BQ Yorkshire Issue 04 by We Are UMi

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ISSUE FOUR: SPRING 2010

QUEEN OF SHOPS Victoria Quarter - still bringing the fashionistas home

MATCH OF THE DAY Football club marketer Andy Hobson on scoring business

BLUE SKY THINKING Creative science, with Science City York’s Nicola Spence

ACHTUNG, BABY Dirk Mischendahl - putting Leeds on the international map

ISSUE FOUR: SPRING 2010: YORKSHIRE EDITION

TWEED SUITS Construction in the doldrums? No-one told Strategic Team Group’s Charles Tweed...

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

YORKSHIRE EDITION

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BUSINESS QUARTER: SPRING 10: ISSUE FOUR Plenty of anniversaries and birthdays to celebrate this issue, which is fitting as we mark the end of our first year as a magazine. Perhaps most importantly, Leeds’ Victoria Quarter celebrates its 20th birthday this year. That might come as a surprise to those of us who are still getting used to the idea of Harvey Nichols - every lady what lunches’ favourite store - being in industrial Leeds, and to mark this fact, we see just how successful the Victoria Quarter has been, both as a shopping centre in its own right and for its significant impact on the city of Leeds. We also profile Strategic Team Group, a Yorkshire-based building and maintenance company that has kept growing while other much bigger ventures in both property and construction have either gone quiet or come tumbling down as the construction industry as a whole faltered, the victim of recessionary times. Harvey Nichols’ opening was of course a big event in Leeds back in the 1990s – a sign to the rest of the country to sit up and take note of what was going on here. But so too in a different way – and in a different market – was Love Parade, a dance event that paved the way for all manner of other mega-events to find their way to Leeds. This month, we profile Dirk Mischendahl, the man who brought Love Parade to the city in the face of fierce opposition at the time, and who has gone on to establish a successful events management company that now operates nationwide out of the city he has adopted. Those of you from Bradford might also remember that city being a serious contender to house the national stadium at one time. Unfortunately, the National Superdome plan lost out, rather predictably, to Wembley in the end. But the experience was a good formative education for one of the campaign’s lobbyists, Andy Hobson, a marketer so adept at his art that his latest agency, Fantastic Media, includes two local football teams among its

clients. We speak to him about his various lives, including floppy-haired would-be popstar, football agent and marketing ace. If the world of the 1990s seems a world away, spare a thought for those whose job it has been to sell and maintain the ever changing office technology of the intervening period. We find out how Adrian Fitzpatrick, managing director of the Arena Group, has helped to grow what began as a photocopy supply firm to a successful concern through all the changes the years have brought. And if you’re bored of the past, what about the present? What, according to the Sunday Times, was Yorkshire’s fastest growing company last year? Step forward Harrogatebased Interim Partners. Yes, that’s right, a recruitment agency, which is quite a feat in these troubled times. We speak to its managing director and founder Doug Baird – a seriously driven man. This month we also have lunch with Gary Lumby, current president of the newly merged Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce and a man with interests in several other areas. And if all that networking tires you, we also take a look at the success of Science City York. It’s a business support agency that has been performing remarkably well considering it has only just acquired a new full-time chief executive after a three-year hiatus. Now, here’s the science bit ...

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THE LIFE AND SOUL OF BUSINESS YORKSHIRE EDITION

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

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SHARE THE LOVE

Features 66 LEADING SCORER One-time would-be popster Andy Hobson on a newer life in football

16 SHARE THE LOVE Dirk Mischendahl - how Love Parade and more put Leeds on the map

32 BRICKS AND MORTAR How Yorkshire’s fastest growing construction company bucked the trend

36 COPY RIGHT Ofﬁce supplies just got really interesting, thanks to Arena Group

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16 POSH SHOPS

70 BRAIN GAIN How a recruitment company became the toast of Yorkshire

74 POSH SHOPS How Leeds’ Victoria Quarter brought the fashionistas home

78 MRS BLUE SKY Prof Nicola Spence on creative science

TENTS GREEN CHIC

30 AS I SEE IT

How to manufacture a recovery

42 BUSINESS LUNCH

How Gary Lumby’s ﬁngers stretch into many business pies

Regulars

48 WINE Simon Beneteau tests two best bottles

50 FASHION Teeing off in style

ON THE RECORD Who’s doing deals in Q1/10

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

22 COMMERCIAL PROPERTY The landmark developments building the region’s industrial landscape

LUNCH

56 KIT Bell & Ross - serious arm candy

62 MOTORS Creating waves with Ferrari

81 FRANK TOCK Gripping gossip from our backroom boy

82 EVENTS The best events this coming quarter

42 BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

ON THE RECORD

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Major deals this quarter include the £18m sale of Hallam Beauty and two deals for Endless which have yielded returns many times bigger than the original investment. All this and more, in Q1, 2010... >> Region looks up Confidence seems to have made a considerable return to Yorkshire businesses if the latest survey by the Institute of Chartererd Accountants (ICAEW) is anything to go by. In the ICAEW’s Business Confidence Monitor for the first quarter of 2010, Yorkshire and Humber came up with a record confidence index score. It is now the UK’s fourth most confident region. Interviews with business professionals across the region found a score of 27.9 up 14.4 points on the final quarter of 2009, and the highest ever score for the region. This compares with a national score of 25.8 for the quarter. ICAEW regional director Chris Manners said: “Yorkshire and Humber is starting to look as if it might be back in business, with quite strong growth expected in the main business health indicators such as turnover, gross profits, sales volumes - where growth is predicted to be at its highest level since the first quarter of 2008 - and even head count. This comes after steep contractions over the 12 months to date. “But we have to temper this with the reality that there is still a long way to go. More businesses can fail, even during an upswing, and Yorkshire is one of the worst UK regions at the moment for boarded-up shop fronts, even in our major cites.”

>> Deal’s not all rubbish Straight, the Leeds-based recycling bin supplier run by the flamboyant entrepreneur Jonathan Straight, has bought the UK business and manufacturing assets of fellow AIM-listed wheelie bin supplier Helesi for £1.65m in cash. Straight will immediately begin selling the acquired products to its customer base, using

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both Straight and Helesi brand names. The deal is being partly funded by a loan of £750,000 from the Lloyds Banking Group, and Straight will continue to pay Helesi an ongoing royalty for using its brand. Straight is also set to become sole UK and Irish supplier for other Helesi products, including plastic four-wheeled bins.

>> Endless makes two exits Endless has sold two of its portfolio companies in less than a month, in each case generating returns that are many multiples of its original investment. At the beginning of March it sold DavyMarkham, the Sheffield engineering firm it had turned back into profit after 27 years of consecutive losses, to Indian engineering and construction giant IVRCL. Although the sum was undisclosed, Matthew Deering, portfolio director for DavyMarkham, said: “This transaction represents a 10.5 times return on our original investment and is significantly ahead of our investment plan.” The Indian company plans to use the acquisition to increase its foothold in UK and European markets using the DavyMarkham name. DavyMarkham managing director Kevin Parkin said: “It is great news for DavyMarkham’s customers, employees and suppliers, since IVRCL is financially very strong, is highly growth-orientated and dedicates itself to continuous improvement in all fields of its business.” DavyMarkham was back making a profit within a year of Endless investing in it in 2007. Under Endless’s ownership the company has also rationalised its site to turn vacant space into a business park that now has 10 tenants. Endless and management were advised by Deloitte and Nabarros. IVRCL was advised

by Irwin Mitchell. The sale came just a couple of weeks after Endless and fellow investor NorthStar had sold pharmaceutical manufacturer Excelsyn to Albany Molecular Research, a US company listed on NASDAQ, for £12m. The deal saw Endless net a four times return on its investment. Endless’s Aidan Robson, who led both the original investment in 2007 and the current exit, said: “We invested in Excelsyn when the business was facing considerable challenges and had lost investor support. Three years on and following significant work and commitment from both Endless and management, Excelsyn is now a market leader in providing chemical development and manufacturing solutions to the pharmaceutical industry.” Endless, NorthStar and management were advised by Dickinson Dees. The buyer was advised by DLA Piper.

>> Minorplanet in £7.2m loss Vehicle tracking software provider Minorplanet has recorded an annual loss of £7.2m after what it says was an “exceptionally difficult” year that saw a huge drop in demand from its core SME market and forced it to cut staff numbers by 40%. Since the company’s financial year ended at the end of August 2009, it has also had to borrow £300,000 in working capital from Terry Donovan, its own chief executive. However, it says it is in discussions to sell off its Australasian subsidiary, and saw a marked improvement in sales in January 2010.

>> Morrisons pleases shareholders Morrisons has announced profits of £858m in the year to the end of January, up £203m on the year before, as

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turnover also increased by 6% to £15.4bn. The supermarket group also reported that its weekly average customer numbers were up 7% year on year. Such results meant it was able to raise its dividend by a marked 41% to 8.2p per share. The results announcement came just a few weeks after the company said Dalton Philips would be its new chief executive from March. Philips, 41, and currently chief operating officer of Loblaw, Canada’s largest food distributor, replaces Marc Bolland, who resigned to become chief executive of Marks & Spencer at the end of last year.

ON THE RECORD

richest businessmen, and other shareholders. In its results for 2009 the company had revenues of £292.1m and EBITDA of £49.5m.

>> Spice cools down Spice, once one of Yorkshire’s most acquisitive businesses, has said it will not be making any more acquisitions for the foreseeable future as it warns that the bad weather earlier in the year has made trading worse than expected. The outsourcing company made the announcement just weeks after Simon Rigby stood down as chief executive and as a

director of the company to pursue other interests. He has been temporarily replaced by Martin Towers, former finance director of Kelda Group, while the company looks for a permanent new chief executive. In an interim statement the company said activity and volumes in its electricity and water business had been less than expected since Christmas, partly because of bad weather right across the country hampering any possible work. In its non-core sectors, the telecoms business is taking longer to see projects come to be determined, and although the facilities business is back in profit the gas business is still being hit by continuing loss-making contracts, and expects to make a sizeable loss.

>> Harvard gong Harvard Engineering, the street lighting manufacturer that featured in the first edition of BQ Yorkshire, was one of four winners of Yorkshire Forward’s Innovator Awards designed to celebrate innovation and collaboration among businesses in the region. The company won the Sustainable Innovation award for its Leafnut product, which aims to cut street light carbon emissions by 100kg per light per annum. Other winners included Shipley-based Radio Design. It won the Young Innovative Business award for developing a system that allows three cellular-based stations from two separate UK mobile phone networks to share the same antenna, thus reducing costs.

>> CPP to ﬂoat CPP, the card protection company built up over many years by Sir Hamish Ogston, is to float on the main London Stock Exchange. The company, one of York’s largest employers, says proceeds from the float will be used to fund the next stage of its development, in particular further international expansion, and to bring down its level of debt, which at the end of last year stood at £48.8m. It will also be used to provide a partial exit for Ogston, already one of Yorkshire’s

left to right, Chris Sellars, partner at Hart Shaw; Paul King, senior associate at Halliwells; David Kearns, finance director at GRI Group; Graham Royle, chairman and CEO at GRI Group; Neil Thompson, managing partner at Halliwells Sheffield, and Paul Dawson, managing partner at Hart Shaw

>> Beautiful deal Bradford-based Hallam Beauty has been acquired by Swiss Mibelle AG of Switzerland in an £18m deal which will see its current parent GRI Group continue as a significant joint venture shareholder. The company, a manufacturer of personal care products, was bought by GRI in November 2005 after its then owners went into administration. Under GRI it has already seen turnover grow to more than £36m. GRI chairman and chief executive Graham Royle said: “In evaluating Hallam Beauty’s five-year strategic business plan for 2010 onwards, we identified that its continued growth would benefit from the major synergies derived from partnering with another technically strong, Europeanbased business from the same sector.” Halliwells and Hart Shaw advised GRI Group. Nabarro, Barber Harrison & Platt, Kurmann Partners and Clearwater Corporate Finance acted for Mibelle AG. Neil Thompson of Halliwells said: “The sale of a 70% stake to Mibelle, generating over £18m plus the potential for an equivalent amount again on the exercise of options over the remaining shares, is truly phenomenal and testament to the strategic management skills of Graham Royle.” Mibelle is itself a subsidiary of Migros, a €14.5 billion Swiss conglomerate.

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NEWS

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Want to know what’s been happening in Q1 2010? Here it is: mergers, acquisitions, deals done and directors in new positions. Whatever the economy’s up to, Yorkshire’s still doing plenty of business >> Show you’re fit Small business owners in Yorkshire are being challenged by peer and business support organisation The Alternative Board to show they have the right skills and physical fitness for business. Under the Fit for Business Challenge, produced in association with Nuffield Health, Fitness and Well-being Centre on Hornbeam Park, Harrogate, entrants will have to answer a short online questionnaire on business issues which will be judged by a panel chaired by Gary Hetherington, Chief Executive of Leeds Rhinos and Leeds Carnegie. Each team entering will then be given a health MOT by qualified staff from Nuffield Health. Finalists will attend a Physical Fitness Challenge Day at the Nuffield Centre on May 22. Winners will receive a year’s membership of The Alternative Board (TAB), including individual coaching and access to free online business tools, as well as one month’s Nuffield Health Centre membership for team members. Second prize will be six months’ TAB membership, plus one weeks’ Nuffield Health Centre membership and third prize will be three months’ TAB membership plus three Nuffield Health Centre day passes for each member of the team. The closing date for entries is midnight, Friday April 23. The competition is being launched just as Martin Allison, TAB’s chairman and one of the judges, takes up a new role as head of debt advisory for PricewaterhouseCoopers in the region. Allison joins the firm as a director from Leeds Metropolitan University where he was dean of the Faculty of Business & Law and helped to devise a new Certificate in Turnaround Management. He will be based in the Leeds office.

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>> Grand offer The soon-to-open Cedar Court Grand Hotel & Spa in York is hoping to tempt business and conference travellers to the hotel by offering for a limited time a special delegate rate of £99 for a double or twin room. The five-star hotel, due to open on April 26, has five meeting rooms able to accommodate up to 20 people, a space for upto 40 in what was once the railway company chairman’s office, and the Boardroom – a wood-panelled room capable of hosting 120 guests.

>> Marshalls wins Huddersfield-based Marshalls has won the Achievement in Sustainability Award at the national PLC Awards for the second year running. The award, sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, was one of eight given out at a ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel designed to recognised PLC’s contributions to the UK market. The winners this year were drawn from a larger range of companies than ever before, with the field now including constituents from the FTSE 250 as well as the FTSE Small Cap and FTSE Fledgling indices.

>> Clearwater revival Leeds-based bath supplier Clearwater has launched a new version of its in-built spa

system which is self draining and drying for the ultimate in hygiene and cleanliness. The patented Clearspa system, which is pre-fitted, also has an encapsulated jet pattern fitted between the two skins of the bath to ensure a full-body massage. At the same time, Clearwater managing director Darren Allison has launched a new company offering what he claims is the largest range of 35mm shower trays in the UK. Zamori’s range includes 45 different tray designs including square, rectanglular, walk-in, pentangle, quadrant and off-set quadrant. They also weigh a maximum of 25kg, so should remove the need for a two-person lift to carry the tray on site. Prices start at £89.

>> London input at Financial Leeds Financial Leeds has succeeded in attracting an expert from outside the region to promote inward investment in financial services in the city. Jacqui Nuttall has joined what used to be called the Leeds Financial Services Institute as inward investment manager and brings with her 10 years of business development experience in financial services organisations in London. She will be working closely with chief executive Howard Kew and marketing manager Samantha Cameron-Carruthers, who has joined Financial Leeds having held a senior marketing role in the building society industry.

>> Pawletts ﬁres up brand Guisborough-based central heating and fireplace company Pawletts is pushing for further growth after investing more than £25,000 in new branding, a luxury showroom and expanding its workforce. Family-owned Pawletts - first established as GA Pawlett more than 35 years ago – has

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COMPANY PROFILE

Liam Kane Regional Director, Business & Commercial Banking, West Yorkshire at The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and NatWest takes a look at how the region’s small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are fairing and explains how the initiatives launched by the Bank are helping businesses survive and move out of the downturn positively.

RBS AND NATWEST INITIATIVES CONTINUE TO HELP LOCAL SMES

IAM explains: “With over 1.2million of the country’s small businesses banking with RBS and NatWest, we genuinely understand the challenges they currently face. My colleagues and I are committed to supporting new and existing business relationships and draw on a wealth of specialist sector and business experience. Looking after the healthcare and property team is Director Ian Foster, who works alongside fellow Leeds Directors Garry Duffy and Ian Barnet – with Garry working with businesses with an annual turnover of up to £1million and Ian with those businesses with a turnover up to £25million. They are supported by a team of over 30 Relationship Managers working across the city. These managers are all committed to ensuring customers benefit from initiatives such as the Government’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme (“EFG”), competitive priced funding via the European Investment Bank Loan (EIB), SME Customer Charter (where we have given a promise not to increase pricing on committed overdrafts until at least the end of 2010 unless the risks associated with lending to the business have increased), the ‘Business Hotline’ as well as traditional banking facilities and lines of credit. We are currently accepting 85% of credit applications from SMEs, a figure that has remained stable throughout the downturn and earlier this year we pledged to make £1billion of new loans available on competitive, flexible terms to UK manufacturing businesses – of which there are around 15,000 across Yorkshire & Humberside. At the time of writing we lead the field in taking EFG applications with over £280million worth of loans agreed across the UK, maintaining our 42% market share and have loans of £313million in the pipeline. For the EIB scheme we have £247million worth of loans agreed and an additional

garden sheds and log cabins to both trade and general public markets. Lewis Tankers Limited received support from RBS with the Management Buy Out (MBO) from Simon Storage Limited. The deal saw Stewart MacDonald, David Brown and Andrew Nicholson take 100% of the shares in Lewis Tankers Limited. A package was agreed which included funding from RBS Invoice Finance and Lombard against the assets of the company.

Left to right: Ian Barnet, Liam Kane, Gary Duffy and Ian Foster £63million in the pipeline for high value loans (>£500k). Three local businesses that have utilised the support available from the Bank are Russell Eaton, Knox Sawmills and Lewis Tankers Limited. Taking advantage of the EFG funding available hairdressing father and son team Russell and Robert Eaton, recently opened a £350k salon in Leeds city centre, creating nine jobs, after securing funding from NatWest. Lombard also provided funding to fully equip the new salon. NatWest funding was also utilised to support family run business Knox Sawmills of Bilton, Harrogate with the opening of a new building at their Knox Lane site which increases their showroom capacity and provides additional office space to the company. Bank funding supported the cost of both the build and the fit out of the new building. Trading in Harrogate for over 60 years the company sells a wide range of products including fencing, decking, garden furniture,

For further information on how RBS and NatWest can help your business aspirations please contact us: Liam Kane Regional Director, Business & Commercial Banking, West Yorkshire T 07833 664597 or email liam.kane@rbs.co.uk Garry Duffy, Director Business & Commercial Banking, Leeds T 07770 990191 or email garry.duffy@rbs.co.uk Ian Barnet, Director Business & Commercial Banking, Leeds T 07714 446988 or email ian.barnet2@rbs.co.uk Ian Foster, Director Business & Commercial Banking, Healthcare & Property team T 07889 969280 or email ian.p.foster@rbs.co.uk

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NEWS

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transformed its former parts store into the new showroom. It has also signed an exclusive distributor deal with solid fuel stove producer Clearview.

Graham Leslie (right) with the stadium’s Ralph Rimmer

>> GT man for IFT Grant Thornton director Daren Bekisz has been appointed chairman of the Institute for Turnaround (IFT) in Yorkshire and the North East. IFT is an independent professional body with a membership of rigorously accredited turnaround executives and advisers. Founded in 2000 as the Society of Turnaround Professionals, it achieved Institute status in 2008. Its objective is to see the turnaround profession acknowledged among the wider business community as being an intrinsic part of commercial and public life. Bekisz said: “My primary aim during 2010 will be to increase general awareness of the IFT and the ability of its members to add value to challenging situations. IFT is very well known among turnaround professionals, but less so among the wider business community.”

>> PR agencies merge Former national journalists Richard Hamer and David Moss-Blundell have merged their companies, Ripon-based Green Lane PR and Leeds-based Blue Sky PR, retaining Blue Sky’s name. Hamer and Moss-Blundell have more than 40 years’ media experience between them. Both spent time with Yorkshire PR agencies before launching their own PR companies in the

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>> Search for stadium sponsor Huddersfield’s stadium is looking for a new sponsor as its tenure with pharmaceutical company Galpharm International comes to an end. Galpharm’s sponsorshop of the stadium was part of its business plan and it increased its sales by more than 100%, making it an ideal takeover target for its current owner - global healthcare provider Perrigo. The stadium, which is currently home to both Huddersfield Town and Huddersfield Giants, has just won planning permission for a major new extension known as the HD One. This will include dry ski slope, ten-pin bowling alley, a music venue, 64,000sq ft of offices and an 150-bedroom hotel. Graham Leslie, former Chairman of Galpharm International, said: “For me personally, it will be quite a sad day to see Galpharm replaced. The commercial rationale to sponsor the stadium proved so successful that global interest was in abundance once the campaign was launched to sell the company. The brand awareness through television exposure, both nationally and internationally, proved invaluable, whilst we also made good use of the corporate facilities allowing us to host suppliers and guests alike.”

mid-2000s and the Blue Sky PR team is completed by web design and online strategist Jeremy Griffin and graphic design consultant Chris Beadle, plus two support staff. The team has experience across most sectors, including law, construction, education, hospitality, retail, professional services and sports and leisure. Blue Sky PR director Richard Hamer said: “Both David and I worked within the Press Association’s ground-breaking new media division in the 1990s and so have particular strengths in the digital, online and social media PR, as well as the traditional areas such as newspaper, television and radio.”

It will be a sad day to see Galpharm replaced. Sponsoring the stadium was so successful that global interest was in abundance

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NEWS

>> Brewery in record hat-trick Saltaire Brewery, featured in the last issue of BQ, has made history by scoring a hat-trick of gold medals including the overall prize for 2010 at a top national brewers’ awards. The brewery’s Triple Chocoholic speciality ale beat 1,400 beers to become the Supreme National Champion beer of 2010 at the Society of Independent Brewers awards in Stratford-upon-Avon. The beer was chosen in blind tastings by 50 professional judges drawn from across the brewing industry. It also won champion beer in its category of speciality beers, while the brewery’s Cascade Pale Ale completed the hat-trick by winning in the premium ale category. No other brewery has managed to scoop two category wins and the overall prize in the history of the competition.

>> KPMG advises City Region The Leeds City Region has appointed KPMG to advise on its structure, remit and delivery of investment decision-making. The Government granted pilot status to the Leeds City Region last year in a move which created a formal partnership between 11 local councils. It offers the opportunity for greater local decision-making relating to spending on transport, skills, innovation and housing. The goal is to improve the area’s economic performance, prosperity and the quality of life for those who live and work in the city region. Iain Moffatt, Senior Partner at KPMG Leeds, said: “This pioneering partnership stands to benefit the area through integrated, local decision-making in some key spending areas. “As well as advising the board of the Leeds City Region in its embryonic stage, I look forward to helping to achieve tangible connectivity between public and private sector organisations.” Iain Hasdell, KPMG’s Leeds-based UK head of local and regional government, said: “Our advice to the Leeds city region board broadly relates to helping them to deliver on their

fuse8 director Rob Smith (left), centre marketing manager Paul Smith and marketing assistant Louise Tarrant

>> fuse8 boosts White Rose Leeds-based digital agency fuse8 has been appointed by the White Rose Shopping Centre to handle its creative, PR and digital marketing requirements following a three-way pitch. The six-figure integrated 12-month campaign proposed for the shopping centre, owned by Land Securities, will involve TV, radio and outdoor advertising along with consumer media relations activity, the implementation of a social media strategy, and the enhancement of the White Rose website. The 680,000sq ft centre has more than 100 stores including Marks & Spencer, Primark, Topshop and Debenhams. White Rose’s marketing manager Paul Smith said: “We undertook a significant research project last year that used consumer-based market segmentation to provide us with a great degree of insight. Our brief was to create a versatile, fresh and engaging campaign that would connect with consumers and fuse8 presented us with a compelling proposition.”

objective to grow the City Region economy by £21bn by 2016. More specifically, we will offer guidance on governance matters; about which forms of finance to use to achieve their objectives; and how best to make their investment decisions.” Andrew Carter, chair of the Leeds City Region board, said: “As we work hard to drive recovery and deliver economic growth in the City Region it is important that we have in place the best possible governance structures for the responsibilities we will exercise.”

>> Savings offered up front Logistics management specialist Bedfords is offering a novel way of

proving that it can deliver savings to its customers by offering them a “pre-bate”. Under the scheme, the Leeds-based firm is committed to providing customers with the savings it says it can achieve by the end of the contract - before the contract starts. Able to move anything from a parcel to full load across a sizeable fleet, the company continually reviews operations for clients in an attempt to reduce costs wherever and whenever possible. Managing director Steff Pfadenhauer said: “As we emerge from the recession, businesses are looking to streamline and we can help by managing and reducing transport and logistics costs. But changing supplier or outsourcing any business

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NEWS

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function is a major decision and we know that the pre-bate scheme will give potential new customers confidence that using Bedfords is the right decision. A quick fix is of no use: longevity is the key to success.”

>> IT chief takes stake in portal Lawrence Steingold, director of performance management software provider Link Performance Management, has become finance director of the Yorkshirebased home improvement web portal Decision2Day after taking a stake in the company. Steingold has considerable experience of software, IT and financial services companies, having previously been chief finance officer of Lakeview Computers Group.

>> BA ﬂies ﬂag for Yorkshire cheese Thirsk-based Shepherds Purse Cheeses has landed a contract with British Airways for its best-selling Yorkshire Blue cheese. Passengers travelling First, Club World and BA’s new London City to New York service will be served the multi-award-winning cheese later this year. Yorkshire Blue cheese is made from 100% cows’ milk and is based on a continentalstyle recipe. The company, which celebrates 21 years of artisan cheese making this year, is already supplying its Fine Fettle cheese for use in dishes supplied by London-based restaurant Roast for British Airways’ service from London City Airport to JFK Airport in New York.

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Richard Jackson (left) with the NCI team

>> Jackson joins growing insurance ﬁrm Harrogate-based motor insurance and recovery firm NCI Vehicle Rescue has appointed former Nidd Vale and Mercedes Benz of North Yorkshire boss Richard Jackson as its chairman. NCI, a PLUS-market-listed company, incorporates the brand names rescuemycar.com, rescuemybike.com and insurance4my.com. It already has 135,000 customers throughout the UK but has a target to increase that to 1,000,000. Managing director Neil Richards-Smith said: “Richard’s industry expertise, with over 30 years’ experience in the local trade with Nidd Vale motor group and Mercedes Benz North Yorkshire, will be invaluable. We are also confident that Richard’s long-standing reputation among Yorkshire’s business elite will continue to open doors for us as we grow.” Jackson said: “When I was approached by Neil and the board I was immediately impressed by their vision and the strength of their product. Currently, the most popular package for our customers costs £40, roughly a third of the price for an equivalent package offered by the AA and RAC, and I believe with value such as that, the potential to grow is enormous.”

>> Delegates get fit Well Met Conferencing at Leeds Metropolitan University is now offering a new incentive for delegates – entry into its newly refurbished gyms on the Civic Quarter and Headlingley Campus. For £4.50, conference organisers will be able to benefit from this added-value incentive and take advantage of the swimming pool and gym equipment, which will also be used by a number of world-class athletes. The new facilities include a weight area with weights from 2kg to 40kg; 51 pieces of resistance equipment covering all major muscle groups; 71 pieces of cardiovascular equipment with integrated 12” screens;

seven adaptive motion trainer machines (a new unique type of machine which allows users to climb, stride or run); and three Power Plates that can be used to stretch, strengthen, massage and relax the body.

>> New CIM chair in place The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has appointed Giovanna Battiston as its regional chair for Yorkshire and the North East. Battiston has more than 10 years of marketing experience, and has been South Yorkshire regional manager of the Oxford College of Marketing since 2006. She is an associate lecturer in Marketing at Sheffield Hallam University and a marketing module Leader for ICS. She has also been for

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eight years a marketing consultant and coach specialising in business English writing and copywriting. At the same time, David Whittle, managing director of Leeds-based brand design consultancy Chilli UK, has been made a CIM Fellow. Fellowship status is bestowed on CIM members who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment, with a strong marketing background, usually of 15 years. They also need to have held a senior management position for five years.

>> No HIC-up The proposed redevelopment of Harrogate International Centre (HIC) has moved a step closer after councillors gave their approval for the last piece of

design work for the £13m scheme. The proposed new entrance had to be re-designed after councillors considered the original design inadequate. The new entrance on King’s Road has been designed to give added prominence to this south-facing aspect of the venue. The planning committee also approved revised applications for the two new halls, which will add 3,400sq m of flexible event space to the venue, and they approved an associated scheme by Puma Hotels to create a 107-bed lodge hotel whose design will create direct access into HIC and improve access to the 170-bed Barceló Majestic Hotel, which Puma also owns and plans to extend by 85 bedrooms. Harrogate Borough Council, which is jointly funding the redevelopment scheme with Yorkshire Forward, will announce the

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successful contractor bid in April. Batley-based BAM, Bowmer & Kirkland based in Derbyshire, and three Leeds-based companies - Morgan Ashurst, Sir Robert McAlpine, and Wates – are all on the shortlist. Work is expected to start this summer and complete in autumn 2011. The Association of Surgeons has now committed to holding its annual congress at HIC in 2014, 2018 and 2022. Eight UK venues were shortlisted for the event rotation over 12 years and venues in Liverpool and Glasgow have also been selected for the 12-year rotation. The association’s chief executive Nicholas Gair said: “Membership associations like ours represent repeat business to convention centres which, to a large extent, is relatively recession-proof. Our congress brings around £1.6m to the host city.”

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rate speaks volumes for the agency and was one of the main draws for me. The team has helped globally recognised brands such as Vodafone and I’m excited about being part of such a dynamic and fast growing team.”

>> Veg scheme now fastest in UK Organic vegetable box delivery scheme Riverford Organic claims to have become the fastest growing scheme in the country as it celebrates its third year of trading. The company, based at Home Farm in Newby

Morris (centre) with Holden (left) and Ayre

>> Keepmoat deal adviser joins Gordons Yorkshire law firm Gordons has expanded its corporate department with the appointment of Andrew Morris, formerly a partner at DLA Piper. Morris has more than 20 years’ experience in corporate law at DLA Piper. Two years ago, he led the legal advice on the £783m sale of Yorkshire social housing developer Keepmoat, which was one of the largest deals ever seen in Yorkshire. He joins a 13-strong corporate team at Gordons headed by John Holden. Gordons’ managing partner Paul Ayre, said: “Andrew is an outstanding lawyer who is well known for handling complex corporate deals and providing sound strategic advice at senior executive level.”

>> Hômejames for Gakenyi Yorkshire-based search & social media marketing agency hômejames has appointed Nej Gakenyi as business development director. Gakenyi’s experience of large-scale projects at Ektron, one of the world’s largest CMS software companies, has seen him work on development, search and social media projects for international clients across diverse sectors from manufacturing to gaming and local government. At Hômejames he will be responsible for client delivery, strategic growth through potential acquisitions as well as looking at Hômejames’ international capability. He said: “Hômejames’ high client retention

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>> MRL in Top Gear Knottingley-based events safety company MRL Safety has just completed a contract ensuring safety for the latest Top Gear Live international roadshow, which ended this February. Top Gear Live is a series of shows around the globe featuring flaming rally cars, extreme underground street racers, cars which change colour and the world’s first indoor loop-the-loop. The company won the contract against stiff competition from other safety consultants and its first task was to carry out a risk assessment and draw up an events safety management plan. It then drafted site safety rules for contractors to follow when setting up arena stages, seating and putting together the huge indoor loop-the-loop structure. As the tour involved roadshows in Amsterdam, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Sydney and Auckland, the company also had to make sure it was working within each country’s own safety rules. The contract follows work the company has also recently been carrying out ensuring the safety of 80,000 people at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations and at last year’s Creamfields and V Festivals.

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Wiske, is currently delivering more than 3,000 boxes of organic produce every week. Home Farm, which is owned and farmed by Peter Richardson, has increased its deliveries by 40% over the past year. The farm delivers its award-winning organic boxes via its team of delivery franchisees spanning Yorkshire and the North East. Richardson is the third generation of his family to run the farm, which he converted to organic in 1996. He said: “The last three years have been eventful, and although we’ve been hit by the credit crunch like everyone else, most of our customers have stuck by us and we continue to attract new customers every day. Once you’ve tasted the quality and freshness of organic veg straight from the ground, it’s hard to go back to the supermarket alternatives.” Riverford is bucking the trend, as the latest annual report from the Soil Association suggests sales of organic vegetable boxes are at best staying level and at worst declining.

monks who lived at the monasteries, along with interactive maps of Benedict Biscop’s travels, an image gallery featuring religious relics and learning resources for schools. The website plays an important role in Wearmouth-Jarrow’s nomination for World Heritage Site status in 2011. Darren Navier, Numiko creative director, said: “Numiko has a great deal of experience in developing interactive platforms and content for the wider culture, entertainment and arts arenas. Rt Reverend Mark Bryant, Bishop of Jarrow and chair of the Wearmouth-Jarrow Partnership, said: “New features will allow us to reach new audiences and help us share the amazing story of Wearmouth-Jarrow with more people.”

>> Tailor suits the city A Wilmslow-based bespoke tailor which claims to be the fastest growing operation in the UK is to offer its suits in Leeds, with consultations and fittings at The Met Hotel. King & Allen Bespoke Tailors caters for men and women with more than 2,000 suit cloths and styles for business and weddings, as well as summer lightweight and seasonal specials. Each suit is hand-made down to the buttonholes. A typical consultation, which takes up to 60 minutes, involves more than 25 measurements and figuration details to ensure a perfect fit.

>> Anglo Saxon relics online Leeds-based digital agency Numiko has won a bid to re-develop the website for the twin Anglo-Saxon monastery of St Peter’s in Wearmouth, Sunderland and St Paul’s in Jarrow. Featuring 3D virtual experiences, the new site will give users an insight into the lives of

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>> 20m escape at Xscape Xscape in Castleford saw its 20 millionth visitor through its doors in February, following a record-breaking year in 2009. The real snow ski slope bucked the economic downturn by enjoying more record sales weeks in 2009 than any year since it opened in 2003. Marketing manager Dan Wharton said: “It’s a staggering figure. It’s a great achievement for Xscape and the region. The secret of our success lies in the variety of our offer.”

>> Higher speeds for Leeds >> Audiences Yorkshire rebrands Cultural marketing agency Audiences Yorkshire has appointed two outside agencies to support it as it rebrands later this year. The agency, which was founded in 1991, supports arts and cultural organisations by providing audience research and marketing and communications consultancy. It also runs the digyorkshire.com website. The agency is working with design consultancy Wonder Associates and PR agency Umpf. Chief executive Alison Edbury (pictured) said: “Over the last three years we have been through a comprehensive organisational development programme. “This has given us a compelling reason to re-brand.”

Leeds-based telecommunications firm AQL has started the roll-out of what it claims will be a high-speed fibre network for Leeds businesses, offering internet speeds at least 10 times faster than the national average. The company already operates several exchange sites around the UK, including a fibre network from Leeds to London and several connecting into multi-tenanted offices in Leeds itself. The new 100-megabit per second network is currently being trialled in The Calls area of the city by post production company VTR. Managing director Carl Waters said: “We can now upload 40 commercials in an hour to our London-based partners as opposed to 45 minutes per commercial. Unlike some regional initiatives, our connection is delivered to our desktop and allows us to access every media company in the country.” AQL plans to expand its network throughout other areas of Leeds city centre during 2010.

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ACHTUNG, BABY... Dirk Mischendahl came to Leeds to study and loved it so much, he’s back, creating a big noise through even bigger events. Peter Baber meets a German proud to call the UK’s fourth largest city home

When we finally get round to the general election this year, one person who won’t be voting is Dirk Mischendahl. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he isn’t allowed to as he still holds a German passport. “I just can’t,” he says, with no hint of a German accent, and only the faintest twang betraying that he was brought up in Australia. “I can pay lots of tax, but because I still have that passport, I can only vote in local elections, not general elections. I should get around to changing it, I suppose.” Even many native Leodiensians are not as passionate about the UK’s fourth largest city as Mischendahl is about his adopted home town. And there are even fewer who have put their money as actively where their mouth is as he

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has, not just with the Northern Art Prize, which he and his company Logistik have more or less singlehandedly got off the ground, but also by stamping his mark on many venues across the city. These include the Tiled Hall, the new Leeds City Museum, and now Harewood. Our Victiorian forefathers would no doubt have been fuming that such a supporter of the city has not been given the freedom to vote. But perhaps Mischendahl’s nonchalance is a sign that in today’s world a successful businessman can make his influence felt in many other ways than just the ballot box. And he is certainly a successful businessman. He towers over even this 6ft 6in interviewer when he opens the door in a natty pinstripe suit. It’s 8am and he’s the only one in, so I

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ENTREPRENEUR

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His wish to return some of these favours led in part to the foundation in 2007 of the Northern Art Prize, a £16,500 annual prize for artists working in the north of England whose work is shown at Leeds City Art Gallery. Logistik still is the main sponsor of the event, and in its first year the company put in £125,000 of its own money - a staggering amount, when you consider that even now its turnover is only £12m. Mischendahl says the event, which he thinks “has the potential to be Turner-esque”, was designed to try to stem the flow of creative assume the one car outside – a European sports car – is his. He certainly exudes confidence as he shows you around the converted mill Logistik has more or less taken over, particularly since it expanded, first into digital marketing with offshoot Brand New, then into consultancy with Triffid, another subsidiary, and most recently with its rescue from administration of next door neighbours the Thinking Agency. Mischendahl has clearly seen the world too. Born in Germany, he moved to Australia when his father was sent there by his employers. He is cagey about his age, says only that he has already travelled much and “done the London thing”. So why does he have such a strong attachment to Leeds? After all, after his successes, first with the Love Parade event and then in setting up Logistik, which now numbers Asda, Marks & Spencer and Lloyds Banking Group among the companies it provides events and communications for, he could easily have done the usual thing of quietly moving down south, where more of the action is perceived to be. He says he is deeply grateful to the city he fell in love with when he came to Leeds University to study psychology. “I owe Leeds a lot,” he says. “The University gave me an opportunity. Brian Hudspeth was the financial controller of the student’s union there, and he gave me a leg-up. I worked with one Dave Small, who started up the rag ball at the union, which has now got 10,000 students going to it every year. In its second and third year, we even got support from Leeds City Council, and in particular from Denise Preston, who used to be the director of parks and countryside.”

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talent down south. “Even people like Hallmark have huge problems getting people to stay,” he says. “The Northern Art Prize was part of that – a small gesture, but we are now getting serious artists.” The prize has certainly won publicity – not all of it positive. But then publicity about the Turner Prize hasn’t always been hugely gushing either. Mischendahl says this year they plan to introduce an education programme to the event. “We have to give reasons for people to stay north,” he says. “There is huge talent in the north, but it never gets seen. People go down to London and never come back, and people who can’t go to London get forgotten about.” And no, he has no regrets about spending such money on such a relatively exclusive event. “I have never been bashful about that,” he says. “We have made money out of that prize in contacts. It is a win-win-win. Last year, we worked out it was a return of £250,000 or £300,000. So I am happy to spend £60,000 a year on it.

So a risky proposition that seems to have paid off. Rather similar, in fact, to Love Parade. It was his wish to bring this German dance music event to the UK, and more particularly to Leeds rather than London, that really brought him to public attention. Even though he managed to get sponsorship from Radio 1, the event, which finally took place in the summer of 2000, was not without controversy, particularly among some locals who were worried about it getting out of control. In fact, when it was moved to Newcastle the following year, the event was cancelled, and it has never been held in the UK since. But it certainly put Leeds on the music map, and helped spur on the development of the Leeds Festival, now an annual fixture out at Bramham Park. “Love Parade was the pinnacle,” says Mischendahl, looking back. “We met up with Radio 1 just after they had come back from Berlin, and they were keen to do it. But I still remember sitting in Leeds City Council’s Leonardo Building with 16 senior police officers, who were all saying, ‘we’re cancelling it’, and me saying, ‘if you cancel it now on

Wednesday, people will still turn up on Saturday. You can either try to control it, and we will move it up to Roundhay Park, or you will have to deal with it on the streets’. I still think it was a phenomenal event.” The event’s success spurred him on to grow what eventually became Logistik. But of course it has also led to many people – this magazine included – going to him for comment on Leeds’ much-protracted attempt to get a new commercial arena off the ground.

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ENTREPRENEUR

Industrious : Mischendahl is keen to retain excellent staff and has a new mentoring scheme

Love Parade was the pinnacle, but I still remember sitting in Leeds City Council... with 16 senior police officers, all saying ‘we’re going to cancel it’

As a member of the board of Marketing Leeds, Mischendahl is more circumspect than he has been in the past about what kind of arena he thinks Leeds should have, and where it should be. At least, he is more circumspect about what he is prepared to say on the record. But he does say the need for such an arena, and the need for it to be flexible, is beyond dispute. So that does not mean just one huge cavern which only real megastars can manage to fill. There needs to be room for business conventions and trade shows too. In short, there needs to be the kind of construction which just about every German city has on its outskirts now. “Mischendahl is particularly impressed with a convention centre he has seen in Hamburg. “It has a floor that drops,” he says, “and then a new floor comes up above it. So they can start building one exhibition while the other is still being packed away. “But a real hothouse mentality exists in Germany. We need flexible space like that here. We don’t need an arena to have another Robbie Williams or whoever else is flavour of the month.” The cost argument he clearly thinks is a no-brainer. “The money in conferencing is phenomenal,” he says. “Look at the NEC for example.” You get the feeling that he is often battling against the still lingering view that somehow event management isn’t really a serious business. This applies just as much, he says, to attitudes towards people who work in the industry. “The industry is really under-represented in terms of responsibility,” he says. “If you think about what an event is, you could have 4,000 people in a room with an absolute load of production in an environment that is managed. And never mind the content, which is the really important part. There are health and safety and wellbeing issues, and all that is the responsibility of the event manager. Even more so with litigation culture. But people still look and say, ‘oh, they are just an event manager’.” Such an attitude is only bolstered, he says by people coming into the industry without the necessary back up. “They come out into the market and they are not insured, and they

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ENTREPRENEUR

haven’t got the necessary standards.” Mischendahl is increasingly seeing companies competing against Logistik to provide events that are also his own suppliers – small audio visual companies that are claiming now to be offering a full events service as well. But such companies are also no doubt reacting to what has been a huge downturn in the market, as companies choose to cut back on just the kind of thing Logistik offers. “I was more aware of recession than most,” says Mischendahl, “because people in the property market we were working for knew it was coming for a long time. These guys were saying, ‘watch it’. So I did enough that got us through.” Even then, he says, he found the recession “scary as hell”. “But it was also very refreshing,” he adds. “You had to think entrepreneurially. We were certainly not unscathed. We lost nearly £1m in reserves, and in 2007/08 we made an overall loss of £396,000. But we dealt with it well,

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and this year we have come out with really strong results – and a profit of nearly £200,000. The recession was also tough, he says, because he knew he was going to have to make his hard-working staff – those he was not going to have to make redundant – work even harder. That has meant coming out of the recession has also proved tricky. “People think you are all smoking Cubans again,” he says. “People start to reflect. They are fed up from being fed up, and you start to have things about quality of life. Big corporates have also

started to employ more. I have lost three or four great people to big business who pay far more than I can afford to. People say, ‘I don’t want to work this hard’, and that all starts coming in. We have to make sure people realise we are looking after them.” To that end, he is introducing a mentoring scheme at work, where key individuals in the company are encouraged to say where they want to go. It is rather similar to the approach Logistik now operates with its clients, so that rather than wait to see what events they might want the agency to run, they actively engage in finding out just what kind of messages the company wants to communicate through its events. “We talk and work directly with the board of each company,” he says. And from such discussions they can set up links with every part of the agency – content, digital, and creative as well as event management. “We don’t want to compete on price, because that’s dead now. But everyone is trying to do value, so what are we going to do? The next step is thought leadership – not just content and creative, but leading the thoughts around that. We are also getting our clients together – so Orange is meeting Marks & Spencer.” The key thing, he says, is to keep on your toes, keep evolving. Just look, he says, at what happened to the Thinking Agency, which he now plans to turn into a sustainability consultancy – a new pet topic of his. “The Thinking Agency had great clients back in the day,” he says, “but it fizzled out because the owners fizzled out.” Even with his partner now expecting a baby, and feeling determined that he doesn’t want to be an absent father, “in an industry that is all about being absent”, there seems little danger of him fizzling out. n

I was more aware of the recession than most because the property market we were working for knew it was coming for a long time

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25/2/10

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

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We’ve seen some big commercial lettings stories this quarter, in addition to a good bit of moving around and even some signs of an upturn. It’s all here - commercial property, Q1, 2010

Hepworth, left, and Westgate

>> Bruntwood prepares for new launch Bruntwood has now fully let one of its office blocks in Leeds city centre and is close to filling another as it prepares to open the largest refurbished office building to be brought to the Leeds market this year. Hepworth Point, which opens in April, was bought by Bruntwood in 2006 and had been let in its entirety to Leeds Metropolitan University to accommodate the Leeds School of Architecture, Landscape & Design. But following the School’s recent relocation to new premises at Broadcasting Place, several floors have been refurbished and are now available to occupy. The building, formerly known as Hepworth House, fronts Clay Pit Lane and provides 44,607sq ft of quality office space over 10 floors. It is next to the proposed Leeds Arena site and has immediate access to the inner ring road and regional motorway network beyond. It also has air conditioning, raised floors, 24-hour access and basement car parking. Quoting rents, with units starting at 1,500sq ft, are in the region of £15 per sq ft. Joint marketing agents with Knight Frank are DTZ and WSB. Meanwhile, Bruntwood has now fully let its West Gate development in Leeds after DTZ and CBRE secured Skills for Care as a new occupier.

>> Shopping centre loan fear One in every five shopping centres in the UK is at risk of defaulting on its loan according to a retail property industry report – and the north of England looks set to be hit worst. The British Council of Shopping Centres’

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The training company has taken the second floor, comprising 11,620sq ft, on a nine-year lease. Craig Burrow, head of sales and development at Bruntwood, said: “Skills for Care adds to an already impressive list of occupiers, including Leeds City Council and CSC Computer Sciences.” Glenn Levison, partner at Sanderson Weatherall who advised Skills for Care, said: “Our client was keen to secure accommodation on a single floor to take advantage of maximum occupational efficiencies, which West Gate offered.” Bruntwood acquired the property in 2004 from Telereal. Meanwhile, financial and risk consultancy RiskMetrics Group has taken additional space within Bruntwood’s West One development with a new lease on a third-floor suite totalling 1,300sq ft. Burrow said: “RiskMetrics has been based within West One since summer 2007, when it occupied serviced offices. The company has grown substantially in Leeds, which has seen it expand into more conventional accommodation, reflecting the flexibility of the Bruntwood offer.” Eamon Fox, associate director at DTZ, who acted for Bruntwood, said: “The building is close to being fully occupied.”

(BCSC) report into secondary centres claims an estimated £10.1 billion worth of centres at risk - that’s 43% of shopping centre transactions going back five years. David Thompson, retail director at DTZ, said that although the research suggested the greatest number of affected centres was in the

North West, Yorkshire could still be hit. “In total, 35% of all affected shopping centres that fall within this asset sector are located in the North of England and it will therefore witness the greatest change in the future,” he said. The research, undertaken by DTZ, reveals the

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growing polarisation between the performance of prime and secondary retail property, which has been exacerbated by the economic downturn. Secondary centres, it suggests, usually fall into administration or breach loan payments if there has been a lack of investment, poor asset management or even poor due diligence at the time of purchase. Mark Williams, chair of the BCSC taskforce and another director at DTZ, said: “Secondary and tertiary centres also need to respond to longer-term structural changes in the industry. Continued industry engagement with Government will also be important, particularly in areas such as empty property rates relief, and the relaxation of planning and compulsory purchase laws. There is also an important role for local authorities - which should be encouraged to engage with stakeholders at the earliest opportunity.”

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

to occupier confidence due to the huge incentives on offer by landlords. “However, it is unlikely that these incentives will continue at their current levels. The time is absolutely right for occupiers to capitalise on this.”

It’s provided an attractive relocation option for firms

>> Gordons helps Age Concern Age Concern has expanded its operations in the Bradford area in a number of deals advised by law firm Gordons and building surveyor Snape Munroe. The charity has extended the lease on its Bradford city centre offices, opened a new shop in Baildon and relocated an existing outlet to improved larger facilities in Keighley.

>> Blip in Leeds take-up Office take-up in Leeds city centre increased again in the last quarter of 2009 to the highest quarterly rate since the end of 2007, research by DTZ suggests. But the rise was significantly bolstered by a 57,000sq ft grade A letting to Yorkshire Water, which took space at Livingstone House in Clarence Dock to house its new asset delivery team of 550 staff in the secondlargest deal of the year. As a result of this deal, 2009 annual take-up was only around 11% lower than 2008. Adam Cockroft, office agency director at DTZ in Leeds said: “We are seeing a modest return

>> Skin Care moves to Wetherby Over 16,000sq ft of high quality warehouse and office premises in Wetherby has been let to Leeds Skin Care, which is relocating from University of Leeds accommodation at the Garstang Building. The new premises, on the established Sandbeck Lane Industrial Estate adjacent to the A1(M), will provide Leeds Skin Care with over 12,000sq ft of warehousing plus a two-storey office building. The Leeds office of Carter Jonas secured the six-year lease following extensive negotiations. John Webster, partner in the commercial department at Carter Jonas, said: “This letting represents a significant deal for the Wetherby market and demonstrates that, despite the difficult economic climate over the last 18 months, the town has proved an attractive relocation option for firms seeking high quality accommodation with good access links.”

>> Two more at Gildersome Acting on behalf of Standard Life Investments, DTZ has brought in two more tenants to the Gildersome Spur Industrial Estate in Leeds. Caterpillar Logistics has relocated from Normanton to a 42,600sq ft unit on the site, on a five-year lease with an option to break after the third year. The second letting is to lighting manufacturer and supplier Powerlite Lighting Solutions. It has relocated from Beeston Royds Industrial Estate and has taken two units comprising 21,200sq ft on a seven-year lease. Paul Mack, industrial associate director at DTZ who negotiated the deals, said two additional units are currently in solicitors’ hands. Gildersome Spur is strategically positioned adjacent to Junction 27 of the M62, providing easy access to both Leeds city centre and the national motorway network.

>> Europort sale signals upturn A prime distribution warehouse at Wakefield Europort has been sold for more than £5.6m. On behalf of a client of fund manager CB Richard Ellis Investors, Knight Frank sold the 90,000sq ft building, which is let to Scottish Power UK Plc, to a private purchaser. Scottish Power has a lease on the property paying a rent of £449,000 per annum for a further 10.8 years. The rent equates to a base rent of £4.50 per sq ft and the deal represents a net initial yield of 7.5%. >>

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY Knight Frank’s Rebecca Farnsworth advised CB Richard Ellis Investors. She said: “We received good interest in the property from a range of purchasers which shows the revival in investment demand if the product and the location are right. Wakefield Europort is at the hub of Yorkshire’s motorway network and West Yorkshire’s premier distribution park which played a significant part in the deal.” King Sturge advised the private purchaser.

>> Grimley helps MBO A Yorkshire-based artificial flower and gift distributor appointed GVA Grimley’s Leeds office to value its nationwide property portfolio to help it secure funding for a £12m management buyout. CB Imports group of businesses trades out of Yorkshire but also operates a division of wholesale cash & carry outlets trading by the name of Country Baskets from four industrial warehouse units around the UK. Valuation experts from GVA Grimley’s UK-wide team valued 250,000sq ft of warehouse space across premises in Stourbridge, Astley near Manchester, Glasgow and East Ardsley in Leeds.

>> Cookridge Hospital goes for £4.5m The former Cookridge Hospital has been sold to Leeds house builder Chartford Homes and Leeds property group J.Pullan and Sons for at least £4.5m. The deal, negotiated by DTZ, provides for additional payments to former owner the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust should the housing market improve significantly in years to come. DTZ residential director Phil Roebuck said: “The site offers excellent potential for a high quality housing development which will be well placed to take advantage of the improving market conditions.” The 19.5 acre site has planning approval for some 248 dwellings, comprising a mix of houses and apartments, some of which are to be within the original Grade II listed hospital buildings. The site also includes a 16,000sq ft

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office building, which, following refurbishment, will be available for sale or to let. Neil Chapman, the Trust’s director of finance said: “Since all services transferred from Cookridge Hospital to the purpose-built new St James’s Institute of Oncology in 2008, we have been working hard to secure a sale of this redundant site. In what we recognise is a very difficult property market, we are convinced this is a good deal.” Chartford is to begin work on the site immediately, with the first 24 houses due to be available towards the end of this year. Chartford managing director Chris Thompson said: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with Pullans again, who in addition to their financial strength bring years of development experience with them, particularly in the refurbishment of listed buildings. We are very pleased to secure this prime north Leeds housing site, as the market appears to have now levelled out.” Chartford and Pullans were advised by

surveyors Carter Towler and Blacks Solicitors. The NHS was represented by DTZ and Eversheds Solicitors. >>

We are pleased to secure this prime north Leeds housing site, as the market appears to have now levelled out

>> Slump in CPOs Compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) have dropped in use so markedly in the past 12 months that they are in danger of disappearing completely as a tool to use in trying to regenerate areas in the North of England, a report claims. The report compiled by Dickinson Dees on behalf of the Northern Way, a partnership between the three northern regional development agencies, claims the use of CPOs is down by almost 50% compared to 2008. Although historically CPOs have been perceived as a confrontational, complex and expensive to process, the report also highlights their high success rates – with under 5% of planning and housing CPOs not being confirmed. Yorkshire and Humber has more CPOs that are not confirmed than any other region in the UK, but the report claims that is because the region has taken on more challenging schemes. Frank Orr, planning expert at Dickinson Dees, warns that if the use of CPOs continues to decline authorities may lose the resource and skills base necessary to promote them. “With public sector spending cutbacks inevitable, local authorities should be reminded that CPOs are an effective tool for regeneration and that, if properly made, their success rates are generally very high,” he said. “Economic recovery will in part depend upon reactivating private sector investment so the use of public sector compulsory purchase powers has a key role to play in this and must not be allowed to fall off the agenda for future regeneration.”

Business as it should be

Rockliffe Hall is the north eastâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest luxury hotel, golf, spa and leisure resort located in picturesque Hurworth-onTees, County Durham. A multi-million pound investment has restored the 18th century Old Hall to its former glory, creating the perfect venue for business. From corporate golf days to private dining and conferencing for 10 to 250 delegates with 12 fully air-conditioned meeting rooms, most featuring private outdoor terrace and entrance with views over the magnificent grounds. Minutes from Durham Tees Valley airport, the east coast main rail line and major motorways (2.5 hours to London, 2 hours from Edinburgh), make Rockliffe your business destination of choice.

www.rockliffehall.com For further information, please call: +44 (0)1325 729999, or email: enquiries@rockliffehall.com

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

SPRING 10

>> Rural park progresses St James Securities has started work on transforming a former woollen mill and parkland site it recently bought near Mirfield into a four-acre office park. The Leeds-based developer has already secured a hat-trick of lettings at Wheatley Park, and has unveiled its first completed building, entitled The Watermill. Works to a second, the 1812 Building, are ongoing. Oliver Quarmby, of St James Securities, said: “We have secured planning permission for the conversion of a further two buildings to offices and they will be built out on a sequential basis. Ultimately we hope to create a thriving, highly-regarded business environment at Wheatley Park.” Camira Fabrics has taken 13,000sq ft in the renovated Watermill; while Normal TM, an interior architecture company, has taken 550sq ft and

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marketing consultant Purebrand Creative Communications has taken 1,200sq ft in the 1812 Building. Lisa Fox, financial director of Normal TM said: “We spent six months looking for new office premises which offered a rural setting within the M62-M1 corridor and with access to a train line providing a suitable link to London. “Wheatley Park met with our requirements and also provided the additional benefits of a modern office facility within a building of traditional character. She added: “Despite the rural nature of the site, there is a constant buzz of activity as the park attracts horse riders and walkers alike to the parkland beyond our office windows.” Hanson Chartered Surveyors of Huddersfield and Michael Steel & Co of Leeds are joint agents.

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>> Pickering site sold Upper Carr Chalet and Touring Park in Pickering has changed owners. The property was offered by Colliers CRE at a guide price of £1.3m and extends to around 5.3 acres. It was sold by its private owner to a private partnership. The park provides 80 touring caravan and tent pitches as well as five chalet pitches and has been graded as four-star by the English Tourist Board. Richard Moss, associate director of recreational property at Colliers CRE said: “The business at Upper Carr has experienced increasing turnover during the previous vendor’s tenure and I think it is well placed to benefit from the anticipated growth in the UK caravan holiday sector.”

>> A1 services plan A Bramham company is leafleting residents in an area North East of Ripon about a proposed motorway service area at the junction of the A1 and A61 which it claims will bring hundreds of jobs to the area. Bayford Developments intends to submit an application to Harrogate Borough Council for permission to develop the 11ha site early next month. Chief executive Jonathan Turner said The Highways Agency had already indicated the need for such a facility on this stretch of the A1, whose section between Dishforth and Barton is expected to be upgraded to three lanes. Two competing applications to develop service areas on this part of A1 have already been lodged. One involves upgrading the existing Leeming Bar services, while there is also a plan for a similar facility at Kirkby Hill near Boroughbridge. These proposals are to be the subject of a public inquiry, beginning in May. But Turner said: “The purpose of the successful application will be to fill the gap between the existing Wetherby Services and forthcoming facility at Barton, which are about 40 miles apart. We feel our site

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

is ideally placed, as it’s almost exactly half-way between the two.

>> Deal translates well Translation and interpreting group The Big Word has acquired the 21,000sq ft Roydsbeck House in Wortley from a private client in what is being billed as the biggest deal in the Leeds out-of-town office market in the past year. The building will house the company’s global headquarters, translation services and technology business. The company is relocating to the Grade A three-storey office building close to the M621 from existing premises in Headingley. The group currently has 220 Leeds-based staff and expects this number to rise to 300 by the end of this year. Guy Cooke, a partner with Knight Frank in Leeds, who advised the seller, said: “We assisted our client to acquire this property and were able to sell it swiftly. The quality of the building itself, together with its excellent location and the availability of the freehold, were a winning combination.”

“We previously rented the unit, but felt the time was right to settle permanent roots and make a firm commitment to the location. The building is of an extremely high standard and suits our needs perfectly with a combination of office and production space, which allows our apprentices to be involved in all the practical elements of their training.” Green Lane Industrial Estate is based just off Junction 32 of the M62. Bill Skilki, chief executive at Priority Sites, said: We’ve invested a lot in making the site attractive, combining high quality sandstone, brick and steel cladding buildings with well landscaped grounds.”

Marmadukes Hotel

Guy Fawkes Hotel

>> Hotels back on market >> Training firm puts down roots The final unit on Phase I of the Green Lane Industrial Estate in Featherstone has been sold to Apprenticeship Training (ATL) for a sum approaching £750,000. The company, which is the UK ’s largest vocational college for plumbers, electricians and gas engineers, bought the 15,000sq ft premises from developer Priority Sites, which was advised by Yorkshire-based hlw Commercial Lawyers. Nick Hayward, senior manager at ATL, said:

Two well-known York hotels have been put on the market by administrators after their owner’s building and property empire collapsed in the recession. The 13-bedroom Guy Fawkes Inn is located opposite York Minster and is reputed to be the birthplace of the gunpowder plotter. It is being marketed at around £1.1 million. Sister hotel Marmadukes, meanwhile, is a town house hotel with 20 en-suite bedrooms, a dedicated business centre and a walled rear garden with garden spa. Offers are being invited around £1.25 million. Colliers Robert Barry is selling the properties, formerly owned by David Hattersley, on behalf of the administrators. >>

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

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>> TCS tenants increase Town Centre Securities has completed a further letting at Town Centre House by the Merrion Centre in Leeds. First Locate, a customer service management company, has taken a ten-year lease on the whole of the building’s first floor comprising 4,522sq ft in a deal advised by Jones Lang LaSalle. Dominic Connolly, director from First Locate, said: “We have been operating for over ten years and based on strong business performance, we are currently managing over 1 million accounts valued at over £0.5 billion, and with our plans for the future we felt the time was right for further expansion. “Town Centre House fitted our requirements. The larger space gives us much-needed room and with broadband speeds of 100MB available this will help in future-proofing the business and securing a stable base for growth.” The Town Centre House office will now become the company’s headquarters, in addition to satellite offices based in Scarborough and Malton. Adam Hodgson, associate director at Jones Lang LaSalle, joint leasing agents with Sanderson Weatherall on Town Centre House, added: “This letting to First Locate, which follows on from the deal struck with Business Internet Directory last October, means that over 65% of the total office space in this newly redeveloped building is now occupied.”

This letting... means that over 65% of the total office space in this building is now occupied

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>> Speculating on Leeds A Harrogate-based developer is giving Yorkshire’s commercial property market a boost by embarking on what is currently the only speculative office scheme in progress in Leeds city centre. Wilton Developments has secured planning permission and is now progressing with its re-development of 10 South Parade. Jason Stowe, managing director at Wilton Developments, said: “The development of 10 South Parade reflects our confidence and commitment to Leeds. The building will undergo an extensive re-development programme, effectively creating a new building. 10 South Parade will provide

36,000sq ft of high quality, air-conditioned accommodation with Grade A+ specification which has already attracted many interested potential tenants.” Planning permission was secured to include a radical transformation of the external fabric of the building, a re-positioning and improvement of the entrance area, the enlargement of the first floor and the addition of a glazed top floor with balconies. Stainforth Construction Ltd has been appointed to undertake the re-development and is now on site, with work expected to be completed by this autumn. Set in a prominent position on South Parade fronting the Leeds Internal Loop Road, the development will provide five storeys of energy-efficient office space that is expected to achieve a BREEAM environmental assessment rating of Very Good. WSB Property Consultants, DTZ and Knight Frank are the agents for the development, which will include basement parking, a secure cycle store and male and female changing rooms with showers. Robin Beagley of WSB said: “This is a significant landmark development for Leeds and is a reflection that we are starting to see signs of improvement in sentiment from businesses in the city.”

>> Reed goes to Toronto Reed Recruitment is to relocate its Leeds office to Highcross’ new Toronto Square scheme in the city centre. The agency has taken 6,695sq ft on the ground floor on a 10-year lease at a rent of £24 per sq ft. The letting required planning consent for change of use of the ground-floor space, which was handled by Highcross’ agent, CB Richard Ellis. The 90,000sq ft Toronto Square office scheme was completed last year, following a multi-million re-development and extension programme. First to move into the building was Zolfo Cooper, which occupies the seventh floor, one of three new glazed floors added to the building. Following this latest letting, Highcross will be sub-dividing the ground floor to meet Reed’s requirements and create a new office suite of 3,300sq ft. Agents for Toronto Square are CB Richard Ellis and the Leeds office of Knight Frank.

Green Awards 2009 WINNER OFFICE DEVELOPMENT OF THE YEAR

Exceptional offices available now within a landmark building in the city 1,456 Sq.Ft - 75,954 Sq.Ft over six floors | BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating Ground Floor: Let to Reed Recruitment Seventh Floor: Let to Zolfo Cooper

www.torontosquareleeds.co.uk

Another development by:

guy.cooke@knightfrank.com

jonathan.shires@cbre.com

AS I SEE IT

SPRING 10

an industrious future Labour costs and productivity are both under the microscope if Yorkshire Forward’s new strategy to help manufacturing is to succeed, says Damian Ward of Bradford University School of Management Yorkshire Forward’s decision to launch its strategy for manufacturing is a sensible one and reflects the significance of the sector to the region’s economy. We have more manufacturing and more people employed in the sector than the national average. The region also has strong pockets of manufacturing with certain towns and cities more dependent on the sector than others. For example, 20% of the workforce in Hull and Selby is in manufacturing compared to just 8% in Leeds and 6% in York. Yorkshire Forward recognises, quite rightly, that the sector needs a long-term strategy to grow and become recognised internationally. The agency has set a tough challenge – to grow manufacturing by more than 50% so it represents 20% of the regional economy by 2030, compared to the 13% it represents now. So is the bar set too high? Not necessarily. Manufacturing as a whole is not growing and in the past Yorkshire and the Humber has underperformed in terms of productivity and exporting. By focusing on four high-tech manufacturing sectors Yorkshire Forward has the best chance of achieving its goal. Advanced engineering, digital, healthcare and low carbon technologies are our manufacturing ‘jewels’ and we are good at them. Most importantly, these high-tech sectors can compete in the global market and make money. This means they add value to the regional economy. But how will these plans fare in the current economic environment? What is going to hit home hardest? And where are the risks? I believe there are three areas that will have the biggest impact on these growth plans for the sector – interest rates, exchange rates and wages. People are constantly misguided by interest

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rates – whether they are going up, down or staying where they are. What they often fail to understand is that the base rate is not important. There is a supply chain of cash in the economy with the Bank of England at one end and business at the other. It is a bit like milk production. You have a farmer at one end paid one price for his milk and the consumer at the other who pays another, higher price. Along the supply chain a number of different people each pay or receive a different price for the milk. Interest rates are exactly the same – at each stage people are making different margins. There are money markets lending to banks and governments; then retail bankers putting their mark-up on for the business or personal customer. This process – the transmission mechanism – means that the manufacturing sector, like all others, is not feeling the benefit of low interest rates. They are probably paying around 7%. Manufacturing is particularly at risk here because it is a sector heavily dependent on bank financing, whether it is an overdraft to buy stock or a hefty loan to pay for investment in capital equipment. You can spend a lot of time worrying about interest rates but can do nothing about it. One finance director of a global company says simply: “You just have to get over it!” My advice is you know you have to pay the rates so just plug it into your spreadsheets and live with it. What about exchange rates? The Bank of England is keen to see sterling exchange rates against the euro stay low because Europe is our biggest trading partner. Unfortunately, with the euro being hammered in the debt crisis in Greece and other European countries, we are seeing sterling rise again. Of the four areas of spending in the UK –

household, firms, Government and international trade – the latter is the one we are pinning our hopes on for an increase in prosperity. But we need the exchange rate to remain low as manufacturers are the key people exporting. Germany and France came out of the recession before the UK and now they have slid back to zero growth. There is a feeling that the same could happen here. Exporting would give us some traction out of the recession, but if the pound grows stronger against the euro and our customers’ economies are weakening progress will be much slower, if we have progress at all. Wages - the third area that can have most impact on the growth of manufacturing – perhaps offers the best hope for the sector. In order to win international sales, manufacturers must be competitive – either by pushing up their prices and adding more value or by keeping wage pressures under control and improving productivity. The Germans have always been very good at achieving the latter and in previous recessions they had higher outputs for lower costs. Our manufacturers need to follow suit in order to become tighter and fitter. Management must look inside their organisations to see where they can reduce labour costs, improve processes and increase their productivity. A focus on labour costs and productivity is a key to ensuring that the region’s manufacturers gain the competitive advantage necessary to hit Yorkshire Forward’s ambitious targets. Dr Damian Ward is senior lecturer in economics and head of the strategy, economics and international business group at the Bradford University School of Management

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AS I SEE IT

Germany and France came out of the recession before the UK and have now slipped back to zero growth. There is a feeling that the same could happen here

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

INTERVIEW

SPRING 10

BRICKS AND MORTAR A ten-year-old Leeds business is proving that builders can still thrive, even in recession, as Peter Baber discovers

If you’ve been going through Leeds City Station recently, you might have noticed a new structure emerging on what used to be the taxi rank. It’s going to be the Leeds Cycle Point, the first such unit in the country, where you can leave your bike securely and also have it maintained and repaired while you’re away, if you wish. The concept is already a familiar one in the Netherlands, and is being brought to Britain by Abellio (formerly NedRailways), the owner of Northern Rail. The unit, which is due to open in May, has attracted a fair amount of publicity, with transport minister Lord Adonis launching the building work. There’s also a good story behind Strategic Team Group, the local business constructing the scheme. The company is 10 years old, and in those 10 years has become one of the fastest growing construction companies in Yorkshire. How do I know this? Well, unusually for a privately-owned construction company unusually for any private company, in fact - the company has regularly produced full company reports that are freely available to all and look like just the kind of thing that a publiclyquoted company would produce, although founder and business development director Charles Tweed insists that a flotation is the last thing on his mind. He says he wanted the company to be run transparently from the start, which probably

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explains why the report also includes full details of directors’ remuneration. The highest paid got just over £144,000 last year (to end March 2009). The latest report also reveals that in the 12 months to the end of March 2009 the company, based in Castleford, increased its turnover by 20% to £34.5m. And even though it admits operating profit came under severe pressure during the downturn, it still managed to bring home EBITDA of £2.5m. Tweed says that since then the company has carried on growing, to the point where he now believes turnover stands nearer £39m. “We are now on the YORbuild, Kirklees and North Yorkshire frameworks,” he says, “with all those appointments made in the last 16 months. YORbuild takes in Leeds, Scarborough, East Yorkshire and Rotherham. With Leeds City Council we can tender on everything up to £3m. Admittedly, that is a ceiling, but it does mean you are at the party and you are there to play. With Kirklees we are a framework contractor and we get the jobs. We have completed Phase 1 of the redevelopment of Huddersfield Town Hall, and are about to start on Phase 2. We have also just completed the ‘air dome’ indoor all-weather sports facility on Leeds Road. “The other big area over the last 12 months is train operating companies. They are quite a tight-knit community, so if you get a good name like we have managed to achieve through Merseyrail you soon find you are

working with Northern Rail, Arriva, and Transpennine Express, as we are.” Yes, in the past year, while property and construction companies all around have been tottering on the brink or just falling straight into the chasm, Strategic Team Group has kept ahead. “We have lost eight or nine competitors,” says Tweed, “but we have managed to survive through diversification.” Such a feat is not entirely unexpected, given Tweed’s own track record. Born into a family that already ran a building maintenance business, he initially eschewed that to start a painting and decorating business down in London before selling his share in that to the other directors and coming back north to have a go at running the family firm, by then called Station Maintenance. “I built it up and diversified it,” he says. “Under my father’s direction the company had been focused very much on oil companies, and I diversified it into banks.” Despite the name, the company had relatively little involvement in railway contracts. By the time he sold it to Mansell for £4m in 1995, the company was “predominantly a maintenance operation with long-term contracts with blue chip clients”. As is usual in these cases, he worked with Mansell for two years on an earn-out business, with a place on the main board. But he says he didn’t like ‘the people issues’ in a big organisation and felt it was time to move on.

INTERVIEW

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Fortunately, two of his former colleagues, who were also still working for Mansells – Andy Watson, now managing director, and Gary Taylor, now operations director – also felt it was time to start again as a maintenance contract business. It wasn’t going to be easy. Tweed emigrated to the Isle of Man for a year to serve out his exclusion clause. He worked part time in a golf shop, although even there he found time to launch an electric lighting business in Wrexham that he still has an interest in. While he was away, Taylor and Watson started Strategic Team Group, and Tweed invested in it from the beginning and joined them as soon as the exclusion clause had expired. In fact, the three soon found they weren’t seeing any continuing competition from their old employer. “Shortly afterwards, Mansell did a deal with Balfour Beatty over our old business and completely closed the operation,” he says. That left the new company free to diversify into new areas. First it moved into refurbishment, and then into new build, which Tweed calls a ‘massively different’ business. “We had to create separate teams,” he says. “A maintenance engineer and manager is completely different to a new build manager. We even thought about splitting them off completely. We bought a safety services business, and a shutters and doors business which we are only now selling off to management, and the idea was to create a brand called Strategic with many companies belonging to it. But we decided to concentrate on core activity, and expand into other areas. That included opening an office in Scotland. “And we expanded into the North West. But we are not planning to expand further south. We do have certain maintenance contracts there, but we sell ourselves as a North of England and Scottish company.” He puts the success of the business down to, “putting more energy into having sales people out there, but also people who are very good at pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQs)”. More recently, too, it has been down to embracing a new kind of contract – a “prime cost” contract which Tweed says gives the client much more clarity over what the final cost is likely to be. “Both the recent Kirklees jobs were done on a

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We are in a business that needs to bring people in from all parts of the community. It helps us get contracts like Trident in Bradford... one of our biggest contracts prime cost basis,” he says. “That means whatever it costs now, plus a margin, plus a target. This kind of contract works for us because we are not having to tender. We know it’s a prime cost, so we know what the margin is. Local authorities, meanwhile, are always having to be open, and the difficulty from a council perspective is securing value for money. That’s easier to achieve with this kind of contract, because they don’t have to spend money on tendering and can get things going faster.” But it seems another key ingredient the company has benefited from is the right kind of people. Right from the start the three of them were lucky, because the demise of their old business meant there was a load of people only too willing to work for them, so they could cherry-pick. “For the first three years, we were hand picking people,” he says. “We weren’t having to spend a lot on recruitment.” But right from the start it was also made clear that those joining the new group would be heavily incentivised, with a profit-share scheme and clear targets everyone knew they had to work towards. Tweed says this is why the company has always been able to enjoy profit margins of around 8%. “That’s unheard of in an industry where many were only doing 2%,” he says. But Tweed clearly takes an interest in people in other areas too. He is keenly aware of the industry’s need to respond to the new equality laws that may or may not pass through Parliament before the election. To that end, the company has brought in a new HR manager who has specific experience in diversity issues. “We are a business that does need to bring people in from all parts of the community,” he says. “It helps us getting contracts like Trident in Bradford, which was one of our biggest projects. The difficulty is in

attracting the ethnic minorities. There still seems to be a perception about construction. This is why we brought the new manager in.” He is also keen to get accreditation in diversity, because more and more clients are demanding it. Such accreditation will also help to create clear water between Strategic Team Group and smaller companies who may not have the resources to attend to such issues. Tweed freely admits that this kind of legislation operates against smaller players. But that could play to the company’s advantage. For the other added benefit it has had over the past couple of years is private equity backing: Barclays Ventures invested in the company in March 2008 in an £11m deal. Tweed says in the first few months after this they were left largely to themselves. “Because of the marketplace and how it has changed over 18 months we have actually been one of the best performers in their portfolio. So they have kept off our back because trading has been good. But they are now starting to inject a little bit of pressure about acquisitions. They are now two years in, and ideally see an exit in three to four years, so they want to get the right multiples on our business.” So the company is looking at two acquisitions – one in Scotland and one in East Yorkshire – which, if successful, could take its turnover up nearer £60m. It is looking at expanding in other ways too. Into sustainability, for example. Tweed says the company is currently working to at least a level four on the nationally-recognised sustainable code for housing, if not higher, with its new social housing. And he says there are so many older properties built to a lower level that there is bound to be refurbishment work out there. “At one stage, we were working with Leeds University and were going to employ a strategic performance improvement engineer

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who was going to monitor those buildings,” he says. “We were going to get grant funding for that, although that opportunity has now been lost. But we are going to look at it again.” The other new avenue is property investment. In part because of the recession, the group has taken its first tentative steps towards owning some of the property it builds. This began with an InCommunities scheme in Keighley which housing minister John Healey opened earlier this year, where the group will own eight of the 27 units it is building. Other private sector schemes are also afoot. But Tweed is quick to point out that this is not a rash move into investment – the kind of thing which has tripped up many a construction company before now. All the investment – and the risk - will be taken on by 21C Properties, an offshoot of Strategic Team Group which he, Watson, Taylor and other

unnamed high net worth individuals are investing in. The advantage to the core company will come in the maintenance that is likely to be needed. “Strategic Team Group will continue to be a contractual business,” he says. “At the moment, people are wanting to invest because we are getting these sites at discounted rates.” In fact, the company could even be expanding the services it offers to these “high net worth individuals” – a group which, thanks to Tweed’s connections, includes sporting celebrities – by offering to work directly for them as well. “People with that level of money are always disillusioned about getting ripped off,” he says. “Everybody knows them, so they automatically add 10 to 20 per cent because they think they can afford it. We want to sell it in a different way, using our prime cost model. Again the group as a whole will benefit.”

INTERVIEW

You get the feeling he speaks from experience here, because one of the reasons he moved to the Isle of Man was to get away from the tax man. His then advisors had set up a scheme for him there, but in the end he says this didn’t work out. “I ended up doing a deal with the inland revenue,” he says. So does he regret the hiatus his little sojourn there caused? Is this an attempt to do something better? He is not sure. “I am a big believer in fate, and it all worked out for the right reason,” he says. “It was good to be away for a year because I knew it was going to be unpleasant: Mansell suspected I was setting a business up, and at the time I was going through a divorce. It was not very good for my daughter, but it did allow me to be away from the scene.” Now, having come back and launched a construction business that is bucking the trend, it is easy to see what he means. n

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

ENTREPRENEUR

SPRING 10

in association with

COPY RIGHT The office supplies market may have been through a revolution in the past two decades, but Peter Baber finds one Wakefield company is keeping well ahead of developments Do you remember photocopiers? Those huge monsters that used to roar away at the back office for hours on end? Some unfortunate temp had to stand next to them all day looking for paper jams, papers not running

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straight and the occasional unwarranted attention of a male member of staff. Well, they have evolved â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the machines have anyway, and probably the temps, though I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t vouch for the male members of staff.

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ENTREPRENEUR

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ENTREPRENEUR

Photocopiers are now known as multifunctional devices, or MFDs, and you don’t have to stand next to them any more. With a simple click of your mouse they can automatically scan, print, and copy, not to mention email. There might even be some that will make you a mug of tea. But what does all that mean for the poor souls who have to service and sell such machinery? With all those changes, there must surely have been any number of supposedly innovative new models that ended up going nowhere, new technology that was rapidly superceded – the fax machine, for example – and much in the way of legacy devices and systems. In fact, the office itself has gone through enormous changes in the past 20 years, with more and more people choosing to view, edit and send their documents entirely through the ether, possibly making the traditional photocopier redundant. So back in 1991, would you have wanted to be starting out launching a new photocopier re-seller company, just as all manner of new digital and desktop inventions were coming in? Wouldn’t it be rather like setting out to market a brand new style of horse-drawn carriage in Detroit in 1908, determined to pay no attention to what that irascible fellow Henry Ford was doing just down the road? Well, no. 1991 was the year when Adrian Fitzpatrick and five other colleagues – some of whose experience in the office supplies business went even further back to the purple

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

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ink of the Banda machine - decided to branch out on their own. And 19 years later, although three of those directors have retired, the company they founded, the Arena Group, is still going strong, selling and servicing MFDs made by Toshiba, Ricoh, and most recently Kyocera. It produces software for some of these machines too. All Cunard liners, for example, run with Arena Group software on board. And Toshiba has just appointed the company to be a direct reseller for some of its bolt-on products. The company has also been through some considerable expansion. Since 1999, it has made six acquisitions of traditional MFD resellers, and most recently has also acquired a document management business.

We were stealing a march on an awful lot of traditional companies which ... didn’t know whether to invest in new machines

Fitzpatrick, 45, says the company deliberately didn’t run away from the changes the industry has seen. “More complex machines were seen as an opportunity,” he says. “We were stealing a march on an awful lot of traditional photocopy companies which were staffed with people in their 50s who didn’t know whether to invest in these new machines.” And there hasn’t even been a retrenchment in these leaner times, either. Fitzpatrick says there was only one thing the £12m company put on hold throughout the whole of last year. That was a plan to refurbish the remaining three wings of the four-wing headquarters building in Wakefield they bought from Marshalls Mono – one satisfied client – in 1996. Other than that, nothing. No job cuts, office closures, or anything. “We have kept everyone on,” he says, “and haven’t made any cost efficiencies. The business did take a slight downturn, but we thought it would be completely the wrong message that the first time things get a little bit sticky, we ditch people. In any case, we didn’t make a loss, we just made less profit.” Fitzpatrick puts this success in battling through even slight adversity partly down to the open culture he and his directors have generated within the company. With 126 staff, the company still finds time to produce a monthly newsletter which keeps staff regularly informed about how well they are doing. “The only thing we don’t share is how much we paid for an acquisition and how much the directors took home,” he says. There is an “open book” on staff training needs. “As long as it has a business benefit, we agree to pay. I can’t recall ever turning down a request for training.” And the company has a profit share percentage pay out scheme, which it has recently widened. “Originally, we did it on length of service,” says Fitzpatrick, “but we did recognise that someone might come in brand new, would do a great job, but because it was only for a year would only get a tenth of what someone else might get. I really believe that you should treat your staff well. The most important thing is that we as directors say thank you. I try to say good night to everybody when I leave.” It’s perhaps not surprising that Arena was

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voted Best Company to Work For in Yorkshire in 2006, which also happened to be the year of its biggest ever profit. But Fitzpatrick doesn’t rest on the recognition of one national award. Other anecdotal evidence, he says, suggests his staff are content in what they do. “In 2006, we had said that if we break through a certain profit barrier we would all have a company night out. We did, so we went to Bibis, then to see Grease, then a nightclub. And we got a 96% uptake on a Friday night. It’s not just a one-off, either. In the last three years we have had just short of 99% attendance.” Much of this way of thinking stems back to what Fitzpatrick calls the “seminal year” of 2002, when the company had been facing some staffing issues, particularly around the quality of new hires. For the annual conference that year they booked Steve McDermott, a motivational speaker. But McDermott ended up doing a lot more for the company than just giving them all a slap on the back. “We had been struggling to plan that conference,” says Fitzpatrick, “mainly because we had just been through an acquisition. Steve came to meet us, and said, ‘what do you want the staff to do when they go away again?’ And that got us thinking. We did have problems with people. We weren’t paying peanuts to get monkeys, but we were filling gaps quickly. So we said we needed to identify the real quality people in the organisation and make them stay. As Steve said, we needed to get people on the bus and get them to the right seat. “We also had to be more careful about who we brought into the business. In some instances that meant paying more, but that was the right thing to do.” It wasn’t, however, all just a matter of people. Fitzpatrick and his co-directors were quick to realise which markets they needed to be in to give the company a secure foundation. So they very quickly moved away from just supplying the small businesses where they started, to increasingly serving the public sector. The Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation and Barnsley Council, for whom Arena was the sole supplier of MFDs, were early successes. The company is now focusing particularly on the education sector. It makes up around 60%

ENTREPRENEUR

We had to be more careful about who we brought into the business. In some instances that meant paying more, but that was the right thing

of the company’s business. Such business obviously means making long-term contracts – and that benefits forecasting. “It’s a place where we want to be,” he says. “We have contracted service revenues, and that meant we were able to forecast our performance last year within 0.1 of a per cent. It gives us stability. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in a business where you relied on this month’s sales.” He and his directors haven’t been ignoring the news either – they are keenly aware that, whatever the political parties might say, some sharp cuts in public sector funding are imminent. Fitzpatrick insists that does not mean such business will vanish for them. “They will still need to copy and print,” he

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ENTREPRENEUR

says. But a need to be more aware of public sector clients’ needs to keep costs down is partly what induced the company to become a Kyocera dealer last November. “Their machines have long-life technology with a ceramic drum,” he says. “They are very efficient to run. Dealing in them also sends out a very strong green message. That sits alongside our ISO 4001 accreditation. But we are not looking to replace one model with another, because that doesn’t add value to our clients, it just means churn. We are looking to make people more efficient.” And that is the other change the company has made over the years. Fitzpatrick hates the term ‘management consultancy’. “It’s a dirty word,” he says, but the company has been moving more into consulting with clients on how they manage their printing and photocopying needs. That’s where the money can really be made. It was the need to improve the company’s ability to do this that led to the acquisition of a Chesterfield-based document management business - the most recent acquisition the company made - in 2006. Taking that business on means the company now has the capacity to help its clients, however they choose to deal with their documents – either by printing them or storing them electronically. It won’t be seen as a consultancy that in the end just wants to sell photocopiers. “We can be a trusted adviser with document

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

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management,” says Fitzpatrick. “We are able to look at our clients from a truly objective perspective.” Moving into a relatively new area like that has, however, involved some culture change. “We have probably only grown that business by about 30 per cent so far,” he says. “It has taken us a while to get into it. The business was also very product-focused. Out of 20-something employees, there was just one salesperson. We wanted to change that approach and bring sales people on board.” Such ambitions have been somewhat thwarted by a reluctance in some of what Arena was hoping would be key sectors for them to target – in particular professional services – to go wholly down the road of storing everything electronically. When we spoke, the company was in the process of arranging a seminar for legal firms at no less a venue than Anthony’s in Leeds – tempting the lawyers of Leeds with fine food in order to try and sell them the virtues of document management. “There is still a real nervousness among them about destroying the original,” he says. “Yet it’s a massive cost to them.” There has also, of course, been the downturn. “There have been good opportunities which could have had a return on investments as low as six months,” he says, “but people are still holding off. I am sure that will come.” The new business will, apart from anything else, allow the company to spread its footprint

wider without having to open new offices. For the moment, the physical side of the business is based largely in the North of England. And Fitzpatrick wants it to stay that way. “We don’t even go into the Midlands, although we do do Cheshire. It’s the work/life balance,” says the father of three. “I am very rarely away from home.” Another addition Fitzpatrick and his fellow directors are keen to ward off is any potential private equity investor. “I know private equity is changing,” he says, “but it still wouldn’t sit with us. “No matter what share they take, private equity still has a significant say in how a business is run. And I am not very good at taking orders. “In fact, if we can’t afford to do it and the banks won’t support us – which has not happened yet – we might look at it again and say, ‘why are we doing it?’ We have 120 families to feed and we have a responsibility to them.” It’s a chastening message for these times, but a sure sign of why this business is likely to be around for a good while yet. n

Lee & Priestley’s specialist Entrepreneur Team works with clients as a strategic partner, offering a unique blend of legal, business and entrepreneurial expertise. Lee & Priestley acts for businesses across a broad range of industries and has a particular reputation for entrepreneurial expertise in the new media, media, internet, technology, creative, leisure, entertainment and healthcare sectors.

Jonathan Oxley, Senior Partner, Lee & Priestley LLP Tel: 0845 129 2300 10-12 East Parade, Leeds, LS1 2AJ www.leepriestley.com

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in association with

a finger in every pie... There isn’t much to do with business in Leeds that Gary Lumby either isn’t part of or doesn’t have a view on. Peter Baber meets him BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

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It’s not often in these heathen times that you get inspiration from a Church of England vicar. But that is what Gary Lumby, currently president of Leeds, York & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, did at the chamber’s last annual dinner in January. The chamber always invites the same reverend

BUSINESS LUNCH

to say grace at the start of proceedings, and, speaking to Lumby in the bar afterwards, he said how much of a sense of fun there was in the audience. This was music to Lumby’s ears. He believes not enough people, particularly at the moment, believe that business and fun can go together. “At the end of a long day you can have fun in business, and that’s what we want to do,” he says. “If you are at work for a long time, it helps to have fun.” Lumby certainly needs a sense of fun in his career. For apart from overseeing the running of what is still a relatively recently merged chamber (the Leeds and York chambers only came together towards the end of 2008), late last year he also became a non-executive director of Business Link, an organisation which in the past has come in for a fair amount of flak. Then for his day job, Lumby is a banker – a dirty word at the moment, although he has spent his whole career in banks that have not had to resort to the Government for support. He joined Yorkshire Bank in 1998 from Barclays. “I was one of the first to be actively recruited by Yorkshire Bank,” he says. “It happens all the time now.” After several different management roles he took on the role of head of small business banking at Yorkshire Bank in February, although he says he has really been serving the needs of small business through most of his time there. Which is just as well, because seven months ago his wife, another career banker whom he met when he worked for Barclays, decided to jump ship and become a small business owner herself. She took over a 40-year-old contract decorating business which she plans to take to new heights. So, with a busy schedule like that, there is certainly plenty of need for fun. Nor is it surprising that he should choose to talk about such fun at one of Leeds’ most “fun” places – the Restaurant Bar & Grill in City Square. The restaurant is part of a group of 33 that includes Piccolino elsewhere in Leeds and in Ilkley, and another Restaurant Bar & Grill in Harrogate. But each has its own individual style. The one in Leeds certainly made a splash when it opened a few years ago because it turned

what had been a dusty central post office into an exciting new venue right in the heart of the city. You get the wow factor as soon as you walk in, thanks to the huge glass wall of a wine rack that separates you from the elegant, modern interior (mostly covered over with false ceilings when it was a post office). The bar is always a good place to stop for a drink, and if you need privacy there is a private dining room for hire. But Lumby says he particularly likes the venue because it is somewhere he can go with a business associate for a fantastic lunch often on the spur of the moment without feeling they are going somewhere oppressively formal. That’s probably why the crowd you get here is much more mixed than you will find at many other venues in Leeds. And the food is also admirably varied: he went for a tandooribaked seabass, while I opted for fish cakes. On previous occasions when I have been lucky enough to eat here I have been wonderfully sustained by the marinated breast of chicken with Malayan spices, sweet potato, coconut and lime. Fun indeed. But as for the sense of fun the vicar spotted, Lumby thinks it has come partly from the make-up of the audience at the dinner. “There was a 60/40 split between men and women,” he says. “It’s a real change. We have far more women, and a far younger audience. We want to make sure the diversity issue is tackled. We have recently had a better mix on our board members, recruiting Suzanne Burnett to the board from Scarborough. She runs a recruitment agency and also runs a farm. We need to get diversity right at the board – I am very conscious of that.” Under his presidency there has been a change in the board’s constitution to reflect this. Previously, anyone wanting to make their mark on the chamber had to get elected to the council. “We have replaced this with modern forums which are open to all members – in Leeds, Harrogate, Scarborough and York. The members can get together to talk about the issues they want the chamber to represent them about.” Particular issues of note recently have been the impending increase in National Insurance contributions. Then there is the on-going debate about rates on empty properties, and

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BUSINESS LUNCH the perennial chestnut of transport. But perhaps there isn’t quite as much change as there might appear. While such issues are discussed openly, the Chamber still has a board of directors made up of the great and the good from Leeds’ business life. And yes, Suzanne Burnett has joined. But for the moment she is the only woman. Still, such developments are a major step from years gone by, when anyone coming to the Leeds Chamber dinner for the first time would be met by a sea of black serge, with barely a glint of a cocktail dress. Lumby is keenly aware that the Chamber, like any good business, has to cater to the demands of its customers, particularly in these chastened times when membership services organisations may not be top on everyone’s list of priorities to spend money on. “People forget that the Chamber is a private sector

Lunch! The Restaurant Bar & Grill, The Old Post Office, City Square, Leeds LS1 2AN Opening hours: Monday to Friday: 11am-11pm Saturday: Brunch 9.00am-12noon Restaurant 12noon-11pm Sunday: Brunch 9am-12noon Restaurant 12noon-10.30pm t: 0113 244 9625 e: rbg.leeds@therestaurantbarandgrill. co.uk w: www.therestaurantbarandgrill. co.uk/leeds.html

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The Chamber gives business a voice... at local government, national government, and other areas. Whether you take advantage of it is another thing

company – private sector owned and led,” he says. “So we have to look at bringing value.” The Chamber makes itself vital, he thinks, by running networking events, although there is plenty of competition now in this field, and by the advice it gives out. He recently had first-hand experience of this when one of his wife’s staff fell off scaffolding at work. “She turned to the Chamber to see what to do. That’s a good example of where the Chamber can add value.” But perhaps most of all, he sees the Chamber as being in the unique position of providing a voice for all businesses, unlike the CBI, which he says is mainly about larger businesses, or the Institute of Directors, which is more focused on individuals. “The Chamber gives businesses a voice, no matter what their size, at local government, national government, and other areas,” he says. “Whether you choose to take advantage of that is another thing.” A good example of this working, he says, is the campaigning the Chamber has done on driving ahead improvements at Leeds Bradford Airport. But there are perhaps questions over how effective this is at national level, where he admits the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) – an umbrella body to which the Chamber does not have to belong but does – has in the past been somewhat drowned out by other bodies. “The media and Government, not unsurprisingly, looks at the CBI and says they represent more workforce,” he says. “So would they pay more attention to them than the BCC? I hope not now, but in the past there has been a tendency to do so, particularly when Digby Jones was running the

CBI. But BCC director general David Frost has done a lot in retaining our independence.” One way the Chamber itself could increase its influence would be by getting bigger. Since the merger, Lumby says his chamber has been in more active discussions with the Bradford Chamber about linking up. They tried it once before, and split up again, but that was a different era, he says. “There was less cooperation between Leeds and Bradford councils then than there is now,” he says. He looks fondly over the Pennines to what is going on in Manchester, where two already large chambers merged in the middle of the last decade to create a super-chamber that he feels now really does have a voice. “I really do hope we do become like Manchester,” he says. “I would like to put more focus on that between now and September when my term as president ends.” He is keenly aware that, as a private organisation, it is perfectly possible for a chamber to fail. The Mid-Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, covering Halifax, Huddersfield, and Wakefield, went into a CVA at the end of last year. Lumby says his chamber is looking to see what it can do to help its members, though there is no talk of merging yet. So how, then, does he view Business Link, his other major preoccupation at the moment? Until 18 months ago, Business Link had been run as four separate organisations in Yorkshire, and had been attacked for being hugely wasteful by, among others, one of Lumby’s counterparts at Hull Chamber of Commerce. Others were ready to point out that, with salaries barely reaching £30,000, what sort of person would be a Business Link adviser if they could get a much better paid job elsewhere?

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BUSINESS LUNCH

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BUSINESS LUNCH Then, just as Business Link was being streamlined into one organisation, a new bombshell was delivered by Ajaz Ahmed, one of the creators of Freeserve and one of Yorkshire’s best-known digital entrepreneurs. Business Link, he said, was too much like the X Factor: it didn’t have the courage to tell someone with a bad business idea that it would never be a runner. Lumby grimaces, remembering what Ahmed said. “I am sure if Ajaz went back now he would agree that Business Link has improved, but there is more work to do,” he says. “I joined it to try to bring some private sector disciplines and to bring some collaboration with other support agencies like the Chamber. It certainly has been successful with the financial health checks it offers. But we haven’t been so good at communicating that. The Business Link contract in Yorkshire is now worth £40m, and 90% of that is delivered to the front line. As for the advisers themselves, I have been out with them. I am a bank manager, I have heard the criticism that all advisers are ex-bank managers or failed bank managers. That’s not true – advisers come from all walks of life. Salaries are being addressed, but that is a work in progress.” He firmly believes, despite rumours that the Tories might be planning to abolish the Business Link model if they come to power, that some such body is needed. “You need some co-ordinating body to co-ordinate business services to SMEs,” he says. Business Link’s problem, he thinks, is more to do with the expectation of its clients than anything within the system – most particularly, their false belief that they can run to it whenever they need money. “People have this mistaken impression that Business Link is all about dishing out grants,” he says. “That is not its purpose. It is one area, but quite a small part. It is predominantly there for advice and making sure struggling SMEs get the right level of support. It is an information diagnostic service.” It so happens he thinks there is a similar mismatch of expectations in his day job as a banker. “At Yorkshire Bank our approval level for small business currently runs at 88%,” he says. “That is down from 90% a year ago. The challenge we have is that not enough people

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

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Spectacular: The Restaurant Bar & Grill provides a great business lunch in a dramatic setting with appropriately thought through business plans are coming to us for finance.” Pardon? Sorry? Then why are there all these stories about companies being denied funds? He is quick to explain. “There are people coming to us without appropriate plans, but businesses need to understand that the bank is there to help viable businesses – that is a crucial word. Even with the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme, a business has to be viable to use it. So if you go to your bank with a plan and say, ‘in the last 12 months I lost money, but in the next 12 months I am going to make money’, and you haven’t gone through how you plan to do that or it’s not credible, what is a bank supposed to do?” It’s seeing so much of this non-joined-up thinking, he says, that has caused him to work harder at trying to help such businesses through Business Link and the Chamber. And that’s where he must head now. So I wonder, with such a hectic life – on top of these three roles he is also vice chair of the governors at Leeds City College, and sits on the board of Marketing Leeds, Education Leeds, and the Regional Industrial Development Board for Yorkshire and Humberside and the East Midlands – how

does he find any time in his schedule to relax? Well, he does have a house in Spain, and a small property business, but what he likes most of all is talking with his wife at the end of the day. About what? Need you ask? “About business.” n Over the past five years, Watson Burton’s Leeds office has developed a strong reputation for being professional and pragmatic whilst remaining approachable and always delivering value. It achieves this by offering experts who work in partnership with clients to provide high quality legal advice at competitive rates.

Find out how Watson Burton could help your company by contacting Gearalt Fahy, Employment Partner. 0113 235 5602 gearalt.fahy@watsonburton.com

BENETEAU ON WINE

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

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BENETEAU ON WINE

DELICIEUX! Simon Beneteau, head sommelier at Hotel du Vin and Bistro, York, offers his expert opinion on two top bottles. Salut! If you want to really learn about wine, it’s best to experience it in its native environment, with all the natural sights, sounds and smells that accompany it, which means the best way to drink is to travel. That makes my job extra special, and my travels in search of great wines have taken me all over the world, including all over my home country of France (well, where else?), Belgium and even to Cuba. Looking into the future, I’m excited now about the latest developments in the growing South American and South African wine markets. I keep a keen eye on the many wonderful new grape varieties now being used in Chile, while I am also convinced that South Africa is now increasingly becoming a reliable producer of premium wines. And it isn’t just wine which lifts my spirits. As Head Sommelier at Hotel du Vin in York, I believe in fully embracing the wonderful things we have here, and that means I also enjoy cigars, which are much to be encouraged I believe! I also enjoy spirits, and I have plenty of opportunity in my job to sample the best on offer to our discerning customers. I’m fortunate enough to be in charge of bar and wine service in Hotel du Vin, where I manage a truly amazing wine and beverage list comprising more than 450 great wines, including 25 wines by the glass, plus 150 fabulous whiskies. I’ve worked in the hospitality industry since 1998 and, following my degree, I specialised in beverage management, affording me the opportunity to work in a variety of French bars, restaurants and luxury cruise liners.

And while experience has trained my palate and my judgement, ongoing training is vital to keep abreast of current trends and developments within the wine, beverage and cigar world. And tasting too of course - and what a privilege to be asked to write this column about two wonderful wines for you. My first is a marvellous white - Le Cigare Blanc Bonny Doon 2007, priced £51. This wine is dominated by the Roussanne white wine grape. Here, it lends a real sense of minerality, while Grenache blanc adds tannic structure and an unmistakable peachiness. This wine is intensely suggestive of Asian pear, quince, white peach, honeydew, lime blossom and lilac; a fruitful combination that is hard to resist. The red I have tasted for you is Cotes de Provence La Courtade 2004, priced £44. Domaine de la Courtade has a fascinating location, being one of just three estates on the Ile de Porquerolles. Made from 97% Mourvèdre and 3% Syrah, this wine’s aromas are peppery and spicy with tones of rocket, leading to stewed fruits and the scent of cherries. The taste, at first firm young tannins, develops a certain sweetness, before comes liquorice, cloves and ripe cherry flavours. Delicious!

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

FASHION

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GOLF CHIC

Golf, once the home of the naffest fashion on the planet, is experiencing a makeover fit to revolutionise even the most staid clubhouses, says Josh Sims

above: Swedish star Alex Noren - fully branded at the Qatar Masters, Doha Golf Club, Doha, Qatar right: Oliver Wilson cuts a dash during the first round of the Qatar Masters

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

Recent years may have been good for golf, but they have been terrible for golf style. Back in the 50s and 60s - heyday of pros Arnold Palmer and Gary Player and fairway-loving celebs Bob Hope and Bing Crosby - the plaid trousers, soft short-sleeved shirt and cardigan may not have been catwalk quality, but they had a distinctive panache. Certainly, they were a long way from the beaten chinos and saggy polo shirts that have dominated the greens in recent years. But a revolution is underway on the fairway. Sportswear giants such as Nike and Puma have entered the market, with designer names such as Boss Green label, J.Lindeberg Future Sport, Zegna Sport, Pringle, Tommy Hilfiger and Dior also launching golf clothing lines. Meanwhile, British luxury goods brand Dunhill, which sponsors an annual Links tournament in Scotland, has launched its Dunhill Links technical golf wear collection with shirts that help keep you cool, trousers that stretch for the big swing and jackets that breathe. As Dunhillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s head of menswear Carlos de Freitas says: â&#x20AC;&#x153;This represents a design challenge. Golf is at a point where performance clothing

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Designers like to make products that have a purpose and look great, especially as more brands are looking at the technical aspects

right: Sweden’s Henrik Stenson does his bit for Boss during the Qatar Masters

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

and every day clothing crosses over. Designers like to make products that have a purpose and look great, especially as more brands are looking at the technical aspects.” Golf as a culture is catching up. “It’s now a misconception that golf is just a sport for people of a certain age with the time to play it,” says de Freitas, who has recently taken up the sport, now the world’s fastestgrowing recreational pastime with some 10 million people taking it up in the last 15 years in the US alone. Certainly, golf has almost performed a complete about-change in terms of image, from the chosen sport of the curmudgeonly and retired to that of the youthful and edgy. The Beastie Boys, Alice Cooper and Samuel L Jackson are avid fans and ‘urban golf’ - played through inner-city back streets using soft balls - has become an extreme sport phenomenon. Hip magazines from Bogey to Putt have introduced golf to the kind of audience for whom getting around a course in style is as important as getting around it under par. Even golf pros, in an age in which showmanship, global TV coverage and big sponsorship deals are increasingly part of the sport, are more aware of the need to have a distinctive image. When the US Open begins this June, look for the drivers of fashion as much as those of golf balls. No wonder demand for good-looking golf clothing has increased, or that the likes of trendygolf.com - an online retailer devoted to fashionconscious golf wear lines - is now doing such good business that managing director Ian McCloud thinks the market is in risk of becoming over saturated. It is the genuinely specialist products, “those that can balance functionality, versatility and cool”, that will still be around in a few years, he believes. Clearly, the market is strong right now due to the fact that golf clothing has a certain retro appeal that is in keeping with menswear’s current fascination with heritage, authenticity and the 1960s. Scottish knitwear brand Lyle & Scott has re-lauched its golf wear line for this season in keeping with classic cuts such as the v-neck sweater worn by Sean Connery in Goldfinger. Meanwhile, Original Penguin, a golf wear line launched in 1955 and a hit with the likes of Hope and Crosby, has also been re-launched to include a new Penguin Black range of more directional pieces stocked by a number of leading fashion stores internationally. “There’s an awareness that golf is a leisure sport, so why dress as though you’re going to the track?” says Original Penguin’s president Chris Colby. The new culture is leading to the creation of a growing selection of dedicated golf clothing brands offering a directional style; golf crossed with street wear aimed at subverting clubhouse etiquette and more akin to the often outlandish style of golfers 50 years ago. US brand Tattoo Golf offers what it calls ‘aggressive golf wear’, its polo shirts, long-sleeve T-shirts and even hoodies and beanie hats coming with tattoo prints and the brand’s skull and cross bones logo. For the lady player, Tattoo Golf also offers ‘chick gear’. None of it would be quite right at St.Andrew’s, but it suits the fashion-conscious young who are increasingly drawn to a sport that, not so long ago, they would have considered more apt for their grandfathers. UK brands like Williams Golfwear, which is bringing back the bright colours and bold checks of golf’s post-war style, and labels like Bunker

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INTERVIEW

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

York

FASHION

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above: Henrik Stenson comes over all plaid for Boss Boss Green, available at Fenwick, Newcastle

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Mentality and Refugees are growing, the latter offering witty polo shirts embroidered with a parody of a clubhouse crest, trousers with ‘cheat’ pockets (slots so you can surreptitiously drop a ball onto the green through your trouser leg) and eco-friendly tops that may serve as a reminder that golf courses are not always very environmentally-sound places. It also offers disposable golf bags, black golf balls and golf ball warmers using high-tech, heat-absorbing fabric, suggesting that the whole attitude of golf may be facing an innovative makeover. “The makeover is happening,” says Refugees founder Peter Gorse. “The fact that the bigger fashion brands are now getting into the market speaks volumes. Golf wear is moving on in terms of style - there’s a huge choice out there and the etiquette of what can be worn on the courses is easing up. The pros are dressing more distinctively now and the clubs are aware of the need to attract new members - members who want to be able to wear what they want.” n

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arm candy

Not all quality watch companies are the product of generations of family horolophiles painstakingly engaged on building an international reputation, or of a lonely, ageing individual toiling over exquisite oneoffs in an attic, as Bell & Ross proves

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Rare: Instrument Br 01-92 Radar - a limited edition of 500

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EQUIPMENT

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EQUIPMENT

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Technical watches last in terms of looks as well as make. For us, it’s about not having superfluous detail. There’s nothing on these watches that is useless

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The little-known name of Bell & Ross may only be a teenager against the brand giants of the watch world, but it is already ranked highly among watch aficionados for its products’ design and craftsmanship and is worn by the discreet for stealth wealth understatement. It also boasts its own benchmark innovations, including timepiece ‘complications’; those totems of haute horlogerie. What is more unexpected is that its founder and CEO is only just over 40. Carlo Rosillo (of the ‘Ross’ in the brand name) studied business at a French university and within four years of graduating had joined up with design manager Bruno Belamich (of the ‘Bell’) to launch the company. “It was just a passion,” says Rosillo. “And you can’t really resist that. And although it was risky, now I’m very glad that I did it.” Indeed, Bell & Ross has established an enviable position in the watch world. Young, it has so far been able to follow its philosophy without wavering, giving its collections a coherent, signature style and unadorned good looks. Unadorned because that is the essence of these watches. They are pared down and functional, classic rather than fashionable and have exceptionally clear, large dials. Their beefy dimensions are something other brands have embraced recently more as a trend, which, in turn, has already given Bell & Ross’ BR01 something of a cult status. More than that, their watches’ legibility has given Bell & Ross, Rosillo says half jokingly, a particular popularity among the 60 to 80-yearold market. “Fashion watches are in and out in six months,” says Rosillo. “Like Jeeps in the car world, technical watches last in terms of looks as well as make. For us, it’s all about not having superfluous detail. There’s nothing on these watches that is useless. You might say there’s not much colour to them, for instance. But until we find that colour has a real function, there won’t be.” This Bauhausian form-follows-function aesthetic stems from the company’s origins. In 1992 it began by collaborating with the Sinn company to design and make instrument panels and clocks for the aeronautic and space industries, its products finding a warm reception from professionals who depended

on clear time-keeping - astronauts, pilots and divers. (In fact, the BR01, a big, square watch based on an aircraft instrument panel, is something of a nod to the company’s heritage). Two years later, Bell & Ross decided there was room to turn this into a watch business. It began by launching its Space 1, a re-edition of the first automatic chronograph worn in space in 1983 by the German astronaut Reinhart Furrer on SpaceLab. Indeed, such was its growing reputation among adventurous types that two years later Bell & Ross was asked by the French Security Service to create the Type Demineur for its bomb disposal teams. With its non- and anti-magnetic case (a magnetic one might, inconveniently, cause a bomb to explode), this not only gave Bell & Ross some expertise in making exceptionally good value watches (government agencies being keen not to spend too much on their personnel - Bell & Ross watches retail from E1,000 to E20,000) but was the company’s first watch innovation. “We even like to think that, while heritage is held in high esteem by much of the watch industry for some reason, a lack of heritage is actually an advantage for us,” adds Rosillo. “Heritage can be a burden, especially if you have a back catalogue with a few crap designs. It can create an approach you feel compelled to follow. We’ve been free to start

Bold: The BR02-carbon finish

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Bling: BR02-Pink Gold Carbon finish

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with a clean product and a clean operation. This gives room for innovation.” There has been plenty of that out of Bell & Ross’ hi-tech manufacturing plant in La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland. Aside from watches beautiful for their simplicity, such as the Vintage 123 - part of the company’s best-selling collection - there is the first watch with a jumping hour and power reserve (the Vintage JH), designed in collaboration with master watchmaker Vincent Calabrese, and a telescopic crown system, by which the screw-down crown descends entirely into the thickness of the watchcase. The brand has also created a diver’s watch (the Diver TE) with a capsule that shows the amount of moisture absorbed by the intensity of its colour; and the Hydro Challenger and Max models ingeniously have cases filled with a special oil-based liquid that not only makes these divers’ watches completely water-resistant, but prevents refraction, allowing them to be read accurately at any angle underwater. And that, by the way, is a long way underwater - unintentionally, the Hydromax now has the world record for a deep-sea watch, at 11,100m. While recent years have seen the launch of military watches, as well as the BR01 in various versions (including an unexpectedly bling, diamond-covered version), further innovations are promised. The latest hot ticket? The BR02 carbon-finished diving watch, another icon in the making, from a company that seems to take delight in bucking expectations. “The launch of Bell & Ross was difficult for much of the industry to understand I think,” Rosillo says. “What were we about? Where had we come from? But we captured the interest of people who love watches, and that has always been motivating. I mean, does the tradition of a watch brand really depend on how long you’ve been around, or how quickly you consolidate your philosophy? “I don’t know the answer,” he adds. “But I do know that we’re often thought of as being much older than we are. And then you look at a lot of other companies that have been around for decades and you wonder where they’re going. In troubled times you have to keep your direction, whether it seems to suit those times or not.” n

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17/3/10

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MOTORING

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MOTORING

HUNGARY FOR SPEED

Chris Porter puts one of Ferrari’s new thoroughbreds, the 599 GTB Fiorano, through its paces on an exhilarating journey from London to Budapest. A tough job, but someone had to do it… Sight-seeing is not best done at 150 mph, even if there are a lot of sights along the road from London to Budapest. But when you’re sitting in a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano - Ferrari’s most powerful road car in its class to date, exceeding the punch of even its legendary F40 - free of speed limits on the German autobahn and still short of the 50 cents piece you needed for the toilets at the last petrol stop, well, the temptation is simply too much. This, after all, is a car that will get you from 0-60 in a sphincter-clenching 3.7 seconds. Oh look, there goes another picturesque castle. There, in a blur, was an ancient monastery. There an Alpine range or two. We could pack a lot more in. Indeed, this Ferrari, built to retain the racing engineering of purer sports Ferraris, but with the luxury of a touring car, has a top speed in excess of 205mph. It’s just that, at around 150mph, while you know the car can do more, you’re sure that you can’t. It is at speeds not much greater than this that F1 racing drivers are said to have out-of-body experiences - and I feel like I’m starting to float. Not for nothing has the Ferrari design team given the 599 a central grip for what it euphemistically calls ‘extra passenger purchase’; aka hanging on for dear life. >> The grip is leather-clad, as are the seats, styled to hold the seat of the driver’s pants - by which he may well be driving - firmly in place, without sacrificing comfort. It is just one of the details that Ferrari is now putting into its cars in a bid to develop the

touring market, all too aware perhaps that those models with the F1 looks and the bumpy rides may look the part, but hardly make for leisurely driving. And with Germany the company’s key European market, followed by the UK, the touring market (thanks especially to the Channel Tunnel) is a growing one. It may be more convenient to take the Eurostar or to fly across Europe - but for those with the five days to spare, not to mention a greater love of high torque and engine pitch than small talk and stunning scenery, Ferrari is certainly one way to do it. Just expect to overshoot the occasional motorway exit. You may also make some friends, as wherever you go, a new Ferrari seems to draw crowds and congratulations. ‘Wow!’ is a seemingly

international word of appreciation, strangers want to shake your hand as though you’ve just cured cancer, and the driver (even one who has borrowed the car) basks in the glory reflected off the polished bonnet. But this is all when you’re stationary, of course, and that’s not often. The drive may take in diversions on a whim, but first stop might be Mayschoss, through the red grape vineyards of the Rhine valley and on through the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Rhine Gorge and up into the more mountainous terrain of Austria. It may take in Schloss Neuschwanstein, the 19th Century Bavarian palace and inspiration for Sleeping Beauty’s Disney castle, or Schloss Linderhof, King Ludwig II’s scaled-down take on Versailles. Via Salzburg and Lake Wolfgang, snowy peaks looming over its crystal surface, you might take the Danube river route via Melk Abbey and then onto Sopron, on the Austrian/Hungarian border. From there, next stop will be Budapest and its 1,100 years of history, not to mention, being Europe’s largest spa town, its 80 thermal springs and 12 medicinal baths. This will be a journey of both grey motorway straights and winding routes through verdant valleys, all accompanied by a distinctive Ferrari gurgle, and there is no getting away from the fact that, after this amount of driving, the destination could not be better chosen. For you may be in need of a massage, despite having rocketed along in one of Ferrari’s new breed of comfy car. “We’re acknowledging that there are drivers

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MOTORING

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who don’t want a car they may only get to use a few times a year on the track - they want a Ferrari in terms of sportiness, but also one they can use every day, or go away in for the weekend,” says Ferrari’s brand director Dany Bahar. “So, looking forward, there will be a change in the mix of cars from Ferrari. We’ll always be in the sports car sector, but if >> you segment it between extreme sports cars and grand tourers, I think we will see more GTs.” Indeed, the emphasis on touring is a new side of the prancing horse and part of something of a brand overhaul. Ferrari claims that the credit crunch has nothing to do with this, though it must have been taken aback by the 700 or so secondhand Ferraris that came onto the market in the week after the closure of Lehman Brothers. But it is having to respond to a changing world in which, potentially, for financial and environmental reasons, the end of the era of the super-sports car is nigh. The company is, for example, producing more ‘eco-friendly’ cars - its newest, just-launched model, the Ferrari California, also a GT, producing 25% fewer emissions than its other contemporary models. Ferrari concedes that this is still a lot - though its target is to build engines by 2012 that reduce emissions by 40% on its 2007 levels. The company is maximising branding opportunities also: Ferrari is on track to being as much a lifestyle brand as an automotive one, with 20% of its margins now accounted for by Ferrari-branded clothing, leather goods, fragrances, models, memorabilia, sportswear

in association with Fila and, the latest tie-in, audio equipment with Meridian. To this end, until 2009 saw the opening of the first Ferrari shop in the UK, on London’s Regent Street; one of 24 now around the world. And this year, residents of Abu Dhabi will get even more: the first Ferrari theme park, €600m’s worth. “The world of Ferrari is made up of those who own a Ferrari on the one hand and those who love them - the Ferraristas,” says Bahar. “The core business may always be about making exclusive sports cars, selling less than the market demands, but there is also a space for other products with the same values as the brand. “We have to be careful which products we license and choose very carefully the products we launch, not diluting the value of the brand, regardless of the commercial success it might have. But Ferrari is something more than a car manufacturer now.” Certainly, it has always been a provider of memorable experiences that go beyond what is, for most people, the routine necessity of getting from A to B. The lorry spill becomes the great leveller - when traffic grinds to a stand-still a Ferrari is denuded of its purpose and is little better to be in than a Trabant. And in a five-day drive, a few jams might be expected. But when the road clears, the skies are blue and the scenery spectacular, the Ferrari comes into its own and 40 hours of driving suddenly seems like an adventure - albeit at some acceleration - rather than a chore. n www.ferrari.com

This will be a journey of both grey motorway straights and winding routes through verdant valleys, all accompanied by a distinctive Ferrari gurgle

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

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MOTORING

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MATCH OF THE DAY From ﬂoppy-haired pop star (almost), to football agent and now successful marketing agency head, Andy Hobson scores in business by playing to his own tune, says Peter Baber If I had a pound for every time an entrepreneur I have interviewed has told me they started off in life wanting to be a pop star, I would be as rich as some of them are now. I suppose it’s not entirely unexpected. After all, the courage you need to stand up in front of an unknown and usually sceptical crowd at a gig is probably similar to that needed to stand up in front of an unknown and usually sceptical crowd of would-be investors. But it certainly gives the lie to those minor pop

stars of the 1980s who used to claim they were against capitalism. (I can’t actually think of a better example of ruthless capitalism in action than the music industry, but there hangs another article.) Andy Hobson is a fine example of someone who made the switch. He is currently managing director of Batley-based Fantastic Media, a full-service marketing agency whose clients include both Leeds United and Huddersfield Town. But back in the early

ENTREPRENEUR 1990s he was in a band called Maple Park, with the requisite Happy Mondays-style floppy hairstyle and centre parting. And yes, he was the lead singer. The band was, he says, reasonably good. “We played in the Duchess of York in Leeds, which was a well-known venue then, supporting people like the Charlatans,” he says. “But looking back now I knew we were never going to be good enough. But then you think you are. I’m better at what I do now than I was at singing.” What makes Hobson stand out, however, is that having already spent some time trying to make a name for himself in a notoriously competitive industry, he was perfectly ready to dust himself down and have another go in another equally competitive field – football. Not playing football, but consulting football club owners – hardly the most welcoming people – on how they should market their assets. It is, perhaps, a good illustration of his extreme confidence. “I left school at 16,” he says, “I wasn’t studious. But one of my real skills was having the confidence to mix at different levels without being intimidated by the top table or the bottom table.” The timing was crucial. It was 1992, when football clubs were suddenly coming into loads of money thanks in part to Sky and other satellite channels trying to get broadcast rights. Or, as Hobson himself puts it: “Football clubs had gone from being places where fans on the terraces urinated down the back of your leg to being awash with cash. I felt I had to be a part of that.” The particular path he chose was to offer his services to the clubs as a consultant on stadium design and marketing – something at the time, he admits, he knew very little about, and had to read up on. “I had to position myself as being an authority,” he says. “I was self-taught, but fortunately there weren’t many other people who had marketing experience in sport in Britain. In the USA there were - they were years ahead of us. But not in the UK. So there was a career opportunity.” He says clubs were telling him where to go “all the time”. “But it didn’t knock me back. And some did invite me in.” It would be remiss not to point out, of course,

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that some of these clubs have since suffered severe financial pressures, if not total bankruptcy, thanks to the collapse of ITV Digital and other firms. Hobson blames this not so much on the clubs’ advisers – he himself never gave financial advice - but on the banks who were prepared to lend huge amounts of money to the clubs for development before the clubs had actually received what had been promised by the satellite channels. “In football, the Premier League is the big pot,” he says. “ITV Digital thought the combined strength of Leagues 1, 2, 3 would be as big, but it was nowhere near as big. They gave out too much money to too many clubs. The clubs didn’t care about it. They took the £300,000 a year and thought ‘Great!’ The only problem was that the payment was in stages, so they borrowed from the banks. Then there were people like NTL who bought all the web rights to all 72 clubs below the Premiership. It was ten years too early. If they had done it now they would have had a chance.” Eventually, Hobson proved so successful at what he was doing that he was taken on by National Superdome, an organisation that was trying to win the contract to build the new national stadium in Bradford, rather than Wembley. Hobson says he was aware just how rapidly he had progressed. “Everybody who has any job in business will at some stage think, ‘how the hell have I landed this one?’” he says. “But if you are any good at it you will continue. I was in the House of Lords lobbying for our cause, and I was only 21 with an earring.” Such work, although ultimately unsuccessful, brought him to the attention of Tony Stephens, the legendary soccer agent behind such big names as David Platt, David Beckham, and Alan Shearer. Hobson spent a couple of years working with him, and remembers in particular the day Alan Shearer signed for Newcastle. Stephens was so worried about the press finding out – it was widely speculated that Shearer was about to sign for Manchester United – that the deal took place at Hobson’s house, with Kevin Keegan also in attendance. “They had snatched Shearer from under Sir Alex Ferguson’s nose,” he says. “It was then

the biggest transfer deal ever. From there, we went to watch Bryan Adams. We were actually in Manchester United’s box. They were all saying, ‘Hi Alan’, because they assumed he was coming to play for them. The real story didn’t come out until weeks later.” Moving in such high circles, he says, has given him security for life. “I can probably confidently say I will never be without a job for the rest of my life, even if Fantastic Media fails,” he says. He has got to such a position by networking, he says, wheeling out the old adage that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. But does he think that’s fair? Does he think it’s right that people should be making important business decisions – the marketing agency to use, for example – based on the relatively small number of people they know, rather than anything more empirical? “No, I don’t suppose it is fair,” he says. “But everybody has the chance to get to know people.” Look at his story, he says. He comes from a very ordinary background, although he is very keen to point out that it was not poor. He says he hates people who “play up” about coming out of deprivation. “My dad was an electrician, my mum had a job, we had a decent car, a typical house, nice Christmas, loving parents. But my parents were never able to network with people who could have influenced my career, so I took it upon myself to do that. If you look at Sky Sports, every one of Sky Sports presenters bar 20% are the children of footballers, golfers, and so on. It is the way of the world. If you get a chance you would give your children a helping hand. “But it is certainly not true to say you can’t get in anywhere unless you know people. You can create opportunities such as Tony Stephens. It was my aim to get to know him and bump into him. It was the same with Dean Hoyle: the first person he bumped into when he took over Huddersfield Town happened to be me.” Given the illustrious circles he was moving in, however, you can’t help wondering why he chose to leave the world of being a football agent and go into marketing. In particular, to launch a business which, alongside helping Leeds United and Huddersfield Town, also works with what his former football colleagues

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ENTREPRENEUR

Other agencies just daren’t say that lead generation is the key, so there is an opportunity for me to clear up here

might think of as more mundane outfits Chadwick Lawrence lawyers, for example, or budget retailer Bon Marche. But Hobson has no regrets at all. “I found I was always working for somebody else in football,” he says. “The football agent’s world is also getting worse and worse. It’s not a nice environment to be in. Also, as soon as a new owner comes into a football club everyone leaves. The average life expectancy is about 2.4 years. I was offered positions by clubs before, but I knew there wasn’t the stability. Now I have the best of both worlds – consulting two football clubs, but they don’t have to take on board what I say and I can walk away from it. I have a well-respected, proper business. I want to be a professional person, with results, that people feel they are getting value for money for.” Fantastic is actually the second marketing agency Hobson set up – he worked for seven

years with partners at design agency Atom before deciding to set up again on his own. “I just didn’t feel Atom was delivering what I wanted to deliver, which was strategy, marketing, and results,” he says. But results are clearly a key objective for Hobson, which probably explains why within four years the agency has gone from a turnover of £400,000 to £1.3m. “And that’s without any printing or buying,” he says. “Just a hell of a lot of retainers.” Fantastic’s key values, he says, are people and offering value for money. Many other agencies would say the same. But where he differs from many of his peers is by insisting that marketing is first and foremost about lead generation. Other agencies will insist that other issues – brand awareness and so on – come first. “Other agencies just daren’t say that lead generation is the key,” he says. “So there is an opportunity for me to clear up here. People

used to say, ‘it’s just marketing, isn’t it? And hopefully someone will hear about us’. But those days are gone.” This has led to some unusually forthright marketing campaigns, such a billboard campaign for Huddersfield Town that Hobson persuaded Hoyle to do shortly after he joined. It featured Hoyle himself looking out with the words: ‘You buy the season ticket, we’ll buy the players’. “That’s a bold statement for a new owner,” says Hobson. “But you can’t expect football fans to keep buying season tickets; you have to give them a reason. We have had a 26% rise in season tickets after that advert.” And last year he went on holiday with Hoyle. Results, of course, are also something he watches internally. “I have to see results with everything my staff do,” he says. “So if my staff are working for a client, I am internally monitoring them before they go to the client. They go to the client every month, but first they present to me.” It is an attitude like that, he says, which has meant Fantastic has not seen any client walk away during the recession. The agency was hit by the collapse of training company Crag Rats (although Hobson successfully negotiated to be reimbursed by British Aerospace, who were the ultimate client anyway), but no one has gone elsewhere. And he still believes there is extra work to be done in the region. Perhaps surprisingly for someone with such a background in sport, he is not at all swayed by the thought of chasing work that is related to the Olympics. “I don’t see any opportunities there, or in Dubai, or India, or any of these places people are flying off to,” he says. “Call me old-fashioned, but I think I have a hell of a lot of work to do sweeping up in Yorkshire. There are plenty of sub-£50m companies in Yorkshire before I have to go anywhere else.” So will nothing tempt him back? Well, he admits that he might be more interested in getting more sport-related business if England wins the bid to host the World Cup. But for the time being, he is very happy growing Fantastic as it is. “I am very passionate about this,” he says, “and I might not be any good at doing anything else.” n

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

INTERVIEW

SPRING 10

buying brains for business You might be surprised to discover that a recruitment firm was the fastest growing company in Yorkshire last year. But Peter Baber says any surprise quickly disappears when you meet its founder The past year’s recession should have been a boom time for those who have made a career out of helping out companies in distress. Those thick-skinned individuals who seem to arrive one morning with their sleeves already rolled up, ready to tackle the worst issues any sick company is facing, then equally ready to jet off as soon as the worst is over. A role, in short, not unlike that of George Clooney in his recent hit Up in the Air, although we are talking about much more than just the nasty issue of firing people. But turnaround managers have been having slim pickings of late, according to Doug Baird, managing director of Harrogate-based Interim Partners. “I went to a meeting of turnaround managers last May and I was surprised how many of them weren’t in work,” he says. “They said it was the quietest time they had known for five years. The situation might be changing in the months to come, but it still won’t grow as much as we had hoped.” He thinks there are a number of reasons for this seemingly contradictory state of affairs. The banks, in having their own issues, haven’t necessarily been as active as they might once have been in bringing in turnaround managers at the first sign of trouble, he says. The fact that such a dearth of turnaround

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work has made little if any impact on Interim Partners’ bottom line is a mark of just how well-established the agency has become in seven years, and a mark of how it is now providing a wide range of interim managers, and not just those suited to wielding the knife. “We now work just as much in HR,” says Baird. “We could, for example, have a client whose HR director is leaving. They know it will take them up to six months to identify a new one, but as the current one is leaving in a month, they need someone to fill the interim.” The company once again made it into the Sunday Times’ Fast Track 100 list of the fastest growing companies in the UK in 2009, in 26th place. Although that is down 13 positions from the ranking the company achieved in 2008, it is still the best performance for any company in Yorkshire, and Baird has no doubt that it is an outstanding achievement. “The more you grow,” he says, “the harder it is to grow at the same rate.” He is also happy to admit that the table is not a be-all and end-all. It is based on sales growth over three years. Interim Partners has seen sales rise from £1m in 2005/6 to £9.4m in 2008/9 – an increase of 110.5% par annum. But the listing is based on publicly available information only, with researchers left to contact any company which submits

abbreviated accounts to Companies House which they have reason to believe may show a sparkling performance. So it is just possible that there might be a small company out there – either in Yorkshire or elsewhere – which has grown more quickly. But that’s unlikely. And in any case, Baird has many other figures to fall back on as well. “I could say that our turnover is now past the £10m mark, but for a contracting agency like ours that is not really relevant,” he says. “What is important is the fee income, and that rose by 11% in the darkest part of the recession.” He has other goals to aspire to now as well. “Innocent Drinks made it on to the Fast Track list for five years,” he says. “That is a record and a benchmark.” Certainly if a specialist services company like Interim Partners can emulate the story of the three former college buddies who got together to supply smoothies to the world, that will be something Baird can be proud of. But how on earth has Interim managed to pull this off at a time like this? After all, the recruitment industry around the country has been savaged by the recession. We only have to look examples like Whitehead Mann, which closed its Leeds office early last year after 40 years in the city, and shortly afterwards had to seek rescue by way of a merger with Korn Ferry. Baird, meanwhile, has just launched Brightpool, a new arm to his business that, instead of offering interim managers at between £500 and £2,000 a day, aims to supply more junior contractors at around £300 a day. He says Interim’s success is mainly down to the fact that it is not a traditional search and

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selection agency. Right from the start in 2003 it has only been offering interim managers. Traditional search and selection agencies incur most of their costs at the front end of their work in trying to find suitable candidates. Interim Partners, by contrast, just has to look up availability on a database it has been building up over the past few years, detailing what interim managers and potential interim managers are currently available. Such an approach also helped in the beginning, he says, particularly in the first two years when Interim didn’t really have an office. (It moved into its current premises in The Exchange, Harrogate’s tallest office building, in 2005). “Bearing in mind that we mainly deal with larger companies,” he says, “if I had initially gone to them and said, ‘we can do this and that for you’, people may have said, ‘thanks very much, but we already have a relationship with Korn Ferry or Heidrick & Struggles’. But we were saying, ‘fine, you can have a relationship with your search firm, because we are offering something different. You can use them to get your next chief executive, but if you want a very good interim next week we can find them’.” So the new agency found a way in. Only in the past year with the launch of Brightpool has this offer in any way expanded. Interim Partners found initial success in placing interims into troubled Yorkshire Chemicals and Minorplanet. The former may no longer be with us, but Baird says the management he installed recouped significantly more for the company’s investors than would ever likely have been the case had it just been allowed to peter out of its own accord. Minorplanet, similarly, has just announced a £7.2m annual loss after what it calls a “rollercoaster ride” last year. But the company has been through the mill before, and Baird says his appointed managers helped to turn it around then. The success of this led to many other big name companies calling on the agency’s services, and even by this time not just in the field of turnaround. “Premier Foods bought Campbells and wanted to integrate the two companies,” says Baird. “So we brought in programme directors who were so successful that we were called back to put in a whole raft

INTERVIEW

Bucking trends: Doug Baird, of Interim Partners, has a successful business, even in recession

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

INTERVIEW

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of interim managers when they took over Rank Hovis McDougall. We put 20-odd managers into Co-operative Financial Services when they were restructuring a few years ago. “We have also worked with big utilities like United Utilities, retailers like Morrisons, and financial services companies such as Aviva. We have just signed a deal with Royal & Sun Alliance to be an exclusive provider of interim managers for it.” Nor is that boast about being able to provide a manager within a week an idle one. Baird says the company can if necessary find a suitable candidate for a client within 48 hours. “Our main ingredient is availability,” he says. “Clients usually need the successful candidate to start in the next couple of weeks.” Although he says that could mean someone who only makes up “seven out of 10 on a shopping list of client’s needs”, he insists that does not mean people who opt for interim managers necessarily sacrifice quality for speed. Not, at least, if they come through Interim Partners. The company tracks promising candidates, who are encouraged to update details on their database to say not just whether they are or are not available, but also whether they are likely to become available in the next few weeks. “So it’s not a case of saying we can’t get what you need. We can start building a picture as soon as a client appoints us so that when they say, ‘we need someone like that’, we can suggest someone,” he says. There is usually no problem in terms of referencing people either. “We have already met people,” he says. “We meet possible candidates on a contingency basis, so we have already referenced them.” So what kind of person makes the ideal interim manager – for whatever role? Baird says there are between 1,500 and 2,000 “high quality people” on the database – career interim managers, really – and then a further 10,000 “in the market on the edges”. “We are really looking for people who have had good quality careers, with good achievements. They might, for example, have been involved in buying or re-engineering businesses. They really have to show what has led them along the path to want to be an agent of change. It is a big step if they have

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been in a steady spot for 20 years.” That said, the agency doesn’t really turn people away, if they don’t have such experience, or if the experience they have is in smaller businesses which tend to fall outside Interim Partners’ focus. “With such people it’s really a case of lowering expectations,” says Baird, “and finding out what they plan to do in the meantime. There are people we will want to work with closely, while with others we may not want to let on that they are outside of our field. But sometimes clients want somebody with a steady state role, or perhaps the right sector experience.” Whatever kind of experience they have, one thing that unites many of Interim’s candidates is their age and stage in life. With contracts lasting anything between three months and a year, but with candidates seemingly able to be on hand to pick up a job almost at a moment’s notice, it’s clear that most candidates won’t need to be working to earn an income every day of the year. Baird admits that many of them are semi-retired. “Our audience is aged

between 40 and 65,” he says, “although the average age of an interim manager is getting lower. We do have to be careful with our language.” That’s a reference to new laws on age discrimination: originally brought in to protect older people, Baird says that in Interim’s case they actually mean the agency has to be careful not to discriminate against younger people. It no longer advertises for “experienced” people. Instead its adverts spell out exactly what kind of experience the post will require. But he says that is only a minor hurdle for the company. Nor is he unduly worried about imminent cuts in the public sector. Although public sector work currently only makes up around 10% of business and is unlikely to go much above that, his focus is very much on increasing Interim’s profile in the public sector, while it is one of the targets for new offshoot Brightpool as well. “We see potential cuts in the public sector as an opportunity for us to introduce people with private sector disciplines to reduce costs and understand how you gain efficiencies,” he says. For he believes the fall-out from the past recession means the interim manager’s time has really come, and that can only be good for the agency. “There will be shift change about how people hire,” he says. “Businesses will want to invest in a flexible resource at senior level much more so than they would have done in the past. Twenty years ago, if I had said, ‘would you engage a temporary chief executive?’ you would have laughed. But it’s part of the language of business now, for any type of organisation. If there is a group HR director out there who doesn’t know what interim management is, I would be very surprised. Our job is not about educating the market any more, it’s about showing them that we are the best.” The agency’s results might suggest as much. But Baird is not stopping there. “We are only at the beginning of our journey,” he says. “We had a five-year plan to get to £10m in 2007, and reached that in 2009. In the next five years I hope Brightpool will be turning over £50m, and Interim Managers £25m.” This is certainly one driven man. n

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COMPANY PROFILE

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10 08/04/2010 10:28

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SPRING 10

QUEEN OF SHOPS

The Victoria Quarter, an upmarket shopping centre that has become a mark of Leeds’ transformation, is 20 years old later this year. Peter Baber finds out what makes it tick

Later this year a couple of streets in the city centre of Leeds that in recent years have taken on a much bigger role in promoting the city than their relative size on the map would suggest will be celebrating 20 years in their new-look format. The Victoria Quarter, the upmarket centre that has enabled Leeds to call itself the Knightsbridge of the North for so long that some people (this writer included) think the phrase is in danger of being hackneyed, is 20 years old. By way of an early birthday present the centre has also just released figures that show Christmas 2009 was its best season ever. And while shopping centres elsewhere may be struggling, some 1.1 million people came through the centre’s doors in December 2009. That’s a very healthy 16.6 per cent increase on the year before. Centre director John Bade adds: “We found very different trends from previous years. Usually there are highs and lows with early and last minute shoppers, but this year was more of a plateau, with a steady stream week on week.” He adds that the December figures follow on from a good year all round. “We were up 3% on last year as a whole,” he says. “We were slightly above the year before’s figures right up until October, when there was a slight dip and I started to worry that Christmas was not

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going to be as good as we expected. But then it got going and it was exceptional. And the January sales were even better.” Some people might be surprised that the centre has been in existence for 20 years. To many, the 250,000sq ft centre really only came on the scene when Harvey Nichols arrived to take over the largest 50,000sq ft unit there in 1996. But the new-look centre had already been running for six years before that, having opened to fanfare in October 1990. It was already fully let when Edina and Patsy’s favourite store came looking to open its first store outside London. Bade, who has been centre director for all of those 20 years, says: “In many ways we did it the wrong way round: we opened without an anchor tenant, whereas Harvey Nichols is very much the anchor tenant now.” It’s strange that all this should have come about with the glazing over of Queen Victoria Street, now one of the centre’s main arcades, in the late 1980s. By that time the Prudential had acquired the land for the site, and Bade says it was the Pru that really spotted the potential. “Theirs was quite a radical plan in the 1980s. But it showed much foresight,” he says. The glazing they chose also fitted in well with the ornate Victorian decoration on surrounding buildings. Of course, the streets themselves go back

much further than 20 years. In the 19th Century, the part of the site nearest to Vicar Lane was a jumble of butchers’ stalls and fruit sellers. County Arcade itself was home to a marginally more upmarket bazaar. It operated on two floors – the lower level, entirely staffed by men, sold meat, with the upper level, entirely staffed by women, selling fancy goods and haberdashery. Staff had to follow strict rules: no gossiping, no eating or drinking behind the counter, and no women wearing bonnets. All that was cleared away by the Leeds Estate at the start of the 20th Century. Which left a free hand for Frank Matcham, then one of Britain’s most famous theatre designers who was also responsible for the London Coliseum and London Palladium, to get to work on the decor. It was he who produced the rich mosaics, marbles and wrought ironwork that is still in evidence today. It is this that attracts not just shoppers today, but TV and film companies too. Want to do a feature about how life up north isn’t all grim but is now all about exuberance and spending? Why, get a shot of the fountains in Victoria Quarter with some shopping bag-laden young couple walking past. Jonathan Dimbleby’s recent TV history of Britain is a case in point. But history has not always been so kind to the site. Matcham also built the Empire Palace

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Theatre next door. This still survives in skeletal form as the Harvey Nichols store today, although most of the building was rudely knocked down in the 1960s to make was for what Bade describes as a “hideous” office block that didn’t last long. And he says that although buses still ran up and down Queen Victioria Street right up until the 1970s when it was pedestrianised, it didn’t take long for the street to fall into disrepair after that. By the time the Prudential came along, and Bade was appointed centre director, it had fallen into disrepair. “It had a lot of smaller shops,” he says, “and all the shop fronts had gone.” They opened the new-look centre in October 1990 with just three shops – Aspecto, which is still in the centre today, a gift shop whose owner only retired at the end of last year, and a card shop which did not last long. Anyone in retail property will tell you today it’s the classic thing not to do. “The last thing you want to do is build a centre and open it when it is half empty,” says David Thompson, retail director at DTZ. But nevertheless, he says he can “only say positive things” about the Victoria Quarter, which despite such an unlikely start rapidly became a focus of attention to the point where it was indeed fully let by 1996 when Harvey Nichols opened. That event is still celebrated today of course. “Leeds is still quite proud to have been the first place outside London to have attracted Harvey Nichols,” says Thompson. “These retailers usually work down the top ten locations in Britain to find a new site, and Leeds was certainly proud to have got there ahead of Manchester.” The store chimed with such thinking and at the time it ran a series of adverts with the tagline, “Harvey Nichols Leeds, others follow”. Thompson says the more recent success of the Victoria Quarter still shows the significance of having an anchor store like this. “That’s especially true in a down time like this,” he says, “because if you are living in the north and you want to shop at somewhere like Harvey Nichols, you can only go to Leeds or to Manchester. You can’t go to Sheffield or York.” Michael Pettibone, asset manager at Bank of

Grand: The glazed arches of the Victoria Quarter lend it a spectacular aspect

If you live in the north and you want to shop at somewhere like Harvey Nichols, you have to go to Leeds or to Manchester

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Ireland Private Banking, which manages the store on behalf of its current owners, a group of Irish high net worth individuals, adds that, 14 years down the line, it is unlikely that Harvey Nichols would move away again. “It is a very strongly performing store for Harvey Nichols. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I am sure if it were possible they would love more space.” But both he and Bade insist that, aside from Harvey Nichols, it is the attention they have given to the tenant mix – the Vivienne Westwoods, Louis Vuittons and Ted Bakers who have followed in the footsteps of Harvey Nichols – that is the real key to the centre’s success. Bade says attention to the tenant mix started with the Prudential, and continued when Paul Sykes’ Highstone Estates acquired the centre in 2001. “They were probably even keener than the Prudential were,” he says, “and they did turn people away.” The subsequent sale for £124m to the current owners in 2006 must have been a case of Highstone receiving an offer it couldn’t refuse. Bade says at the time it had just won planning permission and approved architects’ drawings to turn some of the upper storey of the centre into serviced flats, similar to the Residence 6 flats Highstone did build above what is now the Restaurant Bar & Grill and Loch Fyne in City Square. The plan was scrapped by the new owners. “I was originally excited by the prospect,” he says, “but we have now allowed our existing shops to expand into the area. North Face and Nicky Clarke now both have more on the second floor than the ground floor.” But the change in owners still made no difference to the approach to tenant mix. Pettibone is proud to point out that in the four years his bank has been managing the centre, and right the way through the current recession, there has been no “downtime” on any unit in the centre at all. Rents may have increased by around 20 per cent, but the new owners have brought in new tenants as well. The Louis Vuitton deal was just going through when he took over. “We have also brought in Paul Smith, which has moved out of its section within Harvey Nichols, while Molton Brown, Reiss and

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

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Vivienne Westwood have all expanded. All Saints have opened a new store. And there are new brands like Jack Wills.” Paul Smith certainly has no regrets about opening a stand-alone shop in 2008. “We are delighted to say that we have established a really great loyal clientele and are very satisfied and proud of our shop,” he says. The All Saints move was a surprise, even for Bade. “I had been thinking that as a company they were expanding beyond the kind of store that wants to be here,” he says. “But in November they took out a second store exclusively for men.” New openings also continued right through 2009. Thomas Sabo, a jewellery designer currently known best for its much-collected charms, opened a corner store in July. “We try to be very selective and exclusive when we chose new locations for our stand-alone boutiques,” managing director Harald Winzer said at the time, “and the Victoria Quarter is one of the loveliest buildings and shopping destinations I am aware of both in the UK and throughout Europe. We are pleased with the good brand mix there.” Pettibone adds that independent retailers are not overlooked either. Besides Aqua Couture, an outlet featured in the first BQ Yorkshire that is now on the point of opening a new store in London, these include gift shop Cadeaux, the Yorkshire Jewellery Centre, and Philip Stoner. “Independent retailers are a really important part of the scheme,” he says. “With centres like this one it is very easy to look at pound signs, but if you do that and nothing else you could destroy what you have. At the same same time, we are not a charity shop.” But there are other external forces at work helping to maintain the Victoria Quarter’s success. One is an absence of anything else much like it in the city centre. Most people say the neighbouring Queen’s Arcade and Thornton’s Arcade have fed off the centre’s success. Bade says there are retailers in there who he knows would like to be in the Victoria Quarter given the chance. And both he and Thompson say development of the Thornton’s Arcade is hampered by its multiple ownership. Whatever the case, comparing these with the Grand Arcade, just 200 yards away but at the

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

Landmark: Harvey Nichols is the jewel in Victoria Quarter’s much-bejewelled crown

It’s one of the loveliest buildings and shopping destinations... in the UK and throughout Europe

moment virtually empty, makes you realise just what has been achieved. Bade thinks Grand Arcade’s problems stem from it being just outside Leeds’ central core. Thompson points out that Leeds also benefits from having several medium-sized centres, such as the Merrion or St John’s Centre, which all cater for different markets. “It’s not like Manchester,” he says, “where the Arndale Centre dominates everything.” Comparison with Manchester is interesting. Despite all the crowing back in 1996, most retailers who have opened in the Victoria Quarter since already had an outlet in Manchester. Thomas Sabo, and at the time Jo Malone, are just two exceptions. Nevertheless, Pettibone says the centre as a whole can stand up to comparison. “In this recession we are seeing a flight to quality. Are we better than the Triangle?” he says, referring to a centre near Manchester Victoria station that was restored in a similar way to the Victoria Quarter. “I am sure we are.” During the recession the Victoria Quarter could also have been seen to have been lucky from the postponement of the building of both the Trinity Quarter and the Eastgate scheme, two shopping centres proposed at the height of the boom. Thompson says these would have been catering for different markets. But it will be interesting now to see if they do, because construction of the Trinity Scheme is back on and its owners, Land Securities and Caddick Developments, expect to open it in 2012. Bade says he is not troubled by that. “You have to think from a Leeds point of view,” he says. “We desperately need Trinity. Eastgate would have filled our niche to a certain extent, but that would have been good for Leeds as well.” Certainly, Pettibone says the Victoria Quarter’s future is rosy. An American who has only been in Europe since 2006, he says the centre “is a joy to work on”. “In my profession you don’t get very many chances like this,” he says. “If you were to plonk this centre down in London, it would be the Royal Exchange or the Burlington Arcade.” There again, if the only other centre you are working on for Bank of Ireland is an out-of-town retail park on Merseyside, most shopping centres would look like bliss. n

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10/03/2010 15:31

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SPRING 10

blue sky thinking Science City York isn’t just boffins in white coats, says Peter Baber. Its remit is much wider – and its success is starting to show

Generating ideas: Science City York’s new chief executive, Prof Nicola Spence

Since 2007 Science City York (SCY), the business support organisation for scientific and knowledge-based businesses in the region, has notched up an impressive track record. In 2008, partly in an attempt to access more funding streams but also to demonstrate its independence, it became a company limited by guarantee. That puts it on a different footing from the other Science City agencies around the country, which were created after SCY was created in 1998 and still sit very much within their respective local councils. The change paid off, because in 2009 SCY

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won two new rounds of funding from the European Regional Development Fund. First a big £19.74m to deliver more than 9,000sq m of new business, laboratory and knowledge exchange space. The agency also won £1.3m in ERDF funding for a programme of intensive assistance for key business personnel within some of the SMEs it supports. The money has enabled it to appoint three business mentors with science and industry backgrounds, who can each work with a maximum of 14 companies for no less than 16 hours a week. That same year – 2009 – also saw the agency

open a centre close to the centre of York for creative industries. The Phoenix Centre has already become the base for 12 new ventures. The agency signed a joint memorandum of understanding with UK Coal in preparation for a bid to build a hi-tech centre for the former North Selby coalfield mine site on the outskirts of York and it finally renegotiated its contract with Yorkshire Forward, which provides much of its funding. In the four years of the previous contract, the agency had assisted 120 businesses and created 54 new ones. It all sounds very impressive. Especially when

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you discover that from mid-2007 until recently it had no chief executive. Richard Hutchins was appointed in 2007, but he left after six weeks for personal reasons (he has since returned to Advantage West Midlands, the regional development agency he had left to head SCY) and Richard Gregory, the former managing director of Yorkshire Television and deputy chairman of Yorkshire Forward who is also SCY’s chairman, stepped in to take overall responsibility. Such an unusually long hiatus isn’t the only thing that’s a bit of an anomaly about Science City York. For one thing, despite the name, and despite the fact that it gets a good part of its funding from the City of York Council, it isn’t restricted to funding businesses based in York itself. The boundaries of North Yorkshire – a considerably wider area – are its remit. Nor is it narrowly confined to what many people might have as an image of science – men in lab coats experimenting with test tubes. “Our remit is a bit wider than science,” says Helen Malton, one of the three newly appointed business mentors. “We can work in any knowledge-based company.” Many of the companies that it funds are in fact digital companies. Examples might include IOKO, an award-winning mobile and digital development company whose credits include creating the 4 On Demand anytime television viewing system for Channel 4. Another example, and one which stretches the definition of what SCY does to the limit, is Gaist, the winner of the innovation showcase award at Venturefest, a Dragons’ Den-type event for technology companies, which SCY sponsors. The company is not based in York at all, but rather outside Keighley, only just making it into North Yorkshire by a few hundred yards. The company has developed a digital mapping system. Commercial director Nick Kitchin describes it as being halfway between professional GIS systems – which are full of applications but requiring some technical expertise to use – and Microsoft Bing – easy to use, but of limited use for emergency services and local councils who need to keep tabs on where things are. There are, of course, a wide range of business support organisations and low-rent office

complexes aimed at attracting the digital sector across Yorkshire. But Kitchin says SCY provided the thing that really mattered; a £50,000 loan to get it started in 2008. Dr Ian Graham, director of the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) at York University, and someone very much more in the traditional mode of science, has no problem with the wide remit SCY follows. “Digital companies have after all come off the back of scientific discoveries,” he says, “and they are probably closer to the delivery stage than many others.” That’s a point echoed by Dan Croxen-John from Applied Web Analytics, one of the new tenants at the Phoenix Centre and someone being advised by Norman Slater, one of the mentors appointed alongside Helen Malton. “Digital businesses are well placed to take advantage of funding at the moment,” he says. “The science comes from the statistical significance of what we are talking about.” But what does the woman who has come in at the end of all this hiatus think? At the start of this year, Professor Nicola Spence was appointed as SCY’s new chief executive. She beat off more than 70 other applicants for the job – a surprisingly high number given the proximity of the election and the possibility of a new government which might not look so kindly on such agencies. She comes to the agency with impeccable credentials. A former academic researcher and plant pathologist, her career highs have included developing the first ever plant virus to be registered as a biological product in Europe (which sounds a bit like Day of the Triffids but isn’t). She comes to the agency from the Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA), just outside York, where she was external affairs director for a time.

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“I hung up my pipette and lab coat quite a while ago,” she says. “I realised the motivation for my career was going towards running an organisation that was directly supporting the link between the businesses and the researchers.” She is quick to point out that because of the nature of the kind of work the agency funds, there will always be some companies that achieve more than others. “We’ve worked with hundreds of businesses,” she says. “Some of them will always be small because of their market, but others have grown.” She is also keen to stress that while commerciality is important, it must not drown out “blue sky thinking” by scientists. “The new Research Excellence Framework, which is used to decide much university funding now, has 25% of marks on impact,” she says. “Some academics are struggling to see how they are going to achieve that. But you shouldn’t put too much constraint on creative interest, because you never know where it is going to go.” Nevertheless, her background has certainly given her a personal interest in ensuring potential new discoveries get the best chance in the commercial world. The plant virus that she was so proud to register never saw light of commercial day because the Israeli company backing it had “a dodgy time”. She clearly wants to ensure other ideas do not similarly fall victim to commercial distress. “We are also about attracting new businesses to the region, encouraging spin-outs, start-ups, then providing support so that companies have the right skills,” she says. She is particularly excited about the £19.74m ERDF funding for incubator space, and how this might chime with York University’s plans to expand onto a new site at Heslington East.

You shouldn’t put too much constraint on creative interest, because you never know where it is going to go

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Co-ordination of services is just as important as providing them in the first place, she says. “We haven’t worked as hard as we could to connect different organisations here,” she says. “I worked for a research organisation five miles from York that wasn’t working with local business or the university. We can do better.” Although she says she is still in her first “100 days” like a US president, “in three years, I hope to be able to walk down to Heslington East to see this exciting hub that everyone is talking about in the UK and Europe”. Certainly those who have been at the receiving end of SCY funding are very thankful. Kitchin says that as a result of the funding, Gaist has been able to develop a product which aims to map existing roadworks on UK roads in real time. The company already has support from every local council and highway authority in Yorkshire and Humberside, the North East and the North West – no mean feat. And now Microsoft is sounding interested in funding the roll-out. Croxen-John, too, says SCY money helped him to attend a web analytics conference in America where he was able to make useful contacts and further his research. “The software people are developing now is essentially free,” he says, “so your own insight is what is important. I am currently talking to a US business happy to share information on how it grew.” The company is also working with retailer New Look on its online checkout. Most of all, Ian Graham sees the value in what SCY is setting out to achieve. CNAP has been in lengthy discussions with Yorkshire Forward and the Government about possibly setting up a biorefinery in Yorkshire. “What we do is similar to oil refining, except we are trying to extract maximum value from biomass. We normally look at milligrams of the stuff, but you have to work in kilograms before industry is interested in evaluating it. So we are trying to build a biorefinery where you can take biomass extract in significant levels. In talking with Yorkshire Forward it was really critical that we had an organisation like SCY working with us to make sure the right structures were in place to attract funding. It is an extremely good facilitator that will allow for innovation.” Spence believes SCY has another role - to communicate what scientists are doing. This

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Science hub: Science City York is working to achieve clarity in the discussion of science helps to foster a sense of York and the North Yorkshire region as a centre for scientific research, particularly in food science. Again, she says, such communication has not always been great in the past. FERA used to work with over 100 different countries, she says. “We haven’t made enough of that. It is partly about inward investment, partly about partnering, and we need to tell that story.” It is an apposite time to promote the kind of science York organisations do, she says, because the debate over food and biomass supplies is topical. But there is a snag. Any debate about the future of food will involve some discussion on genetically modified (GM) crops – and scientists might not be the best people to advance such a taboo subject. “The Government increasingly looks to scientists to do the communicating,” she says, “and it is a tough call for any administration. Would you want to be the minister that approved GM? You can’t expect a scientist to be a brilliant communicator and handle those difficult challenges. I was reading about the climate change scandal at the University of East Anglia, and I thought the scientist at the heart of it was so naïve. ‘I’m just a researcher’, he was saying. ‘No one has ever taught me to deal with the media’. That’s where the problem lies: he has been doing his research, dodging Freedom of Information requests, and not realising the impact that might have. That results in science not being trusted. That is a role for SCY in that we do have dedicated

communications and press people who can work with businesses and scientists. People are equipped to understand what the facts are and make an informed decision, rather than being swayed by media coverage.” Although she insists she still wants to see a debate on GM, she clearly feels the anti-GM lobby has been so powerful that an opportunity has been lost, to the detriment of the UK, and Yorkshire in particular. The GM Inspectorate is based in York, and there are still GM trials running in Yorkshire. “But ten years ago we had products on the shelves, and biotech companies in the UK, and that has all gone,” she says. “The UK economy has been harmed by that. Biotech investment has gone offshore. It has also had a negative impact on the UK science base, because you can’t get that work funded in the UK, so those people either go somewhere where they can get funding, or they do something else.” Ian Graham, however, is not quite so sure. “We shouldn’t restrict ourselves by the arguments over GM,” he says. “Even if nationally we agree to look at GM again, it will take a number of years to deliver.” But he agrees there is much potential for more work on related subjects. “There is plenty of opportunity for intensification of biorenewable feedstocks that don’t have anything to do with GM,” he says. With SCY, the mechanisms should be in place to make sure such work at the very least comes to York. n

SPRING 10

with Frank Tock >> Gary and Duncan One dream that certainly hasn’t been shattered is our idea that Gary Lumby has a keen business mind. So keen in fact, that he can shoot from the hip with the best – the best in this case being Duncan Bannatyne. It turns out that everyone’s favourite Dragon is a friend of Lumby’s, and one Sunday morning he turned up at Lumby’s door unannounced for a chat. It turned out that he was wanting to move back into the area, but couldn’t find any decent house for sale. As they sat having coffee in the conservatory, a thought suddenly entered Lumby’s mind. Why don’t I sell him this one? Lumby and his wife had only moved in 18 months before, but he could spot a keen buyer from a mile away. Was he brave enough to negotiate with the Dragon? He was. By the end of the coffee, the deal had been shaken on. “I got a very, very good deal,” says Lumby. “And I happen to know that he sold the house on a few years later – at a very reduced price.”

who simply could do no wrong. She was married to a conventionally dressed white Yorkshire man. So just the kind of couple, in fact, that you see every day of the week around these parts. Then there was a story about an abandoned baby and how it was looked after by a single male foster carer. By this time I was checking to make sure there weren’t funny pink things flying around in the sky in the background. But what annoyed me most of all was that this man lived in Scarborough, while everyone else was in Leeds. Yet the director chose to make it look as if these two places were just a short hop from each other. Do any of these media luvvies actually come oop north to check out their stories? If they had, they might have noticed that Scarborough and Leeds are actually two hours’ drive apart, and if you use the train to get from one to the other, as many of the characters in this series seemed to, such is the state of our railways that you sometimes feel you’re lucky if you get there in the same century. I could go on about how the plot also included an militant Islamist who felt it deeply unfair he was in jail, and another character who met a particularly grisly and gratuitously filmed end at least in part, we were clearly meant to think, because she had shopped an illegal immigrant. Such a naughty lady. But that’s enough seething for one day.

>> Auntie knows best I do hope you didn’t waste any time this month watching that Five Days drama series the BBC aired. I only did because I heard it had been filmed in Leeds. So was this going to be a thought-provoking drama, worthy of the city it was filmed in? Hardly. At just about every step of the way it betrayed all the signs of being written by the politically correct committee that seems to direct everything Auntie does these days. The central character, for example, was a headscarf-wearing saintly Muslim woman

>> Dirk gets to work I have long admired Dirk Mischendahl from afar, but there was always one question that puzzled me. How does a man who is at least 6ft 7in tall manage to be a success in an industry that requires almost round-the-clock networking in crowded, noisy rooms? As he sips his cocktail, doesn’t he feel cut off from all those shorties jabbering away a good foot and a half below? Fortunately, he has now revealed his philosophy. “Tallness does cut you off,” he says. “But when you are at events you just get drunk to compensate. That’s what led me

BIT OF A CHAT to the industry – it’s a debauched lifestyle. You can meet your new best mate on the night but don’t know who they are by the next day.”

>> Not me, comrade Another mystery was also cleared up this month. I had always assumed that Andy Hobson must be a secret admirer of Soviet art, such is the nature of the bold and bright red Fantastic Media logo that bears down on you at Huddersfield’s Galpharm Stadium. There’s that star that makes up the dot of the “i” too. Surely that must mean that he is at the least a fellow traveller? Hasn’t he just been talking about five-year plans? He laughs. We are not the first to have such an idea. “I wanted the Fantastic name,” he says, “but one of the designers that worked with me came up with the font. But I did like the star, I must admit.” Another idea shattered.

>> How does your property grow? It seems those men of property can’t get enough of gardening these days. First they were turning vacant lots on MEPC’s West End site in Leeds into allotments. Now comes news of a rather cheesy publicity stunt the owners of Calder Park business park have carried out to emphasise both the 100 acres of nature reserve that is on their site and the way you can make your business grow there. In March last year 70 “money trees” were sent out to individual property professionals, and they were all rung up on Valentine’s Day this year to see how well their plants were doing. The winner was King Sturge partner Jonathan Gale, pictured here, whose tree had grown a stunning 75 leaves. Well done to him.

BUSINESS QUARTER |SPRING 10

EVENTS

SPRING 10

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

APRIL

10 MAY The Met Club – Seminar on using LinkedIn. 8.30-10.30am. Cedar Court Hotel, Wakefield. 11 May -For details ring 01423 525622.

1 APRIL Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking breakfast. 7.30-9.30am, Leeds United Football Ground. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

11 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber business lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Beiderbecke’s Hotel, Scarborough. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

1 APRIL 12th ABDN annual dinner and business awards. This year’s theme is “breaking barriers” and comedienne Shazia Mirza will be appearing. Royal Armouries, Leeds. For details visit www.abdn.org.uk/dinner2010.

12 MAY The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. 5.30-7.30pm, City Inn, Leeds. For details ring 01423 525622.

7 APRIL Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking breakfast. 7.30-9.30am, Bar Convent Trust & Enterprises, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 8 APRIL Leeds Media Social. 6.00-8.00pm, Quid Pro Quo, Leeds For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

13 MAY Leeds Media at Yorkshire Cricket Club. 5.30-8.00pm. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 14 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber ladies networking lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Harewood House, Leeds. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 17 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking evening. 4.00-6.00pm, Sam’s Chop House, Leeds. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

8 APRIL The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. 5.30-7.30pm, Hotel du Vin, Harrogate. For details ring 01423 525622. 13 April Leeds and Bradford Construction Lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Aagrah Midpoint Pudsey Restaurant, Thornbury. For details visit www.yourcahamber.org.uk

18 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking breakfast. 7.30-9.30am, Bedern Hall, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

14 APRIL Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber business lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Hospitium, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

18 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber manufacturing lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Headingley Experience, Leeds. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

14 APRIL The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. 5.00-7.30pm, City Inn, Leeds. For details ring 01423 525622.

19 MAY The Met Club – York business lunch. 12.00-2.30pm. For details ring 01423 525622.

15 APRIL The Met Club – Seminar on using LinkedIn. 8.30-10.30am. Ramada Encore, Barnsley. For details ring 01423 525622. 20 APRIL Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber business lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Cairn Hotel, Harrogate. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 21 APRIL Bradford Chamber of Commerce members’ lunch. 12.00pm, Bradford Chamber. For details visit www.bradfordchamber.co.uk 22 April Fast Start Seminar – the second in a series of Government-sponsored seminars aimed at businesses in their first two months of life. 2.00pm, Garbutt & Elliott, York. For details ring Rebecca Green on 01904 464100. 22 APRIL The Met Club – Yorkshire’s own networking club. 5.30-7.30pm, Hotel du Vin, York. For details ring 01423 525622. 22 April Leeds chartered accountants annual dinner. With guest speaker Roger Black. Royal Armouries, Leeds. For details email esta.andrews@icaew.com 26 APRIL Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking evening 5.00-7.00pm, Melton’s Too, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 27 APRIL Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking evening 4.00-6.00pm, Bar Risa, Leeds. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 30 APRIL Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber breakfast briefing – Why Does Your Business Need Social Media. 8.30-10.00am, Aspire, Leeds. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 30 APRIL The Met Club – Leeds lunch. 12.00-2.30pm, City Inn, Leeds. For details ring 01423 525622.

4 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber business forum. 4.00-6.00pm, HSBC, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 5 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber business lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Best Western Monkbar Hotel, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

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

BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 10

20 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber race day. 12.00-5.45pm, Wetherby Racecourse. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 24 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking evening. 5.00-7.00pm, National Railway Museum, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 25 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber golf day. 9.00am-4.00pm, De Vere Oulton Hall. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 27 MAY York tourism lunch. 12.00-2.00pm, Marriott Hotel, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

JUNE 2 JUNE Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking breakfast. 12.00-2.00pm, National Centre for Early Music, York. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 3 JUNE Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking breakfast. 7.30-9.30am, Leeds United Football Ground. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk 3 JUNE The Met Club Yorkshire’s own networking club. 5.30-7.30pm, Hotel du Vin, Harrogate. For details ring 01423 525622. 9 JUNE The Met Club Yorkshire’s own networking club. 5.30-7.30pm, City Inn, Leeds. For details ring 01423 525622. 16 JUNE Bradford Chamber of Commerce members’ lunch. 12.00pm, Bradford Chamber. For details visit www.bradfordchamber.co.uk

MAY

6 MAY Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber networking breakfast. 7.30-9.30am, Leeds United Football Ground. For details visit www.yourchamber.org.uk

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

Please check with the contacts beforehand that arrangements have not changed. Events organisers are also asked to notify us at the above e-mail address of any changes or cancellations as soon as they know of them.

KEY:

Acas: Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service, CECA (NE): Civil Engineering Contractors Association (North East), HMRC: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, ICE: Institution of Civil Engineers, NSCA: Northern Society of Chartered Accountants, FSB: Federation of Small Business, Tbc: to be confirmed.

Marketing / Advertising / PR / Design / Web / Social Media / Events / Print “In choosing Fantastic Media we’ve formed a partnership with people we can trust.” Richard Hayes, Card Factory

“As a result of Fantastic’s marketing campaign, online traffic increased by 41%.”

what does your marketing agency deliver?

Donald Angus, Bonmarché

“Fantastic increased our marketing activity, yet still cut our marketing spend by a quarter giving us real value.” Jeremy Garside, Chadwick Lawrence

08450 176 090 www.fantasticmedia.co.uk

clear practical advice

When managing risk and making complex business decisions you need a law firm that understands your point of view. At Watson Burton we take the time to understand your business objectives and work in partnership to help you achieve long-term success. To discuss your business needs call our legal experts

0113 235 5455 www.watsonburton.com