The Sunday Times Company Feature
Clive Lucking sits down with The Sunday Times to tell them ‘How I Made It’.
“Don’t leave it too long but don’t half bake it. Wait and see until you know how you’ll execute it. Timing is everything. There will be a time when’s right for you, but do it the right way.”
Clive Lucking’s advice to would-be entrepreneurs comes from his career that began with a £4,000 a year telemarketing job at a local office interiors company in High Wycombe, to where he is now, as CEO of Fourfront Group, the UK’s leading commercial interiors specialist, whose turnover in the last three years has doubled to £82.2 million for 2011-2012.
Lucking’s career in office interiors began in August 1987, when he took a job at a nearby commercial interiors company, after cutting short a ‘mind numbingly-boring’ accountancy apprenticeship. In 1989 he moved on to Forwell Design, where he secured the now defunct firm it’s biggest ever contract worth £1.25million. It was then that Lucking knew that his career was destined to be in office interiors.
It was at Forwell that he met one of his future business partners, James Cornwell and at his next employer he met Nigel Hudson, the trio formed Area Sq in January 2000 with £50,000 of their own capital. Just one day after opening for business, they had won their first contract, a £350,000 order from Microsoft Great Plains, with a £1million T Mobile contract quickly following that. When the financial crisis hit in 2007, Fourfront remained resilient; by then, the group was made up of four successful complementary companies, Area Sq, Cube Interior Solutions, Sketch Studios, and 360 Design Studios.
25 years after entering the profession, Lucking’s Fourfront Group has designed and fitted out more than 10million sq ft of commercial interior space, and last year won three £10million-plus design and build contracts.
‘How I Made It’, Lucking says, is by treating staff and suppliers well and aiming high. “Big is not what we want, we want better.”
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