12:00am Monday 16th August 2010
MENTION painting the Forth Bridge to Simon Brown, and the response is a knowing smile.
The managing director of Coldec, the Colchester-based painters and decorators, appreciates exactly what it is like to be involved in a seemingly never-ending task.
His staff, after all, have been employed for the past 12 years on the St Paul’s Cathedral complex, including the famous dome’s lantern and Amen Court, the lodgings of architect Sir Christopher Wren.
The high-profile, much-valued contract is one of many the company has on its CV.
Locally, there has been the redecoration – complete with gold leaf touches – at Colchester’s Moot Hall. Last year, it was a revamp of the mayor’s parlour and Tymperleys, the town’s clock museum, and prior to those, the Red Lion Hotel in High Street.
Further afield are Southwold’s famous lighthouse in Suffolk, the Ipswich-based Suffolk New College – at £400,000 Coldec’s largest single new-build project – the auditorium at the Regent Theatre, Ipswich, and even pop star Rod Stewart’s home near Epping.
Back at St Paul’s Cathedral, six staff spent more than three months refurbishing, at a cost of £50,000, Admiral Lord Nelson’s tomb ahead of his bicentenary, followed by the Duke of Wellington’s a year later.
Coldec has also carried out work at the cathedral choir school and in the crypt.
Such contracts negotiated across the South East – as far as Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire and down to north London – have helped boost the Grange Farm Road company’s annual turnover to £2.25 million.
They are a far cry from its early days, when Mr Brown and his then-colleague, Ken Gooch, started their 12-employee operation from two rooms rented in Hythe Hill, Colchester.
Now, 14 years later, he heads up a firm with more than 40 staff, including several father-and-son teams, and its own freehold premises on the Whitehall industrial estate.
“Repeat business is the best business,” said Mr Brown. “It is quality work at a competitive price. That is what sees us through.
“We don’t have glossy brochures and we don’t spend a lot on marketing. Our greatest strength is references from our customers.”
With contracts coming in, Coldec has, to date, remained untouched by the recession.
Mr Brown said: “We generally want to expand, as we have done over the last ten years, on a sustainable basis. I have seen too many firms grow rapidly in two or three years, only to fall flat on their faces.”
Coldec enjoys a high rate of staff retention, but it is not always easy to find painters and decorators with the skills, which could include gilding, ragrolling, graining and marbling, required by clients.
“In this current climate, it is difficult to recruit the level of skilled decorator we need,” said Mr Brown. “There are lots of painters looking for work, but we set a high standard. We get some, but others we have to mould to our way.
“We retain our staff. There are very few who have left over the years. We’ve still got some who have been here since the start.
“Most come from Colchester and the surrounding villages.
“This is a Colchester company. That is our focus.”
Marketing manager David Draper, who has been with the company for ten years, added: “Most of our work used to be for builders.
Now the balance of the work has tipped towards working for clients directly.”
Those clients include several long-term partners with whom Coldec has decorating contracts.
Between them, the Colne Housing Society, Guinness Trust and Flagship manage more than 23,000 homes in East Anglia, and they all need to be maintained on a regular basis.
Other names that have appeared Coldec’s client list include Essex University, NHS North East Essex, East London University, and the Royal Hospital and Ipswich High Schools in Suffolk.
Coldec’s latest big contract is The Holme, a £103m grade I-listed listed regency villa and part of the Queen’s Estate, at Regents Park.
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