High-street sales may be plummeting in this recession, but so are shipping costs. And for shutters importer Murray Clark, 36, that makes business a lot easier. "Eighteen months ago it cost £3,500 to ship a 40ft container door-to-door from China," says the founder of Brighton-based window shutter business The California Company. Today, the same 31-day trip costs £1,800. "So there's an upside to the recession."
The son of an engineer with Scottish Nuclear, Clark grew up in Clarkston, a well-heeled suburb of Glasgow. Always looking for ways to make money, he had a paper round at the age of nine, "which sounds a bit Dickensian". He later graduated to selling bootleg computer games and music compilation tapes at Williamwood High School.
After university, he moved south, gaining a Masters degree in air transport management at Cranfield University before working with Virgin and then American Airlines. But the 11 September attacks led to cutbacks, more restrictions at work and less travel. So Clark decided to leave, and set up his own business from home in Brighton.
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"I thought of opening a bar or a restaurant."But he soon hit a snag: it was "very hard to get firms who sold shutters in the UK. The ones that were around were very expensive, and they were very snooty in their approach to customer service. I felt there was a gap in the market to do it better, in terms of price and customer service."
So using up some untouched airmiles with American Airlines, he hopped on a flight to North America and found a firm who could make them for him in Toronto. With £1,500 in start-up costs, he built a website, working off an old Ikea desk from the spare bedroom of his home in Preston Park.
The plan was to take orders online then request the shutters from Canada and ship them to customers for self installation. This would keep costs low by removing the need for expensive showrooms and a network of installers across the country. And because there were so few shutter operations around, there was little need for advertising: "as soon as the website went up, we were one of the first companies to come up on a search on Google".
Customers also paid upfront, which removed cash-flow problems. The ordered shutters were initially delivered onto his driveway and put into the garage. But "after a couple of times watching neighbours faces falling when a 40ft truck pulled up outside", he moved to an office in nearby Hove in 2005. Turnover was £150,000 in the first year "and we were just breaking even", thanks to only part-loading containers. However, after shifting manufacturing to China in 2006 to bring costs down, "things really began to motor".
Sales will hit £3m this year as Clark opens a US base in Las Vegas, Nevada, this November a state chosen for being more business-friendly than nearby California.
"I'm not saying it's all trotting along like Mary Poppins, and it's wonderful every single day. But there are lot of areas where you can grow your business and cut costs." Expanding in America carries risks, but could turn out to be one of his best moves yet.
