From Joining Up To Joinery For Oligarchs
The Sunday Times
After six years in the British Army, Bruce Hodgson was all set to make soldiering his career when something happened that forced him to change his mind. He fell in love with a girl called Tess. Not only was it unplanned, it was also rather inconvenient.
“I had become pretty serious about soldiering and I enjoyed it.” he said. “I wasn't expecting to fall in love. I was having a pretty good time and I didn't need it.”
Fate had other plans. So Hodgson quit the army and got a job as general manager of a joinery company in Wandsworth, south London, after chatting to the owner by chance in a pub.
“I had always fancied making furniture. Design and technology was one of my favourite subjects at school. I have always enjoyed making things,” he said. One of four children, Hodgson was brought up in Buckinghamshire and went to boarding school from the age of nine. He loved it but left at 16 under a cloud. “I was a bit of a rebel,” he said. “I got caught out too many times smoking and drinking and playing practical jokes that went wrong. They suggested that it might be a good idea to leave.”
After taking his A-levels at a sixth-form college in Henley, he joined the army after his father smartly outmanoeuvred him. “When he asked me what I was going to do, I said I was going travelling and would worry about it when I got back. So he took my passport and refused to fund me. When I said I would join the army he said I was useless and would never get in. It was like a red rag to a bull.”
On moving to the furniture company, Hodgson found his interest in the subject was growing and he took a part-time course at the London College of Furniture in his spare time. After a year, however, recession hit and he decided it was time to move on. When Tess, by then his wife, became pregnant, they moved to Bristol to be near her family and Hodgson was offered the job of production director for a furniture company. Unfortunately, the company went bust in between offering him the job and his starting work. ”We had a child and no income, negative equity in two properties, and we had bought a knackered little house that was a wreck,” he said.
Then a friend of Tess's mother asked him if he could make a bookcase for her. So he rented a room in some workshops and got to work, supported by a six-month £30-a-week enterprise allowance. When the friend has a dinner party, a guest saw the bookcase and placed an order for some fitted furniture. Hodgson was in business. Once again, it was not the career he had planned. “It wasn't my first choice. I had a vision of growing vegetables in Devon and surfing in the afternoons but the reality was very different and I had to get a job.”
In his first year as a furniture maker, 1993, he made a profit of £7,000. “We ate a lot of baked beans,” he said.
Then he made his sister a bespoke fitted kitchen for her flat. All her friends decided they wanted one, too, and the business took off. Within a year Hodgson was employing three people and working seven days a week.
Five years on, in 1998, he met a businessman called David Telling at a party. He invited Hodgson to quote for some boardroom furniture, but when Hodgson came to his offices the meeting did not go well. Hodgson said: “He told me I was late. Then I submitted some designs and costs for a couple of bookcases which he thought were far too expensive and we had a bit of a row. Eventually I said, well, I don't want to make them for you anyway.”
A few weeks later, however, Telling range Hodgson with a business offer, saying he liked the way Hodgson had handled the situation. Telling bought a 25% share in the company, which they renamed Artichoke, in return for an investment of £80,000. Telling also provided Hodgson with some farm buildings to turn into workshops. Hodgson kept a 49% stake and the rest of the shares were divided among staff.
The two of them immediately set about taking Artichoke upmarket and started getting orders through recommendations from architects and interior designers. Their fitted furniture is now bought by a number of wealthy customers and turnover this year is set to be £3.1m. “We have a reasonable number of Russian oligarchs on our books,” said Hodgson.
He admits making one or two mistakes along the way. “Making furniture that is too big to get up the stairs is not something you do more than once. I can remember not measuring the width of the gates at the end of a long drive. The lorry couldn't get through the gates and it was a long way to manhandle a kitchen.”
When Telling died four years ago, Hodgson bought back some of his stock, giving him 75% of the business. “He would have loved to see what we have done. We are after the super-high-net-worth market,” he said.
Now 40, still married to Tess and with three children, Hodgson is clear about the secret of his success. “I'm very honest. It's important to be honest in life because it means I can sleep at night. Integrity is a big deal for me.”
His advice to other budding entrepreneurs is simple – make decisions and stick to them. “Making decisions or choices is more difficult than actually putting them into action and a lot of people dither whether to go left, right or up the middle.
My advice is it doesn't matter which route you take, just pick one and get on with it.”
BACK TO TOP