Timothy Oulton - Be Original

Full transcript: Timothy Oulton on London Real

0:00 Timothy Oulton: Every ten years you need a seismic shift in your business model or your way of thinking. Have a distinct message. If people trust you, they want to deal with you. I feel there’s more for us to do, and better things for us to do, to give people a great experience. Be true to yourself, but try and have an identity, because otherwise how are you going to stand out in the crowd?

Brian Rose: You know, these chairs that you designed have actually changed London Real.

Timothy Oulton: We don’t want to have 500 stores. That’s not the goal. We want to have 50 really, really good stores. If we’re going to make stuff, I want to make great stuff, I want to make epic stuff, and I want it to come out and slap you in the face. I don’t want to be just another furniture manufacturer. We don’t actually even see it as furniture. We see it beyond that.

0:57 Brian Rose: If you’ve been a fan of London Real for a long, long time, then you’ll realise that over the last year we’ve stepped our game up. We’ve changed the way we look, in both clothes and in the studio. If you watch us now you’ll see a sterling silver British bulldog that we call Winston. You’ll see these beautiful modern leather chairs. You’ll see these huge sails with the Union Jack draped over our windows. You’ll see fascinating ornaments in the studio. And they’re all thanks to this man who is on the show today, Mr Timothy Oulton.

It’s a funny story, and I’ll leave it more for the show, but we were redesigning our studio because we were stepping up our game, because that’s what we do here at London Real. I was looking for a classic English gentleman’s vibe meets Shoreditch trendy cool, because that’s where we are. I’m here in Hoxton Square, in the centre of it all. I went to Harrods on a whim because I wanted to find some old man chairs, and I walked in and I was hit with Timothy Oulton. I was so impressed with his stuff that I pitched him right there, because that’s also what we do at London Real. I said, it’s your lucky day, we’re redesigning our studio and you can feature your ornaments here. They took us up on the deal, they gave us all this beautiful stuff, and I finally got to interview and speak to the man who created it all.

Timothy’s a fascinating man, a guy who never went to university but has this business smarts, this entrepreneurial spirit you can feel from his gut. He was also raised by Benedictine monks here in Britain, and they gave him this sense of community. He said to me on the show, Brian, they always told me that you have to contribute something, whether it’s sport or cooking or the arts or the sciences, but you have to do it in a spirit of contributing. That’s one of the most powerful things I got from Timothy, that and the way he stays on brand and concentrates on creating something unique. Any artist out there watching this, or any entrepreneur for that matter, can take that lesson from Timothy Oulton.

It’s a great episode and it really means a lot to me, because it’s who we are and it’s part of our brand. We are London Real, and as American as I am, I’m also British, and the feel of me and the feel of our studio is shown in the space where you see this conversation take place. The final thing that Timothy taught me is that your environment is such an important thing, because it contributes to the spirit, to who you are, to how you entertain and how you interact with people. I know that when guests arrive at London Real Studios they’re like, wow, okay, these guys are serious, this is special, and this is a place I can open up, let go and tell the real truth about what’s happening. So there you go, Mr Timothy Oulton is here.

3:48 [London Real promo removed]

8:19 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Timothy Oulton, the quintessentially British furniture designer, founder and creative director of the Timothy Oulton brand. You left school at 18 wanting to be a banker, but reluctantly began working for the family business in antiques in Manchester. Over time this turned into a passion, but you realised there was no future in antique restoration, so you created your own brand. Today Timothy Oulton has scaled to an international level, supplying pieces to over 60 countries and operating showrooms in 30 different cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and of course here at Harrods in London, where I first saw your work. Timothy, welcome to London Real.

Timothy Oulton: Thank you.

Brian Rose: Do you like what we’ve done with the place?

Timothy Oulton: Well, it’s been marvellous. It’s like being home.

Brian Rose: You know, these chairs that you designed have actually changed London Real, because we used to sit in office chairs. The more you get someone horizontal, the better they’re going to get into it. It turns you into that lying down, talking to your therapist pose, and I really do think the more people lean back and look up, the more introspective they get about their lives.

Timothy Oulton: Well, the space looks a lot better than it did before.

Brian Rose: It definitely does.

9:38 Do you want to hear my Timothy Oulton story?

Timothy Oulton: Yes, exactly. I meant to ask you that.

Brian Rose: So for people who know or don’t know, you’ve designed all of these pieces, including Winston. We named the dog. People love Winston. We have the vertically mounted typewriters here.

Timothy Oulton: They even got the time right.

Brian Rose: And in our workspace, all the details, a lot of these inspired pieces, the travelling suitcases, the Spitfire, and you can tell me more about these pieces. We were in the process of really stepping up our game at London Real. We just hit our four year anniversary recently, and we were having these incredible conversations with these amazing people, and yet my set looked like IKEA furniture from a backyard sale. It was very male fraternity house design, which is what I’ve always been about. So we thought we really should step up our game. We had a rough idea of what we wanted, but we knew nothing about set design. We thought we wanted English gentleman’s club meets Shoreditch cool, and Shoreditch is the neighbourhood we’re in.

Timothy Oulton: Not easy to do.

Brian Rose: Not easy to do. You were outside, we’ve got street art. If you’ve ever been to Shoreditch, it’s kind of like, in my opinion, what the East Village was like in the 90s in New York. Cool, it used to be squats here, there are artists, but there’s also tech, and the City isn’t far away. So we were thinking English leather chairs, and we were trying to figure out what we could put on the walls, and we were literally in the middle of tearing it all apart. I wanted to find, like I said, these leather chairs you might find in a gentleman’s club, things that look like old man chairs but trendy. So I went to Harrods, because I thought on the fourth floor of Harrods, or wherever it is, I can find a classic English leather chair that’s going to cost ten grand, take a picture and get an idea in my mind. I went up, I think it’s the third floor, maybe it’s the fourth, and I walked into Timothy Oulton, and I was a bit surprised.

Timothy Oulton: That’s almost spooky, isn’t it?

Brian Rose: It was very spooky, because, and I know this now working with your staff, you have a design for everything. The walls are black, there are typewriters mounted on the wall, there were these entire floor to ceiling book towers.

Timothy Oulton: Pillars of knowledge, we call them.

Brian Rose: Pillars of knowledge. It’s like a 360 degree stack of books, floor to ceiling, maybe two or three metres. You had these huge spotlights that I think were used at the Suez Canal, literally a metre in diameter. They must have weighed half a ton. I was like, I want one of those. And there were all these really cool design pieces. I don’t even think our set does justice to how intricate and bespoke it was, and each piece had a story. I started talking to your staff, and I actually walked up to them and said, this is your lucky day, because this is what I was looking for. I’m Brian Rose from London Real, we’re redesigning our set, and you can be a part of it. I think they called security and tried to get me thrown out. No, they were an amazing staff. They told me all the stories, they were super accommodating, they put me in touch with your marketing people, and the rest is history. And they’ve all been to the factory.

Timothy Oulton: Yes, and I think they’ve actually won some awards. Our staff in Harrods won the best service award in Harrods, which is an amazing thing. A furniture company has never got close to winning it. I was in Harrods a few days ago, and everyone from a service point of view is really on top of their game, so that says a lot.

Brian Rose: It’s important for you to have your people there.

13:10 But I want to get your thoughts. Why was I attracted to these things? When I saw these pieces, and we finally got the drapes in here, these chairs were just so perfect, and Winston. When people come in here they’re always like, okay, wow, this reminds me of something. It’s kind of nostalgic, it’s very British, but it’s not antique. What are we feeling when we look at it?

Timothy Oulton: Well, I think it was exactly what you were looking for, and that’s what we try and do when we design product. It’s not design per se. We don’t call ourselves designers as such, although it is a creative process. I dealt in antiques all my life up until about 15 years ago, and I loved antiques, but there was no design element to it. To me, just buying an antique, refurbishing it and selling it wasn’t an interesting or creative process. It was very enjoyable. So when we started with reproduction furniture, going back 20 years, we said, let’s borrow from the antique. Why wouldn’t you? There are 4,000 years of design out there. Why wouldn’t you borrow from it? But let’s make it interesting. We were precisely looking for a customer like you. I didn’t want to just sell antique copies. That didn’t seem the right thing to do.

So it’s about making antiques relevant. Great finishes, great leather, all borrowed from the past, great chandeliers, but put them in an iron cage. Make them interesting. Make a young person want it, because you go into an antique shop, even the nicest ones, and they’re pretty dull experiences, because there’s no point of view. And we said, if we’re going to make stuff, I want to make great stuff, and I want to make epic stuff, and I want it to come out and slap you in the face. I don’t want to be just another furniture manufacturer. We don’t actually even see it as furniture. We see it beyond that now. Maybe everyone says that. It’s like being prejudiced: you love your own kids. Everyone else’s kids are horrible, aren’t they, with their snotty noses, but ours are beautiful. We feel that about our furniture. We want it to be epic and we want it to mean something. We’re just getting into that thought process now. What are we doing it for? Why do we live in China, which is not an easy choice? So, to answer your question, we want to do antiques, borrowed from the past, a nod to nostalgia, why not, but we want it to be modern and relevant. That’s the key thing. Otherwise it’s not interesting. It’s just an antique copy. So it’s got to be something more than that.

Brian Rose: Trendy antiques, if you really want to distil it.

Timothy Oulton: Right, but relevant for today.

Brian Rose: And how do you make something relevant for today?

Timothy Oulton: Flipping heck, that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s one thing to say it. Doing it is another thing. We took the aviator concept, which everyone has done a version of, but we were the first, and turned it into relevant pieces of furniture, like chests of drawers. We took a great Art Deco chair and a great English classic leather chair, this one, and merged them into one. Putting the leather pad on top was a big step. This is called the Mark III. There was a Mark I and a Mark II, this is the Mark III, and who knows what the Mark V will be.

Brian Rose: And the leather pad on top does what?

Timothy Oulton: It just makes it more comfortable, doesn’t it? Otherwise it’s cold, and then it’s really just Art Deco and it’s not for sitting in. I want the stuff to be for sitting in. I don’t want it to be just for looking at.

16:28 Brian Rose: Talk about the experience, because I know a lot of these items are for people’s homes, or for places where people congregate. It’s not just a place to sit, but that whole feeling we have when we group together as people. What does that really mean?

Timothy Oulton: Well, this is a fundamental point for us. This is what we’re really trying to examine. I think every ten years you need a seismic shift in your business model or your way of thinking. I did 18 to 28, 28 to 38, 38 to 48, and now my 48 to 58 is what we call the intangible. Why did you just walk into Harrods? Something made you walk in there and take the stuff. That’s the really interesting point, where price melts away, marketing melts away, distribution melts away, and the customers just come and find you. That’s really what we’re going to focus on. How do you turn it into a proper experience? Even here, you’ve only got four or five bits, but it becomes something else, and it’s a whole heap better than what you had. That’s what we really want to focus on for the next ten years: the complete environment.

We’re opening a restaurant in Hong Kong in February, and I will watch that very, very carefully, not from a financial standpoint. One restaurant is not going to impact our bottom line, but it will really teach us about hosting, something we do pretty well anyway, for example winning the award in Harrods, which was a big day for us. Again, it doesn’t add to the bottom line, but it was almost like an aha moment for me, to think, yes, we are good enough, and a furniture company can mean something more than just how much is that sofa and why are you making that sofa. So that’s really the focus for the company for the next ten years. How do we turn this so it’s not just another furniture store? I want people to walk away from our stores and go, flipping heck, that was brilliant. I don’t know what it was, but I really enjoyed that experience. Maybe they don’t want to buy a sofa today. That’s fine, that’s not the point. We always give champagne out in the stores. It’s not that we’re pro champagne. It just means that when people come, I want them to have an experience they don’t get in a regular store.

The move to the internet is making the store experience even more important. Originally we were going to say we don’t want to be on the internet. Our internet strategy is still in its infancy. Obviously we can’t ignore the internet, and we shouldn’t penalise our customers for not being able to order online, but the store is the core for us. We’ll have to wait and see how we develop that. But the ten year goal is to move away from furniture into the complete experience. As well as the restaurant in Hong Kong, we’re doing a gentleman’s club in Singapore for a partner, and we’re doing the whole thing, everything down to the locker rooms, the bar, the rest. It’s big, it’s 25,000 square feet, a multimillion dollar job, and I’m really going to watch that one closely. It’s almost like market research, R&D, to see how people react to the space and how they use it. When you talk about unique experiences, F&B now plays a major role.

Brian Rose: What’s F&B?

Timothy Oulton: Food and beverage. Furniture on its own, I mean, we’re good, but it’s still just furniture on its own. Restaurants, cafes and clubs are a major part of building a hosting side with an interior design angle. We’ll always have a furniture angle, obviously. We’re world class at that, it’s what we’re good at, so why would I not want to do it? But I think there’s more. Unfulfilled is not the right word. I feel there’s more for us to do, and better things for us to do, to give people a great experience and exposure to our brand.

Brian Rose: They say consumers fall in love with the why. Why do you do what you do? It’s not what you do, it’s the why. People have said that about Apple. A lot of people make electronics, but can you see the passion in it, and what are they really trying to do? Make our lives better, connect us better, make us smile when we pull out a device, not just make it functional. So many great brands throughout the years have a real why. I think of these Jack Daniel’s adverts I see on the Tube right now. You buy into this whole narrative of these guys in a small town in Tennessee making this stuff, and it’s a global brand. They keep it simple and talk about the simple things they do on their days off, and it makes us fall in love with the brand. I’m wondering, with Timothy Oulton, do I want to know the story behind it and why you do it?

Timothy Oulton: Well, we haven’t discovered the why yet. We’re just getting there. With Harley, people have Harley tattooed on their body. It’s an incredible brand. I’m not saying we’re going to be like Harley or anything like that, but we only want 50 stores around the world. Fifty stores is not much of a financial goal, but there’s no goal to have 500 stores. That’s not the game at all.

Brian Rose: You said you wanted to be in the right cities, 50 cities, and I’ve heard you say that very few cities earn the right to have a Timothy Oulton store.

Timothy Oulton: That sounds terrible.

Brian Rose: It does, but it sounds like you want to be in these big global cities. Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Moscow, New York, London.

Timothy Oulton: Yes. We want to be in cities that people travel to as well, because that helps get the word out. It’s not that we don’t want to be in some cities. I don’t want to offend people and say that city is not good enough. It’s not a matter of that, but you want to be in the influential cities. We don’t want to have 500 stores. That’s not the goal. We want to have 50 really, really good stores.

21:44 Brian Rose: Talk to me about passion and company culture. You got that award at Harrods because the people are passionate about what they do. You can’t buy that, you can’t hire that. You have to instil it from the bottom.

Timothy Oulton: Yes, and we don’t try hard. It happens almost organically. There’s a lady who runs the training for the stores, a girl called Jude from Manchester, who’s a phenomenon. She runs a thing in China called boarding school. All the store managers have to come through it. If you want to open a Timothy Oulton store, and remember a lot of the stores are not our own, they’re with partners, the partners can only sign if they send their senior staff. It’s four days and it’s intense. They make furniture. They do the nailing on a piece of wood, they make a trunk, they make the handle. They don’t make the whole piece, obviously, because what can you do in four days, but they get fully immersed. It’s been a real point of success for us, and people get pretty emotional when it’s all over. It’s quite intense.

Brian Rose: And that’s in the factory?

Timothy Oulton: That’s in the factory.

Brian Rose: Okay, you’re based in China. How did that connection happen? Did you always have ties there?

Timothy Oulton: No, I moved there in 2004. I’d been buying from China before, but I suddenly realised that if I really wanted to do this properly, and it’s a massive lifestyle choice, of course, when you’re married with kids, you’ve got to live there. You can’t be half pregnant, whatever you want to call it. You have to be on the ground. So I made that decision and I just moved there, with about ten of us in the design team, mostly Brits, all ex antique dealers or related to the antiques trade. I was the one who could work out how it might all be put together, because antique dealers are not the best business people in the world. They’re very good at product, but when it comes to business they’re probably not the greatest. So that was more my job.

I don’t live in Hong Kong. We have an office in Hong Kong, the sales office, and stores in Hong Kong, but I’m based at what we call the workshops. We don’t call them factories, because they’re not really factories. Although it’s 4,000 people, it’s all handmade. It’s like being in the UK. We call it made in Chingland, which is a bit of a naff word, but it says what it is. It was a bunch of British guys who basically parachuted in, and we’ve been living there for 12 years, near Guangzhou, in the middle of nowhere, an hour and a half from Guangzhou city centre. So it’s in China, but it’s a little piece of England in the middle of nowhere.

Brian Rose: That’s wild.

Timothy Oulton: It’s a bit wild, yes. It’s quite an experience. We have a beautiful showroom there and a beautiful little village where we live. Our living conditions for the first ten years were pretty horrific, but in the last two years we’ve improved all that.

Brian Rose: And you moved there because of the cost base?

Timothy Oulton: It was never about the cost. There are cheaper places. Indonesia is much cheaper. China is not that cheap. You can probably make it in Europe today for the same price. The reason I moved to China is because they weren’t scared to add detail. All my friends went to China to take cost out of the product. I couldn’t get my head around that one. I said, while I’m here I’m going to add cost, because it can get done. It’s not cheaper, but you can get things done. That’s what I liked. And I knew what I wanted. I wanted a massive, diverse collection: chandeliers, chests of drawers, old wood. All our tables are old wood from the UK. We ship the timber from the UK, and a lot of leather from Argentina and Brazil. We ship all that in, and it’s quite complex. It’s 4,000 people, and you need a lot of people, because it’s all done by hand.

Brian Rose: And you could get more detail into your furniture.

Timothy Oulton: Much more extensive detail. Take the trunks, for example. The first trunks had 1,600 pins in one and 3,800 in the biggest one, put in one by one by hand. That’s why I loved it. In China, no problem, they just say no problem. What I like about China is we have a meeting and it’s done. When I was in Eastern Europe and places like that, we’d have a meeting and the next day they’d say, we need a meeting. No, we’ve had that meeting, we’ve agreed it. That’s why I love China. They have a mentality of just getting it done. And I have a great partner there, who’s a very good friend of mine.

Brian Rose: That’s fascinating. I didn’t know that. You went there to get more detailed pieces.

Timothy Oulton: To get more detail and what I call a more complex manufacturing system, because it was never mass production. That was never the plan. When we went there we didn’t plan to sell hundreds of containers. That was never the original goal. We didn’t know it was going to take off like it did. It was only when we started that it really took off. I’d love to tell you it was all planned, but as soon as we started living there it completely changed, because we suddenly started making, I think, some of the greatest stuff available in the world today.

Brian Rose: And you couldn’t have done that here in England or in Europe?

Timothy Oulton: I don’t think so. You couldn’t have had the number of craftsmen. You could take one piece and get it made in Europe, but you couldn’t do the whole collection. I had a factory in the UK for about ten years, and I’m very pro British, obviously, but I wouldn’t fancy turning the clock back.

26:31 Brian Rose: What were the big moments in the history of Timothy Oulton? You said you didn’t know you were going to be here when you started, but were there big milestones where people noticed your pieces, or it took off? When did you actually start the brand?

Timothy Oulton: I would say opening in ABC in New York was the real start of the brand.

Brian Rose: ABC is on Broadway?

Timothy Oulton: Yes, a really famous store to be in. I’d always supplied them, for years and years, but I’d never had my own branded space. When we take a store in a store, we employ our own staff. It’s like our own store within their store. That’s a really influential store. I remember shopping there in my twenties. Anybody who’s anybody went through there, and it’s still an important store, although a lot of people have caught up. In the mid 80s it was unbelievable. There was no other store like it on the planet. It’s still a fantastic store, and I think that was probably the start of the brand. I can’t remember what year that was. Around 2010, I think, we probably opened there.

Brian Rose: So fairly recently.

Timothy Oulton: Yes, as a brand. We’d always made furniture and sold it unbranded to other people. But I said I don’t like this. I want to have our own brand, so we can put our own identity into the stores. You’ve seen our pillars of knowledge. For most people that’s not very commercially viable. Why do I want a 2,000 book pillar in my store? Because it looks good. That’s probably not a great answer for most retail analysts. They’ll say, how many dollars per foot is it going to bring in? Not a dollar, but it’ll look flipping great. We have these big yellow submarines that we bought ex Ministry of Defence, and we put them in fish tanks. You press a button and it plays Yellow Submarine. Obviously we do that because it’s our own store and we have the say, but most people would never do that, because it doesn’t bring in revenue. But I think it does bring in revenue.

Brian Rose: So you’re all about the experience, the way people feel when they come in.

Timothy Oulton: It has to be, especially with the internet coming so strong. Otherwise what’s the purpose of a store? Just go online. I don’t want to do that. I’m not saying we won’t sell online, but I definitely want to keep the stores.

Brian Rose: When you describe it to your staff, what’s the way someone should feel when they walk into a Timothy Oulton store, or onto that floor in Harrods? Because you pretty much own a good chunk of that floor.

Timothy Oulton: We’ve got the half at the back. I’d love the whole room, because then we could have more influence. What do I want people to feel? First of all, wow, what’s this furniture? First of all the impact. We call it eyes first, heart second. You want to capture them visually, because our stuff looks visually strong, and then you want them to start asking questions about how it’s made. That’s when our staff come into their own, because they’ve all been to the workshops, they’ve all been through boarding school, so they’re not talking remotely. They know exactly, and some of them have been two or three times. That makes a big difference. If you say, I’ve been there, I’ve made the stuff, that makes a big difference, and that’s why we won the award in Harrods, I assume.

Brian Rose: It’s funny how consumers get it very quickly, and they can smell the real deal from the fake.

Timothy Oulton: Well, the consumer is so savvy now, which is a good thing, not a bad thing. Everyone’s so well educated. The internet has changed all that. They can sniff out fake, and fake doesn’t work.

Brian Rose: I’ve walked all around the furniture floor at Harrods, and to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever bought any furniture at Harrods. I bought a bed one time. But sometimes you just get the feeling it’s a place where they stick furniture out, and if you want to buy it you can. You don’t feel like it’s an experience.

Timothy Oulton: I don’t think that’s a reflection on Harrods. I think it’s a reflection on the furniture industry. All furniture stores are pretty dull experiences.

30:16 Brian Rose: Thank the Lord. Can you tell me about your childhood? I guess trying to convince an 18 year old that antiques are cool is a hard sell.

Timothy Oulton: It was a really hard sell.

Brian Rose: Was your dad pushing you to get into the family antique business, or did it feel like you were going to head there anyway, whether you wanted to or not?

Timothy Oulton: No. My dad was in the army for 25 years and then set up an antique store in Manchester, and he didn’t sell a thing for the first six weeks, so I think he panicked a little bit, because he had school fees to pay. I went to a great school in North Yorkshire called Ampleforth, which is a Benedictine monastery, and I did love it there. The community aspect had a big impact on my life. I loved the Benedictine monks. I had massive respect for them, and I still have a massive respect for them.

Brian Rose: And the school has Benedictine monks there?

Timothy Oulton: Yes. My housemaster was a Benedictine monk. I loved him. He was a great guy and a massive influence on my life, because obviously you’re not living with your parents. I would even try to avoid holidays, although you always wanted to go to London and do stuff. So the Benedictine monks had a big impact on me and on my thinking about community.

Brian Rose: What age were you when you went there?

Timothy Oulton: I went away to school at seven, but I was 13 when I went there.

Brian Rose: And how did they affect you?

Timothy Oulton: The way they would always try to impress upon you that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you contribute. That’s their concept of community. They didn’t care if it was sport or academics. It wasn’t a great academic school, and I certainly had no interest in academics. In other schools you’d have been kicked out for such a lack of interest in academics, but my housemaster was very good and he understood that. He said, Tim, you won’t go to university, and I didn’t. He said, just enjoy your time here, immerse yourself, and then do what you want to do. When I left school he said, Tim, what do you really want to do? And I said, I know, I’ll go and work for my dad for a bit in the antiques, although I thought, antiques, what are we going to do with flipping antiques? I wanted to be a playboy, but funds were not available. So I went to work with my dad, and I remember the first year we did 15 grand turnover. It was a very small antique business. I don’t know how my dad managed to pay the school fees. By hook or by crook he managed.

Brian Rose: Did you try to become a banker?

Timothy Oulton: I didn’t even try. That was just in my head. I thought I was going to have a playboy lifestyle.

Brian Rose: You were going to be Gekko.

Timothy Oulton: Like you, yes.

Brian Rose: It’s funny, there’s an interview with Michael Douglas where he says, didn’t anyone understand I was trying to play Gekko as a bad guy, a guy you don’t want to be? We all loved him, and every banker wanted to be Gekko, including me.

So you went into the antique business.

Timothy Oulton: Yes. I did five or six years in the antiques with my dad, and I loved it. I used to get butterflies every day.

Brian Rose: Butterflies every day? Explain that to me.

Timothy Oulton: We used to do a lot of house clearances, like you see in the old films. When you pressed the bell on the door, you didn’t know what was going to be behind it, and it was very exciting. You’d go to auction. I loved it, but you couldn’t build a business. When I got to about 23 or 24, I was making wages, but I said, Dad, there’s something missing. It doesn’t seem right to me. I need to do something more permanent, or scalable, whatever you want to call it. I still had dreams of being rich. He said, fine, Tim, go into reproduction, but that’s not for me. He said I could have the business. He was very good. He didn’t charge me anything for the business. He gave me the business, and I started doing reproductions. Then my brother joined, and we got to about 20 million in the UK, which was a nice size. Suddenly it was a scalable business. But then I thought, if I want to grow beyond 20 million, I’m going to have to supply the really big ones, like MFI or DFS at the time, and I still wanted to make pretty niche furniture.

Brian Rose: So to go really big you had to do something like MFI or DFS, and that’s very mainstream.

Timothy Oulton: It’s very mainstream. That’s not really the direction I wanted to go.

Brian Rose: Price goes down and quality goes down, and you don’t want to be that.

Timothy Oulton: Well, the quality stays the same, it’s made to a price, but it wasn’t the kind of furniture I wanted to make. We did that for about ten years with my brother.

34:19 And then I said, right, let’s start in Asia and sell to other countries, because then we can keep our niche but still grow the business, because you’ve got the whole world. You’re not just supplying the UK.

Brian Rose: And you were just supplying the UK before?

Timothy Oulton: At the time, just supplying the UK, until 2004 when I moved to China.

Brian Rose: And you couldn’t supply the rest of the world while you were still in the UK?

Timothy Oulton: No, not really. You need to be in Asia on a full container model. Then you could turn up at an exhibition. Singapore is the big one for us, always in March. So we turned up and put a collection together, and it was just instant. It was one of those things. I’m not sure it would happen again. Maybe it was just right place, right time, so maybe some of it was luck, but we rode the luck beautifully.

Brian Rose: And was that one in Singapore in 2005, where it was instant?

Timothy Oulton: The Canton Fair was the first one we did. If you’re going to do it, you might as well put your head in the lion’s mouth, so let’s do the Canton Fair. What’s some white guy going to do turning up at the Canton Fair? But it was instant. It’s the biggest fair in the world, and I was told it could never work.

Brian Rose: And what were the signature items you showed up with at that first show?

Timothy Oulton: That first show, we just turned up with textiles and a little bit of furniture. A lot of it was luck, and I think people were just happy to buy from someone who they knew had a design element. They knew we were more expensive, but it didn’t matter as long as the quality and the product were good enough. The next year we came with a full furniture offer, and it went again. So we went from about 20 million to 100 million quickly. We couldn’t supply it. The first years were horrendous, because we hadn’t planned for it. We were on nine months delivery, I think, but customers stuck with us because they understood there was a culture of trying to do it properly. I was amazed how many customers stayed, when we let them down time and time again in the beginning. Now our service is very good.

Brian Rose: Was it your reputation that got you through those tricky times?

Timothy Oulton: We didn’t have a reputation.

Brian Rose: Did they know you’d been in the antique business for ten years?

Timothy Oulton: I think they just loved the products, and they understood that we’d suddenly come from nowhere and the orders started to flood in, so they kind of forgave us. But now our service is pretty impeccable, I must say, and our quality is impeccable.

36:25 Brian Rose: Talk to me about Britain as one of the greatest exports to the world. You take advantage of that with your brand. Look at James Bond, just a phenomenon, the way the world eats it up. I call it the Downton Abbey effect. London Real is hosted by a Yank, and 45 percent of my audience is in America and North America, because they are always looking to see what’s going on in London. That’s why they watch Downton Abbey, and that’s why they always look to Milan and Paris for fashion. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and I say this tongue in cheek, but it’s because Americans have no class, so they always look over here. Let me just finish. I love Americans, but they’re always looking over here, asking what’s going on in England. I think it’s because they feel they’re a new country and they want to see the old world, to see what the Europeans are doing. I think that’s why great things like Manchester United export, Timothy Oulton, Bond. I’m putting you way up there.

Timothy Oulton: Way off there. No, obviously there’s an interest in Britishness, and from a quality perspective I understand why. We did make some great stuff, and that’s what got me into it. When I started in antiques I almost became obsessed with British things. I used to buy French antiques and German antiques, but there was something about the British stuff. It was just better made. The Victorian era had the best materials. I know it’s hard to get excited about, but those pieces were bloody beautifully made, better than I can make them now, with no machines. How did they do this stuff? There was a lot of capital, people had pride in their work, and there was a lot of money to make good things. There was a lot of wealth around, they built magnificent facilities, and they had the supply and distribution because of the Empire. They did make some phenomenal stuff.

But we’re an international company. We don’t like to say we’re a British company. Obviously there is a British bent, because three or four of the main product guys are British, but we don’t want to be just British, and we don’t put the Union Jack everywhere. We have the cushions and so on, but I don’t want to have the Union Jack on everything. And I don’t think the Union Jack is that nationalistic any more. It’s just a cool emblem, from the 60s and Carnaby Street. I don’t think it just means the UK per se.

Brian Rose: It’s true, it doesn’t just mean that.

Timothy Oulton: But this idea that the Americans have got no style is absolute bollocks.

New York is one of the places I go to raise my game. You go somewhere like Nolita and there are beautiful little coffee shops that aren’t done for profit, if you like. It’s not a chain, it’s an independent operator. I’m always amazed by New York. It always makes me feel I must do better.

Brian Rose: I agree, New York is special. But when you walk into that coffee shop in Nolita and you’re impressed, what impresses you? Is it the effort?

Timothy Oulton: It’s always the same thing: the attention to detail. It’s not the scale. You can scale things later. There was a little hot chocolate shop that my wife and I went into years ago, and I was bloody impressed. I think it only sat six people, so I know she wasn’t doing it for profit. But it was impeccable, just beautiful: the detail, the little cookie that came with it, the decoration of the store, the way she made you feel when you were in there. I tried to find it again and I couldn’t. I was really annoyed that I didn’t write it down. I thought I’d find it again, and I never did. In New York, everywhere you look there’s good stuff to look at. That city always impresses me.

Brian Rose: And that’s a tough audience. If you’re not at the top of your game in New York, you’re not going to make it. But you sell product in New York?

Timothy Oulton: Yes, we do all right, thank you. Touch wood.

Brian Rose: What other cities in America do you find inspiration in?

Timothy Oulton: For me the main one is New York. We have a store in LA. LA is a different vibe altogether, isn’t it? It’s a different thing, the West Coast. Miami I don’t know at all, although a lot of people are talking about Miami now. I don’t know the States that well. I love New York.

Brian Rose: I’m from California, and people describe California as almost a different country, because it very much is. New York, and Boston where I went to school, is New England, and it feels that way. California might as well be a different planet, a different way of doing things and thinking, and LA is its own thing again.

Timothy Oulton: It’s its own thing again. Very spread out.

Brian Rose: But back to my point, I think Americans do love to grab on to something that reminds them of where they were 400 years ago. They don’t have that point of reference in America. So when they see something Victorian, or Downton Abbey, or Bond, there’s something nostalgic, although that’s the wrong word.

Timothy Oulton: But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Brian Rose: Yes, it’s a wonderful thing, and it says so much that it’s hard to quantify. Again, you talk about how things make you feel. The key is how it makes you feel.

Timothy Oulton: It’s the why, isn’t it?

Brian Rose: It is, and it’s very hard to reproduce.

41:15 The bowler hat is one of your symbols.

Timothy Oulton: We use it as the symbol because it was working class. Everyone thinks it’s an upper class British thing for bankers, but it wasn’t. It was a working class thing. The railroad workers in the States had it, and women in Chile still wear them.

Brian Rose: Explain the hat we’re talking about, because some Yanks won’t know.

Timothy Oulton: The bowler hat. It’s the rounded one, known as the British banker’s hat. We picked the bowler hat before I really even knew the history. It was Lord Coke, or something, and his gamekeepers. He didn’t like the top hat for his gamekeepers, because when they were riding a horse it could get knocked off by the branches. So he wanted a rounded one that could withstand impact, and rumour has it the shop, I think in Piccadilly, I forget what it’s called, gave him his first one. He stamped on it, it didn’t break, and he said, yes, that’ll do. And it went off. It became a classic, and as I say it became a working class classic. Charlie Chaplin.

Brian Rose: It’s funny how one thing can go around the world.

Timothy Oulton: That’s one of the few, and it’s a great shape as well. It looks good, doesn’t it?

Brian Rose: It’s probably not very comfortable.

Timothy Oulton: I’ve never worn one. That’s not the point.

Brian Rose: But if you look at pictures from the 50s and 60s in Britain, there were a lot of bowler hats being worn, and it’s thought of as a banker’s hat now, but it wasn’t. Again, it’s a classic thing that makes you immediately think of Britain. I like it.

It’s fascinating, because I’ve had artists here and musicians, and I try to think about how you decide what you’re going to create for the next five years. How do you start to think about where Timothy Oulton goes when it comes to pieces? I know you’re thinking about the spaces now, like the restaurant.

Timothy Oulton: I am, because we have most of the pieces. Of course we’ll keep reinventing them, that’s what we do, but it’s more about how I mesh the pieces together, and who would want that. Obviously hospitality is a big part of that. Sometimes I think some of our furniture is a bit strong for domestic use. It lends itself to contract. We’ve got eight foot chandeliers, and there aren’t many houses for those. Look, we’re strong in Hong Kong, and most lifts there wouldn’t get our chandeliers inside. So I think we can definitely improve our domestic offer, and then work on our hospitality offer. As an essence, the company is good at hospitality, and we do it anyway. I’d just like to do it better.

Brian Rose: It’s very big in here, and it works well for our set because the space is big. I’ve thought about having some of these pieces at home, and when you come in you make a bold statement. But again, what is the point of hosting people? If you’re trying to draw them in to have an experience in your home, maybe it’s time we took a little more time thinking about what that’s all about. Do you think that’s important?

Timothy Oulton: Yes.

Brian Rose: Is that something we forget?

43:56 Timothy Oulton: Connection is the key, isn’t it? That’s why I think the old English pub was a great institution, because it didn’t matter if you were working class, middle class or upper class. Everyone was suddenly equal in the pub. The landowner and the land worker were in the same pub. That’s why every village had more than one. It was a great leveller, and that doesn’t happen so much any more. I do think hospitality and entertaining are massively important, because they’re about connecting with other people.

Brian Rose: Do you think we’ve forgotten about our own homes and public spaces, and need to rethink the kind of experiences they offer?

Timothy Oulton: Yes. That’s what we’re trying to get towards.

Brian Rose: Why do you think we’ve lost touch with that?

Timothy Oulton: Partly the internet, and partly the way we live nowadays. A lot of people in London wouldn’t know who their neighbour is. It’s not just the internet. It’s been a transition over a period of time, and people have lost touch with neighbourhood and community. I think New York is better than London. People do live in their little communities there. What impressed me in New York is that in the parks people leave toys out for the kids, and there’s water so the little doggy can have a drink. I think New York has a stronger communal essence than London.

Brian Rose: Interesting. I don’t know if I agree with that.

Timothy Oulton: Well, you would know better than me.

Brian Rose: There are some great little small places in London, but I’m trying to think of the neighbours that I know, so I’ll come back to you on that. Talk to me about the pub, because pub is short for public house. Traditionally in England, would you meet and even entertain there, as opposed to at home?

Timothy Oulton: You wouldn’t entertain there so much. It was just the thing you did after work. You went to the pub. Every village had four or five, and it was the meeting place. That’s where you went. Pubs are having a hard time. People talk about the smoking ban, cheap booze from supermarkets, whatever the reason, but it is a loss, there’s no doubt.

Brian Rose: What is your favourite pub? Think of the favourite pub you’ve ever been to. What does it have when you go in, and how does it make you feel? I’ve been in some great ones, and I’ve never put my finger on it, but I’ve walked in and thought, this feels right.

Timothy Oulton: The one from my youth was one called the Griffin, in Altrincham. Why we went there I don’t know, but we just loved it. We went there every night of our lives, every single night, never missed.

Brian Rose: This was when you were at home?

Timothy Oulton: During the holidays, when I wasn’t at school.

Brian Rose: And this is in Manchester?

Timothy Oulton: Yes.

Brian Rose: And it’s called the Griffin?

Timothy Oulton: The Griffin. It’s still there. It’s not like it was, but it’s still there.

Brian Rose: And do you remember what you liked about it? A lot of the people listening to this are Americans. What does a pub have? It has to be friendly. It has to feel like you can relax.

Timothy Oulton: It has to feel like you can relax. And I don’t know, because it’s the same people sitting in the same chair talking about the same stuff every night, which doesn’t sound that good on paper, does it?

Brian Rose: No.

Timothy Oulton: But in reality it’s that sense of familiarity, I guess. A sense of belonging.

Brian Rose: And the sense that you can make it your own, and you know everyone in there.

Timothy Oulton: I don’t know. Who knows?

46:55 Brian Rose: Do you think you will ever come back to the UK, or is China going to be your place?

Timothy Oulton: I love England. I’d love to have a place in London. But I’m going to be in Asia, I think, for the foreseeable future, the next ten years. I’ve still got plenty to do. But I love London. Who wouldn’t love London? It’s a flipping great city, isn’t it? Why are you in London? You could have done this in the States.

Brian Rose: That’s a great question. This town always resonated with me, and New York always kicked my ass. New York is a very competitive place. That’s why if you have furniture that sells there, you should be very happy.

Timothy Oulton: It’s a tough audience.

Brian Rose: It’s a tough audience, they’re used to the best, and they can get the best anywhere they want. Look at the restaurant and hospitality industry in New York. Your game has to be on.

Timothy Oulton: It does.

Brian Rose: Super on. Even places like the Union Square Cafe, which have amazing history and great dedication, sometimes can’t compete with some of the rents. I think you have to constantly innovate to stay alive in New York City, and you have to be at your best all the time. I had some great experiences there. I spent three or four years living there, in two different spells, but it killed me.

Timothy Oulton: And you love London.

Brian Rose: I love London. London fits my personality so much better for some reason. I’m from San Diego, but this suits me. I love the people. To me it’s the most international city in the world.

Timothy Oulton: It’s fantastic, and getting better. I remember when I first started delivering to antique stores in London. It’s much better now. The quality of the restaurants, the way people live, is much more diverse, and it is super international.

Brian Rose: I feel like London is in its twenties now. When I got here it was in its teens, and now it’s really stretching its legs and coming into its own. You see it in the restaurant industry, you see it in the skyline.

Timothy Oulton: And it’s got a good ten years, hasn’t it?

Brian Rose: Yes. I think in the next five or ten years it could arguably be the destination for the world. For me it’s the best city. New York is close.

Timothy Oulton: So you’re not going home for a bit.

Brian Rose: No, I’m going to be here. I love it so much I named my show after it.

Timothy Oulton: Exactly. I heard you say that before.

49:00 Brian Rose: So I’m going to stay here. Talk to me about business and scaling a business. You went from 20 million in sales, which a lot of people would be happy with, to thinking, OK, I’ve got to go to the next level, probably because you wanted to create something you were really passionate about.

Timothy Oulton: I think scale does help in a certain way. It’s not scale for profit’s sake. It just makes the business flow better when you have scale, especially if you want to do a lot of diverse product, which we did. It’s hard to get new suppliers on board unless you’ve got some scale. We’re still a custom shop. When you go through our workshops, it’s still one, two, four of this. It’s never a thousand of this, because people don’t buy this stuff in those kinds of quantities. But scale is important to me. Yes, we do want scale. It’s not that we want to be the biggest. It just helps the wheels turn, whatever the word is.

Brian Rose: So are you looking to grow that five times or ten times?

Timothy Oulton: No, I don’t think so. We’re at 200-odd million now. Maybe double that. You wouldn’t want to do more than that, because then you’re chasing distribution, and that’s not the game, is it? Once you start chasing distribution… You want people still looking for you, rather than you looking for them.

Brian Rose: OK.

Timothy Oulton: That’s what you’re always looking for, isn’t it? You want people to come looking for you, rather than you going looking for them.

50:15 Brian Rose: And is the biggest thing you have to worry about, competition-wise, the internet and things dropping in price? Or do you always have to worry about the next new designer coming up?

Timothy Oulton: We’ve had a lot of copies. I’m not sure of the impact of that. You can’t say there’s no impact; that would be arrogant. It does have an impact. It’s not that the real customer would buy the copy. It just cheapens the overall look of the product, in my opinion, because the copy guys obviously cut corners, and sometimes people buy the product and don’t realise it’s the copy. We do what we can. We have a full in-house legal team and we pursue it vigorously, as far as we can.

Brian Rose: Is it an exact copy, when you talk about copies?

Timothy Oulton: When they copy it, they copy it pretty exactly. Enough for the consumer, what we call passing off: enough for the consumer to think it’s made by us, or whoever they call the originator.

Brian Rose: OK.

Timothy Oulton: Now, some of it we can’t copyright, because some of it is too close to the antique, and that’s fair game. I have no issue with that. We copy from antiques. I’m not saying don’t copy. I’m just saying when people copy, they should put their own stamp on it to make it theirs. It’s not ours. That’s the bit that pisses me off. Why copy it exactly? Obviously I took the internals of that chair from another chair from the 1930s, but I put bloody great steel arms on it, or we put massive rivets all over it. That then, in my opinion, makes it our product, and that’s completely fair. I have no issue with that.

Brian Rose: Do you still go to flea markets?

Timothy Oulton: Still massively important for us. We still buy antiques for a finish, or a rivet, or a shape. But we try not to copy exactly, because otherwise it’s not interesting. It’s not a creative process, and to me it doesn’t have relevance for the consumer, because they can go to the flea market themselves. What they want is to see something inspired by the antique, but improved.

Brian Rose: What are some of your favourites? I know you like Victorian.

Timothy Oulton: Everyone asks that. This is a classic, and there have been multiple copies of this one. We have the design rights on this one.

Brian Rose: This is fairly Art Deco for your pieces, isn’t it?

Timothy Oulton: It is. The arm is very much Art Deco. And the drums. We make these drums, and I love them because of the colour and the rope. They don’t sell. That’s not the point. I love them. That was an aha moment. I had an antique drum in my room at the workshop, and I said to the guy, ‘Can you copy that?’ He said, ‘What shall we change?’ I said, ‘Nothing for now. Just copy it, because I want to see how good a job you can do, and then we’ll decide how we’re going to change it later.’

Brian Rose: A drum. What is it?

Timothy Oulton: A regimental drum.

Brian Rose: Oh yes, I saw these.

Timothy Oulton: So they brought it back, and I said, ‘Why are you bringing me back the original?’ He said, ‘What do you mean, Tim? That’s the copy.’ I said, ‘You’ve done a beautiful job.’ Then we changed them and turned them into chandeliers and things like that. They’re interesting. And I love the orb chandelier. We do this one in the cage, but the chandelier version, the huge one, I love that. That’s a classic. That’ll never go out of style. That’ll still be selling in 20 or 30 years’ time.

Brian Rose: What is that design from? Is it French?

Timothy Oulton: It’s a classic. The orb is a classic design, and inside it’s a classic French or English chandelier, but the trick was putting it inside the cage, which made it trendy.

Brian Rose: Right. And you’re looking for the ones that do last 20 or 30 years.

Timothy Oulton: And you can find them in furniture. Furniture is not as open to the vagaries of fashion as pure fashion is. It’s still fashionable and you have to be on trend, but you don’t get those peaks and then get slaughtered later if you’re off trend, which some of the fashion houses do. Poor them. They’ve got to come up with great stuff every six months.

Brian Rose: And talk about copies. A fashion house can show something on the runway and it’s in H&M a week later. They really have to watch that copy aspect.

Timothy Oulton: They do.

53:56 Brian Rose: Tell me about a design you fell in love with, where you thought, this is going to sell huge, and you put it out there and there’s just nothing.

Timothy Oulton: We’ve had a few. Not many, thank the Lord.

Brian Rose: How do you read the market on things like that?

Timothy Oulton: I don’t know. You do get a nose for it eventually. You can never tell 100 per cent, but we normally know when something’s going to be really good. We’re not so good at spotting when something’s going to be really bad.

Brian Rose: OK.

Timothy Oulton: And we’ve had a few, and they just don’t move the needle. That’s what we call it. What’s wrong with it? We all loved it. Didn’t we love it? Maybe they’re just saying yes to me, I don’t know. You normally know when you’ve got a winner. You don’t always know when you’ve got a loser. But spotting the winners gets easier the longer you’ve been doing it. You still can’t always tell, though. One of the latest big winners we’ve had came out of left field. I didn’t see that one coming.

Brian Rose: And do you get the feedback right away?

Timothy Oulton: You’ll know. First of all you go to the trade show, so you get the initial impact. Then when it hits the store floors you start to see the impact: either they buy it or they don’t. You can tell pretty well within three or four months whether you’ve got a winner. And that’s the key, finding the winners.

Brian Rose: And how important is it to remove things? We’re in the centre of technology here in London, and some of the greatest technology founders, whose companies are getting huge, have sat me down and said, ‘Brian, what we try to do is remove a feature of our product every week until we get it down to the basics.’ Is that something you think about?

Timothy Oulton: Yes. We call it the weeds kill the roses. If you have too many weeds, you can’t even see the roses anymore. You know what I mean? So pruning is a massive part of it, and it’s something we’ve got to get better at.

Brian Rose: Because you want to get down to the core collection.

Timothy Oulton: Of really epic things that move the needle, represent the brand and do the right things, things people don’t see elsewhere, because you don’t want to look like everyone else. So pruning is important, and as the copies come you have to prune more. That’s one thing I don’t like about the copies. Sometimes we have to walk away from our own products, and we’re the originator.

Brian Rose: It’s painful to walk away from a product, not because you did anything wrong, but because there are too many copies. That doesn’t feel good.

Timothy Oulton: No, that doesn’t feel good.

Brian Rose: But sometimes you have to, because it’s business.

Timothy Oulton: You do it because it’s business and there’s too much of it out there, and you think, no, I can’t be associated with that anymore. Although you were the originator, it’s now deemed a ubiquitous product, and obviously I don’t want that.

56:18 Brian Rose: You probably see up-and-comers who look like you did in your twenties, maybe your thirties, coming into your industry. What words of advice can you give them if they want to make long-term careers out of what they’re doing?

Timothy Oulton: Go home! No, I think that’s a pretty easy one to answer: come up with your own identity. Supply is not an issue. There are plenty of factories around the world to make stuff. Distribution is not an issue. The key is the bit in between. What are you doing to improve the offer to your customer? Design is the key, isn’t it? And design is going to be more and more important as distribution channels get straightened out, because of the internet. Having a design element or a point of view, making your product distinctive, is what I say even to the people who copy us. I tell a lot of them: design your own stuff. You’ll be more successful in the end than just copying us. Have an identity, be clear what your offer is, and don’t be half pregnant. If you’re going to do it, do it properly. There’s plenty of room for more people to come in. I don’t mind. There’s still plenty of room in the furniture business. But do your own thing.

Brian Rose: Do your own thing.

57:39 What about reputation? I get the feeling you have a pretty solid reputation out there, as in, Timothy does what he says he does.

Timothy Oulton: We have a reputation for being honest. In the early years we were pretty chaotic, because the growth was phenomenal. Now we’re a much more stable company, but there are very few people who wouldn’t give us pretty high marks for integrity, and that’s massively important for us. Trust is the foundation of our company. We allow people to make mistakes. We allow customers to sometimes be late on payment. We don’t have a problem with any of that. It’s all about partnership. One of my suppliers I’ve had for 20-odd years. My first ever customer, from when I was 22 or 23, I’ve still got him. That’s the furniture business. It’s a very loyal business, but you have to have integrity.

Brian Rose: So that and design.

Timothy Oulton: It’s a bedrock for us. Design is a tool, but design is not a value. Integrity is a value.

Brian Rose: Do you think there’s integrity out there in the business world?

Timothy Oulton: There is in furniture, I must say. And you treat your suppliers right. We call it: you can lick them or kick them, and licking them works way, way better. Same with staff. You can lick them or kick them. Kicking works, but licking works a whole heap better, because otherwise it’s just a job to them. And it’s not about the dosh. We’ve been mad successful. We’ve had some big dividends and things like that, but that just scratches an itch. There’s nothing more pleasurable than seeing the company, or a person within the company, really grow, really get the ethos of the company and pass that behaviour on to the next person. To me, that’s where the greatest pleasure of our company comes from. The dosh became irrelevant 20 years ago.

Brian Rose: Twenty years ago, because you were a success.

Timothy Oulton: It didn’t matter. I’m no good with money. Look at me. I didn’t even know it was a video. They said, ‘Put some better clothes on.’ I said, ‘No, this is my wardrobe.’

Brian Rose: You said it’s not about the dosh. Translated for the Americans, that means it’s not about the money.

Timothy Oulton: I know everyone says that, and I do want money to grow the company. I do. But it’s not just about the money. The point I’m trying to make is that even when the revenues are big and the dividends flow, that’s not what’s pleasurable. It’s seeing the partnership. We’ve got a really loyal customer in Guatemala who follows everything we do. I think it takes him five days to get from Guatemala to our showroom in Miami, but he never misses. Never misses. And he’s been so loyal throughout all our history. That gives me immense pleasure, because the dividends and the profits are all great, and I’m not decrying that…

Brian Rose: But you won’t be remembered for that, and it won’t fill you with a sense of pride.

Timothy Oulton: It’s an itch, and it feels great for about 30 seconds.

1:00:35 Brian Rose: You recently had an amazing experience, and I wanted to see if you could translate it to the customer experience you provide. You were ringside at the UFC to watch Conor McGregor and Ido Portal, who was here on the show a few months ago, and you saw him win. That was your first UFC.

Timothy Oulton: My first exposure to the UFC. I went online a bit before. My son wanted to go. I said I’m not going, especially because of that hammer thing. I don’t like that hammer thing.

Brian Rose: The hammer fist.

Timothy Oulton: When they knock them down. In boxing you’re told to walk away. Very un-English. Queensberry rules don’t apply. But having watched a bit, I thought I’d better brush up a bit. I’d watched Ido on your show, and that Conor McGregor is a seriously impressive individual. Not just his fighting skills: the way he thinks, the way he moves. He moves differently from the others. He talks differently from the others. It’s all right having a big mouth; that’s easy. But he backs it up, and I think he’s got the intellect and the skills to become a superstar. I’m suddenly a bit interested in the UFC, but I’m really interested in him, and in how he attacks the business side of it, because he’s got a high intellect and a high skill level. We’ll have to see how he goes on from here. But I was massively impressed, and as an event it was really well organised. I was super impressed.

Brian Rose: OK.

Timothy Oulton: And of course it helps that there were 10,000 drunk Irishmen there, from an atmosphere perspective. They were fantastic fans.

Brian Rose: Any notes you can take from that, as far as the experience goes?

Timothy Oulton: Good question. Obviously there’s not a lot of direct correlation, but you can always learn something. I thought it was really well organised. It was a great event. I loved it.

Brian Rose: It was 13 seconds.

Timothy Oulton: Yes. But you saw the rest of the fights, and the fight before was also fantastic.

Brian Rose: Yes, it was, for the 185 belt. Dana White has always said that he puts a lot of weight on the live experience, and that everyone needs to see it. The music has to be good. It has to feel great.

Timothy Oulton: It was really well done.

Brian Rose: And one thing he’s always said: I’ve seen a few shows here in London, and there were a lot of drunken Irish people there, which is great, but he also says it should be something you can take your girlfriend to, or your kids. He wants it to be an atmosphere that’s good.

Timothy Oulton: There were a lot of women there. I didn’t see so many kids, but it was impressive. Fair game. I changed my view.

Brian Rose: It’s fascinating to watch.

Timothy Oulton: And I think it’s plugged a gap in boxing. Boxing has got a little bit stale, hasn’t it? There are no great characters.

Brian Rose: Yes, and it’s hard to tell which organisation is which. One thing Dana does is make you fight the best if you want to hold the belt in the UFC. He’s ruthless. Talk about killing your darlings. He’ll put his biggest pay-per-view star in, and next he’ll have to fight a killer, then another savage, and another savage. If you win, it’s great. But on any given night, with those four-ounce gloves, almost anything can happen when you have two of the most highly trained people in the world.

Timothy Oulton: It’s pretty intense.

Brian Rose: It’s pretty intense to watch.

Timothy Oulton: Have you done it?

Brian Rose: Have I done it? No. I’ve trained in MMA for about ten years, but I never got in the ring. It takes a different kind of person to go into that cage.

Timothy Oulton: What they must think about before they go in there.

Brian Rose: Some of the guys at the top of their game say that when they’re walking down to the cage, they’re thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’

Timothy Oulton: Even the professionals?

Brian Rose: Even the top guys think, ‘I must be crazy to go in here.’ And I’ve heard guys say it’s the loneliest place in the world when you’re locked in that cage, your team has gone, and it’s all you.

Timothy Oulton: I went to the Rugby World Cup final, and we said when the players came out, what must they be thinking? But there are 15 of them. Here, when they come out, they’ve got their team around them, then they all leave, and it’s, come back, help! They’re impressive.

Brian Rose: They had a press conference after the fight, and one of the reporters asked a winner, ‘Did you really enjoy it?’ He said, ‘I went in there for 15 minutes and got my face punched. This isn’t about enjoying it.’ It might look like fun to you, but what I’ve seen interviewing fighters over the years is that a great fighter is great at taking punishment. You can dream about giving it out and you can have the highlight reel, but for 90-some per cent of your career you’re taking punishment, and that’s why you’re where you’re at. That’s how you win a five-round war: you can take the hits, not tap out and keep going. That’s good to keep in mind, and I’d say it’s true in business.

Timothy Oulton: Same in business. It’s true, because the great fighter can take a punch. Ali could take a punch. Conor can take a punch.

Brian Rose: He took some punishment off Mendes. And I think we’ll see more of that coming down the line: harder nights, more random nights, nights where he doesn’t feel at his peak and he’ll have to dig deep.

1:05:16 Talk to me about business lessons. When you go to the showrooms and listen to you now, you can make it sound like a direct route, but like you said, you never knew you were going to be here. What are some of the lessons you can pass on to people coming up? It’s never going to be 100 per cent comfortable. Do you take a lot of punishment as a businessman?

Timothy Oulton: No. I think we’ve had more than our fair share of luck, and we rode the luck well and rolled with the punches, but we’ve never really had anything really bad. I saw one of the pre-questions you’re going to ask me: what’s your biggest failure? We’ve had plenty, but I try not to focus on them, because what’s the point? Take your lessons from it. We call it next. Just dust yourself down and next.

Brian Rose: Right.

Timothy Oulton: Business failures are much easier to deal with than personal failures. Do you understand what I mean? Because in business it is just next, and you’ve got to keep trying new things. It’s just a lesson and you go again. With kids, you can’t go a second time. Well, you can, but it’s not ideal. So personal failures are much harder to come to terms with. In business, failures are easy. You just go next. Failures or mistakes, whatever you want to call them, you just start again and dust yourself down. I don’t see a problem with that.

1:06:40 Brian Rose: Let me ask you a few questions about your own success, and any secrets or anything you might have changed. Was there something about your game that you changed, whether it was your daily routine or the way you approached business, that helped you improve over the years, whether in the antiques business with your dad or when you started on your own? Something where you thought, when I made sure I did this, I was much more successful than when I didn’t?

[London Real promo removed]

1:07:32 Timothy, I always ask people who come here a question at the end. I’m really glad you talked about your time with the monks, because I’ve never heard this before, and I don’t know if it will apply to that part of your life. But if you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Timothy Oulton and give that young man a bit of advice, when you’d just started in the antiques business, what would you tell him?

Timothy Oulton: Be true to yourself. I know everyone says that. Keep your integrity. Lick them, don’t kick them. And try to have a consistent design look. Your product may not be design-led, but try to have an identity, because otherwise how are you going to stand out in the crowd? That’s easy in a design business like furniture or fashion. I don’t know how you do that in a service industry, but have a distinct message. And integrity is the big one, isn’t it? Because then customers forgive you, and suppliers forgive you, even when you do make mistakes. If people trust you, they want to deal with you. We call it a tuning fork. When we first went to shows, I don’t know why people bought from us. I think some of them wish they hadn’t, because they’re still dealing with us years later. They were just drawn to something, an energy, whatever you want to call it. So that’s it. Keep your integrity. Be clear what your offer is. Have an identity, especially if it’s design. The most successful companies keep it very simple.

Brian Rose: Right. Cut out a lot of the flak and keep it simple. And finally, going back to the monks: have we lost a bit of connection with an old way of doing things? Do you think we need to spend more time with the monks, whether the monks in the mountains in China or the ones at the school you went to?

Timothy Oulton: Sure. I think you can learn from these guys. Benedictine monasteries go back 1,500 years, and they spent 400 years studying how to live together as a community. So for sure you can learn from them. I always used to say that when parents raise their kids, it’s normally their first time round and their only time round. The beauty of the monks was that 130 kids came through that school every single year. My housemaster said to me, ‘You think you’re special, Tim. Well, you are special to me, but I’m going to get another 130 next year. I’ve had 130 a year for the last 32 years, and I’m going to have another 130 a year for as long as I live.’ So I think they have an ability to see things that you probably can’t see when you’re in something.

Brian Rose: Right. I think we can learn from that. Did your son go to that school?

Timothy Oulton: He did. All my kids went.

Brian Rose: Really? And did they value it as well?

Timothy Oulton: Yes, I think so.

1:10:08 Brian Rose: You talk about a design that’s your own, and I’ve actually been quietly taking notes this whole episode, because we don’t produce a physical product, but ultimately we’re judged on how we make people feel when they tune in.

Timothy Oulton: No different.

Brian Rose: So I’m taking notes while you’re talking. And thanks to you, this design plays a critical role in how people feel about London Real.

Timothy Oulton: I want to do better.

Brian Rose: You want to do better. Well, good. We should talk about the rest of the studio. It’s fascinating, because some of the curtains behind you are never seen on camera, and yet I’m always after everyone here to make sure everything is beautiful.

Timothy Oulton: But I think what we can do for you is swap it over from time to time. You’re going to look after it, and I can find a home for it, because you don’t want it to be the same every year, do you? Do you understand what I mean? And that’s what I’ve got to think about in the future if I do hospitality spaces. No one’s going to want the same furniture for more than two or three years, otherwise it gets a bit boring. So I think you need to be talking to us and saying, OK, what am I getting next year? We can help you with that. Otherwise you can take these home. You haven’t got our furniture at your house, you said.

Brian Rose: No, we need to get that. And I agree. It’s like the whole studio experiment. When people walk in here, it changes the interview I get, because the guests think, wow, this is an experience. When they sit down in that chair they start feeling the whole vibe, and it gets them in a different space. Also, viewers see this from a side-angle shot, so they’re immediately struck by it. The guy who set these lights up was a YouTube guy. I met him at YouTube, and he said, ‘Brian, when people see this set on YouTube, they’ll give you ten seconds longer than they will the next video, because they can see you’ve put a lot of effort into your design and that you must be serious about what you’re doing.’

Timothy Oulton: It must help, mustn’t it? It must help.

Brian Rose: Yes. I think it lets people know that we’re being really thoughtful here, and it makes people lean in a little and say, OK, let me give these guys a bit of time. And then if you’re talking rubbish, they’ll go.

Timothy Oulton: I will help you do it differently. Maybe change it once a year, once every two years, I don’t know.

Brian Rose: Good. Well, you’ve nailed the look for us. This has all been part of our new identity this year, so thanks so much for making our set beautiful. Let’s talk about the future designs. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate you giving us your take on what it takes to be relevant in a competitive industry, and I think everyone can take something from that: be unique, have a design. Tons of people have been interviewing people for hundreds of years, but if you can bring something specific to it, I think that’s why people resonate with us.

Timothy Oulton: Agreed.

Brian Rose: So thanks for this. As we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. I wish you well on yours.

Timothy Oulton: Thank you. Thank you.

[London Real promo removed]