Mister act. Mister Smith Interiors
Sussex interiors specialist Mister Smith Interiors celebrates a milestone anniversary as the leading expert in all kinds of home & business design
With our high streets dessimated by the influence of internet retailing and the power of the huge international chains to stack it high and sell it cheap, credit must go to a local business that continues to trade successfully. But there is one thing those giants cannot offer. The first is years of hands-on experience. The kind of knowledge that can only be gained by working in a business, getting to know both the products and their manufacturers, and learning to understand the needs and the desires of the customers. No online order system will ever do that and a chain buyer may only ever offer you the solutions that it wants to sell you, knowing they can make the maximum margin for the minimum of effort.
At Mister Smith Interiors the much needed knowledge and experience goes back for generations as the business was started by a family and remains in family hands. So what is that special ingredient that Mister Smith Interiors brings to the world of interiors? Latest Homes met with managing director Ben Smith at the Brighton store to find out more. Ben is very much a hands on MD and is as likely to be found on the shop floor as he is at a desk.
“Interior design is very much a hands-on business and in so many ways,” he says. “It requires expertise, we need to be hands on to feel the fabrics, wallcoverings and furnishings. This is a very tactile industry.
Grand Hotel Amsterdam
“We don’t want to supply something once, we want to go on working with our clients over the years, our family working with their families”
“We are also very much hands on when it comes to servicing our clients’ needs. Home visits are an essential part of what we do, whether it is a full design service or simply estimating for wall and floor coverings. Over the 50 years we have been in business we have become very aware of how important it is to build relationships and give continuing service. We don’t want to supply something once, we want to go on working with our clients over the years, our family working with their families. We do find that a satisfied customer will return again and again, their children come to us when they have interior needs and they recommend us to their friends and business colleagues. We like to advise and, to be honest, our motives are not simply based on sales and commission but on doing things properly, advising what will work best, not worrying if the solution is more economical or carries a higher profit margin. It is in this way that we build those all important relationships.
Forty Seven Park Street Mayfair
“We are also unique in that we can offer products that you will not find online. Specialist items that we have sourced, some from small independent producers both here and abroad. One of the things that makes us special is that ability to find the new products that will one day be copied and be imitated on the high street.
“We are also proud of our own team of fitters and specialists, all experts in their own fields for many years, offering real skills that can only come with that being gained over time. Our shops are a showcase for the products we can supply, often featuring design concepts from the very cutting edge of the design world as well as those traditional products that we know will never go out of fashion. But the home service, the measuring and estimating is at the heart of what we do and is something we will never lose sight of.”
Fashions and trends will play an enormous part in what any interior design business will do, so how do Mister Smith Interiors stay at the forefront of that and stay in fashion?
“Keeping your eyes open is the only way, making sure that we see everything that is happening and being produced,” Ben replies. “Then looking closely at how well that will work in a commercial way both for our domestic and business clients. Right now stripes are still in but the palette is now muted, grey is definitely back in. Patterned wallcoverings are still popular but there is a move towards something far more unique. Digital printing is the latest thing in wallpapers right now and is suddenly affordable. It used to cost thousands of pounds but now hundreds, and it does offer the opportunity for truly unique designs as you can print anything you desire. And digitally printed fabric has also become an option with the print quality so improved. Totally bespoke is a new world for interior designers and offers so many more options.
“We have our own interior designer but also work closely with many other local designers who enjoy dealing with Mister Smith Interiors, especially when it comes to the making and fixing of carpets, curtains and all kinds of soft furnishings.
“Lighting also remains a big part of the service we offer. We are linked to the Olive Tree in Tunbridge Wells, a branch of the family business run by my brother and his wife. They have a great eye for lighting and we now offer a great range in the Brighton shop, affordable designer lighting, carefully sourced but sensibly priced.
“It’s a balance of all of our services and skills, managing high fashion and the commercial, modern and traditional, and making sure that we continue to keep our customers old and new happy. This is what has made us so successful, whether it be here in Brighton, at our Crowborough showrooms where we specialise in sofas and corner units and offer a full professional upholstery service, or at Olive Tree, where we offer a massive range of home accessories.”
It’s an impressive track record for Mister Smith Interiorswith many a happy client. But they don’t stop at home interiors. “Did I mention our continuing work in the area of furnishings for major luxury hotel chains and restaurants?” Ben adds. “From an early carpet agency started by my grandfather, developed by dad and now run by the whole family, Mister Smith Interiors and all its associated parts seems to have done well and we predict a strong future ahead of us.”
Clearly the Smith family is a family that can both work and stay together, and that future certainly looks bright.
Mister Smith Interiors,
23 New Road, Brighton, BN1 1UF, 01273 605574,
and 1-3 The Parade, Croft Road, Crowborough, TN6 1DR,
01892 664152, www.mistersmith.co.uk
Mister Smith Interiors: 50 years on
Patrick Smith’s personal history of a family company
My father retired from the Civil Service when he was 60 years old, in 1961. In order to supplement his pension he took up an agency selling carpets from home. This was at the start of a revolution in carpet making which introduced fitted carpets to the mass market.
Previously most people had ‘lino’ with a carpet ‘square’, and fitted carpet was the preserve of the well to do, who could afford woven carpets – largely produced on traditional Wilton and Axminster looms.
In 1963 my parents decided to open Mister Smith Carpets in a small shop in Grove Hill Road, Tunbridge Wells. After a couple of years the business was going well and relocated to a larger premises but in 1968 things took a turn for the worse when my father died, leaving my mother and our manager to struggle on.
At this time I spent my evenings helping with the accounts, but I had more interest in my full-time job as a service station manager. However in 1971 I decided to give up a career in the motor trade and suggested to my mother that I would join the company to run it full time.
My first carpet measure was a bit of a disaster as the young couple ordered a shag pile carpet for their flat, but ended up disappearing and taking the new carpet with them – without paying the balance of £240 – a lot of money to us at that time.
I quickly learnt from that experience, and all about the carpet business, and in 1975 we decided to move to much larger premises. Within a couple of years we were able to open the showroom for curtains and furniture – and the present Mister Smith Interiors took shape.
In 1980 we bought the business of Maytree Furnishing in Crowborough – a well established curtain company. This gave us our own curtain workroom, and the specialist making of curtains and soft furnishings expanded quickly.
These were also times of recession. It was a tough time having to make loyal staff redundant. We closed our Tunbridge Wells shop and warehouse and continued to trade from the Crowborough branch.
In the mid ‘80s we had a lucky break. We had fitted a carpet in a bathroom for a local builder. He was so delighted with our service that he recommended us to a client he knew who was buying a hotel in Mayfair. We quoted for carpeting this hotel and won the contract. From this initial contact we went on to to work for the next 17 years with this hotelier, and he introduced us to the Roux brothers – Albert Roux was managing director of the hotel – 47 Park Street in Mayfair.
We set up a specialist contract division in the company – Impression Contracts, and I worked with Albert’s wife Monique on the complete refurbishment of this hotel and on many restaurants in London including the Michelin starred Le Gavroche, which is now run by Albert’s celebrity chef son – Michel Roux.
Our largest contract with Albert Roux was to furnish the Grand Hotel in Amsterdam. This project involved us in making over 400 pairs of curtains, and laying over 1,000 sq metres of carpet. Amongst many challenges, we were commissioned to create a copy of an Art Deco carpet that had originally been made for the ‘wedding room’ in the hotel. We had to hand template the original, and then hand tuft the carpet in one piece.
In 1995 Albert Roux asked us to look at converting a grand restaurant into a gentleman’s club with private dining – in Moscow. The place was owned by a rich Russian banker – at the time there was a considerable number of bankers being targeted by the mafia on the streets of Moscow – and it was daunting to be accompanied to the banker’s own house on the outskirts of Moscow with an armed escort carrying AK47 guns. This was one contract that I was quite happy to hear that the client had decided to relocate his banking operation to another country, and we never had to meet the challenge of working in mafia-controlled Moscow.
With the increasing size of the business my wife, Penny, retired from teaching to help run the business. We set up an interior design showroom in Crowborough and combined the contracts division of Impression to create Impression Décor. It was soon after that our son Ben came to join the company.
In a family business you can never be sure whether you can work closely with other family members, but we have always worked well together as a team and this was replicated when my younger son, Anthony, joined the business in 1999. The fact that the company had now passed into a third generation would have made my father very proud.
Ben, our managing director, and Anthony as sales director, are both keen to take the company forward and continue to build on the range of exclusive furnishings and lighting – with the personal service on which our company has built its reputation.
Patrick Smith, Finance Director, Mister Smith Interiors, Impression Contracts, The Olive Tree, www.mistersmith.co.uk
