While the recession of the past four years has been tough on interior design and fit-out practices, The Interiors Group’s charismatic CEO, Andy Black, says he has relished the challenge. ‘I’ve never worked so hard in my life for so little,’ he says, ‘and I think a lot of people would say the same. But I love a challenge, and the greater the challenge the earlier I want to get up in the mornings and the harder I want to work.’
The past four years has seen The Interiors Group go from strength to strength, more than doubling its turnover from £14m to £28.5m and winning projects for the likes of Getty Images and LaSalle Investment Management. The company has also set up an office in Abu Dhabi, which has helped it win projects across the Middle East.
‘Setting up in Adu Dhabi has helped grow the business even in the recession,’ says Black, whose decision not to set up in Dubai now seems prescient. ‘What we saw in Dubai – and you didn’t have to be clairvoyant to see it – was that the bubble was about to burst. When I first got there five years ago I was offered a lot of money to set up a business doing interior fit-outs, but when you scratched the surface things weren’t quite what they seemed.’
Establishing a successful business in the Middle East depends, says Black, on a ‘respect and understanding of the culture’. For a fit-out company especially it also depends on quality of workmanship, something Black says was in short supply in Abu Dhabi. ‘If we were to go to America, we’d be competing against lots of companies doing what we do,’ he says. ‘The difference in the Middle East is that lots of companies are doing it, but it’s been easy to go in there and be the one that does it well.’
As well as taking on projects in Abu Dhabi for the likes of Santander Bank, and Getty Images in Dubai, The Interiors Group has also established a base in Oman. ‘Believe it not there are no expat fit-out companies in Oman,’ Black laughs, ‘and they’re just desperate for good quality and trustworthy people to work there.’
So passionate is Black about the interior design and fit-out business that it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else. But his success owes more to hard work and opportunism than careful planning. He left school at 16 with his heart set on a career in the armed forces, but he was turned down on medical grounds. He thought of becoming a plumber but ended up joining Fairclough Construction as an apprentice site manager.
‘It was fantastic,’ he says, ‘because this was in the days when apprenticeships were a true opportunity and I’d do one day and two evenings in college and the rest of the time I’d work on projects like the Thames Barrier and Gatwick Monorail – it was fascinating.’
‘A family friend knew John Lelliot, who then owned one of the UK’s largest fit-out companies in London. They didn’t have a position available for a site manager on the interiors side, so I said I’d come as a labourer and, as and when a position became available and if they liked the way I did things, then I could move up.
‘I’ve always had a passion for working hard. If you’re going to do something you should do it with commitment, and I think that, especially in the boom time, was noticeable to my bosses.’ Within two months Black was made contracts manager for the company, and within two years, at the age of just 23, was offered a stake in a new fit-out company working alongside Total Office Interiors, a large Steelcase furniture dealership.
He co-founded The Interiors Group in 1987 at the age of just 23. ‘My wife at the time thought I was insane,’ he says.’ I’d just taken out a mortgage and I’d started a job where there was no guarantee I’d get paid from one month to the next. But my partner did promise me an XR3i car!’
For Black, finding himself in joint charge of a business was a baptism of fire, and it gave him an invaluable insight into the workings of an interior fit-out practice. ‘I was selling, designing, space-planning, costing… everything. It was without a doubt the most entertaining learning curve,’ he remembers.
In 2007 following a change of structure, he officially became CEO of The Interiors Group, though he says he isn’t interested in the title – ‘The only way you’ll be judged is by your results,’ he says.
Black is also keen to emphasise that success depends on recruiting the best people – and keeping them. ‘As a company we have a fantastic group of people who have an energy and enthusiasm to constantly go that one step further. It may be an impossible goal, but I would like to grow the business to the point where we could stabilise it and then and hold it with a turnover value of £50m, maintaining the quality, maintaining the integrity, and maintaining the brand. If we’re passionate about one thing more than anything else it’s the brand and what it stands for.’
There is, he says, no secret to what The Interiors Group does: it simply comes down to hard work and professionalism. ‘We do what we do very well. Over the past few years we’ve recruited the best people and made sure that the conditions we created for the people who work for us are the best,’ he says.
