BQ YORKSHIRE issue 10 by We Are UMi

www.bq-magazine.co.uk

ISSUE TEN: AUTUMN 2011

plant higher Electronic printing is ideal for companies in growth

credit where due A new breed of payment card shows great flexibility

scrubbed up well The soap company that’s awash with potential

bq live debate Is finance for start-ups ISSUE TEN: AUTUMN 2011: YORKSHIRE EDITION

and expansion yours for the asking or have the banks secured the loan shutters?

retail tales Twenty five years in the cut and thrust of fashion

BUSINESS NEWS: COMMERCE: FASHION: INTERVIEWS: MOTORS: EVENTS

YORKSHIRE EDITION

Business Quarter Magazine

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BUSINESS QUARTER: AUTUMN 11: issue ELEVEN There’s a distinct retail theme among the entrepreneurs we interview this month – which is pretty apposite because that seems to be the sector which is being hit hardest at the moment. If you don’t believe me, ask Judy Aldred, one of our other entrepreneurs, who makes a living from selling data. She has clear proof that it is the retail sector, and not, as some would have us believe, the public sector, that has borne the brunt of redundancies so far. Not that our retailers appear to be in any bad shape. Guy Hudson, of Lynx Womenswear and Menswear, is celebrating his shop’s 25th anniversary this year. Quite an achievement in the world of fashion. And even more of an achievement, I think you will agree, when you read about the hectic life he led before the sedate avenues and well-heeled customers of Harrogate beckoned. Warren Booth of the Yorkshire Soap Company can’t claim quite as long a record in one shop, but he and his business have certainly been brightening up Hebden Bridge, the former mill town. Nick Fearnley doesn’t actually run a shop – but his easy-to-install digital screening products have helped many big name retailers and financial services companies show off their wares in the most dramatic way. We even keep a retail theme going in our report on the latest BQ Live event, where we get the great and the good from the world of Yorkshire business to have their say on a topical issue. This time the subject was “Access to Finance” and while Stuart Paver, managing director of what is probably Yorkshire’s most successful shoe shop, said his company didn’t at the moment need any of that, he had plenty of examples of other people who did – and couldn’t get it.

For our business lunch, we speak to Sarah Day, the first woman partner of DLA Piper’s Leeds office. She was sounded out for the job on the quiet, which sounds like the kind of thing that perpetuates the glass ceiling in most companies. She actually thinks it helped her focus her mind on applying for the post – and would have helped many other people in her position. Outside of the profile interviews, we pay a visit to Ryedale Group – a printing company which, despite being based in sleepy Kirkbymoorside, is doing really revolutionary things in an industry that can still appear staid. We find out why Mike Fromant, a man who made a career of selling credit cards, thinks the latest venture he has joined – pre-pay card specialist Contis Group – is a more appropriate solution for these post-credit crunch times. And we check out the facilities at Rockliffe Hall, a five-star retreat that is so good it really should be in Yorkshire, even if it is just over the River Tees.

CONTACTS room501 ltd Christopher March Managing Director e: chris@room501.co.uk George Cheung Director e: george@room501.co.uk Euan Underwood Director e: euan@room501.co.uk Bryan Hoare Director e: bryan@room501.co.uk Mark Anderson Director e: mark@room501.co.uk EditorIAL Peter Baber Editor e: peterb@bq-magazine.co.uk Alastair Gilmour Sub-editor e: communicate@pressboxmedia.co.uk Design & production room501 e: studio@room501.co.uk Photography

Peter Baber Editor, BQ Yorkshire

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YORKSHIRE EDITION

BQ Magazine is published quarterly by room501 Ltd.

BUSINESS QUARTER |AUTUMN 11

CONTE BUSINESS QUARTER: AUTUMN 11 soap opera

42 credit due

Features

A new kind of payment card being developed in Skipton

46 bq live The debate examines finance for startups and growth problems

20 entrepreneur The young man whose hobby was making soap – and now scrubs up well

26 success story The Kirbymoorside company progressing into electronic printing

37 hectic high life Guy Hudson’s fashion business is doing far more than just hanging in there

BUSINESS QUARTER | AUTUMN 11

52 go figures

20 hectic high life

There are no lies in statistics, says database company boss Judy Alred

56 hall to play for A luxury retreat just over the Yorkshire border that shouldn’t be missed

76 good sign A digital signmaking firm expects the future to be rosy

TENTS YORKSHIRE EDITION

go figures

32 COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

The landmark developments creating our enterprising landscape

60 BUSINESS LUNCH

Regulars

Sarah Day is the first female managing partner of Yorkshire’s biggest law firm

64 FASHION Golf is at last a serious style business

68 motors Rolls-Royce is still the classic of classics

6 ON THE RECORD Doing the positives in business

8 NEWS Who’s doing what, when, where and why, here in Yorkshire

18 AS I SEE IT Leeds should lead in green investment

52 style driver

70 wine Simon Rose is impressed by Spain and South Africa – their wines, at any rate

72 equipment Getting close to the super-wealthy

80 FRANK TOCK Gripping gossip from our backroom boy

60 BUSINESS QUARTER | AUTUMN 11

ON THE RECORD

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Bricks and mortar may be going up, Leeds and Sheffield united legally, Betty’s top man in tea leaves, YBS gets a new CE, double dip raises its head with a drop, and print firm rescued from administration former chief executive the same month, safeguarding 27 jobs. That deal included the sale of all shares in Pindar North America, which was not in administration. And in September Pindar’s confidential printing business was bought by Secure and Confidential Documents. Pindar’s remaining assets were due to be sold by auction in October. However nearly 50 local companies have outstanding debts with the firm, which former chief executive Andrew Pindar admits they will be unlikely to recoup in full. The firm, which gained an extra £3m in funding from HSBC as recently as March, blamed the collapse on a downturn in business.

>> Law firms merge Two of Yorkshire’s larger law firms with operations in West and South Yorkshire have merged. Keeble Hawson and HLW Commercial Lawyers will create one of the region’s biggest legal practices, now known as HLW Keeble Hawson. Both have offices in Leeds and Sheffield, while Keeble Hawson also have an office in Doncaster. The merged practice will have a team of around 250. Keeble Hawson managing partner Paul Trudgill, said: “HLW’s experience and ethos strongly reflects our culture and our commitment to quality and excellence.” HLW senior partner Ron Whitlam added: “The combined depth and breadth of knowledge and experience of both firms’ commercial teams enables us to advise wide-ranging businesses from the sole trader to quoted companies and financial institutions. There is also the added advantage of being able to provide our existing clients with a comprehensive range of legal services in areas where HLW does not currently operate.”

>> Pindar saved What could have been one of the most spectacular businesses collapses in Scarborough for many years appears to have been averted. Pindar, one of Scarborough’s biggest employers, went into administration in July three weeks after posting full-year losses of £1.4m and putting itself up for sale. However a pre-pack deal swiftly saw York Mailing, a newly formed subsidiary, acquire the company’s web offset printing and bindery division from administrator KPMG. As a result, the business will remain in Scarborough, and

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>> New man at YBS

Merger: Paul Trudgill, managing partner Keeble Hawson, standing left; Ron Whitlam,senior partner HLW; Seated: Tony Gregory, senior partner, Keeble Hawson, left, and Roger Dyson, managing partner HLW

255 staff have transferred. Ian Marwood from Grant Thornton, who advised York Mailing on the transaction, said: “I’m extremely pleased to see the successful combination of these two historic Yorkshire businesses, and I am confident that the new business will continue to go from strength to strength.” Legal advice on the deal was provided by Lupton Fawcett. A second sale in August saw the former Pindar cartography business, based in Aylesbury, bought by music printer Halstan Printing Group, with all 16 staff transferring. Another subsidiary, Agility, was sold to its

Yorkshire Building Society has named Chris Pilling, currently head of branch network at HSBC, as its new chief executive. At the same time its merger with the Norwich & Peterborough Building Society has been approved by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The merger will consolidate its position as the UK’s second largest building society. Pilling, who will join the society at the end of the year, takes over from Iain Cornish, who announced he was stepping down in February after eight years in the role. Chairman Ed Anderson said: “Chris Pilling is an excellent appointment. The Yorkshire is one of the UK’s strongest financial institutions and recent merger and acquisition activity has further strengthened its position. “Chris’s outstanding track record and his wealth of skills and experience in delivering exceptional customer services in the retail financial services sector will prove

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invaluable in equipping him to lead the society forward and build on the position we have established.” Pilling said: “The Yorkshire has a tremendous opportunity to build on its status as an independent building society to provide a real and trusted alternative to the banks and I am very much looking forward to being a part of that.” Pilling himself only took on his current role earlier this year, although before that he was chief executive of HSBC-owned First Direct for five years.

>> …as property developers split CTP St James, the trans-Pennine joint venture company that has been behind some of the most well-known property developments of the last decade, has come to an end. Manchester-based CTP has bought Leedsbased St James Securities out of the joint venture for an undisclosed sum, with the joint venture’s assets being distributed between the two developers. The joint venture had been responsible for developing the Round Foundry in Leeds, turning one of the world’s oldest steel foundries into a thriving mixed use developments. It was also behind the Heart of the City development in Sheffield and Wakefield Waterfront. However, the two parties insist the split was amicable.

>> Recession fears heightened Fears of a double dip recession have been heightened after a major survey into the economy of the region suggested that business activity declined in August for the first time since May 2009. The Lloyds TSB Yorkshire & Humber Business Activity Index – which measures the combined output of the region’s manufacturing and service sectors – came in at 49.5 for the month, below the 50.0

ON THE RECORD

level that indicates no change. The Business Activity Index fall, down from 52.2 in July, was only marginal, and the survey’s authors say it was largely concentrated in the services sector. However the accompanying Lloyds TSB Yorkshire & Humber PMI Report suggested job losses in the region are accelerating. The rate of job losses has quickened since July and is now the strongest across all UK regions.

but the company insists this is due to a change in the mix of properties it offers. More optimistically, it says weekly sales rates for the traditionally quiet summer period are running 4% ahead of this time last year.

>> Short spell for outsider at Bettys The first non-family member to lead Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate has left the company after less than a year. Andrew Baker, who was previously chief executive at Duchy Orginals, replaced Jonathan Wild. Wild had retired after more than 35 years of working for the company, 20 of them as chief executive. In a statement the company said: “It is with regret that we announce Andrew Baker has left Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate. “Andrew brought many admirable qualities and enormous experience to the role, but he and the board both agreed that the longerterm ambitions and cultural direction for the group called for a different approach.”

>> Housebuilder happier Housebuilder Persimmon, once the UK’s largest housebuilder and Yorkshire’s largest company, has seen its fortunes improve with a 52% rise in half-year profits – despite a declining turnover. Underlying pre-tax profits at the York firm for the first six months of 2011 came in at £59.7m, compared with £39.4m for the same period in 2010. Total revenues were £712.8m, compared with £776.6m the year before. The company has also substantially reduced its net borrowings, from £112.1m at the end of June last year to £15.2m this year. The average selling price of a Persimmon house has declined by 3.7% to £162,647,

>> CPP new chief comes in York’s biggest private sector employer CPP has a new chief executive – although it is still awaiting the results of a Financial Services Authority investigation into its activities. Paul Stobart, who was until May the chief executive of Sage Northern Europe, has joined the credit card insurer which has already lost Barclaycard as a customer as a result of the investigation. He replaces Eric Woolley who was chief executive for eight years. Woolley, who saw the company through its public listing, will stay on in a consultative role for six months. Stobart joined Sage in 1996 as business development director. He became managing director of UK & Ireland in June 2003, and had only been in his immediate past role for four months. CPP chairman Charles Gregson said: “Paul has an excellent track record and brings significant, relevant experience to CPP following his 15 years at Sage. He understands the mechanics of a customer-focused, high service business and his very strong financial and operational background will be of great value to the group.”

BUSINESS QUARTER |AUTUMN 11

NEWS

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New tecnology boosts production, another venture for capital fund manager, Yorkshire bucks events trend, Lloyds appoints senior manager, York branch heads for Leeds, and takeaway is gobbled up megawatt-sized schemes with a range of other clients which are looking to be rolled out in the coming months. Jarrod Best, managing director of both GMI Construction and GMI Renewable Energy, said: “At GMI it is very important for us to stay true to our values while continuing to look at opportunities to enhance our offering to our clients. The renewable energy business provides a great fit with both our portfolio of work and our approach to sustainable construction.”

Yorkshire Bank Leeds Financial Solutions Centre asset finance partner Jonathan Smith, left, and Hanson Garages managing director Giles Hanson at the company’s headquarters in Featherstone

>> Garage firm looks to expand A Yorkshire manufacturer of concrete garages, workshops and light industrial units is set to increase its turnover by a third this year after investing in new production technology. Featherstone-based Hanson Garages, which operates throughout the UK, has invested in a semi-automated concrete dosing and handling machine after gaining asset finance backing from Yorkshire Bank Leeds Financial Solutions Centre (FSC) through its Investing for Growth initiative. The new machine, part of a series of acquisitions including a conveyor system for recycling chippings, a new molding machine for concrete panel manufacture and an articulated vehicle equipped with forklift facility, will help Hanson Garages increase its capacity, expand its product range and guarantee high production quality. The investments have helped create seven new jobs in management, sales and production. Hanson Garages managing director, Giles Hanson, 44, who took the business over in 1994, said: “Recent changes in our industry now mean that we are the second-largest manufacturer in the industry and have a significant opportunity to expand. These investments are achieving this and we are on track to deliver a 30% increase in our productivity this year. Yorkshire Bank Leeds FSC asset finance partner Jonathan Smith said: “We are seeing encouraging signs of growing interest in asset finance from business which, like Hanson Garages, have seen an opportunity to invest in technology and grow and also from companies which simply cannot run existing machinery or technology any longer profitably.”

>> GMI moves to PVs Leeds based building contractor GMI Construction Group has launched a new business specialising providing photovoltaic (PV) installations for commercial property. GMI Renewable Energy Group has already completed systems that so far total over

BUSINESS QUARTER | AUTUMN 11

250kW. They include a bespoke roof-mounted system at Pavers Shoes’ head office and distribution centre in York, and the largest Solyndra system yet established in the UK on the Clarence Dock car park in Leeds for Town Centre Securities and British Waterways. The company is also in negotiations for several

>> New man at EV Venture and growth capital fund manager EV has appointed Dr Graham Davies as investment manager. He will be joining the investment team which manages the Finance Yorkshire Seedcorn Fund on behalf of Finance Yorkshire. He was previously venture manager at University of Manchester Intellectual Property (UMIP), where he worked with and managed high growth spin-out investment opportunities. He has a strong science and technology background, with a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Edinburgh. He worked for several years as a >>

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postdoctoral scholar in Los Angeles, California and holds an MBA from Manchester Business School. Jonathan Diggines, chief executive of EV, said: “Graham joins one of the largest specialist venture capital/technology investment teams in the UK and will, I am sure, play a significant part in investing the Finance Yorkshire Seedcorn Fund.”

>> Create’s bold move in Leeds Social enterprise Create, which aims to encourage homeless and vulnerable people back into the workplace by offering them training in catering, has opened a restaurant in the centre of Leeds. The restaurant, on the junction of St Paul’s Street and King Street, will be overseen by executive head chef Richard Walton-Allen who has more than 20 years’ experience in the food industry, including 12 years as executive chef at Harvey Nichols. Create was founded in 2007 and is already offering a 12-week personalised training programme in a safe, supportive environment, which can lead to nationally-recognised qualifications. Trainees will now get an opportunity to work alongside Walton-Allen and his expert team. “We believe that our restaurant is unique in Leeds not just because of the great British food and fantastic service but because at Create we believe in doing business for the best reasons,” he said.

BUSINESS QUARTER | AUTUMN 11

>> Rhatigan leaves Feversham Arms Simon Rhatigan has stepped down as managing director of the Feversham Arms Hotel & Verbena Spa at Helmsley in North Yorkshire following the outright buyout of shares by the existing shareholders. Roddy Whiteford is now co-director of the business which is looking for a new general manager. Under Rhatigan’s ownership significant investment over seven years saw what had been a 17-bedroom, three-star coaching inn turn into a 33-bedroom, four-star AA Hotel of the Year and award-winning spa. In 2007-8 alone the shareholders invested £4.5m, adding new poolside suites and a Verbena Spa to the hotel. Rhatigan said: “I feel I have achieved all the things I wanted to achieve with the hotel. I am positive it will continue to thrive and develop under its new direction and maintain its reputation as one of the UK’s finest hotels. Whiteford has worked at senior level for many high profile hotels including being general manager at the Cameron House Hotel in Loch Lomond where he and his team achieved five-star recognition for the hotel as well as winning a series of accolades including AA Scottish Hotel of the Year and a Michelin Star. Plans the new owners have include upgrading the restaurant area this winter.

>> Yorkshire bucks events trend Yorkshire bucked trend last year and saw an increase in the number of conferences and events taking place in the region in the face of a national decline. A UK Events Market Trends Survey (UKEMTS) showed that the region hosted an average of 450 events per venue, proving higher than the national average at just 371 events. The figure represents a 5% increase for Yorkshire from the 2009 figures compared to a 2% decrease nationally. Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to

Yorkshire, said: “The recent findings are brilliant news for the region and highlight that Yorkshire is the place to do business.” Other findings from the survey confirmed that Yorkshire attracted a slightly higher proportion of public sector conferences and events (35% of all business) than the UK (28% nationally) in 2010 while the corporate sector accounted for 46% (51% nationally) and associations 19% – the same as the national figure. In 2010 the average day delegate rate in Yorkshire was £34 – down only slightly from £35 in 2009 – while the UK day delegate rate saw a more significant decrease from £46 to £42. The average 24-hour rate for the region was £127, down from £132 in 2009 although above the national average of £120 which dropped from £140 in 2009.

>> Chamber looks Smart Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce has hired public relations and marketing firm the Smart Agency to provide support as it positions itself as a key player in providing key advice and services to businesses in the region. Harrogate-based Smart Agency will work alongside the marketing and PR teams at the chamber as part of a programme to raise awareness of the increasing range of services to existing members, while attracting new companies in need of expert help and practical services.

>> Howlam in new fund Leeds-based Howlam Developments has teamed up with a Guernsey financial services business to launch a new UK residential property fund. The closed-end investment fund, which Howlam is running with Confiance, is seeking to raise £15m through high net worth individuals, companies and pension fund investors, with a minimum premium of £50,000. “With the stable base rate and the everincreasing need for residential housing continually falling below UK government targets, the opportunity for investor monies

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NEWS

>> New manager at Lloyds TSB

having the ability to work within bricks and mortar in a controlled and regulated environment has never been higher,” said Confiance fund services managing director Ian Hunt. Howlam is being advised in the UK by Gordons.

>> Hotel owners go under Two companies who own two hotels in the Scarborough area have been put into administration. Chris Rooney and Ian Green have been appointed joint administrators of English Rose Hotels and Wrea Head Hotel, which together own the Hackness Grange Hotel and the Wrea Head Hotel. Some 52 people work in the two hotels and the administrators have not made any redundancies while they seek to find >>

Lloyds TSB Commercial, the division of Lloyds Banking Group which supports small businesses, has appointed David Streather as a senior manager in Yorkshire. He leads a team of nine relationship managers who cover the area of Hull, Scarborough and York, and he will be working with Yorkshire’s new area director Martyn Kendrick. Streather has worked with the bank for 30 years, having previously held several business development managerial roles across the North East and Yorkshire. His experience was widened by a secondment with the Tyne & Wear Enterprise Trust, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to boost economic regeneration in the North East by providing support to local businesses. He has also been involved with a family business for many years. Kendrick said: “We’re committed to supporting SMEs – in fact, during the first half of 2011 we have provided £6.7bn of committed gross lending to UK SMEs, and we have also supported more than 62,000 start-ups in that time.”

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BUSINESS QUARTER |AUTUMN 11

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>> BQ and UBS team up to show who backs Yorkshire UBS’ Yorkshire team: Left to right, James Copeland, Karen Vardy, Neil King, Claire Kerr and Richard Bottomley

a buyer for the businesses. Rooney, joint administrator and director at PwC, said: “The companies have experienced recent financial difficulties and cashflow problems, leading to the insolvencies. The two hotels continue to trade and existing bookings will be honoured until further notice, while a buyer for the business and assets is sought.”

>> Law firm ups sticks to Leeds

UBS has joined forces with BQ magazine to instigate a significant piece of research to identify directors who are making a substantial contribution to Yorkshire’s economic landscape. The Yorkshire Investor Directors listing will be a snapshot of business leaders who are driving the region’s economy forward by investing in their organisations, the area’s infrastructure and creating jobs. Jonathan Brown, UBS head of the UK regional business, said: “Many of our entrepreneur clients are regularly investing personal wealth in their businesses and, alongside our professional colleagues involved in delivering private client and corporate finance services, we want to turn the spotlight on directors who are investing in ‘Yorkshire plc’ and helping support the regions economy. “Yorkshire is indebted to entrepreneurs whose acumen and investments contribute to the value of goods and services produced in the region. “UBS believes their efforts deserve to be officially recognised and promoted to act as an inspiration to others to follow their lead.” UBS Wealth Management recently selected Yorkshire to establish its latest UK office due to the strong potential for growth in an area that demonstrates impressive entrepreneurial flair and heritage. Richard Bottomley, a former senior partner at KPMG, has recently joined the UBS advisory board and has overseen the new opening. The office is located in 1 City Square, Leeds, but will serve the whole Yorkshire region. Peter Baber, editor of BQ magazine, said: “Business owners being prepared to invest in the region is essential to Yorkshire and its future prosperity and this research will acknowledge the crucial role they play in the region’s economic well-being. “As the area’s foremost business magazine, we are the ideal partner to support and promote a major business research project of this kind.” The leading Investor Directors in Yorkshire will be recognised in a special report in BQ magazine in January next year.

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Dickinson Dees, the North Eastbased law firm that initially came into Yorkshire by taking over a practice in York, has now decided to move the whole practice to Leeds. The firm is taking 17,000sq ft on the sixth floor at 1 Whitehall Riverside. Managing partner Jonathan Blair said he hoped to have this fully operational by February next year, “at which point all of our staff will have transferred from our current premises in York”. Since opening in York in 2007, staff numbers in Yorkshire have quadrupled to over 50 and turnover has increased to £4.5m for the year ending April 2011.

>> Tiles go online only Guiseley based tiling company Terra Firma has closed its showroom and turned into an etailer. The company was bought out by husband and wife team Sarah and Jonathan Chapman in 2008. Sarah Chapman said that by closing the showroom and taking the designs directly to the customers in their home or office, she can reduce overheads while achieving a much better feel for the customer’s requirements. She said: “I am dedicated to providing an unrivalled, personal and unique service, which is characterised by attention to detail and competitive costs.”

>> IM teams up with Vistage Peer-to-peer chief executive coaching and mentoring organisation Vistage

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International has appointed law firm Irwin Mitchell as a strategic alliance partner in the UK. As part of the deal, Irwin Mitchell’s business legal services team including Leeds-based employment partner Glenn Hayes and James Bullock, corporate partner in the Sheffield office, will present and provide advice for delegates at the organisation’s programme of events in the UK. The firm will also carry out referred work for companies within the group on a range of issues including succession planning, commercial litigation and employment law. Founded in 1957, Vistage provides support for over 14,000 chief executives across the world, including over 80 across Yorkshire, through regular peer group meetings,

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She was advised on the deal by Langleys Solicitors. She said: “I’m thrilled to be able to open my own business here in York. The business has a great reputation for excellence with a loyal customer base. I am looking forward to continuing this and for our customers to receive the same standards of quality and service that they have become used to.”

one-to-one coaching sessions and expert speaker workshops. Hayes said: “Vistage has proved for more than 40 years that it provides a vital role for ambitious CEOs. We are confident that Irwin Mitchell can help build on Vistage’s success and provide members with commercially driven support and advice.”

>> Takeaway taken over

>> Aire Valley law firms merge

A Yorkshire woman who has worked as a business development manager in the UK and Australia has bought a York-based company specialising in selling additive-free takeaway food. Victoria Giannini has bought the existing Nought E Food Company and has taken a ten-year lease of the trading premises on Blake Street.

Two Keighley law firms are merging with a third practice in Skipton to form a more multi-disciplinary practice. Armstrong Wood & Bridgman solicitors and Umberto Vietri Business Lawyers, both of Keighley, are amalgamating with >>

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Charlesworth Wood & Brown solicitors, a Skipton firm which dates back to 1732, to form the new practice. Martin Wood, senior partner of AWB Charlesworth Solicitors, who headed the team managing the merger, said: “We have consolidated everything that is best from them all to form an improved practice with firm foundations for sustainable growth.” Managing partner Alan Davidson said: “For our established clients the merger is definitely a positive step. Everyone will be able to continue to deal with the familiar office and faces they are accustomed to, but we will now also offer wider expertise within the firm to help people across a greater range of services while we gain internally from a stronger administrative support structure.”

>> Cake firm gets £50k to market itself A company that already makes cakes for the likes of Jet2, Grand Central Railway and Hull Trains has won a £50,000 business loan from Finance Yorkshire to help it market its products and services more. Exquisite Handmake Cakes is the 100th company to receive an investment from Finance Yorkshire since the fund completed its first deal in August last year. The company, which employs 30 people from five units on Lennox Road in Leeds, has enjoyed year-on-year growth since being established in April 2004 and has a projected turnover of more than £1.7m for this year. It is developing a new website and attending exhibitions, such as Lunch 2011 – a trade show for the UK’s food and drink industry at Old Billingsgate in London. Managing director Viv Parry said: “We have been very good at developing high-quality products and establishing routes to market. However, we have been very poor at marketing the company and the investment from Finance Yorkshire will enable us to raise the profile of the business. “We recently had a meeting with a prospective client which owns 90 coffee shops around the country and he asked why he hadn’t heard of

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Left to right: Keith Low of HSBC, Progress Group managing director Adrian Kemp and Andrew Walls of Ethos Corporate Finance at Progress Group in Dewsbury

>> Power firm gets funding A Yorkshire specialist power supply firm has secured £4.4m of funding from HSBC to assist with expansion. Progress Group, which is based in Dewsbury, sells, rents and installs generators and emergency power equipment to industrial and commercial clients worldwide. The business, which was originally founded in 1956, was bought out from the founding family in 2007 by managing director Adrian Kemp and his team. It now employs 110 people – 45 in Dewsbury, with the remainder at three sites in Glasgow, Cleveland and London. Although the firm’s turnover has proved resilient despite the downturn, a lack of funding was hindering expansion, particularly as it is looking to expand its fleet of hire equipment. The funding package comprises a term loan of £900,000, a £1.5m asset finance facility and an international trade facility of £500,000, all provided by HSBC Bank. Working capital of £1.5m was also provided by HSBC Invoice Finance. “Some of our customers were severely impacted by the recession but we’ve still been able to outperform the market and we have been creative about developing the hire fleet proposition,” said Adrian Kemp. “We are now positioned to expand and take the business forward both with more efficient newer hire generators, but also into more overseas markets with a great deal of potential.” Andrew Walls of Ethos Corporate Finance, who advised on the deal, said: “Progress needed more liquidity to invest in the newest generator technology available to take advantage of the opportunities in the hire market and move forward after the recession. “This deal shows that solid businesses can still attract crucial funding, but you can’t just rely on your existing bank, and you have to be willing to work hard to structure the package and work with new providers.” Keith Low of HSBC Bank said: “The structured nature of the funding on the right terms provides Progress with the facilities they need to allow them to expand, aided with our international expertise and global network.” Clarion provided legal advice to Progress Group.

us before. We want to turn that scenario around and have customers contact us because they have heard what we can offer.” The company was introduced to Finance Yorkshire by Keith Stearman from SPS, a York-based strategy, coaching and mentoring consultancy. Finance Yorkshire provides seedcorn, loan and equity linked investments, ranging from £15,000 to £2m.

The project is supported financially by the European Union. Ian Atkinson, an investment manager at Finance Yorkshire who worked on the deal, said: “Exquisite Cakes has achieved great success in a relatively short period of time. It has targeted a growing market and is developing a foothold on a national scale, while creating employment in the Yorkshire area.” >>

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COMPANY PROFILE

Four years ago IT support company P2 Technologies set out to provide a service that would set it apart from its competition. With over 50 collective years experience in the industry, P2 was formed by former colleagues Martin Page and Roger Pearson who surrounded themselves with like minded colleagues that together strive to provide a service based on honest advice, outstanding responsiveness, and unrivalled industry expertise.

P2 Technologies, providing smarter IT for businesses

2 Technologies Ltd delivers complete managed IT support to professional businesses across the UK acting as the IT department or complementing the in house IT team. P2’s clients rely on its services to work more efficiently and optimise their system reliability. Commercially focused, P2 ensures that every IT function backs up the key aims of its clients. To provide the unrivalled service that P2 is renowned for the company insists on personal and clear communication with all clients. Offering honest advice, outstanding responsiveness, and unrivalled industry expertise, P2’s client relationships set it apart from the competition. P2’s entire team is made up of people who share the company’s customer focus. Clients benefit from an IT service that doesn’t baffle with jargon or science but instead a business partner who takes the time to understand exactly what the client needs and delivers outstanding customer service. P2’s support and IT solutions incorporate products from leading technology vendors which are interoperable and serviceable, making them work better for the client and the whole company work smarter. It has two core products; IT Anywhere and One Support which primarily aim to optimise business efficiency through tailored, cost effective IT solutions. OneSupport provides clients with complete, specialist IT management and support ensuring the smooth running of the business. The client is freed from IT problems which are dealt with by an expert team of technicians and has complete control over their IT systems and strategy. ITAnywhere, P2’s latest product provides

Martin Page, Director of P2 Technologies

offering honest advice, outstanding responsiveness, and unrivalled industry expertise, P2’s client relationships set it apart from the competition. P2’s success is, in no small part, due to its people businesses with off-site IT facilities, monitored and securely hosted by P2 which allows employees to access their systems, anywhere, at any time of the day. IT Anywhere allows businesses to obtain the latest IT infrastructure and managed IT support from one package. Firms pay a monthly subscription fee for the service which provides staff with full access to its hardware and software via the Internet at any time of the day.

Contact P2 Technologies on T: 01484 779 020 E: info@p2tech.co.uk W: www.p2tech.co.uk

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NEWS

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>> JCT600 heads for record year Car dealer group JCT600 is on track to achieve its best ever year of new and used car sales with retail volumes for the first eight months of 2011 already over 1,000 cars higher than the 2010 record year. Chief executive John Tordoff said the year had started off well, although there was a dip around the time of the Royal Wedding. “We decided to take action quickly and as a result June, July and August have been record sales months for the business,” he said. The company also ran a telephone survey with every customer to ensure that they had received the best possible service from the team at their dealership. “We have a reputation for providing excellent customer service, but needed to know that this was being delivered consistently across the business,” said Tordoff. “We receive regular feedback from customers who buy cars from us via the manufacturers we represent, but wanted to learn more from those customers who had not gone on to buy from us.”

>> Teletext opts for Epiphany Teletext Holidays has appointed search specialist Epiphany to manage its pay per click (PPC) campaigns following a competitive multi-agency pitch. Since starting work for Teletext Holidays, Epiphany has already delivered a 60% increase in conversions. Based in London, Teletext Holidays aims to offer last-minute affordable getaways. Since turning off its analogue television service in January 2010, the company has focused on establishing itself in the digital world, with this latest appointment underlining the brand’s commitment to increase its web presence.

>> Microdat orders rush in Five new jobs have been created at Leedsbased specialist brewing engineer Microdat following a raft of orders totalling £5m. The St Austell Brewery has placed two significant orders for major equipment

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totalling £2, hot on the heels of £1.4million orders each from Moorhouse’s Burnley Brewery and the Wye Valley Brewery in Herefordshire. Further substantial orders are in hand for Timothy Taylor’s, Keighley (£750,000) and Greene King in Suffolk (£500,000). A bespoke Microdat packaging line and ancillary equipment is going into the Leeds Brewery, with further smaller projects for the Hopping Mad Brewery in Olney, Bucks, St Austell and the Kirkstall and Abbeydale breweries in Yorkshire. Microdat founder and managing director Steve Midgley said: “Following a steady 2010, the swing to quality beers from independent brewers has accelerated and we’re now heading for a record sales year. While it’s sad to see the departure of Tetley’s from Leeds, we like to think that, along with the independent brewers, we continue to fly the flag for real ale in the city and beyond.

>> Slimming down helps Animalcare York-based veterinary medicine supplier Animalcare appears to have benefited from the disposal of its livestock medicine business earlier this year, as adjusted fullyear results on continuing operations show a 21% jump in the company’s pre-tax profits to £3m. Turnover in the year to the end of June was also up 5.4% to £11.8m. The company, which is debt-free, sold off its livestock business to concentrate solely on its companion animal division. Chairman James Lambert said: “During the past financial year – and now in the current one – there has been little or no growth in the veterinary medicines market in the UK. “However, with the launch of several new veterinary drugs in the first quarter building on those introduced during the last financial year, we believe we will continue to grow the business markedly faster than the market overall and increase our market share.”

Left to right: OAREL directors David Marsh, Gary Douglas, Philip Taylor, David Cockayne

>> >> Property and hair man move into solar panels Two Yorkshire entrepreneurs are planning to invest £100m and create 14 new jobs over the next two years in a new renewable energy company. Oakapple Renewable Energy Limited (OAREL), founded by Philip Taylor from property development company Oakapple, and Gary Douglas, who founded GHD manufacturer Jemella, will initially install free solar panels. In the longer term it aims to develop other forms of renewable energy generation including wind power and anaerobic digestion systems. The company aims to take particular advantage of the feed in tariffs (FIT) the Government is offering on installations as a means of meeting its own target to source 15% of the UK’s energy requirements from renewable sources by 2020. Both men believe small business owners will still not want to pay the upfront investment on installations or take the risk that the system does not generate the FIT payments anticipated. So the company will pay 100% of capital expenditure for supplying and fitting the solar panels, plus maintenance and insurance for 25 years, in return for a roof or land lease over the areas where the panels are mounted. Taylor said the company is already committed to investing £20m by March 2012. He said: “We are already in advanced contract negotiations with a number of well-known businesses and are in discussions with a variety of food processors, hotels, licensed premises, GP surgeries, retail outlets, manufacturing companies, facilities managers and ground rent portfolio landlords.”

SpoNSoRed feATURe

ReLATioNSHipS MAke THe diffeReNce Weeks into his new post at Lloyds Bank corporate Markets, Regional Managing director MARk BURToN is impressed with the strength and vitality of the Bank’s business relationships across the North. He says it’s one of the “core reasons” he joined Lloyds Bank – “the determination to put the customer at the heart of everything we do”. What’s impressed him even more, however, is the evidence he’s seeing all over the region of ambitious and resilient business relationships. That’s critical, he argues, at a time when so many analysts still define such a clear North-South divide, with firms in the North typically portrayed to be suffering the harshest impacts of the downturn and now forecast to recover much more slowly from recession. Against that background, Mark insists, what businesses need least are banks which focus first on pushing product sales. “What companies need is an ethos of business understanding – a banking team who’ll work hand-in-hand with their management to devise financial and business support packages that are right for their own strategies.” That means getting close, geographically as well as strategically.

“What companies need is an ethos of business understanding – a banking team who’ll work hand-inhand with their management to devise financial and business support packages that are right for their own strategies.” With six offices across the North – including Leeds, Newcastle and Sheffield – Mark’s teams understand the unique dynamics of the businesses they bank and the environment in which they operate. “That closeness is crucial for the business decision-makers,” he explains. “They obviously know our relationship management teams well, but increasingly that goes for our credit committees, too.

We’re one of the few banks to get credit teams in front of clients, making lending decisions right on their doorstep.” He’s sure the efficiency of these credit evaluations is one reason why Lloyds Bank has kept well ahead of its lending targets with £49bn of committed gross lending to Uk businesses in 2010 and a further £21.2bn so far this year. Three deals typify his teams’ approach:

were and they came to us with a marketleading, flexible package.” Referring to the acquisition as “a transformational deal for Aesica” he added that “the team at Lloyds Bank corporate Markets delivered to our needs. You can’t ask for more.” “Aesica’s growth has been steady and exceptional,” says Mark. “it’s a great success story for a region that’s had its fair share of economic upsets.”

YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK, Wakefield Yorkshire Sculpture park (YSp) has been supported by Lloyds Bank since its launch in 1977. The relationship has helped to establish the park as one of the most popular art destinations in Britain, not least by providing £2m of finance that helped to secure european Regional development funding and realise YSp’s ambitions. YSp finance director paul Rodgers credits the banking relationship as one “you wouldn’t get normally in this day and age,” and notes that “they appreciate the challenges and the pressures we face and can help us to respond to those.” The park has seen visitor numbers grow from 250,000 to 350,000 per year, and Mark attributes this to a focused YSp management team, coupled with the long-standing support of the Bank. “it’s been great to be part of YSp’s success,” he says.

JCT600, Bradford Leading independent motor dealer JTc600 expanded its operations significantly in 2010, acquiring three new Audi dealerships in Boston, Lincoln and Grimsby, bringing its total dealerships to 47. Thanks to a long-standing relationship with Lloyds Bank, the most appropriate funding solution – encompassing term lending and a revolving credit facility - was quickly provided. chief executive John Tordoff praised the solution as “delivered with the speed and efficiency that we’ve come to expect from the Bank,” adding that the company’s continued success is due in part “to the continued support of our long-term trusted advisor.”

AESICA PHARMACEUTICALS, Cramlington Aesica pharmaceuticals is on the path to realising its ambitions to become the number one supplier of Apis and formulated products to the pharmaceutical industry, with support from Lloyds Bank. in 2010 the Bank provided a flexible package which refinanced existing debt, and provided a £20m revolving credit facility that supported the strategic acquisition of R5 pharmaceuticals. for Aesica fd, Nick Jones, the success of the relationship with the Bank reflects the fact that “they understood the business, they knew what our plans

We accept calls made through RNid Typetalk. please remember we cannot guarantee security of messages sent by e-mail. Lloyds Bank corporate Markets, Lloyds TSB corporate Markets and Lloyds TSB are trading names of Lloyds TSB Bank plc and Lloyds TSB Scotland plc. Lloyds Bank corporate Markets and Lloyds TSB corporate Markets are trading names of Bank of Scotland plc. Authorised and regulated by the financial Services Authority under registration numbers 119278, 191240 and 169628 respectively. N118/0911

“Relationships like these,” continues Mark, “are why Lloyds Bank has been voted Bank of the Year by the finance directors of the Uk’s leading companies for seven consecutive years.” COnTACTS Mark Burton, Regional Managing director, North Tel: 0113 215 5874 email: Mark.Burton@Lloydsbanking.com Mike Mullaney, Area director, North east Tel: 0191 255 1558 email: Mike.Mullaney@Lloydsbanking.com Jamie Allison, interim Area director, North & West Yorkshire Tel: 0113 215 0859 email: jamie.allison@lloydsbanking.com Tim Pryor, Area director, South Yorkshire & Humber Tel: 0114 260 9101 email: Timothy.pryor@Lloydsbanking.com

AS I SEE IT

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Why Leeds should lead in green investment Neil Mclean, chairman of the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership explains why siting the Government’s proposed Green Investment Bank in the region would make most sense In September, as chairman of the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), I launched what we believe to be a compelling business case encouraging Government to locate the Green Investment Bank in the city region.

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As with any such event, there is always a concern as to the level of real support as opposed to an element of “preaching to the converted”. A wider launch to a national audience in London was held shortly after, but the event in Leeds was striking because of the variety of sectors that were represented – energy and environmental companies, manufacturing companies, financiers and solicitors, construction firms, as well as social enterprise and environmental charities. And the message from the audience was a unanimous “how can we help?”. This is particularly relevant because at first

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sight the location of the Green Investment Bank is no golden ticket for any one area. Initially, at least, the bank will have a staff of 50-100 people – very modest by banking standards. So, why is there so much enthusiasm from the private and public sector alike for the bank to be located in the Leeds city region? Firstly, I believe this is genuinely because people want and support the Green Investment Bank. Across the business world, low carbon and the bottom line have become inextricably linked. Improving energy efficiency and powering our economy in a more sustainable way has gone far beyond the realm of corporate social responsibility. Energy intensive industries such as manufacturing, traditionally viewed as the villains of carbon consumption are, in the Leeds City Region at least, at the forefront of new low carbon infrastructure and technologies. Secondly there is a real understanding that we can develop our existing economy and grow the jobs market by being at the centre of developing, manufacturing and resourcing green industries and supply chains themselves, all of which would be supported by the local location of the bank. So the drive is there, but the enduring problem is finance. Low-carbon technologies are new and constantly evolving. For investors, this presents a ruthless combination of risk and technical complexity that makes analysis of low carbon schemes potentially unviable. The consequences are two-fold. Emerging technologies and services struggle to find investment that more traditional carbon intensive solutions can secure and as a result, innovation in new technologies, which in itself would bring down costs and increase commercial viability, is prejudiced. The success of the Green Investment Bank is therefore highly relevant to the ambitions of business across the Leeds City Region, Yorkshire and the UK as a whole. Businesses across the area want it to work and recognise that the right location will be critical to the bank’s success. This is the crux of our business case to

AS I SEE IT

Government. Our argument is not one of rebalancing the economy, or giving the north its fair share. Our case is simply that the Leeds City Region is the best place to locate the bank if it is to succeed. Our financial, professional and business services sectors have been, for many years, grappling with the same barriers to low carbon growth that the new bank will be expected to address. Our business case includes examples of the kinds of projects that companies based within the area have undertaken, everything from local projects to advising Government and playing a leading role in the delivery of major low carbon national infrastructure projects. One such example would be Co2Sense, which has a track record of making commercial investments in renewable energy projects across Yorkshire. Part of the key to Co2Sense’s success is that the Leeds city region lies within an area of rich opportunity for low-carbon projects – put simply, we are where the action is. Many of Yorkshire’s flagship low-carbon projects such as Carbon Capture and Storage and Offshore Wind have fostered the skills and technical expertise with the Leeds City Region that will be needed to make the Bank and its investments thrive. The experience and expertise in banking, due diligence and low-carbon schemes within the Leeds City Region is well known to everyone who attended our launch in Yorkshire and across the north. Our challenge is to ensure that this real depth and breadth of expertise is recognised and understood in London and across the projected £3.2 trillion global market for low carbon products. If we can seize the opportunity the Green Investment Bank offers we can make the city region, and the rest of the UK a real centre of “green excellence” and economic development. n

Neil Mclean is chairman of the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP). To find out more and support the city region’s bid for the Green Investment Bank, visit www.greenbanklcr.org.uk

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ENTREPRENEUR

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Scrubbed up nicely

The Yorkshire Soap Company has brought highly dramatic retail to a former Yorkshire mill town. Its founder Warren Booth tells Peter Baber why he has always looked beyond his hobby The first thing you notice about Warren Booth’s shop is the bubbles. Quite fitting, really, given that the shop is called The Yorkshire Soap Company. But this is Hebden Bridge. The West Yorkshire town may have acquired a trendy, folksy reputation in recent years, but as you drive along Market Street – the main drag – most shop fronts still bear the blackened stains acquired during the many decades it was a working mill town and chimneys constantly spewed out soot. Then, as you keep driving, you suddenly notice soap bubbles in the air. You look to see where they are coming from and there it is, a white shopfront in amongst all this sooty grey with some of the most fantastic window displays you are likely to see this side of Harvey Nichols. At one point during this year pink flamingos reached down to inspect the wares in the window. At the moment, it’s where fat papier mache ladies in swimming regalia dance. And the Christmas displays are always something special. It’s no surprise that this shop has become the talk of the town, even in a town that is known for being a little more risqué than most. Booth claims it has become a destination shop and he’s right. It’s impossible to speak to him in the shop itself, because it is frequently inundated with customers, often teenage schoolgirls on a day trip out looking for a special purchase. So we retreat upstairs to the office on the middle floor, below the workshop on the top

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floor where the soap itself is made – still by Booth himself, his partner Marcus Doyle and one newly appointed assistant. When the shop opened in smaller premises further down the street four years ago they were producing soap bars in just three lines – orange, rose and lavender. Now they have more than 400 product lines. They have ventured into opening two new stores, they have gone online, and are also producing a line for Harrods – special soap on a rope for the Knightsbridge store’s doggy spa. Very chi-chi. It won’t be a surprise, however, to learn that Booth is not exactly someone who has just decided to turn a hobby into a business. Now aged 37, he has a strong track record in retail. Born and brought up in Manchester, he went into retail pretty much straight after finishing school, and has worked at assistant and store manager level for the likes of Diesel, Louis Vuitton, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Versace and Calvin Klein both in his home town and i n London. In fact, during a spell as store manager in Jigsaw’s Argyll Street store in London’s West End, a lady working in the buying department upstairs happened to be one Kate Middleton, now Duchess of Cambridge. “She was there just as I left,” Booth reminisces. He says he has always loved product, retail

display and branding. He has little truck with people who claim that branding is a façade, when you discover that designer shirts are often actually made in the same factories that produces for high street chains. Booth says that is actually what he loves about branding. “I love the fact that somebody can create a product, brand it, and make it something people aspire to,” he says. “I have always loved luxury branding. It’s so clever that a name attachment can change something very quickly. That’s why we decided on such a grand name for the shop.” He is honest enough, however, to admit that he first started working up an interest in making soap when he was back in Manchester doing the one job in his career that turned out to be a failure – working as store manager at SpaceNK Apothecary’s then new store in the city. Having come up from London, he says, he was too hard a manager. Surely that wouldn’t matter if he was getting results? He shakes his head. “I wasn’t bringing in results, I will be quite honest,” he says. “My hardness had a really negative effect. I came in with London skill sets, from a fashion brand with a high turnover to a cosmetic shop with different ethos. When I arrived there were cupboard doors being kept open with fire extinguishers, no bag searches at the end of the night, no >>

Track record: A grounding in luxury retail helped Warren Booth enormously in his own business

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ENTREPRENEUR

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ENTREPRENEUR

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Clean break: Warren Booth saw that existing soap design wasn’t particularly inspired or well made, so he set out to address that morning meeting, and targets just weren’t being given. The staff were just bumbling along. It was not my style. I was told by head office to calm it down. Nicky Kinnaird, the founder, had employed me, and she liked me, because she thought going in hard was always the best way because you could always soften towards the team afterwards, but you could never do the reverse. But there were new directors coming in and they wanted it to be very relaxed. The staff complained about me, so then I went soft. But then the new directors said that was wrong too – I was now apparently too soft, and was giving all mixed messages. I had had enough.” He says he doesn’t think that, even with his background, he was really suited for selling such high cost – even now, his present shop is totally focused on soap, not skincare. But I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Certainly Harvey Nichols snapped him up soon afterwards, and he was soon floor manager for womenswear in its Manchester store. By this time, however, he had started experimenting with making soap at home, partly as a relatively cheap way of giving friends Christmas gifts. A few years later, having gained some experience in marketing by helping to launch the new Birdcage

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nightclub in Manchester, he decided to give it a go as a business. He had come to know Hebden Bridge through weekend visits to friends of his and Doyle who live in nearby Mytholmroyd. And when one of those friends revealed she was growing tired of running her own soap and cosmetics shop in Hebden Bridge, Booth moved in. He had just £500 to start the business, and initially just sold sourced product. He admits that moving into setting up on his own was a big step – much bigger than he had anticipated. After all, in his retail background he had sometimes managed teams of as many as 35 people. “It was a huge learning curve not having that back support,” he says. “I had always taken it so much for granted. I would say back-ofhouse stuff is about 80% of any business. I am still learning now.” Fortunately, however, he began to get a clear vision about where he wanted to go. “I had noticed soap cakes were becoming a big thing,” he says. “They were really badly done – just rounds of soap with only three layers and no finesse to them. But people clearly liked the food element to the soap. Marcus and I thought we would make our own, but make them more intricate. Marcus

has a background as a chef. He was good at recipes, and I was good at formulating them. All of a sudden the business changed, people started to notice us more, and noticed we were doing more things with the display.” The success enabled the shop to source more product, particularly bottled product, which he didn’t have a licence to produce. It also enabled him to open a second store, which he managed, in Otley – a town chosen because it was similar to Hebden Bridge, but with cheaper rents than Harrogate or Ilkley. He says the new store helped him move up a gear in things like packaging. “That’s when we went for bespoke die-cut boxes and handbags,” he says. But even today, 75% of what the shop sells is its own production, and the new store was putting increased pressure on that production, which was still taking place back at Booth’s home in Morley. “To have a tonne of raw material delivered at home was not great,” he says. He was looking for a light industrial workshop to rent when the shop’s present, three-storey premises in Hebden Bridge became available. Booth immediately saw the advantage of moving into a bigger store where production could take place on-site. >>

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ENTREPRENEUR

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ENTREPRENEUR Booth is also a big fan of Michael Gerber and his book “The E-Myth” which encourages readers, as the phrase goes, to “work on, not in, your business”. So, taking a strategic look he realised that the new Hebden Bridge premises also gave him the opportunity to do something else that Gerber recommends from time to time – retrenching to grow. Wholesaling was something he wanted to expand beyond the contract he already has with Harrods. As a result, he has handed over the Otley store to new owners who will do their own thing, although they will stock his product. “I want us to be a luxury-end soap company,” he says. “Whether we go down the route of more retail, or be a brand within other boutiques, I haven’t decided. My dream is to be in Liberty or Fortnum & Mason as a recognised soap brand, not necessarily with a big high street presence. Once we have that association, we can feed the wholesale out. If you start high, people buy into it more.” Retrenching has also enabled the shop finally to go online, something Booth as a born and bred retailer with a keen eye for display was initially reluctant to do. “I was very aware that I wanted to be a luxury brand, so I did not want to do a cheap website,” he says. “I wanted to be sure that we could make and do the orders, that we could service them, and that we had the right budget so that we could do a proper website. We are now doing very well, with about 50 orders a week.” Given such retrenching, it’s rather surprising to discover that this summer Booth has also been busy launching a homeware store at the other end of the street in Hebden Bridge. It’s bright pink, with a 1930s flapper girl on the front window – and it’s called Home Oh! When I ask Booth what the nearby shopkeepers made of that, he stifles a giggle. He says it’s something he is doing on a trial basis with a possible view to widening what the Yorkshire Soap Company itself will be offering. “Our main item is soap and it always will be,” he says. “But we have seen a lot of gift shops, particularly in this town, where people go down the shabby chic route. That’s not necessarily our taste. We wanted to offer a

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If you set up your own business you have to love what you do. It might not be your personal choice, but you have to love that choice different point of view. Our long term plan is to combine the two.” That end goal may be in a bigger town. “Maybe York or Harrogate,” he says. “It has to be in Yorkshire.” Given his ability to come up with ever more new ideas, however, I begin to wonder if he would in the end believe that successful retailing isn’t actually about what you sell, it’s about how you sell. He is not sure. “Good retail is having a good balance,” he says. “Passion is important. People buy people, they don’t necessarily buy product. But it has to be everything - it has to be an experience. We spend hours choosing the music we play here, for example. “There are lazy people out there who will see

a successful shop, and try and emulate it. But the one thing they can’t emulate is passion. If you set up your own business, you have to love what you do. It might not be your personal choice, but you have to love that choice and understand that someone might.” It’s why, in the end, he believes he is different from other people who have turned a hobby into a business, sometimes unhappily. He always had an eye to the business. “Hobby makers make a product on a small scale, because it fits in with their lifestyle,” he says. “If it’s successful and you have to make it because demand is there, it starts to feel like a chore. Well, it’s never been a chore for me. I always wanted this to be my livelihood.” n

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SUCCESS STORY

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in association with

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SUCCESS STORY

Ryedale rides to the future It may be based in a sleepy North Yorkshire town, says Peter Baber, but printing company Ryedale Group is up to really exciting things

Kirkbymoorside is hardly the place you would associate with radical technology. The sleepy little town, nestling on the edge of the North York Moors, is best known for having tea shops and bed and breakfasts aimed fairly and squarely at those of more advanced years. ‘Twas ever thus, it seems. Slow Train, one of the best known songs by 1960s comedy duo Flanders and Swann, is a lament about the destruction of Britain’s railway network under the management of Dr Beeching. It includes a long list of the towns around the country that, Michael Flanders thought, would soon be cut off as a result. Kirkbymoorside features in the song, along with Midsomer Norton and St Erth and St Ives. And the song had a point – nearby Pickering has only kept its railway connections thanks to a tourist steam railway. And yet, nestling just on the edge of the first roundabout you come to as you drive into Kirkbymoorside from York is a company that really is at the forefront of new technology. You might not even guess as much once you are on Ryedale Group’s site – a collection of warehouse and factory buildings, some of which date back to the Second World War. If you look carefully at the roofs of some of these it’s said you can still see the bullet holes left by German fighter planes. Because of the Slingsby aviation company being located nearby, Kirkbymoorside was surprisingly frequently visited by the Luftwaffe in the 1940s, and to a fighter pilot any >>

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SUCCESS STORY warehouse building looks as if it might be significant. But come in through the front door and you quickly understand that this is a company firmly looking to the future, even in an industry – printing – that may not always have been quite so happy to abandon the past. The first clue is the tree of plastic cards that makes an interesting conversation piece as you wait in reception. Although the company is 58 years old, it’s never really been involved too much in the mucky old world of newspaper printing – the sector which has been so hammered in the recent past. For at least the past 40 years the company, which currently turns over £8m a year, has been involved in the niche business of printing on plastic. That was what founder George Buffoni, a firstgeneration Italian immigrant, opted to specialise in when he was first demobbed from the army at the end of the Second World War and chose to move to North Yorkshire because he heard there might be work there. Manufacturing plastic phone cards is one side of the business – those are the cards you can see in reception. Head of marketing James Buffoni – George’s grandson – says that while this might appear to be a stagnant, if not declining market in the UK, there are plenty of countries around the world, especially developing countries, where phone card issuing is a serious business. Ryedale has a round-the-clock service producing these and sending them out to operators all around the world, who frank them themselves to put the value on. The company uses monocore technology, which means the cards can be produced in one go without any costly laminating. But the main part of the plastic printing business developed in the early 1990s, when Ryedale started working with Hortipak, a company managing director John Buffoni –

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James’s father – was persuaded to take over early the following decade by a new group of non-executive directors he had recruited. Hortipak is now probably the market leader in supplying plastic plant tags to the horticulture industry, and to the major supermarkets and B&Q. The chances are that the last time you went to buy any shrub from your local garden centre, the tag you held up to check the plant’s name was manufactured by Hortipak. But even successful companies (and one sign of success with Ryedale is the fact that it currently enjoys an 100% credit rating from its bank) cannot afford to sit on their laurels. Printing plastic plant tags may be more sophisticated than you think – the ink has to withstand the effects of brilliant sunshine and, of course, copious watering long enough for the garden enthusiast still to be able to read it six months later. But there could always be a company in China willing to undercut you – if

it can cope with the horticulture industry’s demanding turnaround times. James Buffoni, who, aged 30, has just completed an MBA in executive management at Newcastle University with distinction, certainly knows that – which is why he was very keen to pursue an idea first put forward in discussions with local trade organisation Print Yorkshire two years ago, that the company should invest time and resources in developing printed electronics. “The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) reckons the printed electronics market will be worth US$200bn worldwide by 2020,” he says. But what exactly is printed electronics? Well, if you think of a circuit board or a silicon chip with its strips of metal running between points like a maze, then printed electronics is like that, only using the ink itself as a conductive material to move the current. Working with the University of Leeds, and with grant money coming from both Yorkshire Forward and the Government’s Technology Strategy Board, Ryedale has already developed an electronic “nose” that Buffoni claims could accurately distinguish between different brands of whisky. “That means such a device could have huge potential in the anti-counterfeiting industry,” he says. “Whisky brands would be easily able to prove if someone was passing off something as their product which wasn’t.” But the implications go further than that still. Printed paper, even with conductive ink, is obviously considerably lighter even than the tiny silicon chip. Buffoni says this means such technology could reduce the cost of manufacturing testing equipment so much that the NHS, for example, could start producing disposable sensors that could detect sexually transmitted diseases, even certain types of cancer, just from a patient’s >>

The chances are that the last time you went to buy any shrub from your local garden centre, the tag you held up to check the plant’s name was manufactured by Hortipak

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Great impression: James Buffoni is keen for Rydale to develop into printed electronics

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SUCCESS STORY

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Revolutionary: Some of the printing techniques that Rydales is investigating are still subject to intellectual property issues

breath. “The technology is already there,” says James Buffoni. “We are just working on commercialising it.” There are also other exciting avenues printed electronics is currently taking the company into as well, but, because of intellectual property issues, Buffoni doesn’t want to talk about them yet. But he does want to talk about another venture, based around the new phenomenon that is augmented reality. This time the technology behind the project is not that new – barcodes have, after all, been with us for well over 30 years, but they have become much more sophisticated, and smaller,

and now modern-day digital watermarks are almost imperceptible. Buffoni shows me a picture and asks me if I can tell where the watermark is. The answer is that the picture itself is the watermark. Coming from a printing background, he thinks this is a particularly useful step, because in the past, ugly square barcodes have often had a habit of disrupting an otherwise perfect page layout. With the introduction of smartphones, such digital watermarking can be taken a stage further. With the aid of a simple app that anyone can download, smartphones can be made to read the watermark and open up a relevant webpage automatically.

Some years ago, a discussion about how to improve the production of plastic cards led to the company setting up a knowledge transfer partnership

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To take advantage of this technology, Ryedale has already been working with digital marketing consultancy Digital Space to produce a range of websites for Ryedale’s client the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), all of which have been specially adapted to work on a smartphone’s smaller screens. The gardeners just has to waft their enabled smartphone over the plant tag that Ryedale produces for the RHS and the smartphone will instantly download information about where the plant should be positioned, how often it should be watered, how it should be fed, and so on. It can also direct users to more information about the RHS itself. Much more

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information, in short, than you would ever find on just one tiny plastic tag. Buffoni is particularly excited about this technology because he says it turns the traditional story about print losing out to digital media on its head. “Here is print that is being used in a way that complements digital media,” he says. “It doesn’t fight against it.” It is certainly difficult to think of how you could get such easy access to information in such a situation using digital products only. With an eagerness like that, however, it is not surprising to hear that Buffoni already sits on a number of regional and national committees at the British Printing Industries Federation (BPIF), the national trade body. But how does a relatively small company like Ryedale – one that still has on its site a facility to take orders from customers who just happen to drop in – manage to find time and resources to take on such ambitious projects? Buffoni says it is mainly down to the company reinvesting its profits, and the cyclical nature of the main horticultural industry it sells to. As anyone who works in the industry will tell you, there are madly busy periods in March, and then again, slightly less mad, in early autumn. This cyclical nature is part of the reason why Ryedale’s staff headcount can vary across the year from 80 to 110. But that extra 30 is largely made up of casual staff, and the company is aware that it needs to treat its hard core of permanent staff well. “Being based in Kirkbymoorside, an hour from York, we are keenly aware of our limited labour pool,” he says. So every year in the quieter periods over the summer the company gets together to talk about what new areas it should invest in – and everyone in the company is involved. “Each year we allocate to invest between £50,000 and £60,000 in these speculative opportunities,” says Buffoni. These discussions have already produced remarkable results. Some years ago a discussion about how to improve the production of plastic cards led to the company setting up a knowledge transfer partnership through which it managed to introduce robotics into the process.

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“That upped the number of cards we could produce on a daily basis from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands using fewer staff,” says Buffoni. “That machinery is now eight years old but it is still a world leader in plastic card production.” There are no limits to what can be discussed, even when it comes to how to run the business itself. In the past two years the company has managed to shave £1m in costs, without losing any staff, largely through staff suggestions. It certainly sounds a promising place to work. But Ryedale is, of course, a family business. Buffoni says he has been working at the company pretty much since he came back from a round-the-world trip after finishing university. He did have to prove himself, he insists – he had key performance indicators to make and was judged on his progress. But it is clear that he is being lined up for

succession, as would be usual in any family company. And it is often claimed that there lies the fundamental problem with family companies; they will never attract the most competent, ambitious employees because those potential employees realise they will never get the top job, unless perhaps they marry in. Does Buffoni agree? Here, he does something that no other family employee of a family business to whom I have asked this question has ever done. “Why don’t we go and ask some of the staff themselves?” he says. And we do. It turns out that the first member of staff we come across, who runs the IT department, left a job at Morgan Stanley to come and work here, partly, he says, because there were more opportunities at Ryedale to prove himself. If that isn’t endorsement of a forward-looking company, I don’t know what is. n

Innovation in business Manufacturers across the UK are spending more time on developing their business strategy and researching new product development according to the EEF The Shape of British Industry report* which NatWest have supported. The survey draws on the opinions of 300 manufacturers. Manufacturers across the UK are spending more time on developing their business strategy and researching new product development according to the report - with 76% of companies increasing innovation and 69% increasing capital investment in the UK. They are more Liam Kane: focused on innovation to drive their businesses forward by building an Regional Director edge in product quality and customer service and are taking a more strategic view of their supply chains with 75% seeing customer/supplier relations as a challenge to growth plans. Ambition is a driving force behind the survival of many businesses and by working together we can help shape this growth. Our survey with EEF shows that although the recession halted over three-quarters of firms’ growth plans, causing them to rethink their strategy, there is evidence of ambitious companies who place strategic emphasis on growth and are focusing on innovation and export markets. For more information contact: Liam Kane, Regional Director, Commercial Banking,Yorkshire Tel: 07833 664597, liam.kane@rbs.co.uk, ahead.natwest.com

*Source: Shape of British Industry Report, published by EEF in partnership with NatWest, November 2010. All information within this magazine is produced by Room 501. Please note that the views and information have not been endorsed, issued or approved by NatWest. Any views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of NatWest.

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

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Sunny Bank is shining, DHL is posted to Millshaw Bank, a Pennine farm attracts broad interest, White Rose blooms, a new law firm takes space in Leeds, and an engineering consultancy expands into York >> Three more for Sunny Bank Three more tenants are moving into premises at the 1912 Mill, part of the Sunny Bank Mills complex in Farsley which is going through a £2m conversion to become a business centre. The mill complex was once a location for both Heartbeat and Emmerdale. The new tenants are Essex-based Prestige Graphics, which has taken 4,500sq ft on the second floor of the 1912 Mill; Stroud Consulting, which has taken a 300sq ft suite in the Sandsgate building, which was the original mill office; and Northern Light Studio Photography, which has taken a 2,000sq ft pre-let in the Festoon Rooms. This will be ready for occupation in December. Joanna Stroud, co-founder of Stroud Consulting, said: “Sunny Bank Mills is a superb place to work. We love the ethos of the mills and their sustainability and we are delighted to be contributing to the commercial life of Farsley.” There remain 8,700sq ft of offices on two floors available to rent in the 1912 Mill, with nearly 9,000sq ft of office space at Sandsgate over three floors and more than 2,000sq ft of quality studio and business space in the Festoon Rooms. Rents are around £14 per sq ft. John Gaunt, co-director of Edwin Woodhouse, which owns Sunny Bank Mills, said: “The pedigree of business reflects the quality of the refurbishments demonstrating that even in the teeth of recession, Sunny Bank Mills and Farsley can succeed in its mission of being a creative space for business.” Other existing tenants include Richard Moran Photography, Powerhouse Digital Photography, travel agency Uncover The World, the Yorkshire Physiotherapy

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Network and Jackaboos Play Gym, which has

>> Lateral goes for £24m

Lateral, a city centre office development in Leeds, has been sold out of receivership to German fund manager RREEF for £24.25m, reflecting a net initial yield of 7.81%. DTZ’s Leeds and London investment teams were appointed by receivers Bryn Williams and Philip Glenn to sell the property, which comes in at 96,960sq ft. Built in 2005, the building is currently let in two leases to The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for at least the next eight years. The property provides a total rent roll in excess of £2m per annum. James Lawlor, associate director in DTZ’s Leeds investment team said: “Although the regional commercial property investment markets remain challenging, the disposal of Lateral highlights that demand does exist from a number of different purchasers for the correct product and it represents one of the most significant office investment transactions in the region in 2011.” Montagu Evans advised RREEF. just signed a new lease. Mike Dove, of Leeds-based property consultants Dove Haigh Phillips, joint agents with Jones Lang LaSalle, said: “The refurbishment of the 1912 Mill is a complete triumph, a wonderful balance of cutting-edge modern office space in an environment rich in history and heritage. The attention to detail is stunning and the 1912 Mill now provides arguably the finest office space in the LeedsBradford corridor. “The crowning glory of the 1912 Mill is the top floor, which has been lovingly restored and

where the fabulous new Northern Light window stands out. This creates a stunning commercial penthouse. The owners of Sunny Bank Mills took the brave decision to invest heavily in this building and, indeed in the rest of the complex, and this decision has paid dividends.” Gaunt, who is related to the mill’s original 19th century founders, said the developer was also looking at other “imaginative” use for other parts of the Sunny Bank Mills site, “including a 130-cover restaurant with a terrace fronting Town Street, the main street in Farsley”.

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

>> Housebuilders sell up

Paul Mack, DTZ, left; Mike Warrington, DHL depot manager, centre, and Harlan Pollitt of Evans Property Group

>> DHL moves to Millshaw Park DHL has relocated its Leeds depot to Millshaw Park Industrial Estate in Leeds as part of a £10m investment in ten new distribution units across the UK. Millshaw Park, jointly owned by Evans Property Group and Land Securities, fronts the Leeds Outer Ring Road next to White Rose Shopping Centre and Office Park and comprises just under 500,000sq ft of industrial and warehouse accommodation. DHL has moved from a smaller site in Kirkstall Road to a 34,000sq ft unit at Millshaw Park on a tenyear lease. This will increase its capacity by more than three times. At the same time, two other tenants have moved to Millshaw Park. Electrical engineering and satellite installations company, Crystal Electronics, headquartered in Wellingborough has opened its first Leeds depot in a 2,800sq ft unit on a five-year lease. And Dewsbury-based digital printing and graphics company PM Displays has acquired a unit of 2,800sq ft on a ten-year lease. Paul Mack, associate director at DTZ, which is joint agent on the site with Knight Frank, said: “Evans Property Group has invested a huge amount of time and money in ensuring that this estate remains one of the region’s premier industrial and business parks. The estate has undergone an extensive programme of refurbishment over the past few years. With another couple of tenants already lined up, we are now well on track to achieving our overall objective, which is to have this estate fully occupied.” The estate has units to let from 2,500sq ft up to 50,000sq ft.

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The former regional office of the National House Building Council (NHBC) in York is up for sale. The NHBC has appointed DTZ to market the 7,000 sq ft Buildmark House in Clifton Moor on a freehold or leasehold basis. Andrew Searle, the NHBC’s head of facilities management at NHBC, said the building had become surplus to the organisation’s requirements following a recent consolidation exercise. “The property offers an exciting opportunity for an owner-occupier who wishes to operate on the outskirts of central York but also wants the benefit of easy access to the city centre,” he said. DTZ surveyor Maria Taylor-Pick added: “The property has great presence in York and is highly visible, overlooking Clifton Moorgate.”

>> In the swim A former swimming pool in Brighouse town centre is being sold by Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council as a freehold site. Extending to around 0.71 acres, the site consists of the former swimming pool and two adjacent car parks and is located 100m from the train station. Matthew Bagley, associate director at Jones Lang LaSalle, which is advising on the sale, said: “Bringing the property to the market is a positive step in its transformation. >>

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY The site offers an exciting opportunity for a potential buyer to redevelop it for a range of property uses taking advantage of its canal-side location and proximity to the Brighouse town centre.”

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head of the Leeds office said: “In such a difficult market, the achievements of all these individuals are all the more special given how high the bar has been raised.”

>> Windsor House retains agents

>> Pennine farm for sale Ashday Hall Farm, a 75-acre farm at Southowram near Halifax has been put on the market at £650,000. The Pennine farm has close associations with the neighbouring Grade II-listed Ashday Hall. But there are no agricultural restrictions, so prospective purchasers could build on the site, subject to the necessary planning consent. The property will appeal to farmers, as well as those with equestrian and lifestyle interests. Tom Whitehead, senior associate and head of Carter Jonas’s northern farm agency team who is handling the sale, said: “Ashday Hall Farm is ideal for those seeking an affordable independent farm.”

>> Promotions at DTZ Some 11 people have been promoted within the Leeds office of DTZ, part of a general promotion across the agency’s regional offices that has seen 36 promotions in total. The promotions in Leeds include Ruth Marshall from corporate real estate management, who has been made a director. Tim Cameron-Jones, senior director and

Locate in Leeds

House. She previously worked with Carter Jonas in Leeds and London. Paul Smith at F&C Investments said: “As landlord, we are committed to working with both our new and existing tenants in order to find the most suitable space based on each individual’s business requirements. We believe that the combination of ‘flexi’ and traditional leases will be well received in the Harrogate market.” John Webster from Carter Jonas said: “The offices have always attracted interest from a wide range of small and large local and regional businesses. The properties not only provide offices to a modern specification, but also space with character which is close to the town’s restaurant, hotel, conference and shopping facilities.”

>> White Rose set for expansion

Carter Jonas has been retained as letting agent on the Windsor House office complex in Harrogate after it was acquired by new owner F&C Investments. Windsor House is one of the largest commercial office investments in Harrogate, providing over 100,000sq ft of office space within both period and new build accommodation. The offices are offered to let on both traditional and short-term flexible lease terms with suites available from 100 to 4,500sq ft. The suites may be offered with ample car parking and are situated in a landscaped setting close to the centre of Harrogate, opposite the Valley Gardens. Carter Jonas has acted as letting agents on the site for more than 20 years with the previous owners. The agency will be joined by Karen Winspear, lettings and retentions manager at Windsor

Land Securities has appointed Jones Lang LaSalle’s retail agency team as leasing agent on White Rose Shopping Centre in Leeds as it gears up to expand the site. The developer has secured an outline planning consent to increase both the A1 and A3 provision in the 685,000 sq ft scheme, and this gives an opportunity to enhance a tenant mix that already includes Debenhams, Sainsbury’s, Primark and Marks & Spencer. Fashion anchors include Next, H&M, Zara, Topshop and New Look. Damian Sumner, director in Jones Lang LaSalle’s retail agency team, which is joint agents on the development with Brassington Rowan, said: “We are looking forward to working in partnership with Land Securities on White Rose Shopping Centre and Trinity Leeds to reinforce the position of Leeds as one of top shopping cities in the UK.”

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY landlord Highcross, which was advised by CBRE, said: “Mott MacDonald’s decision to choose Saviour House as their base in York highlights the attraction of the building’s location in the city centre, as well as for the high quality specification and the finishes delivered through our recent refurbishment.”

>> Bread and butter work

>> One Manor Mills space goes Healthcare training company Primary Care Commissioning has taken one of two remaining grade A office suite at Manor Mills in Leeds. Acting on behalf of administrators KPMG, DTZ and Jones Lang LaSalle jointly negotiated the deal, which saw the company take 4,626sq ft with parking at the centrally-located site. Manor Mills, a mixed-use development comprising two self-contained offices on the ground floor with residential apartments above, is situated to the south of the city centre, a short walk from the railway station and with easy access to the motorway. Mark Firmin of KPMG said: “We have achieved great success with the residential units and are now extremely pleased to have let one of the office units.” Maria Taylor-Pick, surveyor in DTZ’s office agency team, said: “The disposal of this high spec office accommodation is a great result in the current climate. The space is of grade A quality and of a size that is in short supply in Leeds city centre. The south of the city centre is an exciting and attractive area for business to take advantage of and we are confident of achieving similar success with the remaining unit.”

>> Mott MacDonald moves into York Mott MacDonald has taken new premises at Saviour House in York in a deal negotiated by DTZ. The engineering consultancy will occupy the second floor of the building on St Saviourgate, which comprises 5,862 sq ft of office accommodation. Eamon Fox, Associate Director of DTZ’s office agency in Leeds, said: “Centrally located office accommodation in York is in short supply, so

this is a superb opportunity to be right in the heart of vibrant York. The city’s reputation as a centre for the UK’s rail industry makes it an attractive destination for professional services firms such as Mott MacDonald, which are involved in the sector.” The choice of location was also the result of a staff survey conducted by the firm, which indicated that cycling to work was a preferred mode of transport. Alex Hyams of

Subway operator Made to Order has appointed the Leeds office of Colliers International to negotiate lease events on 20 properties in West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. The commercial lease consultancy team will undertake rent reviews, lease renewals and valuations on these Subway outlets. David Halliday, associate director at Colliers International in Leeds said: “Our strategy is to address rent reviews and lease renewals in a proactive manner and also identify ways in which we can add value to the overall portfolio.”

>> Halifax gateway completed Developer St James Securities has completed its refurbishment of Shaw Lodge House, the gateway to its ten-acre Shaw Lodge regeneration site in Halifax. The developer has converted the 4,000sq ft grade II* listed office building into ten quality office suites from 245sq ft upwards and the adjacent garage has been demolished to make way for car parking. The refurbishment has been completed just as financial advice firm Investing for Tomorrow has taken a 720sq ft suite in the building at £13.50 per sq ft. Existing tenants include Halifax MP Linda Riordan and telecommunications firm TTG. There are three suites still available, >>

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY ranging from 245sq ft to 288sq ft, which are aimed at the small business and startup market. Oliver Quarmby, director of St James Securities, said: “We have restored Shaw Lodge House to its former glory. It now boasts a new roof, a new car park and new external landscaping, while its masonry has been cleaned and repaired. “Internally, it has been completely redecorated and there are new heating and electrical systems, together with new WCs and kitchens.” He said the company was now starting on a similar programme with offices in the former Design Studios, where there is 926sq ft available. St James has a long-term plan to build an urban village on the site, but Quarmby said: “The redevelopment of the rest of the site will be spearheaded by commercial developments so that the original plans for dozens of houses, retirement homes, a health centre, restaurant, shops and even a hotel can be revived in time.” The mills were founded in the 1820s by John Holdsworth and remained in the ownership of the same family until 2005, employing 3,000 people at their height. The main product woven at the complex was moquette, used for covering seats on trains and buses across the world. The last loom fell silent in September 2008.

>> Headhunters move to Phoenix House Sagar Search and Selection has taken a five-year lease at Phoenix House in Leeds in a deal negotiated by Jones Lang LaSalle. The recruitment firm is moving into 2,735sq ft of first floor space at the building, which is owned by LaSalle Investment Management. The premises will be its headquarters in Leeds following an office move from Rawdon. Tom Brammeld, senior surveyor in Jones Lang LaSalle’s office agency team in Leeds, said: “This letting to Sagar Wright is a further sign of improving sentiment in the Leeds office market which saw a significant increase in quarter two take-up, compared with the first three months of the year.”

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>> Boutique firm with Bruntwood Newly-established law firm 3volution has taken space in a Bruntwood development in King Street, Leeds, in a deal advised by Knight Frank. 3volution, a boutique commercial law firm formed by three former partners of solicitors Lee & Priestley, has taken 1,507sq ft on the first floor of 14 King Street. The business has taken a three-year lease at £19.50 per sq ft. Louise Handley, a partner with 3volution,

said: “We are very central, which our clients and employees tell us is important, and we were given a blank canvas to create the office space that suited us best with the flexibility to expand into other space should the growth of our business require.” Knight Frank partner Elizabeth Ridler said: “King Street is a superb location, close to Leeds station and with excellent access to Yorkshire’s motorway network. They have moved into quality office space, providing a perfect base for their new company.”

>> Three building complex has new owner Ilkley-based property developer Opus North has acquired The Bourse office building in Leeds city centre in a joint venture with Palmer Capital. The mixed office and retail complex, in the heart of Leeds city centre, was bought for £7.4m. That reflects a net initial yield of 9.9%, following an 18-month receivership. The building is less than 100 yards from Leeds railway station and comprises 50,000sq ft high quality space over three buildings, overlooking a central courtyard. Its 20 tenants include multinational office occupiers and a retail provision offering the award-winning Anthony’s restaurant, William Hill, Evans Cycles and two convenience food operators. Each of the buildings, Equity House, Sterling House and Bond House, has its own designated entrance with an NCP multi-storey car park to the rear. There is currently 4,000sq ft of high quality office space available on the second floor of Sterling House and 1,700sq ft available on the first floor of Bond House, with agents quoting £17 per sq ft. Terms are already out on one of the vacant units. Opus North aims to improve value in the short term by targeting a range of asset management initiatives. Opus North managing director, Andrew Duncan said: “The interest shown in the building since we purchased it vindicates our decision to buy this very special office complex. “The Bourse is superbly located in the commercial and retail heart of Leeds and is close to Yorkshire’s excellent motorway network, as well as being next door to the station.” Duncan revealed that he worked in the building himself during the 1990s when he worked for property consultants Grenville Smith & Duncan, who were the original letting agents. The Bourse will benefit significantly from the completion of the Oakgate Group site opposite the building, where a new food store will be completing in early 2012. It will also benefit from the nearby Land Securities scheme, Trinity Quarter, providing up to one million square feet of grade A retail in the vicinity. DTZ’s Leeds office acted for Opus and Palmer, while Cushman & Wakefield acted for the LPA receivers.

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ENTREPRENEUR

Hectic high life

Guy Hudson went through a hugely varied career before settling down to run his successful Lynx fashion business, now celebrating 25 years in Harrogate. Peter Baber spoke to him >>

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ENTREPRENEUR Guy Hudson is owner of Lynx Womenswear and Menswear in Harrogate, two shops that sit almost side by side on West Park, one of the more stately streets in this stateliest of towns. Given that his womenswear shop is celebrating its 25th birthday this year (menswear came along eight years ago), you would really get the feeling that this is someone who has arrived, who is settled, and who is calm. But it wasn’t always like that. In his early days – he is 53 now – Hudson had a career which involved all manner of fly-by-night jobs both in retail and wholesale. He had a background in retail, as his father owned a delicatessen in Boston Spa. “It was a pretty disappointing day for him when I said I just wasn’t interested in fruit and vegetables,” says Hudson. “The name over the door was Hudson & Sons, and I was the only son. But they frightened me to death; they were going to send me to Jacksons of Piccadilly to train and I was a pretty sheltered 16-year-old.” Although his very first jobs were in retail, including a stint at Austin Reed, he also had a go at wholesaling when more than one of those retailing jobs fell through, often because one of his business partners had been too hazy about his financial situation. And he says he found the thrill of wholesaling phenomenal. “One of the first people I was working for was a very aggressive Jewish hosiery manufacturer in Leeds,” he says. “He had given me a budget for four weeks, and a van every fourth Sunday. I went around stock houses, living hand to mouth on a four-week basis. I was young, full of adrenaline, and really confident in what I was buying. Later in my career I found it very

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difficult to shake off that excitement of the four-week turnaround, screaming up and down the M1. At one stage in the business we bought a brand new XR2, which was great. But doing the motorway every four weeks on closed-season cash and carry did take on the feeling of being a trapped wasp. We turned stock eight times a season. We’d be lucky if we can do it twice now.” He concedes he had a very strong work ethic, which often led to him moonlighting in other jobs just to get the money in. “When I was 17, I went to Cornwall on holiday and came back skint, so the very same day I went to a restaurant called the Damn Yankee. They said, ‘Can you start tonight?’ and I did. I always moonlighted in Damn Yankee restaurants. I worked whatever it took.” Even more recently when he has been much more established in Lynx he has done things that more conservative business minds might find crazy. A few years ago, for example, he decided his mailing list database was rubbish, so he threw it out. Just threw it out. “I just realised the housekeeping wasn’t as effective as it could be,” he says. “Now we have a 7,000-strong mailing list which is live and active.” But these hectic up and downs disguise a fashion business brain that must be remarkably shrewd. After all, 25 years is a long time in fashion. Hudson came to set up Lynx with his then business partner Paul Lown after two years spent outside the world of fashion working for his brother-in-law’s restaurant in Bradford. “I explained at the time that I didn’t cook,” he says. “I was supposed to be front of house, but when you have a problem with the chef

When Harvey Nichols opened in Leeds we looked at our business very critically. We were profitable and successful but we realised we were overlapping

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you still have to go into the kitchen. I had to make pizzas for one whole evening, and we didn’t charge anything because the pizzas came out star shaped. But our takings had been £300 a week, and I got it up to £3,000 a week. I gave them a year’s notice, because we were starting Lynx.” Lown had already been running a menswear shop called Leopard, and the first five years the two of them had been selling womenswear as Lynx Hudson admits it was an “unnaturally long relationship” for him. But he still thinks the turning point in his career came when he bought Lown out in 1990. “I finally had the business solely,” he says. “That’s great because it means the financial implications are your own, not joint. It’s not calm, because it’s never calm when you are running a business. You always have sleepless nights of stock control, worrying about cashflow and staffing. But 1990 was the turning point. I relished the opportunity.” He thinks part of his success has been down to concentrating on what he is trying to do. “In any successful business there has to be a heartbeat, a focus and enthusiasm,” he says. But building a really strong team – and paying them over the odds to stay with him – is also important. “We have fabulous loyal staff, and minimal staff turnover. One girl has been with me since day one. My buyer and merchandiser has been with me for 14 years, and we have people who have been here over ten years. We pay way above the odds to get staff and keep them loyal.” It’s also really important, he says, to invest in “new blood” – something he thinks shops like his that have fallen by the wayside failed to do. “We have a new guy coming into menswear, in his early 20s, who looks great,” he says. “He represents how we would like someone to represent us.” But he insists he does not choose his staff from among the beautiful people – customer service skills are much more important. “I have tried very hard to have a representation of size, age and look,” he says. “A very tall person would find it awkward to be served by someone who was short. A very large person would find it awkward to be >>

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ENTREPRENEUR

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ENTREPRENEUR

served by an anorexic size zero. We do cover from the age of 24 to one girl who is nearly 60, and all in between – tall, short, medium, and not so slim.” He admits he has a fairly loyal customer following as well, although this really only came into its own when the shop moved after 11 years on Station Parade to its current location on West Park. “We closed Station Parade on the Saturday evening,” he says, “and put the same volume on the new shelves over the weekend, and on the Monday morning business increased by 50% because it was more luxurious surroundings. “The biggest frustration was so many Harrogate people saying, ‘We’ve been waiting for a shop like this for years.’ We would point out that we had been up and running for 11 years, but they would say: ‘We don’t do that circuit down there. We just do this parade, turn around and go back to Leeds.’”

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He also has a keen eye to keeping just one rung ahead of the competition – or aside of it. “When Harvey Nichols opened in Leeds, we looked at our business very critically,” he says. “We were profitable and successful with labels we were working with, but we realised we were overlapping with them. So we started going to the European fairs, spending a lot more time there, at shows in Berlin, Florence and Milan. Generally in the past few years we have focused on pure Italian manufacturers. We realise we are getting far more competition from our Harrogate neighbours. I am looking over my shoulder at exhibitions too much now.” Recent discoveries as far as menswear goes include Italian shirting brand Aglini. “We are currently the only stockist in the UK,” he says. “We had to buy direct from Milan last year because they had finished relations with their UK agent. The shirts retail at between £150 to £175 and we are now in our fourth

season and have not yet had a sell-through percentage of less than 90%. They are a bit of a nightmare because we are presented with samples where you can change every feature – the button shape, the collar, the thread that goes into it, the shape of shirt, and the fabrics. But the fabrics are more superior than anything else. People come and buy two or three the next season.” Womenswear in contrast, unlike menswear, has been fairly flat in terms of trade this season. Hudson says he has not been too affected by the recession, but this year he has for the first time taken the unusual step of opening up a concession within his womenswear store. Pennyblack is an offshoot of the mighty Max Mara empire, and once again the shop in Harrogate is the first in the UK. “It’s one of the more commercial labels Max Mara does,” he says. “The market is becoming far more price-sensitive. I didn’t want to move

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Hanging in: Gary Hudson’s menswear operation has not been too affected by recession, although womenswear has been fairly flat this season the business downmarket. I wanted to hold onto our pricing and image, but I felt there was room for a monobrand store. They are delighted to be in Harrogate. The contract is set to last for five years; they provide the shop fitting, with a rebate every six months, and contributions to marketing.” The Pennyblack store might finally tempt him to do something he has not been terribly enthusiastic about doing before – go online. He has seen too many people get caught out by the web in years gone by, he says. “They naively thought they could sell size 30 and 38 waists online because they don’t sell them very much through the shop,” he says. “But you have to reinvest in software, and reinvest again. Sensible people have said, ‘This is my retail business and that is my etail business’ – two businesses each needing its own finance and its own enthusiasm.” Nor is he tempted to try to attract some private equity, as many others boutique shops

like him have tried in the past. “I almost had that kind of thing with Pennyblack,” he says. “A marketing company approached me and told me they were interested in going into business with me. The guy’s background was McDonald’s, and he was now working with airport spaces – in other words big, busy footfall destinations with captive audiences. I asked what both parties were bringing to the table. He said, ‘We are bringing expertise.’ I said, ‘So am I.’ It turned out most of the cash was to come from me as well. He had told me about this great location he had found and the next time I was in London I passed this site and it was just farcical. It was a new development opposite Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge. The only other units in it were Mclaren and Rolex. You just would not cover the overheads, as our average sale in Pennyblack is £78.” But in fact even with his strong track record behind him, Hudson is not really interested in

building an empire. He tried it before by opening a shop in Ripon. “It was a disaster,” he says. “I didn’t do the research on the town. And the shop took up too much of my time. Even 12 miles away is half a day when you include travelling.” The only space he would be interested in would be if any more units became available on West Park. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, running two great units in a very tight, controlled way,” he says. At the moment, two former colleagues from Hudson’s long career are back working with him. One is Ian Murray, the man who first employed him at Austin Reed. Now semiretired, he works part time as a consultant. The other is Paul Lown, his original partner in Lynx. He is now head of menswear – reporting to Hudson, rather than working with him. “There’s a sweet irony in this business,” says Hudson, “but we get on famously well.” n

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SUCCESS STORY

Credit that’s worth it Skipton based Contis Group hopes to pioneer a new kind of payment card. Peter Baber reports

Credit car veteran: Mike Fromant has been instrumental in the success of the Contis Credicard launch

Even in economically depressed times like the present, we are always told somebody will be out there making money. The trouble is, a lot of those somebodies will be receivers, insolvency experts, debt collectors and so on. Businesses, in short, who might be expertly run, but whose raison d’être would not exactly fill you with joy, and whose customers would probably prefer to remain anonymous. Not a great subject for a business feature, then. So it comes as something of a turn-up to hear about the successes of Contis Group, a Skipton-based financial company that has just expanded through acquisition, and in particular to hear about how the product Contis is pushing could be particularly appropriate for these times of austerity. The company produces pre-paid credit cards – cards which you load up with cash before you go out and spend. While there are around a dozen other companies across the UK

offering such services, the group is currently unique in that it is capable of being an issuer, processor and programme manager of the cards it produces. Other companies, such as the Newcastle Building Society and Clydesdale Bank, only perform one of these three functions and so have to find partners to fulfil the deal. Contis, in contrast, is a one-stopshop. Contis cards can also be used in most ATM machines, which again is something of a novelty. The company was identified as a growth opportunity, if not actually founded, by Yorkshire-based entrepreneur Peter Cox. In 2007 he came across a small company based in Skipton called Credicard which had been set up by a recruitment consultant working for the NHS who had found it difficult to pay the foreign nationals he was bringing in to work in the service because, not having lived for a very long time in the UK, they usually found it >>

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SUCCESS STORY impossible to open a bank account. A pre-paid card seemed a clever solution to this quandary. Cox saw an opportunity for expanding this service into other markets, so he bought Credicard, initially put it into the ID Data Group he was then chairman of and, when that got into financial difficulties through unrelated matters, bought it out again and launched Contis as a standalone group. The company is now owned by Cox and a number of investment trusts. But what is perhaps more significant is who Cox has managed to persuade out of retirement to come and work for the company as managing director – one Mike Fromant. Fromant, now aged 59, is something of a veteran of the credit card industry. He first joined Barclaycard in 1972 when it was then the only UK-based card issuer. Back in the days of the three-day week and double-digit inflation, a credit card must have seemed incredibly exotic, and something only the very wealthy could afford. But on several occasions between then and now, Fromant has clearly shown that credit cards were something the public wanted. After 20 years at Barclaycard he moved to HFC Bank to launch the GM Card, which was then the UK’s first co-branded card (again something that is commonplace today). “At that time it was the biggest launch of a card in the UK with 15 million people mailed,” he says. “I then got a job with GE Money, launching their bank card business. GE Rewards was the first cashback card in the UK – we got ours out a couple of weeks before Alliance & Leicester.” And yet now while he says he thoroughly enjoyed his career and is glad that credit cards are widely used across the country, he feels there is a place for something which brings people back to reality. “Many people now don’t want to have credit cards, because they are concerned that they could spend more than they actually have,” he says. He is deeply aware, for example, of the fuss that was kicked up a few years before the credit crunch set in when Matt Barrett, then chairman of his erstwhile employers Barclays, confessed to a House of Commons Select Committee that he personally would not

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advise any of his friends to have a Barclaycard, because it was too expansive to run. Fromant says this was definitely a “Ratner moment” referring to the jeweller who confessed to selling “crap” products. “Barrett was talking about his children having credit cards and getting into debt,” he says. “It is perhaps not what you should be saying when you are running a business. He ought to have recommended the pre-paid card. Products are right for different people, but there is nothing wrong with credit cards.” Even still, there must surely be an opportunity now to promote what his company is doing? “I think so,” he says. “I have two older daughters who don’t want a credit card. There are far more people being declined than there used to be – I believe it’s over a third of all applications at the moment. The other advantage of our system is that there is no credit rating with us. We do have to have customer due diligence, to make sure they live where they say they do and that they are who they say they are, but that is all. We don’t check their credit history.” So what exactly does Contis offer? First there’s the standard pre-paid card, which the company produces both under the Credicard name and under private labels. Fromant says: “If you have a son or daughter at university, and you want to help them manage finances, rather than allow them to run up debt, you can help them with a pre-paid card to help them manage finances.” Students needn’t feel they are losing street cred by having such cards, he says. “It looks the same as any other card. It’s got the Visa or Mastercard brand on it.” The card still remains useful for foreign workers who continue to come to work in Britain, which was its original intention. “We deal with credit unions too, so people’s benefits can go straight onto the card,” says Fromant. If the card membership is a closed environment – as a credit union would be – Contis can also add another benefit in the form of a cashback loyalty scheme. “We are, for example, also currently talking to a restaurant chain which pays all its workers by cash,” he says. “That’s quite a responsibility, so why not give them a card where you can load

that money on? You can load it on instantly when the staff leave on a Friday night. That means the cash is on the card, not vulnerable in their pocket.” But one area where the benefits of a pre-paid card can really come into their own is among frequent travellers. “You can load euros directly onto our cards,” says Fromant, “so when you are in Eurozone all transactions are conducted in euros and there are no additional conversion charges. You can’t hold two currencies at same time at the moment, but that is one of the things we are looking into. There is no reason why that can’t be done.” The foreign exchange benefit is one reason why Fromant insists pre-paid cards are not just for what might be considered to be the bottom part of the finance market – customers with limited means who most finance companies would shy away from and who other customers would not want to be associated with. But the cards don’t just go to individual consumers either. Contis also runs an account card service for companies which want to simplify their sales ledger process. It is ideally suited for small businesses, in particular hotel chains, but one big customer is glass company Pilkington. Fromant says: “Their traders may want account facilities, so we give them a Pilkington green card, and they can buy glass based on the account. This means that rather than having to keep settling with Pilkington each time, they have a period of credit. One statement consolidates that, and the money is collected by direct debit. For Pilkington it saves them all the business of checking out the trader, managing that credit decision, and dealing with transaction.” Again Fromant belives many other businesses could be interested in this. Contis recently acquired GTP, another card producer, out of administration. It had been running a similar scheme for Travelodge, although when Contis bought GTP out of administration Travelodge opted not to continue with the scheme. The final offer in the group of three is a standard gift card like a voucher. Virgin Experiences and Pizza Express are two of the biggest clients here.

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SUCCESS STORY

If you have a son or daughter at university, rather than allow them to run up debt, you can help them with a prepaid card to help them manage their finances

But it’s clear Fromant sees plenty of opportunities for other uses of the cards – ones that haven’t really been tried yet. “I have been talking to a potential client who is launching something on the internet in terms of gaming which they want a payment card vehicle there for,” he says. “There is a lot going on in the internet for payment. I hope to be able to sign a deal in next couple of months. “Then gambling is another avenue we could go down, and we are talking to people about that as a product. Our scheme has an advantage, because any winnings you make can be paid directly back onto that card. We can do it 24 hours a day. Banks can’t.” There are other territories to discover as well. “We believe we are a global company, not just bound by the UK,” he says. “We are looking at making interesting deals in South Africa. The Eastern European market is another interesting area, particularly the Baltic states. I

might say western Europe too, but you have to have a presence in Spain, France, Germany to be able to break into the market. That would be difficult for us as we stand today.” It’s partly in readiness for expansion that the company this year invested £2m in new technology both at its head office in Skipton and at its satellite office in Ahmedabad in India, where much of the company’s software is written. “We have been building some more interfaces around authorisation to make better integration directly with Visa,” says Fromant. Acquiring GTP gave us membership of Visa and our own FSA e-money licence. So we are also looking at mobile technology, and possibly having a mobile application that lets you open up and load funds via a mobile phone. “For our travelling customers, that would mean you could buy euros or dollars via a mobile phone at an exchange rate that is available at precisely that time.”

But for the moment there is still something of a marketing exercise too. Despite the advances in technology, despite the obvious benefits for frequent travellers and the desirability of pre-paid cards for money-conscious students, Fromant says they still have something of an image problem. “The opportunity is there,” he says. “People just see pre-paid cards as being at the bottom end of the market.” But then of course, to a certain extent Fromant has been here before. “It’s really just like Barclaycard in 1970s,” he says. “We need to keep explaining the product and its simplicity.” And that is a challenge he should be up for. In his early days Fromant was a top-class runner, regularly in Olympic trials, although he never quite made it to the Great Britain team. In his forties he once came second in the World Veteran’s Champions 10,000 metres. Although he has given up running, he is still clearly up for a challenge. n

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in association with

The issue: It is undeniable that companies large and small are finding it more difficult than ever to access finance for start-ups, growth and development. How do businesses best position themselves to attract finance and investment in today’s economic environment? Put a bunch of business leaders, advisers and bankers together for a discussion in a place like the Leeds Malmaison on a Thursday night, and it doesn’t take long to reach a consensus that there is indeed a problem about companies getting access to finance. It’s a view held by many companies too, not just start-ups. In our discussion, chaired by Caroline Theobald of the Bridge Club and sponsored by Deloitte and Eversheds, we had two companies who

could hardly have come from more different ends of the spectrum. But both had tales to tell of frustrations in finding funding. First was Sarah Dunwell, chief executive of Leeds-based social enterprise Create, which aims to get rough sleepers back into work by training them to get jobs in the catering industry. Unlike Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Foundation, it aims to get a large number in at entry level, rather than train up a smaller number for much more senior roles. As a result, the organisation, which was founded four years ago and is backed by Yorkshire Bank, has opened a restaurant in Leeds on the corner of King Street and St Paul’s Street. But it is currently looking to expand into four more cities in Yorkshire. Chief executive Sarah Dunwell said she had found looking for backing for such a venture quite hard work. She admitted that, being a social enterprise, she was limited in what she could offer potential investors as a return – although social enterprises by law are allowed to share out up to 35% of profits. She was hoping to find an investor “with a portfolio that is big enough and just

I wish I had known how long it takes your company to get ready for getting finance so we could prepare ourselves and get ahead of the curve

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The participants Peter Cranston, head of restructuring in the north, Eversheds Sarah Dunwell, chief executive, Create Foundation Matthew Hughes, partner, Deloitte Marty Kendrick, area director commercial, Lloyds TSB Gary Lumby, director of small business, Yorkshire & Clydesdale Banks Stuart Paver, managing director, Pavers Dan Renton, director, Deloitte Mike Reynolds, independent chartered accountant Tim Simpson, managing director, Park Place Corporate Finance Kerry Swain, investment manager, Endless Jason Trigg, regional director, HSBC Neil Williams, regional director, Santander In the chair: Caroline Theobald, Bridge Club Venue: Malmaison, Leeds BQ is highly regarded as a leading independent commentator on business issues, many of which have a bearing on the current and future success of the region’s business economy. BQ Live is a series of informative debates designed to further contribute to the success and prosperity of our regional economy through the debate, discussion and feedback of a range of key business topics and issues.

wants a bit of social investment to add on”. But at one point in the discussion she admitted there were many things she had wished she had known before starting out. “I wish I had known how long it takes to get your company ready for getting finance,” she said, “so we could prepare ourselves and get ahead of that curve by strengthening our board and management team, and so that I could start that readiness process early enough. If it takes nine months it’s worth knowing that’s how long it takes.” At the other extreme was Stuart Paver, managing director of family-run Pavers, a Yorkshire-based shoe store chain that has more than 100 branches in the UK and a joint venture in India. He said his company was in the lucky position of not needing any extra finance – but that didn’t mean he hadn’t had recent experience of other companies trying to access finance. “The UK banks claim they are open for business,” he said, “but if we turned away customers as good as the banks are currently

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Investment issue: The BQ Live participants heard how many well-run companies have been denied lending from the banks turning away, we wouldn’t be still in business. Paver revealed that in the past two years the company had actually been lending to developers through an agent. “We would receive 12% interest, and the agent gets 5%, and the developer still gets money at the end. And yet before he comes to us he has been to every single bank in the UK for a loan, and they won’t lend it. And yet these developers will never borrow more than 50% of the asset value, and not one of the 30 or so opportunities we have taken up have ever had any difficulty paying it back. In fact,

some of them have been back to us two or three times during this period. They can afford to pay effectively 17% interest.” He thought the problem was essentially one of credibility. “The banks too easily say no to credible propositions,” he said. “We have also just put some other money into a different venture for photovoltaic (PV) panels. They were willing to pay 20% over a six-month period. And even in the worst fallback they would still end up with getting income off Government-subsidised PV panels, but still they couldn’t get a bank interested.”

Faced with that barrage, how would banks respond? Over the course of the evening many of those represented, including Santander, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and Yorkshire Bank, were keen to stress that situation was not as bad as all that. Martyn Kendrick, area director for Lloyds TSB, wanted to challenge some of the assumptions that had been put out by the press. “Reports say our balance sheets are eroding,” he said, “when ours actually grew by 4% last year. The key piece is having confidence in >>

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Lending: The bankers in the discussion stressed that there was not so much a change of heart as a return to a more conventional situation business. How can the press help us stimulate that confidence?” Jason Trigg, regional director for HSBC, said he certainly didn’t want to put out the message that banks weren’t lending, and had seen first-hand the effect that such reports had on business. “Banks do want to lend money,” he said. “If we ever stop doing so, we won’t survive. I do come across, for example, a customer who is impeccable and who has a brand-new machine in the corner of his factory which has been paid for out of valuable cashflow

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because they have seen on the TV that banks are not lending.” And Neil Williams, regional director from Santander, said it wasn’t so much a change of heart on the part of the banks as a return to more conventional situation than had existed in the middle of the last decade. “In the early 1980s when I started in banking, banks would typically loan only up to 60% on any deal,” he said. “But over the past decade they have been going over each other so much to lend that they have been willing to put 85% or even 90% in. All that has happened

is that the banks have tried to redress that, although they have had to do so very quickly. It’s just that the market hasn’t adapted to the new environment.” He felt businesses would have to “selfgenerate” the rest. But how could this be done? Was it possible, said Dan Renton, a director at Deloitte, to “focus more on growth from cashflow”, and was it healthy to do so in the current climate? Kerry Swain, an investment manager from Leeds-based Endless, said cash supply was indeed something her turnaround looked at

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They buy product with the intention of paying for it on day 65 and selling it on day 32 on average. The more business they generate the more cash they have

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with each new company it invested in. “We often spend the first 100 days looking at finance, looking at funding shortfalls, and short-term funding, and things like that,” she said. Stuart Paver said that if anyone wanted to see how this might work very effectively in practice, they only had to see how Amazon behaved. “They reduce the cash to cash time,” he said. “If you compete with them it is a waste of time. They are not interested in generating a profit on sales. They buy product with the intention of paying for it on day 65 and selling it on day 32 on average. So the more business they generate, the more cash they have got. They don’t care if they are making a profit. They start discounting and discounting, so it becomes uncompetitive for everybody else.” Yet Tim Simpson, managing director of Leedsbased Park Place Corporate Finance, was more sceptical of the need to manipulate the balance sheet like that. “I know a company that likes to take the linear approach,” he said, “They always require customers to pay before. How can they do that? Because they have a bloody good product. That is the point. You need to produce value to the world. Look at what value your activity is creating. This company is lending money to others, and buying stock in advance. All good businesses do that.” There was a general feeling that finance was not the only issue either. Many felt relations between banks and companies looking for funding could be more effectively managed as well. Simpson felt the process had become far too bureaucratic, with prospective borrowers being asked to fill out forms that were in some cases 90 pages long. “The big issue is getting the money to flow between the two,” he said. “Dealmaking has become far too bureaucratic and expensive. We need to find a way of short-circuiting dealmaking bureaucracy. “Rather like criminals being made to visit victims of crime,” he said, “if you are borrowing from an individual, you are much more likely to repay them. There was a time when a bank manager had a much better >>

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role in society than he does now. Bringing that personal interaction back is absolutely critical.” Williams said the banks were only acting on the advice of lawyers in demanding such supplementary documentation. “But I can’t remember any case we have lost because the documents weren’t right,” he said. “Only a small percentage of problems get to court anyway.” In defence of lawyers, Peter Cranston, head of restructuring in the north at Eversheds, said the lengthy forms companies needed to fill in were partly the result of a risk-averse culture trickling down from bigger to smaller deals. “Everything starts with investment grade amounts,” he said. “What we do is too heavy duty, and that comes from a risk-

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averse environment, which is fed down from investment grade into every grade.” But it was by no means only professionals and funders who were felt to be the problem. Many around the table felt companies applying for funding also needed to be better educated, and more realistic about what they were likely to get. Many of the bankers around the table agreed with Williams who said he had come across too many cases of, for example, restaurant owners applying for finance who couldn’t even say what their average number of covers a night was. Gary Lumby, director of small business at Yorkshire and Clydesdale Banks, said he feared such a situation would only get worse with the

loss of a proactive Business Link in the region. “On November 25 this year it becomes a website and call centre only,” he said. Paver said he wished banks would create more packs for borrowers that were tailored to specific industries – something most of the banks said they were already doing. And while Matthew Hughes, an audit partner at Deloitte, said he felt more support should be given to mentoring networks to educate businesses, or to non-executive directors, Lumby was not so sure. “Not everyone can afford non-executives,” he said. “And we have a mentor programme through the Clydesdale Bank that was free, but our customers just don’t use it – even though we use only proven mentors.”

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Thoughts from the BQ round table debate Dan Renton, director in corporate finance for Deloitte in Yorkshire

Mike Reynolds, a former finance director at Cosalt who is now building up a care home business, said he felt many businesses were overcautious and overprotective when it came to working with mentors. “There’s certainly a case of, ‘I don’t want them to know how much we turn over,’” he said. So what, then, would they all say to Sarah Dunwell’s predicament in getting funding, mentioned at the start? How would they advise her to proceed? Swain agreed that early intervention was always a good strategy. She said it was the major failing of many of the companies who came knocking at Endless’s door. “You look a lot more credible going in early to talk about your finance issues than if you go and say, ‘Next month I am going to run out of

cash,’” she said. Peter Cranston, who works in restructuring, agreed. “It’s the discipline of information that is important,” he said. “By the time problem situations get around to me the financial information is often disarrayed by organisational disarray. Something which is unravelling scares people off.” So to avoid such issues, many agreed with Dan Renton that the most important thing to come equipped with was a credible business plan. His Deloitte colleague Matthew Hughes went further: “If you don’t know your own business plan, how can someone invest in you? You have to remember that people invest because they want to make money. You need to understand your risk and your weaknesses, and then we can have a conversation.” n

If you don’t know your own business plan, how can someone invest in you? You have to remember that people invest because they want to make money

“In my opinion, the most important item discussed was how we bring entrepreneurs together with funders in a way that fosters trust, builds a relationship and ultimately a business solution. Many entrepreneurs complain that finance simply isn’t available; conversely, many banks complain that they would welcome further opportunities to lend, so something isn’t working in the right way all of the time. To start that conversation those looking to raise finance must be well prepared and have a thorough, well thought-through business plan. That business plan should articulate opportunity, but also be honest enough to consider risks and challenges. Above all, the proposition should be based on delivering something stronger, better, more compelling than existing competition. A strong plan will attract strong interest. For their part, funders need to continue to invest time as well as money building business relationships with the very many talented and ambitious business leaders we have in our region. The financial community holds commercial experience that many companies would find simply invaluable and a richer business conversation will drive opportunity for lender and company alike. Today’s younger, entrepreneurial businesses are tomorrow’s PLCs and we simply must support them in these difficult economic times.”

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ENTREPRENEUR

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No lies in statistics Judy Aldred has been making great gains with her Ssentif database that allows public bodies to benchmark against anyone they like. She tells Peter Baber it’s made her something of a data swot as well

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You have been warned: I am about to indulge in a little bit of myth busting. First about that touchy subject – public sector cuts. Through much of the discussion of public sector spending cuts we have heard over the summer, particularly when the unions were marching, there have been several claims that it will lead to job cuts and that this will hit women hardest, because women are proportionally more likely to be employed in the public sector. This is rubbish. Do you know what sector has seen women losing their jobs most? It’s retailing. Then air pollution. There was the report published in the British Medical Journal in September which suggested that people who spend a large amount of time in traffic are

more likely to get heart disease. From that you might expect that people who go to work on public transport, and so breathe in all these fumes getting on and off buses, are also more likely to be at risk. If you thought that, you would also be wrong. Looked at across the country on a local authority basis, the two boroughs that come out best for having high levels of public transport use and low levels of heart disease are Lambeth and Southwark in inner London – hardly the kind of places you would expect to find the freshest air. How do I know these things? Because I have been speaking to Judy Aldred, managing director of Ssentif, an online data analysis and management company headquartered in Leeds that has developed the UK’s widest

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range of fully analysable public sector data – around 35,000 different indicators going back more than 10 years and covering every local and health authority area in the UK. She is a geophysicist by training who drifted into IT management for the NHS, but since she started Ssentif in 2004 has found she really enjoys analysing data as well. She admits that the correlation she has found on pollution isn’t perhaps ideal. “You clearly cannot say that the percentage of people on public transport is the same percentage who are suffering,” she says, “but you have got to start somewhere.” Nor, she insists, is she pursuing a particularly right-wing agenda, claiming that the fuss about public sector job cuts is nothing. “Those cuts are going to happen,” she says.

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“It’s just that I know from my experience in the public sector that when the Government says it will make job cuts, sometimes those people don’t get made redundant immediately. They just put them in another place.” Something similar in fact happened with the NHS Information Authority, the body Aldred was employed by when she was building the nhs.uk website, now known as NHS Choices. It was part of the reason why she ended up being moved up to Leeds from the Midlands, as it was consumed by the much larger NHS Connecting for Health programme. She is particularly proud of the work she did setting up nhs.uk, the first time there has ever been a one-stop-shop website detailing all the services that are available in every different part of the country on the NHS. When it was

complete she had a personal email from Tony Blair congratulating her. She later heard something via one of his spin doctors that really pleased her. “He apparently said that out of all the different public sector projects he had seen, not only did ours come in on time and on budget, but it exceeded his expectations – and we were in fact the only public sector project he could say that about.” He would no doubt be chuffed to hear another little statistical titbit she has uncovered since New Labour was swept from power. Not long after the coalition Government came in, it announced that it was scrapping the target that had been set for every hospital trust in the country to be seeing 90% of patients within 18 weeks of them first being >>

BUSINESS QUARTER |AUTUMN 11

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Huge potential: Judy Aldred’s database company is well ahead of the market put on the waiting list. This would still be a target, the new Government said, it would just not be monitored. At the time the decision was greeted with relief by many who said the NHS had become obsessed with targets. Only a small minority pointed out that what isn’t monitored doesn’t get going. But Aldred says she has proof that those naysayers were absolutely right. “The figures have started plummeting,” she says. “Some trusts are already down to just 35 to 40% of patients being seen within 18 weeks, and that’s in just over a year.” Some might say that is ample proof of why more competition needs to be introduced into the NHS, or at least more publicly accessible information. While Aldred was running nhs.uk, the site only featured ancillary information such as visiting times and car parking facilities. With the advent of foundation hospitals, much more comparative information has been introduced, but by that time Aldred had long since left.

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It’s not like setting up a greengrocer’s. We had to sell something people didn’t know they needed In fact, there is something of a love story behind her decision to leave. While she was running the website, a very junior wannabe web developer from New Zealand called Pete Owens came to work for the organisation. Formerly a fitness coach with New Zealand Golf, he had designed his own database which allowed him to compare different golfers’ performances easily. “Because it was all in one place you could cross-reference to see when and how they were getting best results,” says Aldred. He had come to England to learn how to

expand his ideas onto the web. “But he quickly realised he is an inventor,” she says, “and that he would never get the skills to build it up.” She hadn’t really known him until they both started jogging in the lunch hour at work. “I was his boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, I think,” says Aldred, with a smile. But he started telling her about his ideas; she could see the potential, one thing led to another, and – well, they are now married. In fact, they started employing developers to help work up the database out of their own wages while they were still employed at the NHS. “But to do things properly you have to give the day-job up,” she says. “So we did. We left the NHS, sold our house, car, everything really, and moved into rented accommodation.” Although they have a satellite office which employs four technical staff in Redditch, the two of them and Owens’ brother now work out of that rented accommodation, which is the top half of a house in Moortown. It might have a beautiful garden, maintained by septuagenarian landlord who lives downstairs, but it has no central heating and has windows which are falling out. “We wear lots of jumpers,” Aldred quips. So what was the potential of Owens’ database that so persuaded her to take such seemingly drastic action? Primarily, it was its expandability. “What we have built is expandable in all dimensions, time, and range,” she says. “It’s a humdinger of a clever part.” They initially thought that, as the database had been designed for golf professionals, they should target the sports market. “We actually stopped working entirely for the NHS after London got the Olympics bid,” she says. “So we thought that was great. But there isn’t any money in sport. A lot of sporting organisations deal with companies that give them stuff for free. As an up-andcoming business we couldn’t do that.” Moving back into health, a market Aldred was clearly more familiar with, they had initial success selling the system to a programme to measure obese children’s BMI. As part of this they were using a specially designed scale that the Department of Health had assured them

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was crown copyright. Only the true owner of the scale soon contacted them to say they were infringing his intellectual property, and the department then admitted it had made a mistake. “We came very close to going out of business because of that,” says Aldred. “I got a letter from the then health minister Caroline Flint, saying that we could not get any compensation for their mistake because we were a commercial organisation. That taught us to be careful, but also to see what we could do with the system that was not going to be relying on other pieces of information.” In fact it was shortly after that that she had what she describes as her “ping moment” and thought that instead of trying to sell the product as an empty database, why didn’t they sell it as an online package complete with data already loaded? “I spent a week trawling various places, looking for data,” she says. “Initially we had 175 indicators, all from primary care trusts. But since then new laws about data transparency have made everything open up. And because we are so far ahead of the game, it doesn’t matter what data they give us, our flexibility means we can put it in.” She showed the new Ssentif product to one primary care trust on a Tuesday, and by Thursday they had made an order. “I knew that meant we were on to something,” she says, “because the NHS does not usually turn around purchasing in that time. We now service primary care trusts, mental care trusts, hospital trusts, and we have just started with local authorities who I think are the best. “It’s really important to them, having all the data in one place. They already have access to financial information in one place, and to benefits over here, and crime somewhere else, but we take all that data plus financial information and any performance data and put it together. So you can see, for example, what percentage of pupils are absent, and how related that is to the drug crime rate in your area.” In fact, one council – Durham unitary authority – specifically chose to start using Ssentif because of its benchmarking abilities. “They said there were benchmarking clubs

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You can take it slow and build the business up yourself, or take the venture capital route. We want to keep control available, but they had a fixed number of indicators, and you could only benchmark among other members. They said nothing has the range of data that Ssentif has.” She isn’t particularly worried about public sector cuts having an impact on her business. Although primary care trusts are coming to an end, GP consortiums are now running as shadow authorities. “And there are three times as many of them as there were PCTs,” she says. Hospital trusts are also increasingly keen to use a system that allows them to benchmark

against anyone else, partly because messages coming from Government suggest that those who appear in the top ten in terms of performance will get extra funding. “We have had two new orders from them this week,” she says. The only challenge, she says, has been making people aware that the kind of database they all want to use is out there. “It’s not like setting up a greengrocer’s,” she says. “We had to sell something people didn’t know they needed. Yet so many people have said, “This is the tool that I always wanted to see, but I didn’t know it existed. It’s hard when you can’t use somebody else’s experiences to see how you go.” That could be changing, however, partly in thanks to Ssentif signing up with Leeds PR firm The Right Agency, who, after just two PR shots, has managed to get Aldred and Ssentif in the Sun, the Mirror, Sky News, and all BBC local radio stations. The media has been interested in the statistical stories Aldred can bring up, like the ones at the start of this article, so she is looking for more. “We are expecting expansion this year and next year because of the interest we are getting,” she says. And yes, they have “already had a sniff of a big organisation” interested in taking them over. And from venture capitalists too. But Aldred is not interested. “We decided early on there were two different routes to go down,” she says. “You can take it slow and build the business up yourself, or take the venture capital route. We have chosen our route. We want to keep control.” Similarly, while she does eventually want to move out of their current premises, she sees no reason for moving into anywhere expensive and glitzy, as clients rarely come to see them in person. Thanks to being close to the broadband exchange in Leeds, she can do everything from pitching to training online. She can even do it from New Zealand when they go back there to visit Owens’ family. “Business is definitely changing,” she says. “Now if our clients are going through cuts, they can’t afford to spend £120,000 on a programme. It makes more sense doing it online. I’m just a face on a big screen to them.” n

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Cornering the market Rockliffe Hall just misses out on being officially based in Yorkshire. But, says Peter Baber, it is a fine luxury retreat those from the county would be unwise to miss

BUSINESS QUARTER | AUTUMN 11

You can always tell a true Yorkshireman, because he knows where the limits of God’s great county are. Contrary to what some might tell you, Yorkshire does not stop where an area currently known variously at Teesside or Cleveland begins. That area was a totally new invention that came in as part of the Heath government’s local government reorganisation in 1974, and was duly abolished in 1996. No, all good men and women from Yorkshire know that Yorkshire begins on the south bank of the Tees, and just keeps going. Which is a shame, because literally lying on the north bank of the Tees between the villages of Hurworth and Croft is a five-star hotel, golf club and spa resort, that, if it had any sense about it, would declare itself part of Yorkshire. In fact it’s surprising that the Tees should ever have been a border, because at this point it has many meanders, and Rockliffe Hall, the hotel in question, sits at the southern end of one of them. In other words, it’s surrounded on three sides by Yorkshire. The hotel has vistas within its grounds that stretch across to the North York Moors, so if you do come across the river you can still feel at home. The building itself, and its impressive grounds, have a history going back several centuries (see panel), although the old part of the current building dates from the early part of the 19th century. But in recent years it had fallen rather into disrepair, and its £60m transformation two years ago is largely thanks to the efforts of its current owner Steve Gibson, the owner of Middlesbrough Football Club. The football connections are fairly obvious as

you come onto the site, as Middlesbrough’s impressive training academy is housed on part of the original estate next door. Gibson, who made it onto the Sunday Times Rich List through the success of his Bulkhaul transportation business which he founded in 1981, saved the club from bankruptcy when he took it over in 1985. He has in the past said that he only came across the Rockliffe estate when he was looking for a somewhere to site a new training facility for the club in the 1990s. At the time, practice sessions were being held in a prison in Yarm. Even then, he and associate Warwick Brindle were unsure about what to do with the house itself. Although market research established a need for such a luxury resort, and planning permission was granted in 2000, it would be nine long years before the hotel itself came to fruition. Part of the reason for that is the sheer quality of what is on offer here. For despite Gibson’s football connections, what strikes you immediately as you come onto the site is the superb golf course. Covering 375 acres, it’s no surprise to hear it’s the longest in Europe, with an average hole length of 440 yards. The course gently slopes down to the river’s edge – in fact, because the river is still very occasionally prone to flood its designer Marc Westenborg had to make sure there was no run-off from the course into the river. But he’s cleverly overcome that problem by including ten holes with water features. There’s a fine clubhouse too, although you wouldn’t notice it because its roof has been grassed over. Looking out over the course from the hotel’s balcony, Rockliffe Hall managing >>

Impressive: Rockcliffe Hall managing director Nick Holmes is proud of what has been achieved in two years

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Top notch: Rockliffe Hall has three restaurants ranging from fine dining to brasserie-style director Nick Holmes is clearly proud of what has been achieved in just two years. “We are already talking to the PGA about bringing the European tour here,” he says. “We’ve already had a Sir Bobby Robson memorial which was played here. And we had the Sky TV Trilby Tour here too.” Much of this has been down to the appointment of Graham Storm who plays on the European tour, as the course’s club professional. Storm, who was born in Hartlepool, came to Rockliffe from Wynyard Hall in County Durham. But what of the hotel itself? The five-star quality of the site hits you as soon as you arrive. Doormen offered to valet park our car for us, even though the room we were staying in was only a short walk away.

Holmes himself is keen to show off the 61 bedrooms on offer here, each one at least 42 square metres in size and individually designed with full Sky TV, complimentary wi-fi access, Egyptian cotton bedding and Villeroy & Boch bathroom fittings. They all come with mood lighting adjustments too – quite a development, once you get used to it. The 61 figure actually includes around 18 “apartotel” rooms with more than one bedroom. These were developed partly to accommodate the many visiting football players the hotel puts up. So, stay in them and you never know who you might bump into. There are also two, four-bedroom cottages within the grounds. Residents of all of these properties can benefit from the hotel’s facilities.

The ruins of former stables have been included in a delightful garden. The architects who built it at the height of all things Gothic would have approved

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“We have just turned our gatehouse into a business suite that can fit 16 people – perfect for a short corporate break,” says Holmes. The hotel boasts three restaurants, and here too a certain amount of celebrity status has been brought in. Its top-notch fine dining restaurant is situated in a former orangery – the hall’s Victorian owners were keen botanists – although by the time Steve Gibson acquired the property the plants had been allowed to grow through the roof. And it’s called Kenny Atkinson at the Orangery, because its head chef is indeed the former chef at Seaham Hall has who won the BBC’s Great British Menu show and has two Michelin stars behind him. While the Orangery itself is intimate, there’s a separate campanella area which you can hire for private dining. And on some nights you can be entertained by a pianist who spends the rest of the week playing the piano in the Savoy in London. Nothing but the best here. Along with a restaurant in the clubhouse, the hotel’s other dining option, upstairs from the Spa, is currently going through a relaunch masterminded once again by Atkinson. “We’re going to call it the Brasserie by Kenny Atkinson,” says Holmes. “And unlike the Orangery, where an average main course is nearer £20, you will be able to bet more bistro-style meals here for around £10.” We can only wonder whether one of Atkinson’s changes will be simplicity, because when we dined there, while the food was excellent, we were slightly overwhelmed by the variety available, and the possibilities of having many dishes either as a starter or a main course. Something a little more straightforward might be in order, especially if you have just come up from the spa, because that is a relaxation treat not to be missed. It has one of the country’s largest hydrotherapy pools, not to mention a 20-metre swimming pool and 18 treatment rooms covering everything from pilates and yoga to Rasul mud wraps. There is even a treatment room for couples. Along with the treatment rooms are eight heat therapy rooms that run the whole gamut of temperatures. Next to the hydrotherapy pool there is a tropicarium, a tepidarium, and – much more of a rarity – an igloo, where you can rub ice over yourself after you have

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sweated elsewhere. This side of the spa is restricted for adults only – a restriction that is properly enforced. But on the other side by the swimming pool there is a sauna and steam room as well as juice bar where you can sit and have endless complimentary cups of iced tea while sitting on a recliner enjoying the effect of the light streaming through the stained glass windows. These windows – by renowned modern stain glass maker Alfred Fisher – were originally installed at the chapel that formed part of the monastery that used to own Rockliffe, and were preserved when the chapel itself, only built in 1971, was pulled down. Even after a relaxing time in the spa, there is much else to discover in the grounds. You can go for a walk by the river, or take part in a Nordic walking class if you prefer. And the ruins of the former stables have now been included in a delightful garden out front. The architects of the old house who built it at the height of the interest in all things Gothic would surely have approved. If you think the whole area looks quintessentially Victorian, you wouldn’t be wrong. Lewis Carroll’s father was vicar of the nearby parish church at Croft where the young boy is said to have come across a gargoyle that inspired him to create the Cheshire Cat. He also wrote an early version of the Jaberwocky there. One wonders whether he might have thought the Duchess lived at Rockliffe. If you are planning your special day, the hotel can cover that too. There is a wedding suite with its own private entrance and private balcony looking over this garden that can house 160 people for dinner, or 250 theatre-style. Holmes says they will guarantee that your wedding does not clash with anyone else’s taking place elsewhere in the hotel – as a result, they are now taking wedding bookings for Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and even occasionally Mondays. “We did about 70 weddings here last year,” he says. But what’s the real finishing touch to all this luxury is that it is not nearly as pricey as you might imagine. Holmes says weddings at Rockliffe can be as little as £115 a head, including food and the bar. Corporate day rates start at £45 a head for the guesthouse,

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or £65 in a suite in the hotel itself. And membership of the spa itself, which is open to non-residents, starts at £95 a month. There are gyms in Leeds that would charge more than that and still not have as impressive facilities. No wonder Holmes says they are

already attracting day visitors from Leeds and Manchester. A current special offer this autumn of two nights at the hotel with dinner on the first night at the Brasserie or in the clubhouse is £185 per person. You would be foolish not to. n

A bit of history Rockliffe Hall has a fine history. What remains of the old building was originally built in the 1860s by the Backhouse family. According to The Road to Rockliffe, an excellent book by Chris Lloyd that you can get at the hotel, they were a wealthy family of bankers who had made much of their money by being wise enough to back what became the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which can lay some claim to being the world’s first railway. Even the machinations of a local duke who felt steam trains might upset his hunting were not enough to thwart them. They were also Quakers – part of a wider Quaker family whose banking interests turned into what became Barclays Bank. And they employed as an architect Alfred Waterhouse – another Quaker – who had only just recovered from a scandal when one of his buildings collapsed, but went on to design Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. The Backhouses were keen botanists (there is some suggestion that their puritanical Quaker background gave them little room for other interests) and were among the first to bring Californian Redwoods into this country, which you can still see in the grounds. But when the family line eventually petered out at the turn of the 20th century, the next three owners were far more brash characters, having army backgrounds and being keen huntsman. Unfortunately the last aristocratic owner, the Earl of Southampton, had an heir who was more interested in escaping at night down a drainpipe to go off for assignations with visiting actresses at the nearby Darlington Hippodrome. Although the Earl is thought to have built a cricket pitch to keep the young man more on the straight and narrow, he later rejected any claim to the estate and went off to spend the rest of his life in Malta. When the Earl put the estate up for sale in 1948, it was bought by the Hospitaller Order of St John and became both a monastery and a hospital for physically and mentally disabled people. But with declining numbers taking orders, and the trend to get more such patients out in the community, all occupants had moved out by 1991. When Steve Gibson acquired the estate in the mid-1990s, the house itself had been empty for five years and had suffered from vandalism.

BUSINESS QUARTER |AUTUMN 11

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BUSINESS QUARTER | AUTUMN 11

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The lady from DLA Sarah Day has scored another triumph for women by becoming the first female managing partner of Yorkshire’s biggest law firm. But she tells Peter Baber that encouraging diversity is much more subtle than doing that

When she officially took over in May this year, Sarah Day became the first-ever female managing partner of the Leeds office of DLA Piper – the largest office in the legal firm’s network anywhere in the world after London. Given that the firm has a history going well back into the 19th century, that is quite an achievement. Yet the manner in which this has come about, and which she describes to me over lunch at Sous le Nez in Leeds, sounds surprisingly old-fashioned. The appointment, it has to be said, was entirely done on standard lines. Like all managing partners, her appointment had to be confirmed by the executive board. Yet in the months beforehand, she had been encouraged to put herself forward in a series of private meetings. Such a method of looking out for new talent has in the past sometimes been attacked by equality campaigners who see it as an all too easy way to keep the old school tie and other such examples of male bias going. Day, on the contrary, thinks it

certainly helped her to prepare for the appointment – and she thinks it could even help other women in a similar position. “It’s all part of a piece about giving people the confidence to have a conversation, and not just assume who is going to take over,” she says. “A number of people said to me, ‘Would you think about it?’, and to be truthful I hadn’t until they asked. But having thought about it I thought I would enjoy it. It’s about people bringing themselves forward. I hadn’t really thought about it until I did have such a conversation. I assumed that someone else would stand.” After we break to order the food – myself opting for tempura prawns to start, and Day going for the fish of the day – she goes on to explain just how the reasons for this secrecy were perfectly sound. Neil McLean, the former managing partner, was in the process of becoming chairman of the new Leeds Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), but nothing was certain, and the LEP process itself was so long-winded that it would have been foolish for anyone to have come out and made an open statement before matters were confirmed. As it happens, Day actually took over her new role in February, but there was a

three-month transition period to ensure that no boat was rocked in the process. She is very enthusiastic about what her predecessor has gone off to do, for she thinks such work is terribly important. “The LEP is going to be very good for the region,” she says. “We have all enjoyed the economic growth of Leeds very well in recent years. But we have to work very hard to make sure it is there for the next generation. Getting inward investment into the UK is hard enough, getting it up to the north even more so. And it is not going to be possible to sell Leeds in a generic way – if you do that, people soon begin to notice that on the world map the UK is small and off to the top left. So we really need to think more about export.” She says she went to an event run by accountancy firm BDO recently where the audience was asked for its views on the economy and on business prospects via a push-button console. “Most people were positive,” she says. “Most expected growth in the next 12 to 18 months, and 90% felt this would come from the UK. But I have to say I am not convinced by that. We do have lots of exportable talent, but we don’t sell it enough, and say why people >>

Give a man a list of essential attributes. If he gets seven out of ten he probably thinks he is not doing too badly. A woman thinks she needs to get all ten

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Time is running out and we need some things to be big and bold. That’s why we need the Green Investment Bank coming to Leeds. We have got to think big should come here rather than Paris or Cologne. There are lots of little organisations trying to do great things, but is there coherent thinking across public and private sector? We need to make sure there is, then focus on key areas. Otherwise – and believe me, this does happen – people might think they are better off locating somewhere in the sun.” Given that this is the kind of thing that Yorkshire Forward was supposed to have been doing for the past decade and a half, this sounds like a tacit criticism of the regional development agency’s performance. Day insists it is not. “Yorkshire Forward operated differently,” says Day. “It did do some good things, and set up many different initiatives. But time is running out and we need some things to be big and bold. That’s why, for example, we need the Green Investment Bank coming to Leeds. We have got to be united and think big for something like that to happen. It would be hard for Financial Leeds, for example, to do that on its own.” No doubt she and Neil McLean see a key role for DLA Piper itself here. Because one of the things she wants to do during her term as

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managing partner – and although she doesn’t have to, she has limited herself to three years in the role – is to try to raise the profile of individuals within the Leeds office. She thinks that “too few of us are known in the region”. “But the reason for that is that people are doing a lot of good work, and don’t shout about it. So I think we need to be involved in making sure this region shouts about itself and is positive about itself. Those two join together. A lot of our partners do press the flesh, but then you wouldn’t know about the litigation work we do, for example.” It is perhaps true that in some senses DLA Piper is something of a sleeping giant. With its roots in Yorkshire (although originally in Sheffield, not Leeds, says Day), following its merger with Piper Rudnick in Chicago and Gray Cary in San Diego in 2005, it actually became the largest law firm in the world if you count number of lawyers employed. It has become even bigger this year following a merger with Phillips Fox, an 100-partner Australian practice. But there are still plenty of “magic circle” practices in London who would claim that total numbers of lawyers is not really relevant

when it comes to determining how important a legal firm is. Others would claim that such global practices are essentially meaningless, because legal practice around the world is so different. Even Day herself admits to these differences: the UK, for example, is relatively unusual in separating out barristers and solicitors and relatively unusual in having separate lawyers dealing with transactions and contentious work. In many countries, the lawyer who draws up your contract will be the same lawyer who deals with it when it goes wrong. Not in the UK. But Day insists that, five years on, the merger is going as smoothly as could be hoped. “We were very clear when we did it that it needed to be a merger, not a takeover,” she says. “We wanted to be a strong international business and to merge with a US firm like that. We did not want to be like other earlier mergers, where the UK firm became very much a US firm in its approach to business. There has been cross-fertilisation, but legally we are separate entities.” So will there eventually be an international firm? “We will get there,” she says, adding that the firm is already not bothered about where exactly its headquarters is. While much administration goes on in London, the head of corporate law for the European region, for example, is currently based in Madrid. “There will always be local culture,” she says, “and that’s important, and we also want to make sure that each office has to have a strong business location. Our Moscow office, for example, doesn’t just do big gas deals, but also does strong local business. It’s the same for Paris, Kiev, Australia. But there are some things you can say about common denominators.” One is the internal culture. Day sits on the international board of the practice, which oversees internal promotions from right across the network. She was particularly encouraged by one recent presentation she went to. “We interviewed over 40 people,” she says. “They all had different characters and backgrounds, but they all bought into the same vision, and shared the same values.” At the time of the American merger, one problem many commentators focused on was the different methods of remuneration either

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side of the Atlantic. Essentially speaking, once you are a partner you are remunerated largely according to how long you have been with the firm. In the US it is based much more on how much business you bring to the firm each year. Although the remuneration is still separate between the American and non-American offices within DLA Piper, Day insists this has not been so much of a problem because the practice was already something of a meritocracy before the merger. “In our system you see what each partner has contributed to the firm, and is their remuneration commensurate with that?” she says. “That means a younger person can rise quickly.” (As she herself did, becoming managing partner at the age of 45 having only been in the Leeds office since the early 1990s.) But even she admits that a meritocracy can have its faults. “You are measuring the best part of 700 people,” she says. “So you have to make sure you get real transparency about that. What other clients have they shared? What have they tucked away? What intelligence have they done which has really helped the firm? All of that needs to be put into the mix.” In such a situation is it not often the case that those who shout the loudest – usually men – will get noticed first? This writer has come across many business owners who thought the young thrusting male lawyer they were dealing with was burning the candle at both ends to get the deal done, only to find that most of the work was actually being done by his quieter female colleague back at the office. Day agrees that women are often bad at putting themselves forward – as she might have been with the managing partner’s post. “Give a man a list of essential attributes in a job description,” she says, “If he gets seven out of ten, he will probably think he is not doing too badly. A woman thinks she needs to get all ten.” But she is dead set against the idea of quotas or positive discrimination in recruitment, she says, because you have to have the best person for the job. Although she herself is married but has no children of her own, she can quite understand that a woman’s desire to be with her children probably explains why, despite more than 50% of law graduates

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being female, there are so few female managing partners. “Where we are missing a trick is in working out whether some of these women could come back afterwards,” she says. “What are they looking for?” Nor do such questions only apply to gender, she says. “With diversity generally there is a lot of education to be done.” She has in fact noticed substantial differences even between supposedly similar countries such as the UK and the Netherlands –

differences that go beyond a mastery of the English language. “If you say, ‘I am not sure I agree with that,’ to a UK person that means you don’t agree. In the Netherlands it means you are not sure. If a Dutch woman wanted to say she did not agree with something she would say, ‘I don’t agree with that’, which has something to recommend it. If we can be aware of differences and be educated about them, we can open up the talent available to us, and people will know they have a chance.” n

A city tradition It seems incredible that we have reached the tenth edition of BQ Yorkshire before any of our Business Lunch candidates have suggested Sous le Nez as a suitable venue for the interview. Perhaps they think that such a venue – in a basement in Quebec Street in Leeds – hardly needs publicising. Because Sous le Nez en Ville, to give it its full name, really is the business heart of the city. Sarah Day remembers that being the case when she first came up to Leeds in the early 1990s, and it is still the case now. Even coming in for an early lunch on a weekday, as we did, there was at least one business acquaintance of hers already there. Nor is such an accolade undeserved, when you look at the menu. There’s usually a perfectly done steak for those hearty business types, but also a fish menu, and this writer has yet to taste a better chicken liver parfait when it’s on the menu. Service is immaculate too, often by waiting staff who display all the usual Gallic je ne sais quoi. And while it is good to meet those you know through business, there is plenty of opportunity for privacy too. Not just because the restaurant boasts many little partitioned-off tables, it also has a private dining room at the back if you really want to keep the observers out. The restaurant was christened Sous le Nez en Ville when it opened in April 1991 to distinguish it from the original Sous le Nez in Ilkley, which Robert Chamberlain founded in 1985. The Ilkley restaurant closed down in 1992, however, and Chamberlain himself is now just a consultant for this Sous Le Nez, which is run as a limited company with shareholders, including the original chef Andrew Carter. But it looks likely to remain a Leeds stalwart for a long time yet. For more information visit www.souslenez.com

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Style is the new driver Nick Faldoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diamond sweaters have given way to infinitely more elegant and practical golfwear, as Josh Sims reports

With thanks to: www.subseventy.co.uk, www.albartross.com, www.galvingreen.com, www.golfino.com

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FASHION

When Alex Bartholomew, ex-shoe designer for the likes of Burberry and LK Bennett, offered her shoes to the Wentworth Golf Shop early last year, they might well have been tentative. Here, in effect, was not the trainer-style golf shoe that has dominated sales over recent years, but a “proper” leather-soled style with calf leather upper and layered heel, together with anti-microbial fabrics and cleat technology. It was, in short, a more luxury golf shoe – for £350. Surely Bartholomew’s Royal Albatross label was a step too far for most casual golfers? The shop bought some anyway. And six weeks later the brand was its best-seller. “It’s a specialist item,” concedes Bartholomew. “There have been attempts to make golf shoes like this before, but the process has been cost-prohibitive. But consumers are changing – with the recession and issues of sustainability, there is less of a throw-away culture, more a readiness to invest in the stylish but long-lasting. And it’s happening in golf too – it’s getting a much more qualityminded market.” And a big one too – according to estimates by the British Golf Industry Association, the golf apparel and footwear business across Europe is only growing, worth in excess of 125m euros in Germany and 36.2m euros in France, for example, but even 5.0m euros in the relatively immature market of the Czech Republic and 3.5m euros in Russia – where the number of registered players has tripled in the last five years. Small wonder then, that while global brands the likes of Puma and Adidas are pushing into golfwear, with specialist labels the likes of skiing company Bogner taking a side-step into it, the sport is seeing an explosion of relatively young or new niche brands, among them the likes of Natural Born Golfers or Tattoo. Supported by golf retailers – if only because golfwear provides much higher margins than equipment – these are ready to capitalise not only on golf’s growing popularity as both a participant and spectator sport, especially due to TV coverage, but a fundamental shift that (in many, if not all countries) is seeing it evolve from an elitist, expensive, middle-aged, largely male sport to one that is more inclusive, >>

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FASHION younger and female-friendly – one BGIA estimate reckons that while 25% of registered players in Europe are women, they account for 60% of all golfwear sales. Even drastic improvements in golf course conditions, notably with drainage systems, are having an impact, reckons Mike Johnson Hill, UK managing director of Galvin Green. “People are not so worried about having to wade through muddy sections and so are prepared to put on some nice trousers,” he says. “The changing nature of the sport is changing the way golfwear looks,” argues Robert Hart, the creative director of Bunker Mentality, which launched in 2005. “Golfwear is having to become much more fashion and fit-conscious, especially since everyone now thinks of themselves as being and living in a much younger spirit too. Its getting some of the more radical style it used to have. Remember Nick Faldo with his diamond-print shirts? We might think they look pretty bad now but they were a style revolution at the time. Golf, unlike other sports, has a history of dressing up to play and that is coming back.” Indeed, Hart stresses that the shift is really from golfwear to golf fashion – clothes that reflect fashion trends and are wearable direct from course to pub or social gathering, a shift also reflected in the growing number of fashion brands now with strong golfwear lines, from Hugo Boss for men, through to Casall, La Perla and Escada Golf for women. “That crossover element is getting more and more important,” agrees Andy Davies, sales director for Sub70, which launched in 2004. “We meet what is the key market demand – effectively mainstream fashion you can play golf in. This is a consequence of golf being more a lifestyle sport for many players – they may take their game seriously but they also want to be the best-dressed person on the course.” Sub70’s best-sellers include its black-and-white tartan trousers and Groove shirt – a simple, fitted style in six colours with contrast piping and pocket detail, with the brand launching knitwear this summer and waterproofs in autumn – designs that have taken the brand

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FASHION from a turnover of £30,000 to £0.5m in just six years. But Davies can see the turnover of styles increasing just as rapidly, so that golfwear keeps pace with seasonal fashion trends – Sub70 already introduces new styles every three months. “And the customer seems ready to update his golf wardrobe just as regularly as he might his off-course wardrobe,” says Davies. But what then will distinguish what is worn in civilian life as opposed to that worn in active duty on the green? The deciding factor is likely to prove the technological edge, one which, according to Johnson Hill, is set to see more traditional, all-cotton golfwear gradually fade from the market. According to Hart, tech remains a secondary issue. “We decide whether a new design looks cool, and then we think about making it in the intelligent fabrics,” he says. “Golfwear’s utility is an increasingly essential part of its proposition, especially to a younger tech-savvy consumer.” Isabelle Prchlik, spokesperson for Golfino – Europe’s largest single supplier of golf apparel and leader in golfwear for women – stresses that while a certain fashionably preppy chic may shape the look of its clothes for this summer, functional factors such as waterproofing, “moisture management”, stretch and comfort are all factors that modern golfwear design must consider. “Golfwear has to work in different climates and has to be able to give so as to not interfere with your swing,” she says. “But the important factor is that this technology is hidden – it’s there in the clothing but you wouldn’t know it – and that it does not interfere with the silhouette. Golfwear can be sporty but there is a strong demand for it to remain elegant, and doing that in technical fabrics is a challenge. We have advanced stretch micro-fibre materials for trousers, for example, that you could do gymnastics in. “The fact is that golfwear is in a period of rapid change, in much the way that the sport itself is. Golfwear is getting more sophisticated in style and substance. Keeping both factors up means that inevitably it will get more expensive. But just as many golfers want the best clubs or the latest balls, it seems that many too are more than happy to pay for the best clothing.” n

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MOTORING

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Supercharged For Super-Fun

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MOTORING

Fabien Doré, recruitment consultant for The Restaurant Group, takes the supercharged Lotus Evora S for an extended spin around the Pennines

I’d been looking forward to driving the Lotus Evora S for over a week and when I pitched up at Lotus’s new showroom on Gelderd Road, Leeds, excitement reached fever pitch. What a sublime looking car, a real head turner. Surely this is the best looking Lotus ever? Getting in, I felt properly cocooned by a slick, all-leather interior. Everything is clearly laid out with controls coming easily to hand – nothing too complex. The exception was the Alpine multimedia unit that looks very cool and retro but unless you have a masters degree in sat-navery, you might find it a bit challenging to use. At least I did. For such a great car, I also think a higher specification sound system is in order. Once on the road I found the car reassuringly stable and easy to drive, and dare I say it, a little tamer than I was expecting. That was until I discovered the “sport” button. I prodded it, not really expecting a huge difference – how wrong could I be? Once in sport mode this car comes alive and everything starts to make real sense. The Lotus racing heritage kicks in and the car becomes an

absolute beast. The power is more immediate, the vehicle tightens and the noise is absolutely thrilling as everything opens up. I’m grinning from ear to ear as it eats up the corners. This is no boy’s toy; it’s a man’s car. I really had questioned some of the published stats for this car, particularly the 0-60 time of 4.6 seconds, but while I was certainly not going to push too hard on busy public roads I can now confirm this car is very, very quick. The handling is superb, the brakes strong and responsive, leaving me feeling in complete control at all times. The gearshift was a bit stiff, but I didn’t mind that, to be honest – it kind of forces you to engage with the car. It loved the twists and turns of the Pennine roads I used to put it through its paces. A brand new Lotus Evora S will set you back £67,000. It’s a lot of money, but this really is a special car and very exclusive. Come November, there will be an IPS version with optional six-speed automatic transmission. I’m also really looking forward to a new version of the Exige, available early next year, that will carry the monster V6 from the Evora. n

Once in sport mode this car comes alive and everything starts to make sense. It becomes an absolute beast

Lotus Evora S was supplied by Lotus Leeds, part of the JCT600 group. Tel : 0844 8447449 www.jct600.co.uk

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ROSE ON WINE

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serious contenders A white wine from Spain has Simon Rose pondering a change in regular drinking habits, while a South African red amazes him with its Bordeaux-like class – without the price

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Pazos de Lusco “Zios” Albarino, Spain (£13.99) If you hadn’t already noticed, there is a revolution sweeping through Spanish wine. It’s fair to say that not all bits of most revolutions are things you want to be involved in, but the emergence of the Albarino grape in Galicia is one thing not to protest about. The grape straddles the border between southern Galicia and northern Portugal, but the former ones are much better known in international markets. But popularity always breeds poor imitation and a rush to the mass market. Fortunately, this isn’t one of them. Pazos de Lusco is one of the great names of Albarino, despite a mere six hectares under vine. With an alluring nose of nectarine and white peach, this is an easy dry white to fall in love with, but on the palate it has the concentration of the serious wine which it is.

this exciting wine country. This wine is a blend of mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot, so its no surprise that it has claret-like overtones, but there’s no Bordeaux which comes this close at this price. All those notes of cigar boxes and pencil lead, which might not sound attractive on paper, but are part of the very breeding of many a fine claret, are here in abundance. In fact, Bordeaux-guru Robert Parker’s website recently gave it an amazing 93 points (out of 100). A pair of delightful wines, the Pazos de Lusco in particular, may replace my usual Sancere. There’s certainly more to Spain than Rioja. Both are available from Lewis & Cooper’s stores in Northallerton and Yarm, and via www.lewisandcooper.co.uk.

Rustenberg John X Merriman (£12.99) Rustenberg is one of the great historic estates of Cape winemaking. But whilst some of the elder statesman wineries in South Africa have been overtaken by younger siblings, Rustenberg has continued to be at the cutting edge of the very best which is emerging from

For more details, contact Angela Metcalfe, wine department manager, or Nigel Overton, on 01609 766707 or via wine@lewisandcooper.co.uk

Simon Rose is sales and marketing director at Alpha Media Solutions.

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ROSE ON WINE

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EQUIPMENT Call it the classic of classics or an ostentatious sign of wealth, Rolls-Royce is the world’s leading car brand. Josh Sims luxuriates in precision engineering and expensive leather to discover the marque’s future in today’s eco-driven market is as assured as its distinguished past

When the rumours leaked late last year that Rolls-Royce was actually going to do it, they were greeted with some scepticism. After all, this was the company whose flagship model, the Phantom, was a veritable beast, with its hefty haunches and miles of sweeping bonnet peaking in a gargantuan grill. At 19ft long and 6.5ft wide, this was less the proverbial gentleman’s club chair on wheels as the entire club. And now here was the gossip saying the veritable 6.7 litre gas-guzzler was going to go, whisper it, all eco. Surely, with the luxury market still reluctant to openly embrace environmental concerns – as though to do so was to suggest the penny-pinching, rather than the socially-aware – Rolls-Royce of all car brands was the least likely to take on the golf-cart silence of an electric engine? But it has. >>

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ecstasy and the electric shock

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EQUIPMENT It’s less ostentatious and I think that will be a key part of what RollsRoyce is about in the future. The Phantom, of course, is a statement

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The 102EX is a fully electric powered Phantom, recently unveiled. OK, so it is not being rushed into production. Also known as the EE, for Experimental Electric, it is more a test-bed to gauge consumer reaction and assess whether this is the best eco drive-train for Rolls-Royce to adopt. Yet the fact that the company has even considered it is a reflection of a new energy for the brand, largely down to the leadership of Torsten Muller-Otvos. It was he who took over as Rolls-Royce’s CEO last year after a lifetime of brand management roles with RollsRoyce’s owner, the BMW Group, where he was its youngest-ever ascendant to the top table. Positioning and re-positioning automotive brands is what Muller-Otvos is all about. It was he who oversaw the re-launch of the Mini. And with the EE he is testing the water.   “It is more an exploration of what our clients think about a more environmentally-friendly engine,” he says. “And clearly we need to make a proper decision on that if we need to down the route of producing alternative drive-trains, which could be diesel, electric, a hybrid, but has to be right for the brand and our customers. It’s less about whether they really want it so much as responding to the changes in legal issues in certain countries that might encourage them to look into the area. Get it right though and I think there’s definitely a market there.” Moving Rolls-Royce into higher gear has been one benefit from German ownership, however disgruntled many were when (like the recent Kraft take-over of Cadbury’s) the purchase was announced. Muller-Otvos stresses how the Britishness of these cars nevertheless remains – some 80% of employees are Brits, all the craftsmen are Brits, the chief designer Ian Cameron is a Brit, the cars are made here – and that remains a great selling point, especially overseas. But he also gently points out that the reputation for excellence Rolls-Royce once justly commanded had been fading fast, with the brand “stunning in the earlier years of its history but losing its way during the 80s and 90s”. BMW, he says, risking opprobrium from the overly-patriotic, re-awakened “engineering competence, manufacturing competence and the latest in manufacturing technology to get the quality

that Rolls-Royce customers expect and what we have to deliver”. Another further benefit has been the CEO’s enthusiasm for spotting unexploited markets, however incongruous they may seem on first consideration. How about, for example, a less stately, more everyday Rolls-Royce? That may not fit with the Rolls-Royce story as it is popularly conceived, but Muller-Otvos has made it work. To the Phantom he has added the Ghost, a car that is a celebration of Rolls-Royce history – it marks this year being the centenary of the Spirit of Ecstasy, Rolls-Royce’s flying lady mascot, said to be modelled on automobile pioneer John Walter, Lord Montagu’s secretary and lover – but one as much symbolic of the times as the new EE. “The Ghost hasn’t been about taking business away from other car brands,” says MullerOtvos. “To be honest, a lot of our customers already have several cars in their garage from several different companies. “But it is a reflection of a change of philosophy for the company; it’s less ostentatious and I think that will be a key part of what Rolls-Royce is about in the future. The Phantom, of course, is a statement. It’s often chauffeur-driven, for example. But we also recognise with the Ghost that there was a need for more of a driver’s car, a more everyday car, something more subtle...” Recognition of the need for the company to broaden its remit has certainly proven successful. Last year saw Rolls-Royce report a record year-on-year sales growth of 171%, with sales of 2,711 cars, more than double the previous record set in 2008, a success largely attributed to the Ghost, which has brought new customers to the brand. Indeed, some 80% of Ghost customers have, atypically for the company, never owned a Rolls-Royce before. Not that the brand is in any way going mass-market. For all that, at £165,000 and upwards, the Ghost may be Rolls-Royce’s more affordable car, Muller-Otvos sees no future in one any cheaper than that. He says: “The economy is getting better and people are getting more confident and coming back to buy luxury products again. But you can’t move established brands too dramatically or too fast, especially one as old as Rolls-

Royce, with its heritage and tradition. It has to be step by step. “There’s been talk of launching a more affordable car but I don’t think that would be right – our intention is to be very, very highly exclusive. And there’s still no one around the world selling more cars in that segment than Rolls-Royce. You wouldn’t want to see a Rolls-Royce on the corner of every street. We’d lose that exclusivity overnight.”   But buying a Rolls-Royce is about more than exclusivity. What has buoyed it up through the recession has been an increased interest in quality over mere brand flash in purchases of

good sense rather than status. That, Muller-Otvos stresses, is where Rolls-Royce can really stake a claim. For all that Rolls-Royce is world famous, “these cars are also an investment”. He adds: “In the end it’s all about build quality – and we make a point of inviting anyone thinking about buying a Rolls-Royce to come to the factory to see how we manufacture cars. When you see the precision put into the engineering, into all the detail, from the leather to the wood, you come away knowing why the cars are at a price level they’re at.” n

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ENTREPRENEUR

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ENTREPRENEUR

Sign of things to come Nick Fearnley believes his digital signage company DMP has every reason to expect a rosy future, says Peter Baber

Every electrical retailer wants to be able to able to show off the latest technology, don’t they? But at what cost? Let us imagine, for example, that you are Comet (still a Yorkshire company, at least in terms of where its headquarters is.) You want to be able to show off the latest HD televisions throughout your store, and perhaps you want to input extra information onto your HD screens that will entice your customers to buy from you. The only thing is you want to do this at relatively little cost and preferably without

ripping up the whole shop floor to put new cabling in. Retailers rarely have time in their busy schedules for such disruption, especially in rented property. And in any case, as an electrical retailer in today’s world you don’t want to commit yourself wholeheartedly to just one technology. HD might be the latest thing today, but you never know, something new could and probably will come around the corner tomorrow. In Comet’s case the company turned to Harrogate-based Digital Media Projects (DMP). >>

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Entrepreneur

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Ambitious: Nick Fearnley is still learning what digital signage can fully offer Set up by Nick Fearnley and Ian Kilner in 2005, the £2m turnover company is carving an enterprising niche in providing digital marketing and signage systems and other types of HD TV technology, largely using coaxial and other cables that companies would already be using for their IT needs. The Comet project was in fact the second time the retail chain had approached DMP about doing a job. The first time Fearnley admits that because he and Kilner were “being geeks, and were not commercially minded”, they were sidelined out of the deal by the American distributor of one of the products they were using who happened to have a UK head office in Leeds. But it is tantamount to the big impression they had made on the company – an impression that was also starting to attract the likes of ITV – that Comet came back for more. “Comet’s end game was to get a full media delivery platform without touching the floor,”

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he says. “The cost of installation would be too high otherwise. They said, ‘We want you to put something in the server room that will give us our own HD channels, but you cannot touch anything on the shop floor.’” What Fearnley claims his company was producing was effectively Freeview HD TV three years before the name was even coined. “At that time, Freeview HD didn’t exist,” he says. “We created a system you could use on Cat5 computer cable. ITV got wind of it, and worked out that it would suit them for their projects.” And how. The system DMP now produces means that broadcasters can take raw data from filming and store it down where it can easily be available for scrutiny (something all broadcasters are required to do by Ofcom rules) without having to have enormous back-up files. It also allows you to add information or edit certain broadcasts afterwards, and carry programme guide

information, all without really having to install very much new hardware. “Our system would look at this data and select what we asked it to pick,” says Fearnley. “It became the hub of ITV’s local news service on the web. Normally systems to introduce such technology would be phenomenally expensive, but they could see that to do that with two guys and an orange box it was really cost-effective. And there wasn’t any intrusion into what they were doing either. We never saw their office – we were never even allowed in.” The success of the Comet and ITV projects has led the company on to win other big name clients as well, like BT and the BBC – clients who Fearnley modestly says we “didn’t deserve”. It is true that digital signage wasn’t what Fearnley and Kilner had in mind when they first started. They had both been working in IT for what was then Mellon Bank (now the Bank of New York), and had initially thought of going in a completely different direction when they set up the company. “We thought we would go and look after SME’s networks and provide them with IT,” says Fearnley. “It wasn’t a half bad idea. But we also got a request from a colleague then, now a friend, who said, ‘Do you know anything about HD TV?’ That’s how we came to work for Comet.” But the company has now got to the stage where Fearnley has even backed away from some projects because he felt they were too big. They have installed an internal network service for DE Shaw, a US-based hedge fund, but when a larger, more well-known financial services company approached them they were less sure. “They wanted HD channels going into every single branch and delivered to the desktop of every office in the company,” he says. “We were initially very excited to have been invited, especially when we got to the detail and realised it would have been around £27m of business. But then we looked and thought what does that do to a small company like ours? Mostly negative things. We have a small team, with two non-executive directors who have fantastic commercial insight, and they said it was too early, would not necessarily

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yield a great return, and we would suddenly become slaves to an investment fund. That won’t mean great things to anybody.” Kilner these days has become more focused on installation. A couple of years ago the company hived off its installation arm into Digital Media Installation’s, headed by Kilner. DMP still uses it for its own installation work. But Fearnley himself has become a passionate advocate of everything that digital signage – the major end use for his systems – has to offer. If you thought digital signage was those annoying videos you might be forced to watch while, for example, standing in a queue at the post office, Fearnley thinks there is much more to it than that, and that if people have been bored with what has been out there in the past, that is only because digital markets are still learning what works. “Digital signage still needs to be engaging,” he says. “You need to be entertained. When you think about it, TV is the ultimate digital marketing tool. We don’t sit down to watch adverts, but we still end up watching them, because we want to be entertained. So let’s take lessons learned from sitting and watching TV. With our system you can play popular programmes and almost hijack the entertainment they have there.” This might include putting personalised messages running along the bottom of the screen that relate to what your store might have on offer that day. There are intellectual property issues to doing this, and not all broadcasters are happy about their programmes being adapted in this way, but Fearnley says it’s the possibilities for personalisation that make digital signage really attractive – and the speed with which new messages can be churned out, especially when compared with old-fashioned print campaigns. “With our system you can update daily, so if, for example, it starts raining, you can promote your umbrellas. Printing, on the other hand, takes a few weeks and there’s almost always errors. Our systems have been justified not on their merits, but on cost savings. That might upset us a little bit but it’s true.” One high street customer, he said, which had been looking at a 27% fall in sales overall because of the economic downturn, found

Entrepreneur

We don’t sit down to watch adverts, but we still end up watching them, because we want to be entertained. So let’s take lessons from sitting and watching TV that stores which had trialled DMP’s system saw an 11.5% uplift instead. Such data shows that digital signage works, he says. “Even if digital signage does nothing more than hold your financial position, it’s worth investing in it,” he says. The financial services sector, with its invisible products which require a lot of figures to explain, has become a major focus for the company, as has the hotel and leisure sector – with digital signage you can easily update your restaurant menu or your room rates without any messy crossing out or rewriting. Fashion, you might have thought, would prove more elusive, and Fearnley agrees it is, although even here there have been surprises. The company’s Spanish agent was getting all excited about a possible contract with a company Fearnley thought was called Farah. It was only when he realised this was the Spanish pronunciation for Zara that things got exciting. “Digital signage is a real ambition of theirs,” he says, “but even at the moment I kind of don’t understand it. But they have stocking issues – they could sell a lot more, but the whole mechanism of reporting back is too slow. Our system can help that way.” Still, there are some issues with digital signage that he agrees still need to be overcome. One is making sure that the display fits in with the environment and doesn’t overwhelm it. Tesco made a mistake in the early days of digital signage, he says, by having its contractor put it far too many screens per store – so many, in fact, that customers soon grew tired of it. Digital signage needs to be subtler than that. There are technical issues too. How often have you seen a digital sign lose its impact simply because the screen – often a plasma screen – isn’t working properly? Fearnley says that is usually because the end customer isn’t willing

to approve the extra expense of installing a proper commercial screen. “There’s a 50% increase in cost if you have a commercial TV display,” he says. ”But if you don’t install one you usually have to write your TV off in 12 months.” He absolutely denies there are any more issues with security in digital signage systems. The opportunities for someone to break into the system remotely and rewrite your messages in an offensive way, are, he claims, actually less than they would be with a print campaign. “Because of encryption, the only way someone could do that would be to break into your office and sit at your PC,” he says. In fact the major issue DMP is coming up with at the moment is that clients are blown away at a presentation and then expect that the company can provide all the content as well. At the moment it can’t – not fully – but it is for this reason that it has started going down the road of content production as well. Fearnley is impressed by what the company has achieved in this line so far. “The team here is far and away better than most of the agencies we have come across,” he says. “I am a geek, not a marketer. But when you get involved with clients you think, ‘Hang on, this is not that difficult.’” Of course, a much larger marketing agency might just seek to take out the threat posed by DMP by making Fearnley an offer he can’t refuse. He says such approaches have been made in the past. “It has happened,” he says. “Not to the point of an offer, but certainly to the point of having a conversation. But I am not sure that is the right thing to do, because it would look like a panic move. I am extremely proud here of what we have achieved. I can certainly see DMP becoming a defining force in digital marketing in the future.” n

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BIT OF A CHAT

with Frank Tock >> Suited up Another survey that has come our way, this time by business-to-business group buying website SME Discounts, which claims that a quarter of people who work from home stay in their pyjamas all day. Yours truly works from home, and he can assure you that he is not one of those lazy slackers. By nine o’clock sharp he is sitting at his desk with a cup of tea and is dressed in a suit – made with cloth from a Huddersfield mill, clearly.

>> Look out for us If you have been watching a programme on Sky called Showboaters in the past few weeks, and thought the company sounded familiar, you’d be right. In the show contestants audition to win a place on the entertainment team on the Thomson Dream cruise ship – the team that is run by Susannah Daley, who we first profiled in this magazine two years ago. It just goes to show how even supposedly mega powerful media companies like Sky are following in BQ’s wake. [That’s enough of the dodgy puns – Ed]

>> The big wen Hooray for us northerners. Apparently we are keeping the staycation market going. An online survey by SMS Survey and Marketing Services on where people are choosing to take their holiday this year and next found that 47% of northerners plan to stay in the UK, compared with just 28% of Londoners. I can see why if you live in the big smoke you might want to escape – I did, that’s

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AUTUMN 11

why I came up to God’s own county ten years ago. But could it not also be something to do with our fairly dismally connected northern airports? I took the wife to newly fashionable Croatia this year, and unless we were prepared to get up at an hour even the farm rooster would have doubts about that involved a five-hour drive to Stansted. Faced with that, Filey suddenly looks a whole lot nicer.

>> All about politics What’s this? Having an affair at work is the worst thing newly-appointed bosses should do. Well, Sherlock, you don’t say. Such an act tops the list of seven deadly business sins new bosses should avoid in their first 100 days, according to leadership consultancy First100 – or so its press release tells us. I am tempted to ask whether it’s OK to have an affair once those 100 days are up, but I was even more intrigued by their sixth sin, which goes something like this: “Don’t avoid playing the political game – everyone else is at it!” Oh I see, so it’s not all right to suggest to Lucy in accounts that as you are new, perhaps she could explain the management accounts to you over a glass of Dom Perignon. But it is OK to suggest to her quietly that between you and her you don’t regard her soon-to-be-retired boss as being up to much and maybe if you stick together you’ll put in a good word? Where do they get these consultants from?

>> Early riser Most of the people we interview in this magazine have an admirable work ethic, but few seem to have taken it to the extremes that Guy Hudson, one of our entrepreneurs this month, has done – or at so tender an age. Guy told us that when he was still a schoolboy his passion was to accompany his father to do his fruit and vegetable buying at the wholesale market on a Saturday morning. Yes, that’s right, while most boys of his age would have been happily popping their zits under the duvet he wanted to head out to the wholesaler.

“The understanding was he would only take me if I was up dressed and ready to go at 4.15am,” he says. “I soon realised a sure-fire trip to the market was to get dressed in the middle of the night, and sleep on top of the bed with the lights on. My father would enter my bedroom believe I was ready and invite me along. This worked most weekends.” Perhaps now that he’s in the world of fashion – the place where people famously don’t get out of bed for less than £100,000 – he is making up for lost time.

>> Great causes We have been inundated this month with stories about great charitable deeds the good business people of Yorkshire have been doing. So briefly, well done to 20 staff at Yorkshire motor dealer JCT600, including chief executive John Tordoff and his chocolate labrador Gem, for taking part in the Three Peaks Challenge ito raise £10,000 for Help for Heroes. Well done to ten lawyers from Dickinson Dees for doing a sky dive in aid of Yorkshire Air Ambulance. But my particular congratulations go out to a team from Clarion Solicitors and RSM Tenon who have just completed the 170-mile Coast to Coast bike ride to raise money to help Bel Young, the ten-year old daughter of Clarion partner Simon Young who was severely injured in a fall off a climbing frame and, after ten months in hospital, is now permanently on a ventilator. A real example of charity beginning at home.

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EVENTS DIARY

AUTUMN 11

BQ’s business events diary gives you lots of time to forward-plan. If you wish to add your event to the list send it to: editor@bq-magazine.co.uk

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

4 Leeds and Bradford Chambers Construction Lunch. Headingley Experience, Leeds, 12.00-2.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

2 Bradford Chamber of Commerce Members Lunch. Bradford Chamber, 12.00pm. For details ring 01274 354750.

5 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch. Holiday Inn, York, 12.00-2.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

3 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Pure Networking. Leeds United Football Club, 7.30-9.30am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

6 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Pure Networking. Leeds United Football Club, 7.30-9.30am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

3 The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Hotel du Vin, Harrogate, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.

6 The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Hotel du Vin, Harrogate, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.

4 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch. Pavilion Hotel, York, 12.00-2.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

7 The Met Club Leeds Business Lunch. With guest speaker Terry Hodgkinson. Mint Hotel, Leeds, 12.00-2.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.

8 The Met Club LinkedIn Seminar. Crown Hotel, Harrogate, 8.30-10.30am. For details ring 01423 525622.

10 Big Society and Small Business – a seminar by Harrogate CVS. St George Hotel, Harrogate. For details ring 01423 561431.

9 The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Mint Hotel, Leeds, 5.307.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.

10 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Networking Evening in association with Cooper Malton BMW. 6.00-8.00pm, Malton, nr York. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

10 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Ladies Lunch. Woodlands Hotel, Leeds, 12.00-2.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

11 The Met Club LinkedIn Seminar. Radisson Blu Hotel, Leeds, 8.30-10.30am. For details ring 01423 525622.

11 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Construction Lunch. Sandburn Hall, Flaxton, 12.00-2.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

12 The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Mint Hotel, Leeds, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.

14 Business Support After Business Link – a seminar by Harrogate Chamber of Trade and Commerce. Crown Hotel, Harrogate. For more details ring 01423 567755.

13 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Techie Breakie. Royal Armouries, Leeds, 7.30-9.00am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

15 The Met Club Facebook and Twitter Seminar. Crown Hotel, Harrogate, 8.3010.30am. For details ring 01423 525622.

14 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Golf Day. York Golf Club, 11.00am9.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 18 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Better Business Finance Road Show. Crowne Plaza Hotel, Leeds, 9.00am-12.30pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 19 Keighley Business Network. Steeton Hall, Steeton, 7.30am. For more details ring 01274 354750. 19 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Export Compliance Conference. Deloitte, 1, City Square, Leeds, 10.00am-1.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

17 The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Cedar Court Grand Hotel, York, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622. 18 Bradford Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner. Cedar Court Hotel, Bradford, 6.45pm. For details ring 01274 354750. 22 The Met Club Facebook and Twitter Seminar. Malmaison, Leeds, 8.3010.30am. For details ring 01423 525622.

DECEMBER 1 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Pure Networking. Leeds United Football Club, 7.30-9.30am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

19 The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Yo Yo Restaurant, Bradford, 5.30-7.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.

1 The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Hotel du Vin, Harrogate, 5.307.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622.

20 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Pure Networking. Bar Trust and Enterprises, York, 7.30-9.00am. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

6 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch. Hotel du Vin, Harrogate, 12.00-2.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 7 Keighley Business Network. Steeton Hall, Steeton, 7.30am. For more details ring 01274 354750.

20 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Forum. HSBC, York, 4.00-6.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 21 The Met Club Harrogate Business Lunch. With guest speaker Wallace Sampson, chief executive of Harrogate Borough Council. Hotel du Vin, Harrogate, 12.00-2.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622. 25 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Lunch. Cairn Hotel, Harrogate, 12.00-2.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 27 Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber Business Forum. Irwin Mitchell, Leeds, 4.00-6.00pm. For more details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

BUSINESS QUARTER | AUTUMN 11

7 The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. Mint Hotel, Leeds, 5.307.30pm. For more details ring 01423 525622. 12 Harrogate Chamber of Commerce and Trade Business Safari – intensive networking. Holiday Inn, Harrogate. For more details ring 01423 849988. Please check with the contacts beforehand that arrangements have not changed. Events organisers are also asked to notify us at the above email address of any changes or cancellations as soon as they know of them.

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