leather-clad cabin – so leathery, in fact, that Aston Martin has perhaps overdone its Britishness by brogueing it – one is propelled from nought to 60 in three seconds, whipped around corners with the ease of a go kart, and, if giving your own 11-year-old or younger a thrill is the order of the day, pinning them to the back of their child-seats. Yes, should Bond ever grow up, the DB11 is the first two-plus-two from Aston Martin that comes with Isofix.

The driving modes – “GT”, “sport” and “sport plus” or “crikey”, “help” and “stunned silence” – and new adaptive damping system allow you to cruise or bomb around as you see fit. Naturally, it’s a fantastic, assured drive and, thanks to the carefully-considered music

of the 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12, one worth having with the radio off. To a car designer like Reichman, however – and perhaps the man on the street awed by the DB11’s presence – all those exterior surfaces represent a new level of engineering and aerodynamics for the marque.

There’s the clamshell bonnet, for example, made – with great complexity – from pressed aluminium. The result allows for a minimum of interrupting breaks to its lines, while also having energy absorbency properties that make it better for any slack-jawed pedestrian who comes off badly at the wrong end of it. There’s the re-engineered fuel tank, which leaves more room in the boot for the pram, or something much more glamorous.

Or there’s the “AeroBlade”, as Aston Martin is calling it: intakes at the base of the c-pillars that channel air through ducts passing within the body of the car, churn them up and exit them at the back. The result? Reduced rear lift.

In other words, it’s a spoiler, without the need of the kind of actual physical spoiler that turns beauty into boy racer. Small wonder Aston Martin has been very quick to patent this genuine innovation in aerodynamics.

But the thing is, whatever any of it does, all this just looks so good too. Of course, Reichman has not sacrificed all pursuit of beauty to the demands of science. There’s the roof strake, for example, flowing in an

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“In every kind of art form – from sculptors to singers – every now and then you need a step change.”

unbroken line from A to C pillar thanks to a process of extruding, stretching, pressing, laser cutting, polishing and anodising – a lot of work for a little thing.

And there’s the grille. “It’s my favourite part of the car,” says Reichman. “It’s a bit DB5.

There’s a slight undercut that gives it a bit of a shark’s face, and I’m fascinated by sharks.

They have an amazing beauty while also being amazing predators. I wouldn’t want to swim with them but I love watching them swim – and I think an Aston Martin needs to have that same sense of potency too.”

“We’ve made some very risky changes,” Reichman adds. “There’s a very hard line to the rear of the car now, for instance. But in every kind of art form – from sculptors to singers – every now and then you need a step change. Of course, with an Aston Martin you fundamentally still have to have a balanced form, because that’s what an Aston Martin is about.

“But if you have those proportions right – and we pushed with every single millimetre – then that allows you to be more daring with

the elements in between. It’s like a fantastic haute couture dress on a model who looks perfect without it anyway.”

Indeed, that daring look’s set to shape the blueprint for Aston Martin for the coming few years. While new iterations of the Vantage and the Vanquish are in development, Reichman stresses that the DB11 represents such a new school of thinking for the company that, come the end of the decade, go into an Aston Martin showroom and the DB11 will be the only recognisable car in the line-up. Everything else will have, in some way or other, followed the super-modern design philosophy it embodies.

“The company has a clear set of goals and, what’s more, the money in the bank to make them happen,” says Reichman. “I’ve been lucky in that Aston Martin’s emphasis on making its cars beautiful means I’ve been like a kid in a sweetshop and as a designer, typically, I get what I want. But I think the company’s vision is what has kept me working here now for much longer than I expected. After the end of this decade I might have to retire – I’ll either be exhausted or I’ll have run out of ideas.” n

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“It’s like a fantastic haute couture dress on a model who looks perfect without it anyway.”

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FASH

HIGH LIFE

D E D I C AT E D FOLLOWER OF

ION Stefano Ricci was one of the first high-end tailors to break into the Asian market and now counts Russian oligarchs, Chinese billionaires and Indian steel magnates among his clients. Josh Sims finds out more about his focus on quality and customer service.

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here’s a point where menswear becomes too ostentatious,” admits Stefano Ricci, a man known to occasionally make belt buckles out of solid platinum, cuff-links encrusted with diamonds and trainers out of crocodile skin. “But the fact is that people successful through the new economy want to express through their clothing that they’re winners. And that can lead to ostentation.”

It’s not a look Ricci, who started designing menswear under his own name 45 years ago this year, espouses himself. With his Karl Marx hair and beard and his soft, elegantly-crumpled suit, his own style is more classically Florentine, a nod to his home town. And, indeed, for all that he may be the go-to dresser of Russian oligarchs, Chinese billionaires and Indian steel magnates – not to mention various heads of state – the bulk of his

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collections is focused around perfectly-finished tailoring and shirting that, seeking reassurance in their purchasing, chime with the tastes of the suddenly very rich.

Without the cultural import of Armani or the flash of Versace, the comparatively niche Ricci may be less well known and have fewer customers – but they’re customers that count. Take, for example, the businessman who last year was followed around the world by a Stefano Ricci tailor for six months, being shown fine fabrics and giving measurements without actually giving any commitment to buy anything. Then who, one day, announced that he was satisfied with the product and service and placed an order for 50 suits. At over US$10,000 a pop.

“It’s about building a relationship with your client,” Ricci suggests. “It’s about respecting them. So, we don’t do the usual marketing – people like this aren’t impressed by ads or celebrity testimonials any more. You won’t see our products in outlets. We don’t ever do sales.

We’ll even destroy products at the end of a season to protect the brand’s image.

“

“You won’t see our products in outlets. We don’t ever do sales. We even destroy products at the end of a season to protect the brand’s image.”

“The idea of luxury ended with 9/11,” he adds. “That’s when everything was suddenly ‘luxury’ and things became very confused.

What we sell now is emotion – a connection.

They trust us to only offer the very best. That means there’s something of an arms race going on and every season we have to push ourselves a little further, in the materials, in the finishing.

After all, our clients don’t actually need more suits, or more jeans, or more anything. And the brand alone could never justify the prices. You have to be able to feel it in the products.”

Ricci – whose sons, Nicolo and Filippo, also work for the family firm, having recently taken up senior positions as chief executive and creative director respectively, and with whom he shares a love of old cars and big game hunting – has had an uncanny ability to connect with his customer too. He used to be

a major player in the Middle East, then home to the world’s big luxury shoppers. Then, in 1991, and much to the bemusement of many in the luxury goods sector, Ricci opened a flagship shop in China, way ahead of the curve.

“This was when there were no clothes shops, when there was barely even lighting in the streets in China,” says Ricci. “OK, so in every family there’s someone who’s not right in the head. But I could sense that China was going to conquer the world. All the young people were running. And people moving fast is always a good sign.”

He has just launched a line for boys too: not children’s clothes with Stefano Ricci branding, but proper, serious clothes – at serious prices – scaled down to fit. Why? Because he predicts that men who have grown up enjoying clothes are looking for a way of sharing that interest

HIGH LIFE

with their sons. Stefano Ricci’s is, if it’s not already clear, a very male world, although Nicolo points out that, to say his father goes big game hunting, would be an exaggeration: “He spends most of the time on safari staring out across the valley and sketching his designs.”

These days they include designs for homewares too, and the interiors of yachts and shops – last year the company opened a shop in Mayfair, London, and this year comes one in Istanbul, so expect Turkey to be the next big luxury hotspot. They’re all part of the mix that makes Stefano Ricci’s a US$100m turnover business. Yet don’t expect the brand, as particular as it is, to stretch to hotels, for example, as both Armani and Versace’s have done, and as Stefano Ricci was asked to do. It declined. Yes, it has a small restaurant above a shop – that’s just to host those customers that spend US$100,000 a year or more down below.

And its kitchens are busy.

“But it’s one thing being consistent in clothing, or in the shop you sell it from, and maintaining that service at the level of something like a hotel,” says Ricci. “That’s very

hard to do. You can’t control it all. And quality is what we’re all about.

“If you trust any company – it could be one that makes pasta, anything – then you’re reassured by its consistency. That goes beyond the product. It means we can stretch a little, because if your customer likes what you do in one area, they’re prepared to give you a chance in another – if the quality and the price is right. Sure, some customers get really attached to a brand and want that designer label in all aspects of their life. But there are limits.”

Though not, it seems, too many, and especially for a company that has long gone its own way. Or, rather, perhaps just stuck to its guns, both literal and metaphoric. That has included making all its products in Italy – and, Ricci stresses, whether “made in Italy” still has the cachet it once did or not, that means really made in Italy, not abusing lax European Union regulations that allow the claim to be made without actually utilising any of the nation’s craft skills. It’s included refusing to diffuse or dumb down.

“The fact is that we haven’t always been

“

“Sure, some customers get really attached to a brand and want that designer label in all aspects of their life.

But there are limits.”

alone,” says Ricci. “One of the reasons for our success is that our competition – and there were several companies operating right at the top, quality-wise, without mentioning them by name – didn’t believe in the power of this niche. These other companies had their hands on the prize. But then they twisted themselves into fashion brands and lost their position.

They lost the quality and service that people would have got from them in the past. And when it’s gone, it’s gone.” n

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Tight but luxurious – at an affordable price Premier Inn is expanding its range of “hub” hotels that offer small but luxurious rooms right in the heart of London and Edinburgh. BQ contributing editor Steve Dyson tried out two of the venues in London.

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ou know what it’s like after a busy day working in London: you just want to walk into your room and fall into bed, knowing that it’s safe, clean and luxurious.

But imagine all that and a bill at the end that starts from as little as £69. Sounds mad, doesn’t it? But Premier Inn is making this possible via its expanding chain of “hub” hotels.

I began my exploration of this brand at the Hub by Premier Inn, Covent Garden where I was staying alone. Now I’m pretty tall and heavy, but I found this compact hotel an incredibly cosy stay.

Before now, I’d always dreaded capsule-style hotels, but some clever designer at Premier Inn

must have spent months making sure its hub was just right for all shapes and sizes.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s not nearly enough room to swing a cat. But the facilities are nifty. The entire bed base slides out for case, shoes and clothes; there’s a narrow but functional hanging space; a small but usable desk glides across the foot of the bed; and you never quite bang knees or head in the boxsized wet-room.

Not all rooms come with windows, although mine did. Nice for a view, but no way of opening it. It didn’t matter – the airconditioning was among the quietest and most effective I’ve had.

As for the noise from outside in the vibrant neighbourhood of Covent Garden… well, there wasn’t any. Totally sound-proofed for an exquisite night’s sleep in one of Premier Inn’s double-sized, super comfy mattresses, handcrafted by the award-winning bed-makers, Hypnos.

And oh, the pillows. Magnificently soft, sumptuous – the type you want to cuddle up to all morning.

But what about if you want to share one of these capsule-style hub hotel rooms? BQ decided to make sure it worked by sending me down to London again – this time with Mrs D to keep me company.

We stayed at the Hub by Premier Inn, Tower Bridge, and were impressed by how secure they were: electronic keys needed to enter an interior door downstairs, again to use the lift and once more for our room.

Then we experienced just how compact these rooms are as we constantly bumped into each other as we got ourselves ready to go out for dinner.

But once we returned to our room to sleep, we quickly got used to taking it in turns to get our night clothes on, before relaxing into another gorgeous night’s sleep on one of those snug Hypnos mattresses.

The only thing you have to remember is to draw straws on who sleeps next to the wall, as this then involves climbing over your partner if you want to go and grab a glass of water in the middle of the night. But that can be fun.

We also noticed the room’s control panel set into our headrest, which meant you could adjust the lighting and air conditioning without moving from your prone, sleeping position.

We even tried out the 40-inch TV and what seemed to be super-fast – and free – wifi. Very handy.

Yes, the Hub by Premier Inn is quite a tight fit for a couple, but it still works if you’re looking for style, location and comfort – at a price you can afford. n The Hub by Premier Inn, Covent Garden, is at 110 St Martins Lane, London WC2N 4BA. The Hub by Premier Inn, Tower Bridge, is at 28 Great Tower Street, London, EC3R 5AT. Rooms start at £69 on certain nights.

More hub hotels in London can also be found at: Spitalfields, Brick Lane; Goodge Street; Westminster, St James’s Park; King’s Cross; and Westminster Abbey.

In Edinburgh, hub hotels are on the Royal Mile and Rose Street.

To book, visit www.premierinn.com or call 0871 527 9222.

HIGH LIFE

Luxury package A new hotel brings a touch of the high life to Leeds’ Bond Court area, as Mike Hughes finds out.

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eeds should put on a big parade for Ken McCulloch. Previously known as the man who launched and developed the Malmaison brand, he is now very much the man from Dakota, and has brought the latest of his new chain of hotels to the reborn Bond Court area of the city, as the jewel in the crown of a five-year investment project from Leeds-based Evans Property Group.

The 95-bed, five star Dakota Deluxe Hotel needed to be something special to showcase the level of luxury and class this part of the city has been crying out for – and McCulloch has done it in style.

Sitting alongside Grade-A offices and

restaurants around the large new square, the hotel includes a Bar & Grill restaurant and Salon Privé cocktail bar with a first-floor terrace. The dark glass and low lighting immediately remove the noise and crowds that are only a few metres away as calm and polite desk staff smile you into your “out of office” setting.

The hotel offers the full package of luxury from bars and drinks to private meeting spaces and the finest food. Clearly, they and the other Dakotas in Glasgow and Edinburgh believe that guests should feel they can base their whole stay there rather than just check in and then go out on the town to find the best places for a night out.

The suite we were in was immaculate and very spacious – including a lounge, desk area with coffee machine, a large walk-in wardrobe and a beautiful bedroom overlooking the square and emphasising that the Dakota really is at the centre of things here in Leeds.

After relaxing courtesy of the free mini bar and complementary petit fours, we headed for the bar area, which spilled out on to the roofed terrace. Champagne seemed right to toast the hotel’s arrival, as we wandered around to take in the spacious areas inside that could be roped off for private groups, including the elegant champagne room and the smart boardroom

for impressing those clients who are known for being hard to impress.

Food that night was exceptional, served one floor down in the intimate yet expansive restaurant. Again the low lighting and large artworks on the wall made it feel relaxed and welcoming as we tried the scallops, lemon sole and rib-eye steak. The waiters were friendly and full of information and, yes, it was the sort of place you would put at the top of your list whether you were staying here or not.

Breakfast the following morning woke us both up nicely and I later put the staff to the test by asking where they would suggest a Leeds newcomer might spend a couple of hours before the next meeting or the resumption of a conference. They clearly had the city mapped and suggested a walking route that took us out as far as the new Victoria Gate development and then back round to the town hall.

It’s a welcome skill, particularly for inquisitive business leaders, to know your city and its attractions as well as you know your hotel – and these staff do.

Now about that parade... n For further information contact Dakota Deluxe Leeds at www.dakotahotels.co.uk

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One helles of a lager Drinks writer Peter Ranscombe argues that not all lagers are born equal and that the helles style of Munich has found a new spiritual home among the community of exciting craft brewers in the UK.

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s a real-ale drinker, it’s all too easy to dismiss lager as frothy horse pee, only fit for consumption on the hottest days of the year when even an amber or an India pale ale (IPA) feels just that wee bit too heavy. Yet not all lagers are born equal.

Since Gordon Brown introduced small brewers’ rates relief in the early noughties, the UK has seen an explosion in the number of micro-breweries springing up. Inspired by their hop-fuelled siblings in the United States, the tax break has allowed many young brewers to follow their dreams by opening their own businesses and creating the beers that they want to drink, instead of being limited by the mass-produced offerings from the bigger beer brands.

Lager, I would respectfully suggest, has been the unsung beneficiary of the micro-brewery revival. While most craft breweries will be able to offer drinkers an IPA, a best bitter and perhaps a stout, there are a decent number of brewers beavering away in the background to create innovative lagers too.

One of the styles that’s been at the forefront of those efforts is helles, which originated in Munich at the end of the 19th century as an alternative to pilsner from Bohemia. Helles lager is described as “bright”, “clear” or “light”, yet has a distinctive rounded or malty note that sets it apart from the more hop-focused pilsner and which should make it more appealing to real-ale drinkers.

And who better to create a helles lager on our shores than a German? Petra Wetzel – one of the first cover stars of BQ Scotland magazine – opened West Brewery in Glasgow in 2006 and brews all her beers in strict adherence with the “Reinheitsgebot”, the German purity law of 1516, leading to her business’s strapline: “Glaswegian heart. German head.”

Her flagship St Mungo lager has rich flavours

of caramel, spun sugar and a touch of toffee at its malty core, balanced by fresher notes of lemon rind and lemon zest. Look out too for her new Nix alcohol-free lager and its sister Nix wheat beer.

Innis & Gunn, the Edinburgh-based beer brand best known for ageing its ales in oak casks, launched a helles lager in 2013 to celebrate its tenth birthday. As well as going on to become a mainstay in bottles and cans, the company’s chain of pubs – or “beer kitchens” – also sells a fresh version of the lager on tap.

The Innis & Gunn lager has been one of my staples for a long time and always reminds me of Spain’s delicious Estrella Damm, with its pine, caramel and lemon aromas on the nose and well-balanced lemon and caramel notes on the palate. There’s a new kid in town that’s caught my attention too though and that’s the Paolozzi lager made by Edinburgh Beer Factory,

the family business set up by former Scottish & Newcastle chief executive John Dunsmore.

For me, Paolozzi is slightly lighter, with green apple, pear and peach notes balanced by subtler spun sugar flavours. It’s named after Edinburgh-born Eduardo Paolozzi, revered as the founding father of the pop art movement.

Helles isn’t all about Scotland though.

Venture to Cornwall and the St Austell Brewery’s Korev lager has enough attractive grapefruit and orange aromas to catch my attention, plus a lighter fizz and a bitter hoppy finish that sets it apart from the Scottish trio.

And no round-up of helles style lagers would be complete without a mention of Camden Hells, created by the Camden Town Brewery in London to fuse together elements of helles and pilsner. As you’d expect, it’s much fresher and lighter in body, with lemon and grapefruit flavours, along with a metallic pilsner tang. n

FROM VIETNAM TO JACK & SAM VIA TEESPORT Jack and Sam run the world from their Barker & Stonehouse dining table. It has seen dinner parties, heated debates, colour charts and even wedding plans.

time, money and reducing impact on the environment. That’s what we did for Barker & Stonehouse and that’s what we can do for you.

But before they decided on a June wedding, long before Sam spotted the table online, before it even arrived at the showroom; Teesport made sure their table got to where it needed to be.

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Serving the UK from the North East, Teesport brings your goods closer to home and closer to your customers, you877 +44 (0)saving 1642

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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

Full steam ahead!

Don’t miss the most inventive event of the year!

Our BQ National Entrepreneur Festival, powered

by Atom bank and featuring the emerging entrepreneur awards, is once again scouring the UK to uncover the country’s up-and-coming entrepreneurial stars, placing the spotlight on individuals making their mark in the business world.

Hundreds of entrepreneurs from across the land will be gathering in the heartland of the industrial revolution, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the birthplace of Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’ for the Festival at the Boiler Shop on 21 November 2017.

Expect the unexpected at this inventive and unique business event – it will be THE one you don’t forget.

Join us to celebrate entrepreneurship alongside likeminded peers from a variety of industry sectors, of differing size and scale, representing all age groups and experience, attending from all around the UK. The emerging entrepreneur awards which form 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 online today.

There will be no event quite like this anywhere else this year. From Glasgow to Guildford we want to celebrate entrepreneurship across the UK. 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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Scotland

North east

Yorkshire

North west

Midlands

London &

South

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d a r G r e v o all

Michaela Reaney spotted a gap in the market and developed a business to support both individuals and companies to make the most of graduate talent. She tells Paul Robertson how it is going nationwide from its base in the North East of England and now incorporates training and development at all levels.

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hile at school, Michaela Reaney formed a plan to one day start her own business – the only issue being, what would that be? She was encouraged by both family and her teachers at Teesside High School in Eaglescliffe to believe it was possible. So, when it came to the choice of higher education, she deliberately chose a path that would prepare her for the challenges ahead, then took early career decisions to support her ambition.

Now 31, Reaney is owner and managing director of Gradvert, a business in its fifth year, supporting organisations to design market-leading graduate schemes, recruit top-calibre candidates and develop industry-leading and accredited training programmes. Turnover will exceed £500,000 in 2017 with a growth trajectory expected to take it through the £1m barrier in 2019 thanks to recent expansion into the Midlands, with the North West of England next on the agenda.

We meet in Gradvert’s headquarters in Newcastle-

upon-Tyne’s Hoults Yard. Reaney talks passionately about the business, which now has seven full-time employees, two part-time and a small team of associate consultants delivering everything people-focused.

“Engaging with graduates at university level gives us the edge and gets us into companies that otherwise might have been reluctant to see us,” she says. “My aim is to ensure Gradvert is the best in market – the go-to provider for anything to do with people development.

“Our clients see us as an extension of their learning and development. We will always help people grow their own talent but then make sure we support them in all aspects of people development.

“We are small and agile, which means we can react quicker than some of the other agencies out there. People are so fundamental to the success of the business and we are passionate about what we do.

“When a client meets the team, they see that and want

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to be part of it rather than the traditional off-the-shelf, transactional approach. We go in, analyse the business needs and design something bespoke to them.”

Gradvert is the only provider of a full 360-degree approach to graduate attraction and development. It has been a steep learning curve but one Reaney was more than prepared for.

“I am lucky that I come from a family of hard-working women and entrepreneurial spirit,” she says. “Several of my family have their own businesses so I have seen the highs and lows and understood it wasn’t a glamorous lifestyle but could be very rewarding.

“I went to Northumbria University to study law because it was the done thing. I knew I didn’t want to practice law but I thought it would be a good foundation to launch a business, understanding the legal obligations. I did my dissertation on the Companies Act (2006).”

On graduating, Reaney travelled to South Africa, working for the Red Cross before securing a position on her return

with recruitment agency Nigel Wright, looking after IT contractors on the company’s international graduate programme.

“It was a brilliant grounding for me,” she says. “It felt like running your own business within the organisation.

I was soon making a lot of money for the company and commission so they progressed me quite quickly.

“Their approach to building long-term partnerships with clients helped me formulate the structure I have within Gradvert – it is a recurring revenue model that is built into a programme of activity for a client.”

Reaney’s next move came out of the blue, the result of a journey to London – a trip that was to put her on track to set up the business she had always dreamed of.

“I am one of those irritating people that speaks to everyone on a train and I have met some fascinating people over the years – it is how I got my next job,” she explains.

“We were just talking about what each other was doing and a few days later they approached me.”

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Management consultancy Blackswan had a contract with mining giant Rio Tinto to deliver its leadership programme and executive coaching. The conversation on the train saw Reaney appointed and effectively seconded to Rio Tinto for three-and-half years – covering the operations in London, Asia and North America.

“It was doing everything from selling in the leadership and development opportunities that existed and the executive programmes to project managing and making them work – managing the consultants and the client relationships,” she says. “It was a great experience, working in every region of the world, speaking to lots of interesting people and a great grounding with some fantastic mentors to help my personal development.”

It was at Blackswan that she met Lisa Bean, who had an idea about coaching graduates after they leave university and support them into employment. It was the lightbulb moment.

“I looked at how to scale it – we all know you leave uni with no money getting pressure from your parents to get a job, so then to go cap in hand to them for more money for coaching is unlikely,” Reaney says. “We flipped it and looked at how we could get employers and universities to pay for the service.”

The pair, along with another colleague, saved up to launch Gradvert. Reaney is now sole owner having bought out Bean – an amicable parting.

“I was very clear the direction I wanted to take the business in,” says Reaney. “It has never been a lifestyle business – had I wanted that I would have done something very different.

“I wanted to move down the development programme route, having seen the benefit of a clear holistic development plan at Rio Tinto for both apprentices and graduates, which was innovative and helped retain talent within the businesses – that was the model I wanted to replicate.

“In work, it was not always clear where the progression was for me and I felt people would have to retire or move on for me to get on.

It inspired me to develop a transparent, clear progression route with a lot of accountability on the graduate to work hard and meet their objectives, but be rewarded accordingly.”

Gradvert’s growing list of clients, from small businesses to FTSE 100 companies, includes Go Ahead Group, Sharps Bedrooms and Veolia.

“Business is all about people and long-term relationships,” she says.

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“You live and die by your reputation and it is important we are on top of it through our communication and relationships.”

“We tend to work best with organisations where there is an ageing workforce, considering succession planning, brands needing help to attract and retain talent in challenging and changing times, with a smaller human resources (HR) and learning and development function.

“We really get to know an organisation and the customer experience is so important. We are scaling the business rather than always focusing on bringing in new clients – it is the bit that keeps me awake at night. You live and die by your reputation and it is important we are on top of it through our communication and relationships.”

Gradvert is enjoying strong growth. An office in London provides space for meetings and training activities to service clients in the South East but opening in the Midlands and looking to launch next year into the North West is where Reaney sees the real opportunity.

“Those areas are similar to the North East in many ways,” she says. “There are a lot of manufacturing, distribution and logistics companies that fit our model. I think these

areas have a lot of growth potential, more than London, and are easier to service.”

Having previously secured investment from the JEREMIE (1) Fund, Gradvert’s intention is to raise equity finance and look to expand further to accelerate the growth of the business by bringing in the right people. However, Reaney has no intentions of handing over the reins.

“It is all about getting the right people to support me to develop the strategic direction of the business,” she says. “I want to get a board in place as, in my mind, we are still a start-up looking to scale, so we need that expertise to develop.

“I would rather own a smaller percentage of a bigger business than 100% of a small business.

We are ready to go to the next stage and we need more people to know about us.”

One area that Reaney believes provides opportunities for businesses to invest is the apprenticeship levy, though she worries about the images being used to promote the reforms.

“You search online for information and it’s back to the 80s – the images are still of a young man

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in a boiler suit fixing something mentored by a grey-haired white male: it’s not like that,” she argues.

“We position graduate programmes to be appealing across genders, ethnicity and age to make sure we attract the talent from all backgrounds, but there is a long way to go.

“We are very proud of the fact the projects we worked on with Go Ahead Group saw us achieve a 50-50 split of males and females across its graduate programme. The bus industry is not seen as glamorous, it’s challenging with shift work and they learn to drive the bus – we needed to reframe it as an exciting opportunity and raise the profile of the progression they can achieve.

“It is all about quality. The bit I love is when someone who starts a development programme, arms crossed, cynical and feeling they know it all, by the end of the training is saying, ‘It is changing my life’.

“Organisations can look at their people strategy and maximise the reforms – engineers can be upskilled or supported in other areas

around leadership and management to allow them to progress. Graduates can do apprenticeships to become managers and leaders – the reforms are no longer just about school leavers but the whole workforce, including existing employees.”

Reaney’s own experiences have shaped how she runs her business – she cites her Teesside High headteacher Hilary French and her staff as being a very positive influence. “I always felt they allowed me to achieve what I wanted to and to believe I was more than capable of starting my own business if that’s what I wanted to do,” she says.

“They were like that with everyone, very supportive in helping you think how it works in practice. Paul Victor, my manager at Blackswan, opened my eyes to opportunities. He was very supportive when I left and we are now doing a project with him.”

Away from the office, Reaney is renovating a 1970s bungalow with her partner, Russell – “It is very satisfying knocking down walls” – they travel a lot and she is part of a book club.

“It is an excuse to have a drink and catch up with friends but forces me to relax and read a book then talk about it,” she says. “Keeping fit is also important. You get to the point of burn out and not looking after yourself – if I am not on top form the business won’t be.”

So, what advice does she have for other budding entrepreneurs? “Don’t let other people’s lack of understanding of what you want to achieve put you off – if you think you have a good idea do your research and make sure you have a great case that you can comfortably and happily present to anyone as your business – the simpler the better. Make sure you have your house in order, you may be small but make sure you have the fundamentals in place which will allow you to scale up and grow.”

Reaney’s approach and vision mean Gradvert, which started as a bridge between university and employment, is now bringing together the worlds of education and business to deliver programmes and people with the skills to sustain the future workforce. n

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Tech know-how wins tax credits Jumpstart’s experts don’t just understand the tax rules, they understand the science, as Bryce Wilcock reports.

AN engineer at heart, Graham Beck landed his perfect job when he was offered the role as a technical analyst at research and development (R&D) tax credit specialist Jumpstart.

Having studied energy engineering at Edinburgh Napier University, Beck went on to complete a postgraduate diploma in engineering design before landing his first role as a graduate mechanical engineer.

That was 1998 and since then he has worked in a variety of roles from being a senior mechanical engineer to a project engineer, before landing a role as a project manager. It was at this point he decided to take a step up and become a technical analyst at Jumpstart.

Jumpstart is the UK’s leading R&D tax credit specialist providing a complete end-to-end service in claiming R&D tax relief on behalf of businesses. The government-backed scheme rewards companies across all sectors in the UK for investing in research and development.

“As a project manager, I was the bridge between the designers and the clients, so I had to be able to interact with managing directors and financial directors whilst being able to understand the technology and the language the designers were using.” he said.

“Having experience in all of those roles has certainly helped me, in terms of understanding the clients, so they don’t have to spend half a meeting explaining the technology to me.

“Obviously, I don’t claim to know clients’ businesses as well as they do, they are immersed in the business everyday, but I understand the principles of the technology they are seeking to advance and the constraints they are working within. I also have a better appreciation for the baseline knowledge across industry sectors. It certainly helps the clients and quickens the process.”

This understanding of their clients’ needs and being able to swiftly identify when and how they’re eligible to claim R&D tax credits is what makes Jumpstart stand out from its competitors. Each of the firm’s technical analysts have a key discipline which they specialise in. They offer more than just sound financial advice but also industry knowledge.

Graham’s work experience lies in mechanical engineering relating to water and wastewater treatment plant design and installation, rotational equipment maintenance and repair, as well as project engineering within manufacturing companies and design consultancies. He works with clients in general

Partner

engineering, materials science, precision engineering and related disciplines.

“I think initially a lot of other companies that were specialising in R&D tax credits, such as the big four accountancy firms, focused on employing accountants with little technical background or understanding,” he said.

“Jumpstart’s technical analysts for the most part are PhD level educated scientists who have industry experience. Those that don’t have PhDs have a wealth of post qualification industrial experience, which in this sector is just as important, as it provides invaluable insight in to industrial R&D processes and rationale.”

“We understand the language that technical people talk so it’s a lot easier and it’s a lot quicker for businesses to use us. The client doesn’t have to write their own report. They participate in a technical meeting that usually lasts a couple of hours then hand everything over to us and we’ll go away, process the data and produce a report for HMRC.” Gordon Brown introduced R&D tax relief on corporation tax in 2000 when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. The scheme was designed to encourage businesses to invest in R&D. So, you might be wondering, like I was, how the process works? “First of all, we explain to companies how HMRC defines research and development,” Beck explains.

“Generally they must be advancing processes or technology beyond the existing industry baseline. Although in some instances companies can qualify for R&D tax relief even when the issue they are addressing has been resolved by another party, as long as the solution (for whatever reason) has never been made publicly available. They may even qualify for R&D tax credits in advancing equipment which is seen as being “industry standard” if the technical issues in achieving the advance are not readily deducible.

“It isn’t as simple as that though, as an advance on its own isn’t eligible, it has to also have what HMRC calls ‘technological uncertainty.’ This means that it can’t be readily deducible and you must be using competent professionals, the answer isn’t immediately obvious.

“There has to be a period of experimentation, testing or going from a conceptual design, detailed design, building a prototype, testing that prototype, going back and changing the design etc, experimenting

“

“We understand the language that technical people talk so it’s a lot easier for businesses to use us.”

with different geometries and materials, that sort of thing.

“And it’s not just product design, it’s process as well. Any project where a company has to invest in advancing the underlying technology, where the solution isn’t readily deducible. That would constitute eligible R&D from HMRC’s perspective.”

It’s the firm’s commitment to helping companies innovate and being at the forefront of technological advances across the engineering sector, which makes it the perfect role for Beck. “I spend half the week out at client meetings and half the week in the office.

“If I’m out at a meeting, I’ll usually be sitting down with the technical and maybe the financial team of the company, talking about the scheme, their technologies and explaining how this could fit in with the scheme.

“The financial people go through the

costs, how much they’ve spent, what eligible costs could be claimed back through R&D tax credits and work out how they could benefit.

When I go back to our office I then work on the technical report which explains to HMRC how a company’s projects fits the criteria. I spend a lot of time writing the reports and spreadsheets to identify all of the eligible expenditures.

“For me going out and speaking to the companies and the technical engineers that get involved in the claim is fascinating. You get shown around the factories and see the state-of-the-art engineering and technology in action. That’s what interests me the most.”

But despite how beneficial R&D tax credits can be to businesses, it isn’t as easy as you would think to get companies to claim.

One of Jumpstart’s biggest challenges is making businesses aware of the scheme and

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xpect the EST RESULTS 86

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;

“

“This can make a huge difference to companies and free up valuable funds for reinvestment in new equipment, new staff or commercialisation of the results of their innovation.”

mise the risk of under or over-claiming and ing an HMRC enquiry; and

encouraging them toand try andvalue claim reliefof for yourtoclaim. get involved. mise the accuracy

their R&D. “Every day is different with each new “People’s conception of R&D as being company dealing in a different aspect of ng the best results, timeinafter something that is performed a lab is a time. huge technology and addressing new challenges. challenge for us,” Beck said. “If you go to That’s what makes the job so exciting and say, a precision engineering client, engineers enjoyable” he said. “Looking forward, the plan is ree R&Dgenuinely tax credit consultation seem to think that every day they’reandto assist more SMEs through the claim process problems soreturns they don’t tend to think of and help keep UK businesses innovating and s of thesolving potential you might their work as R&D. To them, they’re just doing improving their competitive edge.” , contact theirthe jobs. Jumpstart team: “I enjoy all aspects of working at Jumpstart; “You have to explain to them that HMRC the work, the challenges and the satisfaction isn’t just providing relief for the life sciences of knowing I am helping SMEs fund their R&D w.jumpstartuk.co.uk industry, it is available to businesses of all activities. Every week I’m meeting new people shapes and sizes. It’s basically a matter of from companies across the country. I come inghand@jumpstartuk.co.uk trying to enable them to embrace the scheme back to the office and I talk to the guys about and get on board and obviously, so long as how they’re getting on with their claims and 0 218 7226 they meet the eligibility criteria, any company what obstacles they’ve had to overcome, every potentially could be eligible to get some day is a school day, it’s great.” money back. It’s just a matter of getting over It’s not just businesses from the life sciences, that hurdle where they have scepticism about engineering and manufacturing sectors the scheme and explaining that it could apply which are eligible either, as Beck was keen to them.” to point out: “I specialise in engineering and Jumpstart and its expert team of technical manufacturing however there is a wide mix of analysts have helped their clients reclaim companies who come to Jumpstart. almost £100m in research and development tax “We have quite a few software technical relief since the company’s launch and it doesn’t analysts as we get a lot of software companies stop there. Beck and his colleagues are on a and projects. We also have food and drink mission to continue raising awareness of the clients, we get all kinds of businesses applying. scheme and encourage even more businesses Sometimes we have a few technical analysts

working on the same claim. For example, there could be a claim which includes software, machinery and manufacturing. If there is a crossover of skillsets, we could send two or three analysts out to see the client.

“There are also a lot of small companies where directors forego their salaries to support the company’s investment in R&D. We have helped some of these businesses realise benefit on that R&D investment. This can make a huge difference to companies and free up valuable funds for reinvestment in new equipment, new staff or commercialisation of the results of their innovation.

“If you’re a business of any size which has recently invested in or is about to invest in innovative work on new products and process, or improving existing products, then get in touch with Jumpstart. We can let you know if you’re eligible and help you push forward. It’s worth a chat!” n

Jumpstart your R&D tax credit claims

Web: www.jumpstartuk.co.uk Email: helpinghand@jumpstartuk.co.uk Tel: 0370 2187226

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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Bo tle Berry Bros & Rudd is Britain’s oldest wine and spirits merchant, tracing its roots back to 1698 and holding royal warrants from the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Chief executive Dan Jago tells Peter Ranscombe how he’s shaping the £170m company for its fourth century in business.

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isiting the offices of Berry Bros & Rudd (BBR) ticks all the boxes that would be expected of a wine merchant that’s been trading from the same illustrious London address at 3 St James’s Street since 1698: the dark wood of the fixtures and fittings; the glass cabinet beneath the receptionist’s desk displaying famous bottles; and the narrow winding staircases leading up to a plush sitting room, complete with ornate fireplace and more prized labels.

That’s where the old-world feeling ends though. Stepping through other doorways reveals a whole other side to the drinks business.

Beneath No 3 – as the head office is affectionately known by its staff – three 18th century cellars, named “Napoleon”, “Pickering” and “Sussex”, have been refitted to include modern lighting and glass and blond wood staircases, while still maintaining their exposedbrick charm. Around the corner, the newlyopened shop at 63 Pall Mall could be a case study in modern retailing, with bottles priced “from £10 to £10,000” arranged in clear and user-friendly displays.

Opening the shop has triggered a major refurbishment of the existing premises at No 3, returning it to its previous use as a place where the company’s clients can meet their wine buyers and discuss bottles for their cellars.

Judging by the craftsmanship being exhibited

by the construction team on site, the new facility will be far from old fashioned.

And “old fashioned” is a phrase that certainly doesn’t apply to BBR chief executive Dan Jago either. Striding into the firm’s sitting room in an open-necked shirt and smart dark suit, he’s bursting with energy and enthusiasm for the role he took up in October 2015, telling stories of his trip earlier in the week to Burgundy in France with wine buyer Jasper Morris, one of seven masters of wine employed by the business, and of his forthcoming weekend in Portugal.

When he joined the company, he described his post as “perhaps the ultimate job” in wine.

Nearly two years later, has it lived up to his expectations?

“It’s exceeded them – and I’m not just saying that because I’m sitting here,” laughs Jago, 56.

“There was a hell of a lot more to do than I had expected once I understood the challenges the business had faced over the previous few years and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

“But I also knew the opportunities would be enormous. Not just scale, but I knew this was a business that externally was an adored brand, both in the trade and with customers, but internally it was a little bit rusty.”

The family-owned business had posted a loss in each of the four years prior to Jago joining the company. Accounts for the year to 31 March

2016 saw the firm’s retail arm back in the black, with the parent group stemming its deficit to £600,000 from £6.1m in the previous 12 months.

“We broke even in my first six months – that was about stopping the rot and doing sensible things,” he says. “That provided us with a sense that we could make progress and sort things out.

“The first full year I had here was about moving people into a more proactive culture – let’s go and talk to customers and approach them rather than wait for them to come to us.

Let’s show them what we have and how proud we are of it. That worked very well.

“We’ve created the cash we need from the business to help clear up legacy challenges, which is great, rather than tapping the shareholders for investment. That’s what profit is for – to reward the owners and to allow you to do the things you want to do – ‘free’ cash flow or profitability is there to allow you to do the things you want to do, be they infrastructure, development plans, acquisitions or to have the ability to say ‘That wasn’t such a good idea, let’s write that down’, which we’ve done a lot of in the past year and which was a good thing to do.”

Jago’s strategy to turn around the performance of the business included bringing together the five disparate parts of the company – fine wines, spirits, international,

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“If I can be 92 and still involved in a business that stimulates my brain then I’ll have it all, thanks very much.”

retail and events – so that they work more closely together. “Each was very separate and had their own management, finance and marketing functions – it was surprising how few people knew other people in the business,” he remembers.

Restructuring involved some jobs losses, but the company’s total headcount has risen from around 315 when Jago joined to about 360 now, defying expectations in some quarters that the new boss would need to trim the wage bill.

Jago’s desire to have a single computer system for the whole business has meant many of the jobs were created in information technology (IT).

“When I got here, it was very clear there were a number of infrastructure challenges,” he says. “There was virtually no IT in the business and the computers it did have were still operating on green screens.

“Almost every part of the business had a different system. Somewhere in the bowels of the building there must have been a boiler room supplying the steam to keep the computers running,” Jago jokes.

As well as restructuring the business’

operations, Jago tackled corporate governance – one of the major issues facing so many family-owned companies. Along with deputy chair Lizzie Rudd and creative director Geordie Willis, an eighth-generation member of the Berry family, he went on the “families in business” course at Harvard Business School in the United States, which he describes as “brilliant” and “helped us to understand there were other ways of doing things other than pure executive management”.

BBR now has a main board – made up of executive, non-executive and family directors – as well as an executive board and a family board, helping to draw the distinctions between the family setting the vision for the business and then the executive team implementing that strategy.

The new shop at 63 Pall Mall is the latest step in Jago’s plans. And it’s certainly turning heads – in the week it opened, nearby winefocused private members’ club 67 Pall Mall tweeted: “Hard to call @berrybrosrudd our ‘new’ neighbour as they have been here for 319 years, but check out their beautiful new shop on Pall Mall.”

He’s also clearly proud of the firm’s events business, which hosts 1,000 lunches, dinners and other soirees in its cellars, from corporate hospitality through to public events with celebrities such as the hosts of ITV’s The Wine Shop, Amelia Singer and Joe Fattorini. “It’s a really important part of what we do and it meant 24,000 people last year got to see a bit of BBR,” he nods.

Looking at Jago’s pedigree, it’s easy to think he was born to enter the drinks industry. His father, Tom, alongside long-time collaborator James Espey, launched brands including Baileys Irish cream liqueur, Johnnie Walker Blue Label blended Scotch whisky and Le Piat d’Or wines.

Last year, Tom and Espey sold their latest venture, The Last Drop Distillers, to New Orleans-based spirits company Sazerac. Jago’s sister, Rebecca, and Espey’s daughter, Beanie, continue to work with the business.

“If I can be 92 and still involved in a business that stimulates my brain then I’ll have it all, thanks very much,” laughs Jago. “That’s typical of my dad – he takes something that everybody thinks has already been done and then does it again in a slightly different and better way.

“What they’ve done isn’t rocket science, it’s something other people have done before, finding tiny quantities of very rare and old spirits and then bringing them to the market.

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But they did it in such a beautiful and precise way.”

Yet, despite the creation of the family drinks dynasty, Jago left school with a completely different career in mind. After his Cornish sea-loving father had taken him to open days in Portsmouth as a child, Jago joined the Royal Navy in 1979 and spent the next nine years in the senior service.

“I was going to make it a career, but I went short-sighted and at the time that was an issue because you couldn’t be short-sighted and be an officer at sea,” he recalls. “I left the navy after a year in Hong Kong and came back to London and thought, what am I going to do now?

“I wandered around for a week and met four or five chairmen of companies who I’d been introduced to, all of whom said, ‘You’re completely unsuited for this particular career’.”

That’s when wine came into the story.

Jago had delivered bottles for Andre Simon Wines while he was still at school and so he approached the company’s new owner, Laytons, looking for a job. It didn’t need any delivery drivers but instead offered him a trial as a salesman.

“In a slightly naïve way, I asked what a salesman did and they said all I needed was an ego and a pair of shoes,” Jago chuckles. “I had both of those.”

After two years with Laytons, Jago was poached by wine merchant Bibendum, rising over the course of 19 years through the ranks from the sales team to running its buying and marketing operations before spending six years as joint managing director. It was the role that put him on the map in the wine trade.

“I learned an enormous amount about a fastgrowing business, which had no clear plan of what it wanted to be, other than it wanted to remain independent and organic in its growth,” he says. “We were very ambitious – when I joined, I was the eleventh person to work for the company and we were turning over £3m, when I left, it was employing 125 people and turning over £130m.”

Tesco was one of Bibendum’s biggest clients, and so when Jago received a call summoning him to the supermarket giant’s head office, he thought he was in trouble. Instead, Britain’s

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biggest grocer offered him a job as its category director for beer, wine and spirits.

“It was completely and totally out-of-theblue,” he confesses. “On one hand, it was an enormous compliment, but on the other hand it created a huge stir in my mind about what I wanted to do.

“When I sat down in the cold light of home, I asked, ‘Have I taken Bibendum as far as I can?’ and the answer was ‘No’ because there’s always room for growth, there’s always room to do more, but it’ll be more of what we’ve already done, it won’t be anything different. If I turn down the biggest buying job in the world for alcohol, I’d always have wondered whether I could have done it.

“The reason I took the job was that I felt it was time to challenge myself and do something I wasn’t sure I could do, something completely alien. It was nothing to do with it being Tesco.

“This was a job in which there were a lot of preconceptions about how it should be done and they wouldn’t have been asking me to join them if they wanted it done in the same way it had always been done. That was made very clear to me – Richard Brasher, who was the commercial sales and marketing director at Tesco at the time, and Terry Leahy said that they didn’t want me to do what everybody else does, they wanted me to be an even better version of what I’d become renowned for and bring that to Tesco.

“It was terrific and was absolutely the right decision for me at the time. And, to be fair, I think Bibendum had got to the stage where two managing directors was probably one too many,” he jokes.

“It was definitely different to start with, but what it did bring home really quickly was that the basic principles of running a business are exactly the same, no matter what business you’re in. Talk to people, find out what makes them tick and what they want, challenge them to do more than they can do on their own, help them, and be really clear about where you want to go, and if you do all that then a business is a business, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Tesco or BBR or a small independent merchant – the principles are all the same.

“In a slightly naïve way, I asked what a salesman did and they said all I needed was an ego and a pair of shoes. I had both of those.”

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“I’ve always had a core principle not to worry about things you can’t affect. If you can’t change something then don’t worry about it.”

“It’s a cliché but you are only as good as the people you work with. No one is brilliant on their own. They’re only good if they’re working with other people.”

October 2014 marked a turning point in Jago’s time at Tesco. He was asked to step aside while the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) carried out an investigation into allegations that the supermarket had overstated its profits by £326m, while eight other directors were suspended.

“All of us who were involved at the time were told that we needed to go home, there is an investigation, and we’ll contact you,” he explains. “That was on a Monday afternoon and I went home. A week later they started telling me what was going on.

“It became quite clear quite quickly that I had got mixed up in a corporate issue and it wasn’t me, it was the company, that had got mixed up in it. I think we all realised quite quickly that we had to go through the process but we all knew where it would end up.

“I’ve always been quite sanguine about things. It never crossed my mind for a minute that it wouldn’t end up as it did – I realised it wasn’t necessary and that I would go back.

And I did and I have to say Tesco behaved impeccably throughout – it was supportive, it was professional.

“Once they’d been through the process, they were very clear that they wanted me back. I went back, but by then someone else had been doing the job I had been doing for three or four months and the momentum had slowed down a bit in the business and the business was reinventing itself.

“It’s all about how you deal with it yourself.

I’ve always had a core principle not to worry about things you can’t affect. If you can’t change something then don’t worry about it, move on to things you can fix or change.

“It was very clear from day one that this wasn’t anything to do with anything that I’d done, it was just a thing that had happened.

I couldn’t change it, I couldn’t affect it, so therefore I just had to get on with it. So, I did – I had three-and-a-half months off and went back again afterwards.”

In March, Tesco agreed to pay a £129m fine and £85m compensation to shareholders to settle the SFO probe. Former UK managing director Chris Bush, former UK finance director Carl Rogberg and former food commercial

director John Scouler are due to go on trial at Southwark Crown Court in September.

While Jago speaks candidly about the episode, it’s clear that the incident cast a shadow over an important part of his career. He adds: “It wasn’t a question of bouncing back, but when I went back it made me ask ‘Is this the same Tesco that it was when I left?’ and the answer was ‘No, it wasn’t’ and ‘Do I want to be part of this Tesco?’ – I wouldn’t have minded being part of the new Tesco and would have been quite happy, I think [chief executive] Dave Lewis is a terrific operator, I liked the team that was now in charge of Tesco and I had sat on boards with them for some time, like Jason Tarry, who is still a good mate, but I said, ‘You know what, it’s probably time to have a think’.

“Inevitably, almost exactly the same as leaving Bibendum and going to Tesco, the phone rang and someone said ‘Berry Bros & Rudd’ and I said ‘What?’ and they asked if I wanted to have a chat. The minute I put the phone down, I thought ‘I want that job’.

I actually knew very little about the inner workings of the business, although obviously I knew a lot about its history and reputation.”

Now, as custodian of a 319-year-old company, it’s Jago’s job to steer a course through Brexit, foreign currency fluctuations and any other challenges looming on the horizon. It looks like the former navigation officer is up for the challenge. n

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XLR lands executive jet centre A Midlands-based aviation business has expanded its operations into Birmingham Airport. BQ takes a detailed look at the new XLR Executive Jet Centre.

A new thirst for executive jet travel across the UK is driving the fast growth of XLR. The company is part of the aviation division at the giant Rigby Group, which is based in Stratford-on-Avon.

XLR, which was already running two executive jet centres at Exeter and Coventry, has now purchased the corporate aviation facilities of

Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group, based at Birmingham Airport.

Midland entrepreneur Sir Peter Rigby, the founder and chairman of the Rigby Group, said XLR was now “poised for significant growth” as it prepared to enter a range of new markets from Birmingham – one of the UK’s busiest executive flight destinations.

Sir Peter said: “This acquisition underlines the company’s determination to fuel rapid growth through a blend of acquisition and organic expansion, and represents a significant milestone in that strategy.

“The establishment of a new XLR Jet Centre at Birmingham Airport marks a huge step forward in our plans for the company, placing its operations at the heart of one of the UK’s busiest and most accessible airports.

“This opens up significant opportunities not only in domestic executive travel, but also in servicing the growing market across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

“Following our most recent investments in Exeter and Coventry, the Birmingham acquisition leaves us superbly positioned to execute our strategy of leveraging the group’s expertise and commitment to excellence, to create a new major player in the corporate aviation market.”

Rigby Group plc began as a technology company and has evolved over the last four decades into a £1.79bn British success story, with more than £960m in gross assets and 7,500 employees.

As well as XLR, Rigby’s aviation division includes British International Helicopters and Capital Air Ambulance, while it also owns and operates Norwich Airport, Exeter Airport and Coventry Airport.

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“This latest acquisition will enable a significant step up in terms of the both the markets we are able to compete in and our operational scale.”

XLR’s purchase from Marshall has seen it take possession of a custom-built executive jet facility at Birmingham Airport, placing the company at the heart of a round-the-clock operation with multiple connecting customer flights linking New York, Delhi, UAE, and Qatar.

It follows what XLR has described as “solid growth” over the past year with the market for corporate aircraft remaining strong.

Chris Beer, XLR’s director of corporate aviation, said the company’s Coventry centre has already built a growing reputation as a major alternative to London for transiting private flights. Meanwhile, he said Exeter’s access to the South West had seen the volume of private jets arriving grow steadily, particularly during the field sports season.

He added: “XLR already services an extensive client list of brokers and operators, individual clients and aircraft owners through its facilities.

“The addition of Birmingham’s 27,000sq ft, heat-controlled hangar, multiple large parking ramps, and a 3,052m runway capable of taking the giant A380, has boosted our capacity at a stroke.

“While we have already built an excellent reputation within the industry based on an extremely customer-centric focus, this latest acquisition will enable a significant step up in terms of both the markets we are able to compete in and our operational scale.”

XLR’s new premises at Birmingham Airport include an impressive, glass-fronted 44,000sq ft executive suite and business aviation centre.

This is said to provide VIP passengers and private aircraft owners with “a seamless, discreet and efficient transit” through the airport, with lounges, dedicated crew facilities, flight planning rooms, in-facility security screening, a prayer room and a conference/training room.

The centre has direct access to the tarmac and a view over the airport. The XLR terminal offers complimentary beverages and snacks, newspapers and magazines, a self-service bar, wi-fi and digital television. Experienced staff are on hand to provide weather briefings and slot information, ground handling arrangements, cleaning, catering, refuelling, baggage and aircraft handling.

Chris Beer added: “With a prestigious base now fully operational at Birmingham and ready to fly, XLR is ideally positioned to capitalise on Rigby Group’s accelerating expertise across the aviation sector to create a new force in executive jet travel.” n XLR Birmingham is based at The Business Aviation Centre, Terminal Road, Birmingham Airport, B26 3QN. For more details contact Sophie Downes, XLR corporate aviation manager, on 0121 663 1450, emailjet.centre@xlrbirmingham.com or visit www.xlrjetcentres.com

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WAKE UP AND SMELL THE (PRICE OF)

COFFEE

Union Hand-Roasted Coffee is an East London importer, roaster and supplier of high-quality coffee that insists on paying farmers way above Fairtrade prices. Steve Dyson visits Jeremy Torz and Steven Macatonia’s £11m business.

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“ It was so dysfunctional, and we knew there and then that we had to do something about it.”

S

cientist Steven Macatonia quickly became an ex-scientist after falling in love with coffee.

But after launching a coffee roasting and supply business, he soon fell out with the coffee industry itself. And so he and Jeremy Torz – his business and life partner – decided to do something different to shape its future.

It was during a trade trip to Guatemala

in 2000 that the pair witnessed the harsh economies of the commodities market.

“The price of coffee had plummeted,” recalls Macatonia, “and we saw how this affected farmers’ conditions in Latin America, and it opened our eyes to the impact of commodity prices.

“We saw and spoke to farmers for whom it

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suddenly became unviable to produce coffee.

They were pulling out of coffee completely and planting other crops. We saw abandoned farms. Completely mothballed. Plantations covered in weeds and grown over. The famers simply couldn’t afford to plant coffee.

“And this didn’t only hit the farmers, but all the people like pickers – and their families – whose livelihoods depended on coffee farms.

This led to destabilisation, civil unrest, violence, poverty and families literally starving. What we saw in Guatemala was profound, and it seemed insane to us.

“Here was a product that consumers wanted to drink, with the coffee market in the western world really developing. Consumption was sky-high but producers were suffering in a way they’d never suffered before. It was so dysfunctional, and we knew there and then that we had to do something about it.”

What they did sounds simple, but it flies in the face of how the existing commodities market works: they asked coffee farmers how much it would cost to produce the very best coffee. And they paid it. But we’re rushing ahead, so let’s introduce the coffee entrepreneurs properly.

Macatonia, aged 57, was born in East London, and was originally a research immunologist, helping to fight infectious diseases. Torz,

54, was born in Nottingham, and became an optician. They met through friends and have been together for nearly 30 years.

Science had consumed their lives, and so Macatonia took a sabbatical to California for six months in the early 1990s, eventually spending four years there in scientific jobs. Torz joined him, working as an optician in California.

“Although I was a scientist,” says Macatonia, “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in it, and Jeremy and I were always interested in food and drink. California was leading in terms of fresh produce and styles of cooking, and we started to think: ‘What can we do?’ We considered a restaurant, a café and started to look into what was important. We decided it was all about the quality of food.

“I took a course as a chocolatier and patisseriere, and started playing around with café idea. But it was when I walked into a roastery café in north California that coffee hit me. Tumbling out of the roaster was the freshest, toastiest coffee – and I was fascinated. Coffee got us both excited.”

At the time, coffee qualities back in England were poor, and Macatonia and Torz saw a business opportunity. They used their remaining time in the US getting a coffee education – Macatonia spending the weekends roasting, Torz getting a job as a barista in a

café – and started to put their business plan together.

“We wanted to be pioneers in the UK,” says Macatonia, “to be the first at the gates.” They came back to England in 1994 and invested in an old-fashioned coffee roasting machine, setting it up in a small wooden workshop at home in Essex.

“We aimed high. We knew we had to get a reputation. We managed to talk our way into top outlets: Raymond Blanc, The Ivy restaurant, Le Caprice, Harvey Nichols, and top society restaurants at the time. Terence Conran did tastings, and the flavour quality was definitely above the norm, but it was hand-to-mouth stuff, importing just a few sacks of coffee at a time.”

Soon after, the pair came across what was then the fledgling Seattle Coffee Company, set up by an American couple in Covent Garden.

They had a good business background but knew little about coffee, and so Torz and Macatonia Ltd – the company’s name at that stage – became Seattle’s supplier and barista trainer.

“We were quite naïve in terms of a commercial awareness,” remembers Macatonia.

“Six months later they opened their second shop, and then it was explosive growth. Two years later there were 30 shops. It was exciting

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being part of that as a supplier, but we had to upscale, buying a larger roaster and premises.

To fund that our business merged with the Seattle Coffee Company – and they were the majority shareholders.”

This was in 1998, and 12 months later the coffee industry took off in the UK and Starbucks pounced and swallowed the Seattle Coffee Company. “It blew our minds,” says Macatonia. “We were part of that merger and were suddenly roasting coffee for Starbucks!”

By the year 2000, the pair discovered that being part of a big corporation “wasn’t for us” and decided to “take control of our own destiny” and leave. That was when they started to travel to understand the coffee supply market – and were suddenly confronted by how the price drop had hit farmers in Guatemala.

There must, they thought, be a more sustainable way of producing coffee, and they decided to say “to hell with the commodity market”. Instead, they entered into direct trade with farmers and negotiated premium prices for quality coffee.

“It’s not just the price,” says Macatonia. “A lot more detail has gone into it since then in terms of providing support for farmers to help them become viable producers. Ultimately we work with farmers with the capability to farm

“

“It blew our minds. We were part of that merger and were suddenly roasting coffee for Starbucks!”

high-quality coffee in high-altitude regions.

The genetic bean stock’s got to be right to taste good, so it’s about showing them how high quality works, improving their farming techniques to earn that premium for quality.”

And so Union Hand-Roasted Coffee was born, the “Union” name reflecting the ethical relationship with the farmers. Macatonia and Torz used a six-figure sum of money they’d been paid by the Starbucks takeover to launch the company in Newham, East London, buying all the necessary roasting and packing machines.

With just one employee, the partners saw revenues of some £200,000 in 2001. Today, the company employs 75 staff, and revenues in 2016 were £11.5m. It supplies hundreds of independent cafes and a string of high-profile names – from the famed Duck & Waffle restaurant in London to Waitrose supermarket, and from the Giraffe restaurants chain to The Cornish Bakery company.

The company only insists on two principles: first, it only roasts and supplies the very best coffee – from the top 2% of beans available;

second, it pays all its farmer-producers an affordable rate to ensure they can grow great coffee. Not the Fairtrade rate, which is the industry’s equivalent of a minimum wage. But at least 25% above that rate – and sometimes several times that rate.

“Fairtrade has provided a safety net but only for commodity-grade coffee,” explains Macatonia. “We want high-quality specialist coffee that tastes great – delicious – so that the customer comes back to buy more. We’re trying to not give them a choice of ethics over quality. Union is about fusing those two elements together.

“In that way we’ve evolved the business much more to the needs of the producer as well as the consumer. It’s not just a tick-box of ethics but is about how we engage with each of the 40-plus producers we deal with. What’s going to make them as an individual successful in the long-term? Trust, confidence and a depth of understanding allows us to maintain quality.”

Once Union had decided on this approach, the rest sounds simple – but that was far from

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the case. Working with producers meant facing huge hurdles, as certain restrictive markets resisted direct trade.

“National coffee boards did not want to give farmers autonomy,” recalls Macatonia. “We had to fight and lobby for export licences for farmers we wanted to work with. And at times, we were aware that we could be putting lives at risk.

“In places like Guatemala we had reasonable conversations. But in some places, like Kenya, we weren’t successful. We were unable to achieve objectives and as a result we’ve not sourced from Kenya in eight years. We couldn’t get the finance transferred to the farmers that we were paying. We had to dig deeper and received threats we weren’t prepared to take.”

Union was successful in many more cases, and now works directly with coffee farmers in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Burundi and Northern Sumatra.

This ethical approach has been recognised, with Union recently winning the Queen’s award for sustainable development. In a serious tone, Macatonia says: “For us, the business is about understanding the importance of the living conditions of producers, and realising the responsibility of working with farmers in the right way.”

But he gets really excited when he’s talking about the coffee itself. There’s what he calls a “sensory objective” method of evaluating coffee quality, definitively measured on an international scale set by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

The scale is out of 100, with a score of 80-plus equating to speciality coffee. All Union’s coffees are scored 84 and above, and Macatonia says coffee of that calibre is “significantly better” than high street chains, which have an average score of 75.

He says: “The wide range of coffee flavours engages all the senses, and makes enjoying a cup a delightful, intensive sensory experience.

It costs more because of the care and attention needed, resulting in exquisite flavours that the loyal customer enjoys, appreciating and recognising why it’s different.”

Macatonia describes how this experience begins with roasting: “First you engorge the aroma, but you also listen to how it’s roasting, the sound and rhythm of the beans in the drum and how that changes during the roast.

Time and temperature affects the flavours of the coffee. It’s something you have to focus on and concentrate to roast correctly.”

To get the coffee just right, Macatonia believes in having the right people working for Union. People like Pascale Schuit, who has a master’s degree in sustainable development and now lives in Latin America to liaise with farmers on producing the best coffee.

“She’s our eyes and ears on the ground,” Macatonia says. “She has a huge say in what coffee we buy, how much and who from – shaping the direction of our coffee sourcing. We rely on her awareness of what producers are doing that needs rewarding to produce more coffee, giving them positive reinforcement that if they are making extra special efforts we’ll buy more volume.”

Aside from coffee, Union has also launched its “Campus”, an educational establishment to train people in a range of coffee skills: sensory, tasting, roasting, consistency – all aimed at refining high-quality flavours.

“Many cafes want to roast their own beans and they can use our facilities,” says

Macatonia. “The Speciality Coffee Association has established training criteria for accredited courses and we have accredited trainers and certifications from foundation to professional levels. It’s all about quality, and sharing those skills with young people.

“We work with everyone from university graduates to youngsters with no formal education. They both do good jobs as baristas.

But once they understand how they can make coffee taste good, they want to understand more. They have open, enquiring minds about why coffee tastes the way it does. We help them to learn and they can then get solid educations, skills, careers and futures in coffee.”

And it’s on the theme of futures that I leave Macatonia: “We want to continue growing our business. But we also want to remain excited about coffee, and to make Union more vibrant and innovative. Yes, we want to continue to grow our customer base.

“But more than anything, we want to work with more producers, seeing the positive impact that ethical but quality coffee can have on farmers and their families.” n

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From the

fields

dreams of

Paul and Paula Rastrick forged their health and fitness careers at Aston Villa, and have now launched their own business. Jon Griffin explores the world of Physiyolates.

T

he words flow like a torrent from the mouth of Paula Rastrick – a self-confessed product of a dysfunctional family, and a woman who’s viewed suicide, alcoholism and depression from the closest of quarters.

“We are disconnected from our physical and mental health,” says Paula. “We all lead such busy lives, we are all wired up, our senses are overloaded, and we have too much information coming into our brains. People are selling to you on the TV, people are selling to you every time they speak to you, and we are sold to on the phone.

“We are too busy trying to look great – I know loads of people who look great, but internally they are crumbling. You may get the Range Rover and think everything is fine, but it is not because everybody is so stressed. We are out of touch with our emotional intelligence.”

Paula, now 45, should know the meaning of stress and its impact on the self. She lost both her parents to motor neurone disease and cancer before they had reached 60, her grandparents forged a suicide pact from which

her grandfather died, and she herself later suffered from post-natal depression.

“I come from a dysfunctional background,” reflects Paula. “My mum had mental health issues. My dad [former semi-professional footballer Jimmy Searle] was an alcoholic.

They died over a short period of time. My grandfather was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and he had a suicide pact with my grandmother because they didn’t want to go through life without each other. They took a combination of tablets – my grandad died but she survived.

“After I had my baby, I suffered from postnatal depression. I have had a lot of trauma in my life. I have always been interested in the mind, how to overcome adversity, how to develop inner strength.”

Today, Paula can look back on her troubled past and her history of family trauma from a new, hard-earned, perspective. Together with physiotherapist husband Paul, she is the driving force behind Physiyolates, an “independent lifestyle clinic with a holistic approach to

health, well-being and performance”.

The couple, who worked together for years in the high-profile world of football at Aston Villa, are offering a combination of physiotherapy and rehabilitation services alongside the benefits of yoga and Pilates from their smart new offices in the tranquil surroundings of Knowle, near Solihull.

The Rastricks have pumped between £50,000 and £80,000 into the new business, launched in January at a VIP party attended by a host of Villa stars, including Gabby Agbonlahor, Micah Richards, Jack Grealish and others. And the leap of faith appears to be paying off, with around 200 customers a week through the doors and numbers steadily rising.

In a world where technology-driven connections are seemingly a fact of life all day long, seven days a week for millions of people, Paula stresses the key to Physiyolates is a far more personal connection between the individual’s mind and body.

“It is all about understanding more about the mind,” she says. “It is about a deep

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“We all lead such busy lives, we are all wired up, our senses are overloaded.”

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understanding of yourself, it is a very deep personal journey. It’s about how you see the world from the inside rather than the outside – in this world you can get caught in a very materialistic trap.”

Aptly enough, the couple, who have been married for 14 years and have a 12-year-old son Joseph, originally met on a personal development course in London. Paul was working at Villa Park as a physio at the time; the couple moved in together within six weeks and were married within 10 months.

The frequently volatile world of football helped cement the couple’s relationship, with Paula subsequently joining her physio husband at Villa Park as the football club’s new yoga sports performance coach and Pilates specialist.

“There was almost nobody doing yoga

in football,” she remembers. “Apart from Manchester United, it was unheard of. I’d been looking at how it could be used in the world of sport.

“I started off with one session with some 14-year-olds. Within a couple of months it had grown and grown and the first team started doing it, people like Emile Heskey, Stiliyan Petrov, Darren Bent – it turned into a full-time role.

“I gained the players’ respect over the years and grew the business. I did three years at the Open University doing sports psychology and completed a degree.

“You have to be pretty thick-skinned as a woman in football. There was some resistance, people who didn’t like it. But I can handle banter, I am not precious. The players do not

have egos, they are often very nice, it’s the people who run football who have the egos.

“I am really into the mind-body connection and it was all about helping players. I was at Villa for seven and a half years and created a unique coaching model that was picked up by the Football Association. I lived and breathed that football club, our whole family life was based around Villa.”

The West Midlands’ best known football club had also been the centre of husband Paul’s working life for years, after he joined the late Graham Taylor’s outfit as a physio in 2002.

Watford-born and a self-confessed late starter in the world of employment, Paul had worked in retail for John Lewis and for a friend’s insulation fitting firm in the South-East before finding his vocation as a physiotherapist.

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“I wanted to get a proper job, to do something that took my interest,” he says. “I was always interested in sport, mainly football and cricket.”

A talented sportsman himself, Paul, now 51, had trials at Watford as a schoolboy in the late 1970s and later played for Cambridge United’s youth team in the early 1980s.

He recalls: “I had left school at 17 and was average academically. I had to go away and do an access to higher education course in Watford, then I did a physio degree at Brunel University in Isleworth.

“During the final year I did a placement at Millwall. Tom Walley was youth team coach at Millwall and he used to give me a lift every morning from Watford.

“I would have liked a job in football straight

from school but I wanted to learn the ropes. I worked at Watford general hospital, in all the different departments, it was very varied.”

Paul’s big career break came when Bruce Rioch – a friend of Tom Walley – was appointed manager at Arsenal in 1995. The Rioch-Walley connection put him on the path to the big time, albeit from humble beginnings as part-time youth team physio with the north London giants.

“It was very exciting at Arsenal – the place had real class. I worked with Gary Lewin, the first team physio. I would meet Arsene Wenger from time to time [the Frenchman replaced Bruce Rioch in the autumn of 1996], he was very focused, very keen on dietary aspects, a pioneer of English football. He persuaded players like Tony Adams that it was not all

about drinking 10 pints on a Saturday night.”

Paul, who also worked for a spell with Wales under-21s, eventually landed his first full-time football post at Watford, his hometown club.

“Graham Taylor was the best manager ever, he knew how to man-manage, he treated everyone with dignity and respect. I also met then owner Elton John – he was a shy man but a different character in and around the club.”

The physio teamed up again with Graham Taylor at Aston Villa in 2002, working with a host of managers for 14 years including David O’Leary, Martin O’Neill, Tim Sherwood and others. He retains a special affection for the often-maligned former owner, “Deadly” Doug Ellis – “a great man who had Villa in his blood and heart”.

Today, the Villa Park days are over for the

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“ Rastricks, and their energies are firmly focused on Physiyolates.

“We launched in January and we are now getting close to 200 people a week coming through,” reports Paul. “It was a leap of faith – we have had to invest about £50,000 to £80,000 – but so far it has outweighed all expectations.”

Paul, who is Physiyolates’ physiotherapist and rehabilitation specialist, is complemented

by Paula, the company’s yoga and pilates

“Everything I do is driven by passion and intensity.” specialist. He says: “I’m bringing in around £1,000 a week and my wife around £2,000 a week. We have to pay rent on the building and also teachers and admin staff – we need the money to come in but I think we will go from strength to strength.

“A lot of business is word of mouth – I have forged good connections with local GPs and orthopaedic surgeons. We now have two PAs and three other instructors here on a consultancy basis.”

The couple, who live locally in Knowle, say the location close to the heart of the West Midlands village is ideal for the fledgling business. “That is one of the key things – if we were on an industrial estate, I do not think it would work,” adds Paul.

The last word lies with Paula: “Everything I do is driven by passion and intensity. Everyone today is focused on the physical and the external. But the key is connecting the mind with the body.” n

Profile

Beware the hidden tax traps!

LEGAL BRIEFING

By Paul Christian, corporate partner and head of tax at Ward Hadaway.

Paul Christian paul.christian@wardhadaway.com 0191 204 4281

There are many hidden tax traps for private investors in unlisted companies. Typically a private investor ought to be considering the following areas: (a) EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) or SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme) relief, which can give income tax relief (at 30% up to £1 million for EIS and at 50% up to £100,000 for SEIS) on the investment as well as CGT (Capital Gains Tax) relief. (b) Entrepreneurs relief or investors relief, which, if gains are not exempt under EIS or SEIS, can reduce the rate of CGT on sale from 20% to 10%. (c) Whether to become a director, which can impact on the tax treatment of the investment.

Any of these areas would justify a substantial article in its own right. However, rather than try and blind you with tax science, I will instead run through a number of areas where typically we see problems.

Loans An investor is often under pressure to put money into a company to meet a deadline, such as to pay wages. That will be treated as a loan pending agreement of the detailed terms of investment.

However, that money, if subsequently converted into shares or even if repaid and re-invested, will not qualify for EIS or SEIS relief as it will not be treated as new money.

Terms of Investment There is often a conflict between the protections that an investor quite reasonably wants and the EIS/ SEIS legislation which insists that the investment is proper risk capital – in other words, in tax terms, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

It is not always straightforward as the terms of the legislation are sometimes vague and pre-clearance with HMRC is often recommended. Common areas of concern are: (a) Anti-dilution rights. Although not specifically prohibited, HMRC appear to take the view that these are not permitted under general wording. (b) Investors cannot have a preferred right to repayment of capital on a winding up. A trap here is that even if the investor’s shares have “normal” repayment rights, EIS/SEIS will not be available if there are other shares with subordinated repayment rights.

(c) Investors cannot have the right to acquire more than 30% of the ordinary shares or voting rights. This can cause problems around options or, for example, disenfranchising the shares of leaving employees. (d) There are strict ‘return of value’ rules. These would prevent, for example, the payment of arrangement fees to the investor by the company.

Payment by the company of the investor’s professional costs is a grey area.

Entrepreneurs Relief/Investor Relief A decision should be made as to whether to aim for ER or IR. IR is easier, in the sense that the 5% shareholder and voting power and employment/ director tests do not have to be met, but IR requires three years’ holding rather than one year’s.

A factor for some investors may be that the £10m lifetime limits for ER and IR are exclusive – that is, even if an investor has used his/her ER lifetime limit, he/she still has a £10m IR limit available. If IR is wanted, care has to be taken not to fall into ER by accident by being a paid director.

A hidden pitfall if seeking ER in companies with shares of different nominal values, is that the 5% shareholding test is based on nominal value of shares rather than economic interest.

Directors as Employees It is quite clear that if an investor becomes a director – even an unpaid non-executive director – the rules about taxation of employee shares or employee share options will apply to that director.

In particular, if an investor, whilst a director or in anticipation of becoming a director, receives warrants in the company, those warrants will be treated as employee share options and subject to income tax rather than CGT on exercise.

As can be seen from even this brief overview, there are plenty of tax traps for the unwary investor – all the more reason why professional advice should be taken when considering an investment in an unlisted company. n

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“In tax terms, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.”

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Be inspired. Be motivated. Be ready for the challenges ahead.

MADE is the UK’s premier business event for entrepreneurship offering a brand new experience to educate, inspire and motivate early stage entrepreneurs and established business owners. On 9 November MADE will give meaningful, practical advice and inspiration from experts and peers who will share their views, advice and experiences on growing and succeeding in business. Now in its sixth year, this year’s line-up features a fantastic collection of seasoned entrepreneurs, world class skills trainers, business leaders, industry experts and thought-leaders.

While every attendee at MADE is a valuable source of knowledge and inspiration, the speakers below will take to the stage and share with you their advice, knowledge, personal stories, and everything in between - providing you with everything needed to help inspire you to achieve great things with your business.

For more information, to see the full line-up and to book tickets, visit www.madefestival.com.

Your success or failure will be defined by your ability to make decisions. At MADE 2017, I am going to help you make better decisions, faster.

Like everything in life, the decision is yours.

No one does it quite like Brad. His approach to life, business and motivation is unique. Yet it works. He fires people up from all walks of life giving them permission to do the very thing they know they should be doing.

Brad Burton

In 2006, Brad founded membership organisation 4Networking which is now the UK’s largest joined-up business network, has thousands of members and operates over 5,000+ business networking meetings each year. Impressive.

UK’s #1 motivational speaker

A humorous, thought-provoking, high energy motivational business speaker, who stands out in a congested market place and BIG companies take him seriously.

I believe anyone can do it.

We all have creativity and the entrepreneurial tools within us. I very much look forward to sharing my story at MADE Festival.

Sahar Hashemi founded Coffee Republic, the UK’s first US style coffee bar chain with her brother and built it into one of the UK’s most recognised high street brands with 110 bars and a turnover of £30m.

Giving up professional careers (she as a lawyer in London and Bobby as an investment banker in New York) they staked everything on a dream and made Coffee Republic one of the main players in the coffee revolution that transformed the UK high street.

Sahar Hashemi

In 2011 Sahar was nominated by Director magazine as one of its Top 10 Original Thinkers, alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Jonathan Ive. The magazine praised her view that “Entrepreneurially minded talent shouldn’t have to leave large corporations in order to achieve fulfilment. Entrepreneurial behaviour, including ideas like bootstrapping, prototyping and celebrating failure, can help turn stuffy corporations into creative environments. They can also transform automatons into valued, engaged employees”.

Founder of Coffee Republic

FULL PROGRAMME AVAILABLE ONLINE

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The difference between you and someone like you can be as simple as knowing exactly what to say, when to say it and how to make it count!

Learn my magic words at MADE 2017.

Phil M Jones World leading sales trainer

What if I told you in just 120 seconds you could create ideas that would stand out from every one of your competitors? I’ll reveal how at MADE 2017.

Geoff Ramm - Host Customer service & marketing expert

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Best-selling author, multiple award-winner and one of the most sought after speakers on the circuit, Phil M Jones is highly regarded as the world’s leading sales trainer.

From training more than two million people worldwide to coaching some of the biggest brands in the world – Phil’s mission to “teach the world to sell” has resulted in his expertise being globally recognised.

From working with small business owners that are looking to increase sales to leverage their livelihood to globally recognised companies that want to drive more activity from their staff – Phil’s unique skillset allows him to serve a vast mix of people with entirely different goals.

Like you, Geoff Ramm, the creator of Celebrity Service and OMG Marketing, knows the only way you can attract more customers is to create jaw-dropping marketing. Not only that but great customer service leads to lucrative, repeat business.

So how do you create highly successful marketing ideas? And how can you design a customer experience that has you talked about for decades to come?

In his interactive keynotes, your team will not only discover out-of-thisworld ideas, they will come up with them and be excited to implement them too.

Geoff’s on-stage presence will have you on the edge of your creative seats.

Marxist-capitalism; how to run a business and make most of the people in it, have more fun, to make more money for all. Find out how at MADE 2017!

Simon Biltcliffe Founder of Webmart UK

Big things start from smallest beginnings, being at MADE could be the inspiration you were looking for to disrupt yourself, your business or processes to break the mould and try something new. Taking that first step could be the catalyst that sends you on a brand new and exciting adventure.

James Brown Founder of Beer 52

Simon founded Webmart, a print management business in 1996, shaping the business around his personal ethos that Marxism and Capitalism together are unbeatable. Sharing profits among employees and ensuring that both customers and suppliers gain as a result of Webmart’s trading activity, Simon has ensured that the company’s success is also shared by the wider community through a charitable trust.

As the company has grown he has kept a strong focus on people development and training and was an early adopter of technology freeing up Webmart staff to develop their relentless focus on customer service. Today the business operates out of a series of wonderfully designed bright yellow buildings and is one of the world leaders in print management.

Inspired by a craft beer road trip on the back of his dad’s Harley, James launched Beer52 in September 2013. Now the UK’s largest and fastest growing craft beer club with 25,000+ monthly members and backed by founders of SkyScanner, Secret Escapes, Funkin Cocktails and SongKick.

Beer52 produce an amazing in-house craft alcohol magazine Ferment which is available in WHSmith stores nationwide and is included in their member’s deliveries.

With turnover on track to reach £5m in 2017 and millions of bottles of craft beer delivered to doorsteps all around the UK, James and his Beer52 adventure are proof that great things can start from the most unexpected and humble beginnings.

To book tickets, visit www.madefestival.com

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“Some of our underlay is an unseen work of art, and that is a marketing frustration we have because it performs far better than anything else on the market.”

Flying the woven

YORKSHIRE FLAG Mike Hughes goes under-carpet to investigate a Yorkshire success story with Texfelt managing director James Taylor, whose underlay has been used in films such as Spectre and the latest Transformers movie.

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magine if the product you have worked for years to perfect, around which you have built a global reputation, is the finest luxury good no-one gets to see, hidden under something that is worse, but more prized. That infuriating scenario is what James Taylor has to go through almost every time he signs off another order for the carpet underlay made by his firm, Texfelt, which is now selling to top hotels and organisations around the world, including the Atlantis and the Kempinski at the ultra-exclusive Palm resort in Dubai.

But now one of Yorkshire’s best-kept secrets is about to get the fame it deserves, after landing supporting roles in some of the biggest movies around – and taking pride of place in a new factory.

Texfelt joined Taylor’s 160-year-old family textile firm JR Group UK as part of a debt payment. The two had worked together, so when times got tough for Texfelt, Taylor’s family stepped in and took over the firm and its famous products, with the top of the range Sterling Royale made from 80% luxury wool

and entirely recycled materials. It might get brushed under the carpet, but the fact that it is very green – and that the work is here in the heart of Yorkshire – is a source of great pride.

“We say on our website that some of our underlay is an unseen work of art, and that is a marketing frustration we have because it performs far better than anything else on the market and we are very proud of it and would not have been able to build things up to this level if it didn’t perform as well as we say it does,” Taylor says. “And JR Fibres now has an export market that we have been working on for 20 years where things are certainly looking very promising, with Texfelt’s exports up by 81% over the past 12 months, and over the five year period June 2012 to June 2017 have risen 173%.

“There is high-demand in our field at the moment and the market for flame-retardant polyester fibres going into furniture and fillings is very positive in the UK, with a big rise in export activity generally, certainly on the back of the post-Brexit-vote weak pound.

So, whenever we are trading within the UK, we fly the Yorkshire flag in a very big way, with our long pedigree in the industry back to the days when we were shoddy and mungo manufacturers [shoddy was cloth made from ground-down woollen rags, while mungo was a similar process, but using felt].

“We are trying hard to do more business at a local level as well, with people like carpet retailers and contractors because we feel this is a key part of us growing. Dealing at a local level with the waste products, we recycle benefits the regional economy and cuts down the traffic miles, which is good for all of us.”

Taylor’s era at the head of the business will be a momentous one, with radical changes to some areas, all with a determination to retain the character and quality that is woven deep into the fabric of Texfelt.

“We have been working on a project here for the past six years to re-equip the Elland business, where it is run out of a fairly old traditional two-storey mill,” he tells me. “The plant is probably coming up for 20 years old

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and is limited in the type of products it can make and we have seen a move away from traditional felt underlay products in favour of more modern polyurethane foam because fitters like the ease of working with those materials.

“We have been working on a range of non-woven products for various markets, including more technical industries like automotive and filtration, so we have put in a multi-million-pound investment at a new site in Bradford where phase one gave us a new 56,000sq ft warehouse, which will also host a new production line for us. Then phase two is further 24,000sq ft of warehousing, all backed by funding from the Regional Growth Fund, which means we will be safeguarding and creating Yorkshire jobs.

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“It is a big challenge for all of us to keep the values and products that people know us for as well as progressing the company.”

“This will set us up for the next generation as we turn the business from what was a small company turning over £1.7m a year to potentially a £9m to £10m operation with much greater flexibility.”

This is essential reinvention for Texfelt, JR Group and for the whole textile sector in Yorkshire. It has to take place to make sure there is a home for the skills that built this part of the world, and not just in craft centres and museums. These are living and breathing highly-valued practices that have never been bettered, and there is a whole new generation out there waiting to see if the textiles industry could still be a place to create a career.

But the reinvention has to happen to provide the future-proofed environment inside which those skills can flourish again.

“It is a big challenge for all of us to keep the values and products that people know us for as well as progressing the company.” says Taylor.

“What we have seen is a traditionallylow turnover of staff who are very skilled, particularly as carding engineers on older machinery and we now need to move that to state-of-the-art programmable touch-screen machines that don’t require that ‘spanner in your back pocket’ mentality.

“We have to train the workforce that is coming with us from Elland as well as taking the opportunity to start bringing in more apprentices and some younger talent into an industry that has been really badly neglected for many years. There is a feeling in the country and across the region that textile is dead, but that is clearly not the case because there are a number of us investing in machinery and staff and we can make a difference.

“We have had apprentices recently who would come in on the first day into the old mill and see the machinery and have left after a couple of days. This new plant, which will

look like a car assembly line, should be much more encouraging for people wanting to get involved in the industry.”

Taylor is backing that passion with millions of pounds. It is a very personal mission to give his workers – and his family – a future to be proud of and to feel secure in. JR Group is now in the fifth generation of a family business, with his son, who is at college at the moment but already working part-time and starting at the bottom to work his way up. His dad’s responsibility to do the right thing just keeps on growing.

“I am very aware that we have to continue to grow for their futures as much as ours – for our staff and for their children, which is what every family business tries to do,” he says.

“There isn’t any reward without risk and we think this is a calculated risk that’s been six years in the making and is happening at the right time, despite obstacles like Brexit.

“Life would be a lot easier if you could just

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sit on your bum and invest in property, but that is not what we are about. Our Yorkshire DNA is in manufacturing and doing what is right for the people who have supported us for all these years.

“Our business is done at face-value; in a world full of Skype and WhatsApp, we will still get on a plane and service our international markets at least twice a year and have face-toface relationships that are a key element in our success. ‘Service above self’ has been drilled into us since my father’s and grandfather’s days.

“We have long been members of the Institute for Family Business and I am working hard on setting up a facility where nextgeneration members can go and do work experience so they get to see how other companies are run and can bring back that

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insight to their own families. The generation following mine is really important and I would love for my children to join us at some point.”

One unexpected tribute to the quality on offer has come from some of the world’s leading film-makers, who have ordered metre after metre of the fire-retardant fabric to contain explosions and flames on blockbusters like Spectre and the latest Transformers film.

Taylor explains that it all started with a single online order.

“We have a division that operates a carpet underlay shop online and we had noticed an order from Pinewood Studios, and then more coming in for the same person, so we asked them what was going on and it turned out they were building the set for Spectre and were using it for sound absorption and for

explosive containment.

“Trying to get people excited about the world of underlays is a challenge, and finally we have this great opportunity to help people understand what we make. I have got shivers down my spine just talking about it all. This just underlines that this is our time and a great team is in place to make it all happen, including my 70-year-old dad who still comes in two or three days a week – we just can’t switch our minds off.”

The challenges of running an international business means Monday to Friday and nine to five routines just don’t happen. Time zones start at Bradford and reach to Dubai and businesses like JR and Texfelt are always alive to any possibilities to fly that woven Yorkshire flag. n

“Trying to get people excited about the world of underlays is a challenge, and finally we have this great opportunity to help people understand what we make.”

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Forging the future together The impact of education and training on our everyday lives is growing every day, but few areas can touch us as personally as our own health. Mike Hughes meets two people who are leading pioneering work at Teesside University.

AT the end of December, it will be 50 years since South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first human-tohuman heart transplant.

That was a moment that moved the boundaries of what medicine could do and was the culmination of years of experimenting and researching and a remarkable amount of foresight and innovative thinking.

That same commitment to making new solutions possible continues today in research and development (R&D) establishments around the world with carefully built pathways linking the first proposal to the finished product, and at Teesside University there is a campus-wide drive to use breakthrough techniques and strategies to improve our health and make it more easily understood.

Linda Nelson is one of those innovators

helping make the University a pioneer rather than just a producer of graduates. As associate dean (enterprise & business engagement) at the school of health and social care, she is a leading advocate of partnerships built outside the university and the value they can have in developing and testing new practices and sharing experience and knowledge.

She tells BQ: “Our School has a wide range of partnerships which include all the acute NHS trusts in the North East, and the ambulance services as well as many people in the independent sector, such as local hospices and BMI Healthcare, who are the largest provider of private health care in the UK. “What we do with these partners is vital and often unique. With BMI, for instance, as well as quality monitoring what they deliver we also provide their assistant practitioner

apprenticeship nationally to upskill their workforce. The fact that they have confidence in us to deliver national consistency with something so vital, and that we come to their own sites to do so, it is another illustration of the strength of our partnerships.

“There are also research opportunities for both sides, which means that the potential of the collaborations is endless.”

The monitoring and organisational expertise is one of the university’s great strengths and has helped push its reputation well beyond the health sector, with one outstanding example being a best interest assessor award run by Bond Solon, one of the country’s leading legal training companies. This programme develops individuals’ knowledge and skills to work with those who may lack the capacity or freedom to make decisions about their care or treatment.

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Bond Solon came to Teesside University for accreditation and monitoring purely based on its reputation for flexibility within partnerships and the quality of its processes.

Back in the health sector, another partnership that the university is particularly proud of is with Health Education North East, who they worked with to develop a nursing associate award.

“We are the only organisation in the North East delivering it as part of a national pilot across the country. To achieve that we had to write the programme with our healthcare partners from across the region and get it running within three months,” said Nelson.

The university’s relationships being developed against a background of such high-level expertise show why it is singled out as one of the most business-facing educational institutions and is so highly valued by industry looking for the perfect blend of experience and innovation. They also find that in the university’s masterclasses, where nonaccredited training and skills updating can be delivered in short bursts of perhaps just one half-day, often in the practice area and for both the public and private sectors.

“We have such a wide range of work we can do with our partners, but the main attraction for me has always been the people,” says Nelson.

“I love it when I get out and about to meet the people we work with, which I do quite a lot because we have to deliver our work with a great deal of flexibility. The days are long gone when training would take place at a set time on a set day. Now we have to fit in with what our partners need to keep their businesses running as efficiently as possible.

“That means we get the chance to be an ambassador for the university, which really enthuses the staff here because every meeting and every challenge is different.”

Getting such a strong personal message across like that can often be lost within large organisations, but not at Teesside University, where more than 80 years of educating people all over the world has been centred on the people they are working with and tailoring delivery just for them.

With such a heritage to build on, Siobhan Fenton’s outstanding skills have found the perfect home at Teesside, pairing a strong and often lifesaving message with the university’s trademark personal touch through her awardwinning animation work.

As associate dean (enterprise and business engagement) in the school of computing media and the arts, Fenton works with the medium of animation to make a message more watchable and quickly absorbed, particularly where they involve intimate explorations of personal health. In 2012 she was the producer of Centrefold, a multi-award winning animated documentary about female body image directed by Ellie Land, which was screened at 12 international festivals.

A Teesside graduate herself 23 years ago, Fenton went on to co-found Animex, the university’s renowned animation and games festival, and co-directed the first two years.

So her complete immersion in the value of animation has been widely recognised.

“We use animation to engage with an audience and perhaps help them visualise statistics, perhaps about exercise targets. But we also use characters and have a narrative that

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Mike Hughes looks at three ways in which expertise born on the campus is making a huge difference across the country Health+, a business founded by Charlie Hesse, a second year BA (Hons) graphic design student, has been developed in partnership with South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The innovative app allows patients to scan the labels on their medications and, using character recognition technology, crosschecks their prescriptions with NHS and eMC (electronic Medicines Compendium) databases and informs them about what the drugs are for alongside vital information such as possible side-effects and dosage instructions.

The aim of the app is to give patients greater detail about their medication and improve understanding, reducing the number of enquiries made to GPs. Another university success story is the PatSim200 patient simulator.

It has been developed by Peterlee-based Rigel Medical (part of the Seaward Group) with the help of Mark Beckwith, a senior lecturer in industrial design in the university’s School of Design, Culture & the Arts.

The PatSim200 puts medical equipment through its paces by mimicking the most common vital signs of patients, such as body temperature, blood pressure, heart-rate and respiration.

On a wider scale, the university has partnered with TWI to form the Healthcare Innovation Centre (HIC) to carry out research that will make a significant impact on people’s lives and wellbeing.

The HIC is already working closely with the South Tees NHS Trust, which is defining clinical needs as well as providing a test bed for the solutions that are developed and will also collaborate with SMEs developing products such as wheelchairs, prosthetics, point of care diagnostics and software applications.

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takes them through a journey which can be very helpful with health subjects,” said Fenton.

“If it is a sensitive issue, a voice can make it much easier to relate to a character and makes the message much more powerful.

“With Centrefold, people may have instinctively been judgemental if they had been watching a person speaking, but with animation there are no judgements and the focus can be on the procedures in a sensitive and factual way. For example, we have worked with a doctor from Newcastle University on a film on breech births which was very much about educating and informing. You could just have a leaflet printed, but this is using animation and characters to talk about the choices women have – and how we create the right character is central to our work.

“It is important to find a design that isn’t bland, but is an all-women character that could be from any background. That includes what shape they are and what they are wearing, which doesn’t want to be anything that really stands out. It is a pretty fine line we are walking.”

Always keen to push the boundaries of her work, Fenton is also using virtual reality in health education, making training in essentials like drug administration or surgical procedures much more accessible. She has just completed two projects involving VR, one commissioned

by Public Health England about obesity

and one for South Tees NHS Trust around prehabilitation – issues that can be dealt with before surgery.

The university has backed this quality of work by setting up an ‘employability studio’ which has started by looking at health issues before moving on to other subjects.

“Working with our partners, we have got our graduates to work on real-life projects, which are linked to the research being done at the university while giving them employability skills that you just couldn’t get anywhere else,” she explains.

“They are mentored by expert staff like the studio’s creative director Ellie Land so they know they are in the right hands. It is a really important stepping stone for the graduates to get them out into industry where they can enhance their personal and social skills to add to their amazing talents to make them workready.

“It has been lovely to see their confidence growing, but what the studio has also done is to widen their own view of employability and the options open to them.

“We have a massive responsibility for our students and their futures and by supporting them we are helping grow the digital economy, our own local businesses and the regional economy, bringing in SMEs as our partners to work with the other big players and really drive innovation.”

All of this success is also a valuable commercial boost for the University, and the standard of work being carried out there is underlined by the contracts it has won out in the commercial world, where few companies can compete with its depth of skills and experience.

The impact of the university’s work is instinctively regional, of national importance and globally influential, driving innovation and always staying one step ahead of the latest technology. For its staff and students, the past is where so many foundations were laid by genuinely brilliant people.

The present is headline-making, with an unrivalled database of skilled staff and students making breakthrough after breakthrough in any sector that shares their excitement, vision and pride.

And the future? That is where Teesside University really has its focus, as an anchor institution in an ever-developing national economy. n

theforge@tees.ac.uk 01642 384068

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Highlights of Teesside University’s work in health and technology WORKING WITH SOUTH TEES NHS TRUST A team of graduate interns have been working at the forefront of digital technology and virtual reality – introducing their skills and knowledge to internal projects and external organisations. The South Tees Project was to design a prehabilitation toolkit made up of an introductory animation and independent website. Aimed at health professionals, the toolkit was designed to assist them in making sure their patients were prepared for any surgery they may undertake, by reducing the risks beforehand of any post-surgical complications.

WORKING WITH NORTHUMBRIA HEALTHCARE Dave McPhee and Dominic Dunn from Teesside University’s Aurora House Productions, spent ten days shadowing the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust team, led by surgeon Liam Horgan, as it carried out the latest keyhole surgery techniques at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC), Tanzania’s busiest hospital.

The pair filmed more than 25 hours of footage which has been edited into the 90 minute documentary looking at the 17-year relationship between Northumbria Healthcare and KCMC. Brenda Longstaff, head

of international partnerships at Northumbria Healthcare, said: “Telling the story of our projects at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Tanzania has been a real challenge for the film makers. We are so grateful to Dave and Dominic for their incredible job of capturing the essence of what we do.

Sometimes it’s hard viewing but that is the reality. What really matters is that it shows the humanity of what we do, the tears and the triumphs and the pure joy of doing something together that can really make a difference to people’s lives.”

WORKING WITH THE NHS Through a pilot Facebook Learning Object (Flo) Teesside University health and social care students have been developing their understanding of, and empathy with, older people with persistent pain. Flo presents the experience of living with persistent pain in the form of a fictitious older (65+) person’s Facebook entries and interactions with Facebook friends over a 12-month period. The storyline (Flo’s story) has been written by a professional scriptwriter, which was informed by information gathered from focus groups of people suffering from persistent pain. The positive shift in student attitudes towards older people has particular relevance following

a Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust report highlighting the need for increased care and compassion to patients, particularly older people WORKING WITH THE NATIONAL HORIZONS CENTRE The NHC in Darlington – a hub for digital skills and knowledge in the biologics, biotechnology and health sectors – based alongside the National Biologics Manufacturing Centre and the University campus, will work closely with supply chain companies, digital businesses and academics to develop creative digital solutions to industry challenges.

When its doors open in 2019 it will capitalise on expertise in areas like artificial intelligence, informatics, visualisation and simulation. Academics and students will collaborate with industry partners to develop creative multidisciplinary solutions to business challenges.

Laura Woods, director of academic enterprise at Teesside University, said: “The National Horizons Centre is a major catalyst for growth in the region. Not only is it set to address a current national skills gap, but it will also spearhead the development of new hybrid skills and capabilities that drive the growth of key emergent sectors like biologics.

Digital is absolutely central to this hybrid skillset and is instrumental in ensuring the Tees Valley plays a national role in developing the industry sectors of the future.” n

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How can short-term finance benefit business?

Daniel Owen-Parr, commercial sales director at specialist lender Together explains.

For more information visit www.togethermoney.com

The value of applications for bridging finance has risen by 123% in the first quarter of the year compared to the same quarter last year, according to experts.

Industry body, the Association of Short Term Lenders (ASTL) has predicted a robust future for this market after its members reported a 13.9% increase on the previous quarter, with an 11.4% hike in the amount of loans written, and a 45% growth in the size of the overall loan book.

Short term finance, such as bridging loans, have traditionally been used for things like repairing a broken chain when buying houses. However, such finance is increasingly being used by SMEs for a much wider variety of purposes from raising capital for business expansion, to releasing cash flow.

Funding business growth On the commercial side, short term finance can allow businesses to expand or facilitate an office move, for example.

Recently, we helped a manufacturer expand its business by buying a new site thanks to a £550,000 bridging loan. Concrete product manufacturer Waycon Precast wanted to relocate to a £1.65m 10acre commercial site near Honiton, Devon and had already secured a £385,000 grant from the South West Growth Fund, to create and protect jobs, but needed additional funding.

The established business had been operating from a rented site more than 50 miles away in Plymouth but the freeholder had won planning permission to build houses there – meaning the manufacturing business would have to find a new home, and had subsequently identified the site in Devon.

We reviewed the case and ensured a quick completion, so the company could move fast to secure the deal; enabling the business to expand and safeguarding more the 40 jobs in the process.

Supporting development In another deal we helped fund a sympathetic redevelopment project for historic building, The Ship, allowing leading property investors Burrington Estates to realise their vision of breathing new life into this historic building, designed by acclaimed architect Sir Nicholas

Grimshaw and once home to the Daily Mail Group.

The impressive property, which spans 116,000 square feet on a 12.36 acre plot, had been empty for two years and was at risk of being demolished when Burrington Estates stepped in with a vision to create a regional business hub. Funding was required to refurbish the property, creating offices for a wide range of businesses over the three floors, with spectacular views.

The client required £2.5m to repay their initial investment and a further £2.3m for the refurbishment. However, the lack of tenants or formal lease agreements made mainstream funding difficult, although there were pre-let agreements with five local businesses.

We reviewed the pre-let agreements, whereby the businesses, which included an established call centre, a café and a leisure operator, had agreed to enter into a lease once the refurbishment was complete. We then instructed a full RICS valuation with a market value for the property established at £8.4m, with anticipated value post-refurbishment at £11m. We agreed the full funding of £4.8m, which was delivered within a month, and the client was able to move forward with the development.

Our common sense approach is what sets Together apart; and in these cases resulted in positive outcomes for the customers, reaffirming our ability to deliver when presented with complex cases.

As we look to the future, we would agree with the ASTL that the outlook for the sector is a positive one and we are looking to work with more SMEs across the country to deliver the fast and flexible finance they need. n

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“Our common sense approach is what sets Together apart and in these cases resulted in positive outcomes for the customer.”

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p u k Soa th e

SUN

When Farhad Seka arrived in the UK from Iran in 1972, he never thought he’d stay. Now, he runs Linco Care, which produces sun screen for more than 60 countries from its base in Manchester, as Maria McGeoghan discovers.

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t seems appropriate to be strolling around a sun protection cream factory on the hottest day of the year.

The fact that it’s in Carrington, just outside Manchester, and is exporting to destinations like Dubai, takes the old “coals to Newcastle” saying to new levels.

Linco Care is a family-run business that provides

personal care products and has been manufacturing for nearly 40 years. Its factory, laboratory and head office are all under one roof just off the M60 and, on this rarest of Manchester days, it’s just too hot to stand outside and admire the vast delivery area that has just been refurbished.

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Linco’s best known brand is Calypso, a high-quality family sun protection at an affordable price. Re-Gen is a cream, oil and serum used to reduce the appearance of scarring, stretchmarks and ageing, while new hair care brand Restora provides three salon-quality products for consumers to use at home and is sold exclusively online.

Calypso and Re-Gen products can currently be found in many highstreet retailers such as Home Bargains, Wilko, Aldi, Asda and independent pharmacies. And business is good.

Growing demands for Linco’s products abroad mean it is now exporting to more than 60 countries, including markets in Europe, Asia, South America, Australasia and the Middle East. The percentage of export-related turnover has increased from 20% in 2010 to its current level of 44.5%.

Due to the increase in exports, Linco Care has invested more than £500,000 in an expansion of its head office and production facilities, including a factory refit and a new, cavernous warehouse. It has recently increased staff to more than 60 people and the company continues to support apprenticeship schemes, which have often turned into permanent positions.

“We love the sun – we need the sun,” says operations manager Asif Saleem as he proudly shows me around his kingdom. And what a sparkling kingdom it is.

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“I don’t think many people realise that you should throw your sun protection away after 12 months.”

I’ve been around quite a few factories wearing the obligatory Ena Sharples hair net, but this is by far the cleanest, tidiest and most organised shop floor that I’ve ever been on. And the massive new storage warehouse is something to behold.

Picture the final scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, as the Ark of the Covenant is tucked away amongst thousands of other artefacts, and you’re nearly there. Pallets are loaded with products destined for countries right around the world and are shipped out as fast as the production lines can fill them.

“We make 280 products a year, some new and some old,” says Saleem.

“We are able to react with the weather and get our products out there.

“It’s a big market. I don’t think many people realise that you should throw your sun protection away after 12 months. You can’t just leave it in a cupboard and expect it to be effective.”

Having been awarded the Which? seal of approval in 2014 and 2015 for best buy sunscreen, the product team recognised it had achieved a winning formula and has expanded the range. It now includes “Once a Day Sun Protection”, “Tanning and Protection Spray” and “Sensitive Lotion Spray”.

And, for the first time in more than a decade, the Calypso sun care range was advertised across a range of lifestyle channels including ITV, E4 and Sky Living on the run up to the summer rush.

We move on the equally neat and tidy laboratory lined with jars filled with a rainbow of various ingredients – some of them very expensive

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indeed. Linco uses more than 700 ingredients amongst all of its products, and the lab experts are always striving to develop the next big thing.

There are definite trends in tanning and the hottest one at the moment is based on the humble carrot. Saleem takes me to a very busy production line filling bottles with carrot oil, which promises to provide a deep, rich and long-lasting tan while protecting and hydrating the skin.

“This is really popular in the UK,” he says.

“We’re working hard to keep up with the demand. We pack thousands of bottles day from this production line.”

Linco has also started producing halal sun products for the Middle Eastern market in response to demand. The team also offers a one-stop bespoke private label service in all areas of wet-fill manufacturing, including oils, creams, lotions, gels and liquids, specialising in sun care, personal care and depilatory products.

The formulations are either created from their own extensive database, or customised to clients’ requirements by its own in-house team of chemists. It also offers advice in research and development, providing solutions for technical issues and package design, with the flexibility and capacity to handle most types of packaging.

On one production line alone, 10,000 sun care travel packs get completed in a day, while on another 16,000 bottles of sun lotion get filled, packed and labelled for export. It’s a quiet and calm hive of industry and one Saleem is very proud of.

“I think this is a great company,” he says with a grin. “I started out working for the NHS but decided to move and I love it here. I’m very proud of what we do.”

With more growth on the agenda, it’s no surprise that Linco Care was recently recognised as North-West England’s leading export business by scooping up the export prize at the Made in the North-West Awards.

The trophy was recognition for the recordbreaking year Linco Care has had, building upon its existing export successes and registering products and intellectual property in Malaysia and Indonesia.

One of the men behind this success is Farhad Seka, company director and head of product development. Looking nothing like his 73 years, he relishes going right back to the beginning when he first arrived in the UK from Iran in 1972.

“I never thought I would stay, but I did,” he says as we settle around the company boardroom surrounded by shelf upon shelf of Linco products.

“When I first arrived, Bijan Todd was my landlord and he was working with wigs and hairpieces and set up a shop in Bolton. I was studying to be a chartered accountant and he asked me to work for him one day a week and I eventually decided to stay in the UK.” A business partnership was born and, in 1978, they set up Linco, concentrating on hairdressing products and accessories. In 1987, they moved into sun care and shortly after launched their signature Calypso range using a manufacturer in Scotland. As business grew, they decided to start manufacturing their own products in Carrington in 1994.

“Sometimes people think that if you are charging £2.99 for sun protection it’s an inferior product,” says Seka. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.

“You should see how many times we have audits and checks. It’s a very, very good product.”

The company expanded its range and continued to grow until disaster struck in 2003 when fire broke out at the factory and warehouse, causing major damage. It led to a four-year legal battle with insurers and a big bill for legal costs, but the company kept going.

“It was the day of my son’s wedding,” says Seka. “I’ll never forget it. It was such a shock to come back and to see all the damage to everything we had worked so hard for.

“Our cash flow was good so we survived.

Our turnover went from £8m to £3m, but we built it back up. We’re now a £9m-turnover business. We are an ethical company who pay more than the minimum wage and we have a really good team. “ And the secret of Linco’s success? “Oh, that’s just hard work,” he smiles. “No secret really, just hard work.” n

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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 in association with HSBC The PD Ports Northern Powerhouse Export Awards 2018 in association with HSBC are set to take place once again on the 22nd Feb 2018 at Leeds Town Hall. The event will bring together export businesses from across the North to recognise and celebrate their achievements whilst also providing encouragement for more businesses to consider exporting as a realistic opportunity for growth.

Exporting remains central to the UK’s growth agenda and the campaign aims to recognise those exporters who have made the transition from great local companies to potentially world-class exporting businesses based in Northern England.

The awards and accompanying international trade campaign are about highlighting those

wealth creating companies that are selling their products, services and expertise into scores of overseas markets.

Exporting presents the Northern Powerhouse with an opportunity to bring immediate and sustainable growth to its economy and with this in mind we need to encourage more Northern companies to consider trading overseas. Last year the awards entrants represented almost £300 million of export turnover from the North with strong representation across Food & Drink, Manufacturing and Healthcare and Medical.

Bryan Hoare, Group Commercial Director said: “If you are reading this article knowing that you have company activity in export markets across the North I’d encourage you to enter the Northern Powerhouse Export Awards 2018.

Last year we had a great mix of entrants with companies employing as little as four staff to those in their hundreds. The structure of the awards categories means that it is a level playing field for all entrants and we get great satisfaction in uncovering some of the North’s newest export talent as we do recognising those more mature export businesses.”

The BQ digital series of “Around the World in 80 Trades” features also give chance to Northern exporters to receive free PR about their export achievements throughout the campaign. Hoare continued, “We’d like to hear from any exporters across Northern England who has an interesting story to tell so we can use their experiences to inspire others to consider internationalising their business for the first time”. n

Nominations for the 2018 PD Ports Northern Powerhouse Export Awards in association with HSBC are now open and you can enter FREE online at www.bqlive.co.uk/northexportawards18

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THE AWARDS MOST ENTREPRENEURIAL EXPORTER OF THE YEAR A company that has demonstrated entrepreneurial flair within their export strategy. This will be shown through an extraordinary approach to reaching new markets where creativity, innovation and tenacity has resulted in success.

MICRO EXPORTER OF THE YEAR Recognising outstanding achievements in export growth by a company in any industry with a turnover up to £2million. This success will be measured by growth in sales and market penetration together with the application of innovative market strategies to extend export potential.

SMALL EXPORTER OF THE YEAR Recognising outstanding achievements in export growth by a company in any industry with a turnover of £2-£15million. This success will be measured by growth in sales and market penetration together with the application of innovative market strategies to extend export potential.

LARGE EXPORTER OF THE YEAR Recognising outstanding achievements by a company in any industry with a turnover greater than £15million. This success will be measured by growth in sales and market penetration together with the application of innovative market strategies to extend export potential.

EXPORT TEAM OF THE YEAR The export team of the year award will recognise a team who can demonstrate significant added value to their business through adopting innovative techniques, personnel development measures, and successful implementation of the company’s export sales strategy. It should be clear how the company has developed a team wide approach to exporting which may well extend beyond the company to distributors, agents and other third parties who will have contributed to export success.

E-COMMERCE EXPORTER OF THE YEAR A company that through e-commerce has increased brand awareness and recognition, expanded into new markets, increased sales and efficiency and improved customer service. The winner of this category must be able to demonstrate how they have used e-commerce and trading online to significantly enhance their export growth or potential for growth.

HIGH GROWTH MARKET EXPORTER OF THE YEAR Awarded to a company demonstrating impressive export growth in high growth markets (including China, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey).

This success will be measured by growth in sales and high growth market penetration together with the application of innovative market strategies to extend export potential.

SCALE-UP EXPORTER OF THE YEAR A company that has shown significant growth as a direct result of its export activity where exporting has played a fundamental role in the scaling of the business. It should be clear how exporting from the outset has allowed the business to scale both in terms of size, turnover and profitability. This would be demonstrated through a coherent business plan and strategy that places exporting at the heart of the business. The company must have achieved average annual growth in employees or turnover greater than 20 per cent per annum over a three year period, and with more than 10 employees at the beginning of the period.

EMERGING MARKETS EXPORTER OF THE YEAR Awarded to a company who can demonstrate impressive export growth across one or more emerging markets, including Bangladesh, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan and Thailand. Success will be measured by growth in sales and market penetration together with the application of innovative market strategies to extend export potential.

PD PORTS NORTHERN POWERHOUSE EXPORTER OF THE YEAR This award will be presented to a company that has made an outstanding contribution to the North’s export profile and success. Companies must have demonstrated how they have overcome their barriers when entering new markets. The winner of this award will be selected from the winners of the above award categories and announced on the evening of the awards.

THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2018

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Powerhouse Port PD Ports is the gateway to a sustainable export strategy for thousands of companies. Chief operating officer Jerry Hopkinson told Mike Hughes that the group is looking ahead optimistically as more and more customers look for new routes to commercial success.

Jerry Hopkinson is inspired by his own company’s success. After a body blow from the closure of the SSI steelworks on Teesside, PD Ports has been the model of restructuring and recovery and emerged to become a beacon of progress, starkly illuminating the depth of its resources and skills.

With 160 years of unrivalled experience and continuous investment at Teesport, Hartlepool, Felixstowe and on the Humber, the group is an influential supporter and user of the latest technology and portcentric logistics that have helped revolutionise the sector.

Portcentric logistics is a particularly strong point, involving bringing products into the country closer to their end destination to save companies time,

money and CO2 emissions.

As chief operating officer (COO) and vicechairman, Hopkinson has helped shape this impressive organisation for more than 40 years, the last 25 from the boardroom, and is rightly proud of the influential position it holds. “As well as being the statutory harbour authority for the Tees, we are the operator of Teesport and Hartlepool, handling around 30million tonnes of cargo through the river each year,� he says.

PD Ports has its other assets down the east coast as well as the award-winning portcentric logistics operations, employing 1,200 people and investing regularly in training to keep them all at the top of their game.

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The past ten years has seen £1bn invested both direct and through third parties in developing, upgrading and enhancing capacity to meet the demands of its customers and position the Teesport as the UK’s northern gateway for global shippers serving northern markets.

So the gateway for export success is well and truly wide open and Hopkinson says the feeling of teamwork and camaraderie from clients and providers gives the region a huge advantage.

“The success is clearly there and the collaboration is a key factor, but networks don’t exist by their own volition and it would be shortsighted to think we have already built our Northern Powerhouse,” he says.

“We can all look to our own development - and we need to because our immediate interest is the development of the Tees Valley. But then there is the Tees Valley sat within the context of the North East and the North East in the context of the North of England. Given that background, I think what the Northern Powerhouse is all about is setting aside parochial self-interest for a minute and focusing on what we can do together to drive economic prosperity into the North as a whole and into our region.

“For me, it is about the recognition of commonly-held requirements for a collaborative benefit. That means the development of a network infrastructure in terms of transportation, particularly around road and rail development, and a leveraging of the skills base across the UK, which is absolutely critical to ensure that we continue to grow and offer real opportunities for employment and a long-term future for our own staff.

“The port is recognised as a gateway, particularly now when it is so perfectly situated at the heart of the South Tees development Corporation site where so much work is to be done. But we are also a catalyst and will work within the region to develop the most viable opportunities. Within that development, the Northern Powerhouse is essential, providing the greater infrastructure and the greater argument that says we can deliver those opportunities that mean PD Ports can be a key component of this remarkable region and of the Powerhouse.”

Hopkinson is right to emphasise the importance of striking a balance between collaboration and every North East company’s own interests because without individual success there will not be the strongest of platforms from which to develop partnerships and powerhouses. With companies that exist on the scale of PD Ports, their influence can be pivotal and act as a springboard for higher

ambitions and deeper relationships.

“We want to become a fundamental part of our customers’ supply chain here as part of a partnership with firms who want to export through us, so that we are not just the guys who take the cargo from the vessel and put it in a warehouse to be collected,” he says.

“We can arrange the shipment and reception of the cargo into the port, look after the intermediary handling which may include repackaging and redistributing to enhance the product and, of course, getting it to the end point of delivery.

“With portcentric logistics PD Ports has stopped being just the port and has become much more significant and has delivered some really beneficial solutions for our customers.

“We are here to run a successful business, judged by all the conventional standards, but in my experience that success is all achieved by working in partnership and becoming a listening business that is responsive to its customers and remains agile and competitive with excellent performances and practices and a strong moral compass at its heart.”

There is much co-ordinated success across the group, and for the wider region the possibilities are endless as a powerhouse of firms want to find new markets and test themselves against the best in the world.

“In our business we are certainly seeing very material progress. It is by no means ‘mission accomplished’, but we are seeing a pipeline of opportunities that we need to work on to bring them to fruition,” says Hopkinson.

“We need to keep digging in and bring all of our collaborative expertise together here in the North, and if we do that we have every one of those opportunities ahead of us. And they are growing - a few years ago a lot of those were in the IT space, but now I am hearing more and more about manufacturing and engineering and firms getting back to the core competencies in this region.”

People are a recurring theme in our conversation, from the likes of CEO Frans Calje, chairman David Robinson and Hopkinson himself who make PD Ports the formidable presence it is, to those 1,200 staff who work 24 hours a day to deliver success for their customers.

Hopkinson sums it up well: “Working together can be hugely rewarding and is all about the people and making sure we have the skills base here to service the aspirations we have. We can invest all the money we want in the very best kit and infrastructure, but we will always need the right people to be well trained to operate, develop and service it all so the region can be at its very best.” n

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A gate to the world In a recent survey of UK businesses, HSBC was ranked as the number one bank for supporting international needs. Nick Missin explains how the group maintains this level of performance, and how its global reach is making a real difference to British exporters who want to take on the best in the world.

Within a Northern Powerhouse that has already become a show of strength, collaboration and drive uniting thousands of successful companies and forming a formidable global presence, HSBC is providing an essential gateway to exporting.

For Nick Missin, HSBC’s head of trade for the North & Scotland, the determination of his customers to seek new ways of selling their goods and services has never faltered. These companies are always looking for their next customer, and with access to around 90% of world trade, HSBC could help them expand their reach.

“Despite uncertainties in the lead up to Brexit, HSBC’s customers realise that there is a long lead time when dealing with export markets, so our message to potential exporters in the North is to start that forward planning now and think about taking advice and looking

for the right opportunities, because they are undoubtedly out there.

“As we work closely with our customers, we see a positive mood with a lot of enquiries from all sorts of businesses, not just with start-ups looking to take their first steps, but also a lot of mid-market, which are traditionally domestic businesses. There are now success stories in every area and in every segment of industry.”

Missin says those segments include construction, food and drink, heritage goods and oil & gas, which is enjoying a resurgence and leading to some firms repositioning themselves to take advantage of new and revitalised markets. The North is holding its head high as it competes with the world’s best companies, and for him that means HSBC investing its time and experience at every stage of its customers’ growth to make sure every ounce of potential is fulfilled.

He told BQ: “We are firm believers in the Northern Powerhouse concept and the opportunities it represents, which is one of the reasons we are co-sponsoring BQ’s Northern Powerhouse Export Awards. The journey our businesses are on can start with a simple conversation with one of our team to build on a few early ideas, or with our Export Resource Centre to start researching the next step.

“We aim to make such important moves as straightforward as possible for our customers, so the Centre is a one-click online home for insights, case studies and top tips from our trade experts and like-minded businesses, as well as detailed country guides to help them learn more about the markets they might be interested in. But this is not just ours, we have links in there to the Department of International Trade (DIT) and to the Exporting is GREAT site, which is a firm favourite of mine because it has

Commercial Feature

thousands of overseas contracts that have been gathered together by British embassies and consulates.

“They can also use our Connections Hub to extend their networks – something that we know to be very important for firms looking to build a long-term exporting plan. Connections Hub helps our business customers from around the world connect and build relationships.

“All that is a crucial head-start for any aspirational business looking at any area of the world, from the States to Mexico, China, India, Hong Kong and Singapore. They are receptive markets for British goods and services.”

One other reason why those markets present an opportunity for UK businesses is that HSBC has people based across the globe who know their regions inside out and have built relationships that have paved the way for deals to be done.

“It is all very well having contacts with people in these areas but HSBC’s strategy is to have

feet on the ground in these places to help where it matters most,” Missin says.

“We have in-depth local knowledge and expertise in these countries, backed by our UK operation – and our £10bn SME fund – to form the ideal partnership to create Northern success stories.

Using its experience and reputation, HSBC can help customers take advantage of new opportunities that could become gamechanging markets, such as the vast Belt and Road Initiative where China plans to spend around US$900bn on infrastructure projects across the world to link trade along a Maritime Belt and Silk Road.

Described by our Government as “a bold and visionary project” and with the UK at the Western end of the road, the potential is clear.

As Missin says: “Doing the groundwork now will be crucial as our Northern Powerhouse firms look to the future of the Asian market, particularly as the Belt and Road Initiative could

involve projects lasting decades. There are 65 countries linked by this plan to build the infrastructure, which brings great opportunities for construction businesses and the service industries that support them, as well as engineering and consultancy firms.

“Like so many firms we deal with, I like a challenge and with so many opportunities out there in so many different places, we have all become adept at being agile enough to react to market trends and new openings in the world and bring them to the notice of British companies who have the skills, products and drive to make the most of them.” n

Start your journey today.

Visit the HSBC Export Escource Centre: www.business.hsbc.uk/export

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SAVING LIVES WITH SEAWEED

bqlive.co.uk

Midland entrepreneurs Nitesh Mall and Andrew Vanezis are battling to reduce potentially deadly strokes by encouraging consumers to swap salt for seaweed. Jon Griffin reports.

A

fledgling health food company aims to cut the rising cost to the nation of strokes and reduce the dangers of high blood pressure via a new salt “substitute”: seaweed imported from Taiwan. Longstanding friends Nitesh Mall and Andrew Vanezis have joined forces to ship thousands of tins of Kombu seaweed a month from the Far East to the UK – and have already signed up around 900 UK outlets, ranging from health stores to pharmacies.

From this summer, the enterprising duo has reached an agreement to sell its seaweed product – which its branded SALTernative – in 370 Holland & Barrett stores nationwide. And its struck a deal to sell the product in the in-house pharmacy at the world-famous Harrods store in London.

The two friends now have their sights set on stocking SALTernative in supermarkets to further boost sales to between 10,000 and 15,000 tins a month.

They are also being helped to explore markets by the enterprise team at Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce.

“If everyone were to cut a gram of salt out daily, it could potentially save 6,000 lives a year in the UK,” says Mall, 28, from Sutton Coldfield. “Kombu seaweed contains 92% less sodium than table salt – there’s a

massive opportunity in commercialising the product for consumers “Eliminating salt from Indian cooking, for example, is very hard. But when we tested the seaweed it worked a treat. The thought of seaweed in food may not be appealing to everyone, but we wanted to see if it would work in the mass market and so far we have had a positive response.”

Vanezis, 33, adds: “Everybody is focusing on sugar at the moment, not many people are focusing on salt.

But the effects of salt are not as noticeable as sugar – you may not realise you are suffering from high blood pressure. If left undetected and untreated, it can lead to strokes.”

The two friends opted for Kombu seaweed – found in the seas off Taiwan – after flying out to the Far East in May last year to sign an exclusive deal with one of the region’s biggest seaweed producers to ship the tins back to the new firm’s distribution centre in Preston.

Vanezis says: “We feel we are the only ones in the UK market heavily pushing a seaweed-based product as a salt alternative. Until this summer we were pushing up to a figure of 3,000 to 4,000 tins a month, but are aiming to reach between 10,000 and 15,000 a month.

“It was good to go out there and physically see the

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seaweed. We wanted to make sure that the seaweed was well sourced and processed to the right standard and that it was the best variety in the area – 90% of the seaweed in the world is from the Far East.

“It was a bit of a leap in the dark going all the way out there. But you have to make the jump, you have to have the confidence to do that. When you have been there and seen it for yourself, it is a lot easier to identify with the product.”

The pair forked out around £4,000 between them for the exotic two-week Far East trip – but insist that the substantial outlay was well worthwhile in business terms.

Vanezis says: “To build a customer base, it’s going to cost you money – you have to think that everything is a cost in the first year. You have to remember that most businesses fail in their first year because they do not take heed of the fact that they need to have enough finance in place to get through the first 12 months.

“At present everything is going back into the company – we are putting everything on the line.”

Mall says: “For us, we would rather go 100% at it and fail than just go 50% and have regrets.

You have to set yourself realistic goals and

keep cashflow in mind. We have learnt so much since we started.”

The pair both extol the virtues of social media in spreading the Kombu seaweed message. Mall says: “We attracted 4,100 followers on Instagram alone in just two months earlier this year, which has helped our online sales. Around 35% of our sales are currently online and we are trying to grow social media.

“We also use Skype and WhatsApp to deal with the Far East. We would not have been able to achieve what we can without technology – for example 20 years ago, we would have had to fax each other, which took time and money.”

The firm is also tapping into the endless possibilities of the digital world by working with a local gym to reinforce the healthy lifestyle message crucial to the success of SALTernative – displaying custom-made home exercise videos on YouTube.

Vanezis says: “The majority of our customers are already health-conscious. We are trying to sell the concept that as a population we need to get healthier. Too many people are not aware of the fact that they need to cut their sodium content, that there is too much salt in our food.

“The Western market is not used to using seaweed in their diets. But we have around 900 retailers now and it is distributed via pharmaceutical and health food wholesalers.

Last year we did the Good Food Show at the NEC to help get the product to consumers and we plan to attend more consumer trade shows over the course of the year.”

Mall and Vanezis have also agreed a corporate partnership deal with national charity Blood Pressure UK to help raise the profile of Kombu seaweed and publicise the new SALTernative product.

“We are in discussions with other retailers, including supermarkets, grocers and other chains, and from this July have been selling in 370 Holland and Barrett stores,” adds Nitesh.

The SALTernative tins retail at £3.99 for a 50g supply, which can last for up to a month depending on usage.

“We are just rolling our sleeves up and knocking on doors. And if we knock on enough doors, people will listen to you. It has been a hard slog so far, we are still at the growing stage.”

It may still be early days for Kombu seaweed, but the duo is understandably delighted to have exclusive London store Harrods on board.

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“If we can create a company that helps the UK population and is a viable business that is a win-win situation. It is a good feeling that you can help people’s lives.”

Mall says: “We had a meeting with them and explained what we were trying to achieve and what the product was there for. They really liked the concept and idea.

“It is a great name for us and can be an ambassador. The single store is not likely to sell millions, but having it as a stockist gives the brand precedence.”

The company behind SALTernative is mainly owned by Mall and Vanezis, with 43% and 42% of shares respectively. The remaining 15% is owned by Walsall-based investor Daljit Birdi, who’s now the new firm’s commercial director.

Birdi’s share comes after he bolstered the seaweed initiative by ploughing investment into the business.

Mall and Vanezis mainly work out of the Birmingham area and have a small office in Walsall. But much of the time they are out and about, working remotely. For example, they’re aiming to broaden their horizons further with an export drive, with Europe, the United States and Russia in their sights for the future.

Meanwhile, their employee Shailesh Ahya is in

charge of pharmacy sales.

Mall says SALTernative’s annual turnover is looking likely to be “a six-figure sum” by the end of this year, but both entrepreneurs are adamant that profitability is not the new firm’s only goal. He worked in the pharmacy sector before launching the Kombu project and explains: “One in three adults suffer from high blood pressure and salt is the biggest culprit.

“If we can create a company that helps the UK population and is a viable business that is a win-win situation. It is a good feeling that you can help people’s lives. The ideal concept is that when people are doing home cooking, they will choose to use our products as a seasoning agent without putting any salt in.”

To that end, the firm is keen to eventually break into the education sector. Mall says: “We would very much like to take the message into schools but it is going to take a while to get to that stage. We are also looking at restaurants with this product.”

Vanezis, who started working life as a chef in Welwyn Garden City, agrees: “If we continue

to grow, schools are something we can look at in the future. We are still learning ourselves as we go along. One of the main factors is to get a customer base and sustain that customer base, especially with the opportunities offered by social media.”

As much as anything else, the impressive growth of SALTernative in less than a year is testament to the trust and friendship shared by the two young entrepreneurs. They met when working at a retail store in Enfield back in 2008 – and have been firm friends ever since.

Vanezis adds: “I think it helps we get along, the trust is there as friends. I do not think that age is always the key – you sometimes need to go through failures before you become successful.”

Mall nods in agreement: “Because we are very close, we can be open with each other.

When you are young, you have all these dreams and ambitions and you do what you can to make it work. But if you really put your mind to things, I am convinced you can do what you want.” n

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Smarter, better, faster, stronger SMALL and Medium Enterprises accounted for 99%* of all businesses in the UK in 2016, with 76%* not employing anyone aside from the owner. With increased pressure to deliver a top quality (often immediate) service, the people at the top already have a lot of hats to wear.

Until someone invents a time machine that allows more than 24 hours in any one day, passion and hard work only get you so far.

That’s why successful businesses are turning to tech to boost productivity and improve competitiveness. Make sure you do…before your competitors do!

Base decisions on accurate data It sounds obvious, but it’s not easy.

Entrepreneurs make a lot of good but gutbased decisions. As your business grows, however, so does the need to shift decisionmaking to base it on solid data.

Harness the five latest tech trends before your competitors steal your customers.

Fortunately, technology and cloud services can help you turn unfiltered data into useful insights. Free tools such as Microsoft Power BI turns raw data into rich visuals that can help you spot trends, and can pull in data directly from many of today’s popular cloud apps.

This can help you understand your market properly and, when it comes to expanding or diversifying, not make assumptions that you’ll later regret.

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“Technology is a great business enabler, whatever your size or maturity.”

Maximise your billable time Audio and web conferencing tools are becoming more sophisticated, making it more acceptable to use apps like Skype for Business to stay in touch with clients without having to travel for face-to-face meetings. That travel time can be turned into productive work that is better for your clients and their customer experience.

Get out from behind the desk A critical capability for today’s businesses is the need to stay productive away from your desk. The ability to quickly respond to emails, update and share documents and manage calendars wherever, whenever is a game changer for many small businesses.

Technology such as Office 365 gives businesses the freedom to work in whatever way is best for them, while remaining connected to their customers who expect fast and highly digital interactions. It also makes it easier to be part of company-wide conversations. Team chat tools such as Microsoft Teams keep everyone in the loop via the same team workspace – from sales people out in the field to the people responsible for the yes/no decisions. Using virtual workspaces can also help you free up physical desk space, and office overheads too, both of which can stifle growth in the early stages of establishing a business.

Trouble-free transformation Transformation does not have to equal business disruption and change management challenges. Thanks to the cloud, IT that was formerly the domain of large company budgets is now accessible for SMEs. Moving to the cloud also cuts the reliance on your own servers, putting you in a better position for backing up data and disaster recovery. A power outage at one of your locations or a stolen laptop no longer means

a critical loss of business or security. In the long run, this doesn’t just save money; it also improves reliability.

Learn from what they wish they knew Technology is a great business enabler, whatever your size or maturity. Are you taking advantage of the latest tech innovations?

Staying as connected to your customers as your competitors?

Our What I Wish I Knew eBook gives you insights into the views of five UK small business owners and their stories.

For details of the experiences of the other four small businesses in our “What I wish I Knew” eBook simply go to https://aka.ms/whatiwishebook *Statistics obtained from the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.

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STICK TO WHAT

YOU KNOW How Rupert Taylor, founder & MD of Nonstop Snow, discovered the golden rule of growth.

Partner

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“Our staff in Canada are on the go all the time. They could be on top of a mountain, in a snow cave, on a bus driving clients to ice skate on a frozen lake, or in an airport.”

WE’RE a specialist ski and snowboard company providing professional coaching to people taking career breaks or gap years, people wanting to become mountain patrollers or ski instructors, or just passionate skiers who want to transform their skills. Our clients join us for anything between one week and three months – the average trip is about six weeks.

I started the business in 2002 in a little town in western Canada called Fernie, which is where I’d gone fresh from university in 2001 with my snowboard and a work visa to live in the mountains and become an instructor. I absolutely loved the lifestyle but I also loved teaching and sharing my passion. So I decided to create a business that would allow me to stay in the industry and pass on my love for the sport.

It was touch and go to start with. We built a website quite quickly but generating bookings was really challenging. We were fast running out of cash but we decided to invest what little we had in a PR agency, which managed to generate quite a bit of coverage. After that we managed to get 40 people in our first year, which was double our initial expectation.

At the time, it was just me and my cousin Lisa. These days the company employs 20 people full-time. In the winter that number grows to about 75. Our primary location is still western Canada but now we also operate in New Zealand and France. We take about 500 people away each year and we run two offices year-round, one in the UK and another in Canada. We also own a 43-bed hotel in Fernie called the Red Tree Lodge. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years but we’ve grown pretty steadily – about 5%-10% each year on average.

One of the big lessons I’ve learned is that it’s better to run a really great business that’s humming efficiently than expand too quickly into new areas. Just before the financial

crash we bought a sailing school in Devon and rebranded it Nonstop Sail. We ran it for two and a half years, offering things like trans-Atlantic trips and circumnavigations of the British Isles. But we quickly learned that diversification isn’t necessarily a good thing. In fact, now I think of it as something of a dirty word.

It was a classic case of not understanding the market properly and making assumptions.

With hindsight, we should have asked our clients what interested them and worked out what we could get them to book with us.

We made a presumption that people who skied also wanted to sail – but there wasn’t a cross-over so we had to go after a completely new set of customers while we learned all the operational skills of running a different kind of business.

We should probably have called it a day a year earlier than we did but I suppose our emotions got the better of us. We didn’t want it to fail and felt an obligation to the staff and our customers. Pride and passion stopped us giving up when we probably should have.

Keeping close to my customers is very important to me. You’ve got to stay in tune with their requirements so you can adapt accordingly. We do this by using the usual feedback channels but nothing beats getting on the phone and talking to them. We’re lucky in that we get to speak to them in depth because of the sort of service we offer; it’s not unusual to be on the phone for an hour or more.

Technology is a great enabler for us. We work remotely, from multiple resort centres in Canada and from London and Bath in the UK so it’s important to be linked up and all using the same software. It’s good to be able to share files and coordinate our movements easily and our fortnightly team meetings are all held online.

Our staff in Canada are on the go all the time. They could be on top of a mountain, in a snow cave, on a bus driving clients to ice skate on a frozen lake, or in an airport. At any moment, they might have to be able to send emails or connect to a videoconference or access supplier details or find out if a client is allergic to something. And all this from quite remote environments. They used to have to carry around big binders of information, now they just need a mobile device.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but looking back to when I started the business as a 22-year-old, I wish I’d been better at focusing on priorities and saying no so I could concentrate on core things. That’s a skill I’m still working on. I also wish I’d known better when to outsource or delegate. I was trying to save money by doing everything myself but that’s often not the best approach. I also wish I’d known how to relax more and not stress about the business. There are more important things in life.

Top tip: Grow, but don’t necessarily diversify.

We all love change but our expansion into sailing was a costly lesson. Now I only want to grow by finding new products for our existing customers or finding new customers for our existing products. Also, it’s fine having gut feelings but you need to back them up when you’re expanding because the time and cost involved in creating new products is significant.

You need to be certain you’re right. n

The above interview is extracted from Microsoft’s eBook: “What I Wish I Knew: Five UK small-business owners share their success secrets”

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The

changing face of funerals The way we approach the business of death, and mourning, is changing. Mike Hughes meets Bryan and Catherine Powell, founders of Pure Cremation, a disruptor in one of the most sensitive sectors of all.

W

hen venture capitalists are looking for a new investment opportunity, they want some hope of a decent return, in the shortterm or long-term. A key factor in whether that is likely will be the longevity of the target.

Is this an overnight sensation (short-term potential if the timing is perfect) or a business that will grow, in a reliably active market.

As far as that reliability is concerned, there can’t be many to match the funerals sector.

People will live and die – that’s it. And, as long as families look for help in processing their loss, there will be a need for experienced funeral directors.

But, even in such a sensitive sector – where any new approach will always be balanced against how it will be perceived by grieving parents, sons and daughters – change is happening. The accepted formality of the

gathering for a funeral service is being questioned, and people like Bryan and Catherine Powell are the ones providing the answer.

Their Newbury business, Pure Cremation, is only a couple of years old but is already the UK’s leading specialist in direct cremations, where the body is collected and a cremation is carried out, usually with no-one present, and the ashes are handed over to the family within a couple of weeks, with no ceremony or service. It is then up to the family to arrange their own personal farewell away from the spotlight of a full service. Those farewells can take many forms, from a kite scattering the ashes to a memorial cricket match or the raising of a glass at a favourite pub.

From doing about 100 direct cremations a year, the Powells now look after nearer 1,000 at

£1,195 a time – about a third of the full funeral cost – and the sector is growing so much that Bryan is becoming the go-to expert for those venture capitalists looking for inside knowledge of growth patterns and potential mergers or takeovers.

So, at 47, he finds himself a disruptor in an industry in which he has been working since he was 17. “It all started in 2015 with a simple request from a client to look after his mother – but he didn’t think he needed the coffin there to celebrate a life,” Bryan told me.

“And I thought ‘fair enough’ because the part of a funeral people enjoy is the wake after when the personal stories are told and family members and friends are reunited and there is a shared experience of the deceased involving unique memories. That is now often the most important part of a funeral because attitudes

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are changing and where perhaps 20 or 30 years ago nan would go to church on Sunday and have a group of friends there, but now she may be just as likely to go shopping on a Sunday. That sort of intimate community often isn’t there anymore.

“So, we started with this one request and then found ourselves doing more and more until we decided to stop doing traditional funerals and concentrate on this type of service because there was clearly a need.”

This rebel within his industry has not gone down well with all his contemporaries. Fleets of hearses and piano-black cars are expensive, and plenty of staff are needed to run a fullblown service and burial, and now there is an alternative that is much cheaper, but with the same love and respect any family would expect. Bryan diplomatically describes it as “as a service the industry would rather you didn’t know about”.

His company is now not a member of any UK trade organisations, but has stayed with international and United States associations, saying that in the UK there is still a lack of understanding about the change that is happening – and also he feels the membership fees are just too high for their income.

“

“I tell them that the most important thing is to hold on to the memories – the unique moments you spend with the people you have just lost.”

“They are there for the trade, not for the consumer,” he says. “So, we put in a lot of effort instead into asking people for verified reviews of what we offer, which has led to a lot of our business coming from referrals.”

The lesson is that no business should think for a moment that its market is here to stay. As BQ entrepreneurs have shown on so many occasions, innovation is always happening in products, processes and services. But, for the funerals sector, it is said that the last big breakthrough was the change from horses to cars around a century ago. The time is right to shake things up.

But this is a business that Bryan loves. As a schoolboy in Bath during a boomtime, he had planned to become a stockbroker, but for a reason still unknown to him, when he was choosing three work experience options, he blurted out “funeral director” for his last one and an unplanned career was born.

“I think a lot of things appealed,” he tells me. “There was the formality, and a bit of looking after people in their time of need and definitely a bit of driving big cars.”

So, making a radical change to the sector was not a step he took lightly. But like any business, when your customers are more free-thinking than you, sometimes you have to stop and listen, even when you are already the founding chairman of the Independent Funeral Directors’ College, as well as serving for a number of years on the national executive of the Society of Allied & Independent Funeral Directors.

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“Our strapline is ‘The freedom to choose’ and we very much stand behind this,” he says. “By separating the cremation from the celebration of a life, we are giving people the freedom to choose to do what they want, where they want it and when they want to do it.

“Traditionally, a funeral would be Monday to Friday, between 10am and 3pm, and you would be told what time to be at the crematorium, having waited for the one in front of you to come out, and then see the next one coming in as you leave. It’s been a bit of a production line at times,” he admits.

“But now I think people say goodbye over quite a long time period, certainly when a person passes away and then they do something personal with the ashes, like taking them to a favourite spot or even keeping them on the mantle-piece. That is the moment they are getting closure rather than seeing any value in the ceremony part of it where someone comes to the house a couple of evenings before to learn the life story and then regurgitates it on the day of the funeral. It doesn’t have any great value to the people we look after.

“I tell them that the most important thing is to hold on to the memories – the unique

moments you spend with the people you have just lost. The memories will always remain with you, so the people will remain with you as well.”

The debate about funeral attitudes was opened up on a global scale by the death of David Bowie in January last year. The deeplyprivate music icon was cremated in New York, avoiding the headline-grabbing full funeral, and the fact it all happened so quickly underlined to millions the arrival of this new service and why it might be an acceptable alternative.

So acceptable, in fact, that investors are keen to corner the market. “I have helped advise VC companies over the past ten years or so,” says Bryan.

“Because it is a relatively small industry, there aren’t that many investments to make, so when they do find one they are keen to make a move. Investors see a stability in the marketplace and something that is always going to be there in one form or another. They will also know of very good investments that have been made already, so it is seen as a good bet for them.

“With my knowledge of the market, I might be able to advise on a particular region or a company that might be looking to expand.

Historically, funeral businesses are often acquired by larger groups and from that some staff may move out and start their own, so it is a sector that has a start-up element within it.

“But I happen to think there are too many funeral businesses around these days. When I started out a good-sized firm might be doing 400-500 funerals each year, but now the average is 120.”

Pure Cremation’s Newbury base serves the whole of England, from Newcastle to Truro, with his team using a range of crematoria and delivering the ashes home personally each time in a complex logistics operation. With more than £1m coming into the business, there are already talks going on to finance its own expansion, possibly including the company’s own crematorium, and other centres in addition to Hambridge Lane.

The company gives out a free e-book called “How to save £2,500 on a funeral” and the team photo on the company’s website shows them all smartly arranged in front of eight vehicles, with some open-neck shirts on view.

Both would be unimaginable a few years ago, but then this is the business that is changing our view of what is really important when a life ends. n

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