Paul Hodgkiss Design - Paul Hodgkiss
Paul Hodgkiss Designs is a creative Scottish company which is building a worldwide reputation for distinctive, carefully crafted furniture and fittings for both domestic and commercial clients. www.paulhodgkissdesigns.co.uk
Mentor: Leonard Levin, Glasgow Chamber
Paul Hodgkiss runs bespoke cabinet making company and was looking to expand but also realised that “The company was unsustainable and had no value as everything relied on me and if anything happened to me there would be no value in the business despite all our hard work.” Much of the furniture that he manufactured tended to be on a repeat orders and he explained that “things began to evolve in my head and I realised that we have a range of furniture and a strong brand, I needed help as to how we go from here.” This is when he contacted the Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Growth Pipeline who proposed that he should get a mentor and as he says himself “I consider myself lucky that I was matched with Lenny, they paired me off with the best person that could have been.”
Leonard Levin became a business mentor after a few years of retirement after he found that he was “getting bored, but also getting behind the business curve. Mentoring keeps my brain going and it is an indulgence for myself. I wanted to put a bit back like people did for me.”
The match was indeed a good one as he explained he was “born in a pile of shavings” so understood the medium, he was a successful businessman building and running factories from scratch and making s 12-15% on net turnover. He said that Paul was not unlike most of his Mentees, in that the perceived reason why they asked for help was not always the reason they need help. He said that Paul and his guys worked “very hard but not very smart” and the problem was that he originated every product from scratch despite the fact much of the work was repeatable and it just needed to be recorded in a repeatable fashion with a standard operating procedure.
Leonard said “I suppose my skill and talent is to see that, and help with a standard operating procedure, so he could catch 70% of his products and much of his work becomes a repeat performance and a lot of paperwork is avoided. That already removes a huge amount of his time which to me was a prime objective.”
Paul explained that Lenny helped with streamlining, standardising and categorising the work and taking the standardisation program to a format they could follow, Leonard included the tradesmen in his discussions as well so his mentoring was not just the business administration “but going into the workshop as well.” Another area Leonard helped is, as Paul says, “an extremely difficult cash flow which we always had”.
Paul had a plan to build a show room (himself) which meant not only borrowing money from a bank at an uncertain time but as Leonard put it “would have taken his eye off the ball.” Leonard saw the real issue for Paul was not to build a show room but to develop his sales strategy, which once sorted will lead to developing better economies of scale. Leonard is keen to work on his marketing strategy and choosing his target customers.
On the Mentoring Programme itself both sides were very complementary, Paul had had a mentor in the past but said that he was so inexperienced that once the mentor had left he still felt he didn’t know where to go. With Leonard however he said that “mentoring has been taken to its purest form, it is not a standoff , he is like a school teacher you would not mess with, he gives me jobs to do and makes sure I understand and building it with me. I would have it no other way.”
Leonard echoes this “Paul stands out as the best matched Mentee, not everyone wants to hear what I have to say. Paul stood out for being receptive and quick to understand the points I was making and work things out for himself.”
In summary Paul said that the difference from having Leonard’s help is that “I now have a shining bright light at the end of my tunnel and that spreads good feeling through the workshop, they are seeing the potential and there is a good buzz in the air and it’s all worth it.” Paul reckons the relationship is worth a 20% improvement to his profit margin and believes he may be able to drive this as high as 40% improvement. He is also confident that he is on the path to double his turnover. As he himself is clearly bubbling at the prospects for growing his business he generously credits Lenny “for his uncontainable enthusiasm.”
