Part 24: Friends

1998 started with uncertainty. Hacienda had closed a few months before and I had no clear plan of what to do next.

The next few years saw several parallel projects, all thanks to friends. You may have plans, but life is what actually happens - the friends mentioned in this episode all (in this run up period to the year 2000 and a little beyond) offered projects to me that kept “the wolf from the door” and helped me to move forward. They have my eternal thanks.

For ease of reading I will keep each “project” separate, as I did with the Compleat Cookshop / Pronovias Bridal Gown period covered in Parts 13 - 18 but in reality several activities overlapped. In no particular order:

Jerry Owen - VikingOak

During the last few months of the Hacienda retail business cash flow became difficult and an advertisement (similar to the two shown below) caught my eye.

The man behind VikingOak was Ian Simpson. He was based in Hailsham, East Sussex. I went down to visit him at his home. In his office he had no staff but two fax machines, in all other ways, it was perfectly normal. I tried without much success to understand how his “system” worked. The thing was, the fax machines were incessantly printing out. I said to him, I have never seen so many fax print outs, may I ask what they are? Oh, that’s some of my Managing Directors asking for funds! When I explained my background to him, he suggested I might like to become a “licensee Managing Director”, he was holding a course for interested people a couple of weeks later. Here the full system would be explained! I think the fee for attending was about ￡250 (to be paid on the day) - I was in!

You had to wonder at this marvelous funding proposition - No Guarantees - No Credit Rating - No Upfront Fees - No apparent limit to the funds available.

At the meeting (one of several over the UK) about a hundred men and women were in attendance. Only one speaker - Ian Simpson. In the first 15 minutes, he revealed that the source of these limitless funds was (keep this secret) the UK government, but not through any scheme designed to help business - Oh No - this was through a strange loophole in the VAT rules that was perfectly legal, but definitely not approved of by HMCE.

At this point, Ian Simpson asked those who wished to continue in the meeting, to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and pay the ￡250 fee. Those not happy (now they knew the source of the funds) were asked to leave the meeting - no fee charged. About 10% left - I stayed.

Ian then went on to provide (in excruciating detail) the full background to the scheme and why it worked. I will sum this up in brief, but “spoiler” be warned the UK government later changed the rules so as to make this scheme much more difficult (practically impossible) to execute successfully.

As is the case now, there were several VAT schemes to suit different types of trader.

The standard VAT scheme was based on Invoice dates (in & out) of the business, another scheme was based on the dates invoices were actually paid. A company had to chose which scheme to be in.

Ian (and his accountants) had discovered that by mixing these two schemes, a very beneficial effect could be created.

The scheme relates to one company providing a long term service to the other. Many “services” would qualify, but the most popular was regarding staff.

Let’s say Company CASH SHORT LTD was registered to account for VAT based upon invoice dates. This company has a monthly staff bill of say ￡10,000 = ￡120,000 per annum.

A new company is created called STAFF SUPPLY LTD and it now employs all the staff who used to work for CASH SHORT LTD. STAFF SUPPLY LTD then invoices CASH SHORT LTD for A FULL YEA’s worth of staff supply = ￡120,000 + VAT @ 20% ￡24,000

CASH SHORT then makes a VAT claim back of ￡24,000 which is paid by HMCE, a cash flow boost of ￡24,000. If the company’s wage bill is 10 times bigger, the claim back is ￡240,000

The STAFF SUPPLY LTD company does not have to pay any VAT as it only pays VAT when money is received, and no money is received. This is a much simplified version of the scheme, but I am sure you get the idea.

Well, I tried this out at Hacienda and no problem, the VAT rebate was paid.

Now, before testing this out, I went to Jerry Owen (a fully qualified accountant) and asked him to confirm it was all legal. He did confirm (after research and 3rd party consultation) that as far as he could tell it was perfectly legal, and indeed he was happy to join me in offering this CASH FLOW SOLUTION to 3rd party companies.

Unfortunately the VAT authorities were rather unhappy about the spread of this scheme.

Jerry Owen and I (along with many, many others) were called in to be grilled (under oath) about the “service” we were offering, and why we thought it legal. This was all rather strange as they controlled the system, and continued to pay out the VAT refunds. I only had one meeting with HMRC, but they were really targeting “accountants” involved in the scheme. I think some had introduced companies getting refunds of millions of pounds. No action was taken against Jerry or myself - nor as far as I know any of the other licensees of VikingOak, but new rules were introduced that put a stop to this apparent “abuse” of the VAT systems.

Eddy Warrington - Güral of Kutahya - Turkey

One of the very first “projects” that came up was in Western Turkey via Eddy Warrington. This was for the Nafi Güral Group of Kutahya, a massive company manufacturing everything from fine porcelain to sanitary ware, and was regarding introducing their range of Floor and Wall Tiles to the UK. (For full details see Part 22)

Barry Schiller - International Telecoms Resellers Association - ITRE

Barry Schiller (see Part 12) had (back in February 1996) invited me to accompany him on a trip to the USA where he was meeting with members of the Telecoms Resellers Association group.

Several years before that, Barry had joined the board of the “International Resale Committee” of the TRA, (Telecom reseller's Association) in Washington USA. This US trade association was formed to represent the new telecos which were being created in the now deregulated environment of competitive telecoms. A decade later Europe followed, so in 1996, Barry brought together Senior Executives in the International Telecom World in Europe to form the ITRE association, based upon the work of the TRA .

Around the year 2000, Barry asked me to plan a programme of contacting potential new members for the ITRE and to get existing members to upgrade their level of participation. Barry had also introduced Individual membership status in parallel to the original corporate membership. This was an email and direct call campaign of such a large scale I recruited Lindsay Gabriel to assist me.

In December 2001, I introduced Barry to my contacts at Clarion Events re holding an ITRE “wholesale telecoms event” at Earl’s Court for around May 2002. That did not materialise, but I know Barry had held a very successful major event at the end of May 2001 in Monte Carlo, Monaco.

Brian Boatwright - BDi Securities Ltd

At the suggestion of Antah Berhad, Brian Boatwright (see Part 5 onwards), had left Compleat Cookshop when it “merged with J W Carpenter’s, transferring to another Antah Investment: New World Telecoms (NWT). NWT had just set up a new division called New World Payphones (NWP). This new operation had the requirement to collect the cash from (and account for) a growing number of public payphones. Initially when the numbers and geographical areas were small, this was done by an internal team. However the rapid growth of the rollout of payphones meant that multiple subcontractors soon had to be employed. Brian controlled all the routing and accounting for this increasing complex structure.

In 1995, NWP decided to contract out the entire function of cash collection, and Brian took the opportunity of joining a company called BDI Securities Ltd (“beady eye”) in bidding for the contract - which was successful. In 1996 Brian became a director of BDI. BDI had originally been set up as a general security / surveillance company (hence the name), but now coin collection was the dominant business. Brian subsequently bought out the original partners and became the sole director.

The rollout of coin payphones (and later coin video phones) continued apace - in fact in 1995 NWP was the largest independent operator of payphones in the Great Britain. By September 1997, their payphone network had grown to 500, and by the beginning of 1999 that figure had more than doubled to 1,200 public phone booths in Motorway services, hospitals, airports, tube stations, universities, everywhere you can imagine.

Once in control, Brian had found interest in the cash collection service from other business areas (such as car parks) and asked me to join him in a concerted effort to offer BDi’s services to a wider community of ‘Cash” operators.

So it was from September 2000 to March 2007 I was on the payroll of BDi, although (as can be seen) I was involved with several other projects - which Bdi charged for my services.

The more we looked at the potential list of prospects for cash collection the more it grew. In addition to a few other Independent PayPhone operators, there were Car Parks, Fun Fairs, Ticket Machines, Parking Meters, Photo booths, Children’s Rides, Vending Machines, Town Fetes and Fairs, Gaming Arcades, plus many others. Some of these contracts involved safety checks, changing paper or film rolls, cleaning the machines down. Fortunately the team were flexible enough to engage in these “added value” services.

As the “parking sector” seemed particularly attractive I attended ParkEx in Manchester in April 2000 which led to several opportunities.

In addition it became clear there was a requirement for the secure movement of Gift Vouchers which so many retailers use and are effectively cash in another form.

Companies such as Securicor had dominated the cash movement market for years, and as a result had quite high charges. As Brian now had complete UK coverage, we were able to offer competitive services to a wide range of companies. It was never the intention of BDi to try to gain clients engaged in “Cash Movement’ of Bank Notes. This required a higher level security vehicles, although a limited amount of this work was undertaken.

Brian and I arranged, and attended, many meetings within London and other Councils around the UK, plus other cash handling companies - such as those listed above.

Another new emerging market was “Cash Counting Machines” located mainly in Supermarkets. These gave out a voucher the customer then took to the supermarket “help desk” to exchange for Pound notes. Of course these counting machines needed to be periodically emptied.

As mentioned above the complexity of route preparation for this company (all done by Brian himself) cannot be over emphasised. Some machines at a location would reach capacity much sooner than others, some were geographically isolated but could not (under contracts) be allowed to become full / out of service. There were many located in secure locations such as military bases where restricted access demanded “specific collectors” with valid identity.

A few slides from our 2001 presentation:

My introduction to RSVP

In 1999, I was asked to undertake a 3 month project seeking clients for RSVP (Media Reponse) Ltd business. I got lucky in being able to convince Allez France, a holiday company based in Storington, West Sussex, to give the RSVP service a try. Allez France had been established 20 years earlier by Denise and Ray Dawe, after they took a holiday in the Auvergne. Allez France advertised regularly in the weekend press, even though their office was only open on weekdays.

They could see their answerphone was always “full” when they came in on Monday morning, and were interested to find out how many calls they might be missing.

Only a handful of brochure request calls had been anticipated. However the results of having RSVP “live answering” over the weekends was absolutely astounding., - I can’t remember the exact numbers now, but I think it might have been something like 2000 calls taken by RSVP that first weekend - that would otherwise have been lost. This unexpected influx of calls required some quick thinking by Mark Abernethy (MD) and his team, who transferred agents from outbound campaigns to respond to this demand. Initially RSVP could only take details and send out brochures, but within weeks, systems were in place to allow actual reservation bookings to be placed. In 2002 Allez France won an award as one of the UK's top one per cent fastest growing companies. Ray Dawe and sales director David Weston were presented with this award by the minister for small business Nigel Griffiths.

Denis Rudkin - Cargo

Spring 1999 Cargo Home-Stores, Buying Project - Europe & Hong Kong

Denis Rudkin: (see Part 21) A strange turn of events happened in early 1999. I had maintained occasional contact with Denis, who had increasingly moved the Carpenter’s / In-House group (via a change of name to Cargo) into furniture retailing. However Cookware / Tableware / Giftware remained a major part of the product mix. Denis came to see me at home, and asked if I was able to undertake a three month mission for him. The Spring Season’s trade shows were about to happen, and somehow Cargo had “lost” several of its buyers!

Fortunately the other projects I was working on were agreeable to a three month pause, and I was able to accept. So it was, that two years after Hacienda closed, and 3 years after leaving Carpenter’s, I was headed back to the key European houseware exhibitions such as Ambiente in Frankfurt, and the Hong kong fair

If anyone reading this has ever had the experience of being asked to “reprise” a role they previously held, they will know the deep satisfaction this “validation” brings!

Simon Kemp - British Stairways

Simon Kemp - British Stairways.

I first met Simon Kemp (see part 20) whilst working with Antah Berhad in 1991 at his company Kemp Joinery and we both attended the Antah conference (Langkawi, Malaysia) in January 1992. The Kemp Joinery business (although undertaking other work) had become focused on standard specification staircases and increasingly unique high specification “one off” staircase projects.

Video 3 (from part 20) Malaysia 3 - Simon Kemp & Bryan Wilkes with Staircase Parts !!

Video content: On the 27th Jan 1991, a road trip with Simon searching for staircase factories in the Utama Petaling Jaya area of Selangor (at 27 min.) - factory 1 - the secret room. Factory 2 Long Huat, factory 3 Ikman, (at 15.57 min) Simon is beside himself having witnessed a “giant” snake slithering across the main highway. I was dozing in the back so I missed it all, but I never heard the last of it!, ?? Other videos relating to this trip can be found via “part 20” or Attend.TV on YouTube.

Having regained control of Kemp Joinery from Antah in 2001, Simon and I met to discuss how he might develop the company. I suggested he considered a change of name (or the setting up of a new company) as Kemp Joinery did not reflect the current nature of the business.

Struck by the fact that stairs are referred to as “flights” I thought the “play on words” name “British Stairways” opened up the possibility of calling different standard flights (styles) by names such as Paris and Rome. I anticipated we might get an objection to the registration of the name from British Airways Ltd, but it was worth a try.

In fact we never received any objection from BA, instead we ran into “legislation” issues.

UK Companies House informed us that there is a list of sensitive words and expressions, specified in regulations that cannot be used in a company name without the prior approval of the Secretary of State, and British was one of these!

Implied geographical pre-eminence

“BRITISH”

“Approval of this word (British) in your company name will depend on how it is used. Normally the Secretary of State would expect the company to be British owned. You would need to show that the company is pre-eminent in its field by providing supporting evidence from an independent source such as a Government department or a trade association.

You would be expected to show that your company is substantial in relation to its activity or product and that it is eminent in its own field.”

However we successfully negotiated these hurdles, and the name British Stairways Ltd was granted and incorporated in 2001.

Moving forward to 2009, Simon was looking for a way to get closer links with his corporate client who included all the major UK builders - Barratt’s, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon, Bellway, Redrow etc.

I came up with the idea of a “personalized” Screensaver, (screensavers were still very much in vogue at that time”) though not much used today.

Screensaver project

The British Stairways screensaver was built to my specification by Trellisys in Bangalore India (Arun Benty and his team: Rohit, Vijay, and Visas (see Life of Bryan Part 25 - re Attend.TV)

The design was for a series of characters to walk across the floor to a stairway, and then to ascend the stairs up several levels of the building. When reaching the top of the stairs the picture would roll vertically to show the next floor. Each level / floor had a different design of staircase leading to the floor above.

Once the character had reached the top level, the ground floor appeared again with a new character repeating the climb.

An onscreen box carried the logo of the “client company” such as Redrow, with the British Stairway logo also present.

The screensavers were distributed on memory sticks to the buying departments of British Stairway client companies.

Sadly, as the format for the build was “Flash” (which was later removed from all Windows and Apple devices because Adobe no longer support it) this screensaver is no longer available.

However you can get an idea of how it looked HERE: British Stairways ScreenSaver

Of course,

Of course there are many many friends made over a working lifetime, and if I have not mentioned you over these last 24 parts, I hope you will forgive me. The periods covered so far, (the Franchising, Wedding Gown, Cookware / Houseware / Electrical segments) brought me into contact with so many wonderful people in many countries, it really would be impossible to mention or thank you all individually. A few of these “lost” contacts have recently linked up again, and if we worked together “wayback when” It would be great to hear from you at any time. Thank you.

Next Part: Camera - Lights - Action: Setting up an Internet TV Station from scratch - Attend.TV

Time for a step up in the quality of the relationship with your clients: Look no further…..