PART ONE: Neil Hammond, managing director of Caterham Carpets, has a cracking story to tell. Here, in the first of two parts, he shares it with CFJ By ADAM BERNSTEIN.
Neil Hammond, managing director of Caterham Carpets, has a cracking story to tell. And as we’ll see, Neil’s done a bit of everything from paper rounds to ad hoc work in a carpet shop, to fitting, working on contracts, to now owning and running a carpet shop.
At the beginning
Neil begins his story by outlining that ‘it was the mid-‘80s. Del Boy and Arthur Daley were on our screens doing dodgy deals – cheeky, loveable rogues. Everyone loved a pound note and a barter.
Around every corner was another sign written van – builders, plasterers, mini skips, traders – work was going on at a pace in and around my hometown of Caterham – and not a mobile phone in sight.’
Fourteen years old in 1986 Neil wanted a slice of what was going on – ‘I had Kouros to buy!’ he says. Starting off on paper rounds (‘I didn’t like those early mornings’) he moved on to unloading and loading at a small market as ‘the money was better for one early morning, than for six in a row getting covered in newsprint, plus, in school holidays, we could do the whole day’. He served on a cheap ladies fashion stall – ‘big blouses with huge belts and ski pants’.
But a move into flooring was on the cards when he came home from school and his mother informed him that a next-door neighbour, who worked at a job agency, had a visit from someone at the Caterham Carpet Centre who was looking for ‘a strong young man to help out’. The neighbour thought of Neil.
He remembers that the firm’s premises, in Caterham high street, had roughly 60sq m of showroom space, with two offices above, a kitchen and toilets.
Neil nervously attended and introduced himself to the owner, Phil Dann, an ex-fitting manager at Allied Carpets. ‘He had a suave gift of the gab,’ says Neil, ‘always had a snappy suit and drove a silver VW Golf GTi.’
Phil told Neil he was really looking for a school-leaver, but for now he ‘could move those bags over there to the room upstairs’. Neil subsequently grabbed two bags of what looked like cement, some were green, and some were blue.
He says there was another sitting with Phil, Michael Menlove, who said, ‘in a Glaswegian accent I struggled to understand but eventually deciphered, ‘take one o’ those bags at a time son’.’ Neil wanted to impress – ‘it was all still a bit macho in the ‘80s’ – but nevertheless took the advice.
Neil was kept on for duties such as tidying up, loading and unloading, sizing and labelling remnants, and generally getting jobs ready for fitters.
He says the firm had many fitters who required ‘a lot of tea’. Most of them asked if, on leaving school, he was interested in an apprenticeship. The process didn’t exist then, but Neil says it was slang for learning from experience.
In the school holidays Neil was shown how to put gripper rods down and cut underlay. He reminisces how the fitters had Toyota, Nissan and Mazda vans that could take wide rolls of carpet with the seats down.
‘Some had fitted sunroofs, alloy wheels and loud thumping sound systems – they’d have wads of cash and go ‘down the café’ boasting of ‘private jobs’ and nice little earners. Everything was so competitive, and I was intrigued.’
As he tells, ‘I was doing very nicely for a lad my age still at school. I would take around £45 per week home and had dreams of a Ford Cortina.’
Telling wood from trees
1987 came and on awaking one normal school morning Neil had slept through a hurricane – the Great Storm of 1987. Trees had come down and despite attempting, Neil found school closed. On his way home he saw two younger fitters, Brian and Mark in, as Neil recalls, a Toyota Hiace. They persuaded him to join them for the day – there and then as they ‘buzzed around trying to get from job to job’ dodging the downed trees.
The blockages took weeks for workmen to clear, and it was months before the area looked anywhere near normal. However, Phil’s home had grounds full of trees, with many down. As result Neil spent his summer dealing with trees until he received his exam results.
‘I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to become so thought I’d take up the offer of learning carpet fitting until I decided what I wanted to do.’ He had three offers of work and chose that from Michael who Neil describes as ‘very driven’ and that seldom was an early finish.
However, he says ‘sometimes we’d finish early, and I’d pray he’d let me go home. But no, we would go and get a cup of tea at his house, while he dialled from the list of jobs he had waiting and tried to squeeze in one more’.
After a year with Michael, learning, Michael announced he was buying the business from Phil and so placed Neil with Mark to continue learning. ‘I could already do some pretty basic fitting and to increase my £75 per week earnings would go out on Saturday mornings in my gold Ford Cortina (his dream had come true) to restretch carpets, replace door bars, and adapt old carpet to new rooms.’
Croydon calling
A year later Neil was enticed to further afield to work with Brian who had moved to Croydon, contracting for Allders. ‘He was full of promises of big money and was fun to work with but after a few months had got into debt and couldn’t pay me. I left with a bad taste in my mouth.’
Then came the ‘90s recession – ‘everyone,’ says Neil, ‘was scared and the bubble was about to pop for many it seemed’.
Neil was out of work for a few months and a bit disheartened with flooring. But as luck would have it, a local furnishing shop needed a van driver – ‘they did carpets but had fitters in place already. I ended up getting the job and carried on for four years, occasionally helping with the carpets’.
Now aged 23, he was ready to get back into flooring and so bought his own Toyota Hiace van, securing work at a furniture shop as a former fitter had moved on.
Through contacts with other local stores Neil soon built up a pool of work. ‘I’d found that word of mouth just grows if you prove to be reliable and reasonable. Michael was also happy to supply to fitters adding a percentage that made it worthwhile for him and enabled us to make a decent profit – I would also give Michael the odd day fitting.’
It appears Michael had built up the contract side of his business with work in schools and for management companies and communal stairs in blocks of flats. Neil says the bigger jobs were for private nursing homes and care homes: ‘There’d been four Victorian asylums in the area that had closed. People with money were getting together with ex-asylum workers and were snapping up properties and converting them into care homes under various trusts – they all needed lots of flooring.’
By the time Neil was 25 he had built up more subcontracts and had his own apprentice, Pat. They fitted out new homes on housing estates that were springing up all over the southeast.
Neil met another in the trade, Terry Lamkin, who himself had many connections. ‘Terry did carpets, flooring, and curtains, with most of the work being in central London. We worked in Whitehall, the Institute of Architects and Downing Street… Yes, for a few weeks of my life, along with some other fitters, one of which works for me now, we were carrying toolboxes through that famous black door.’
At this point Neil refers to New Labour being in power and says he encountered the Blairs along with John Prescott.
He says life was good and inexpensive in the flat he lived in. ‘My sister was aircrew and I’d take trips with her. I’d make money in the winter, as there was always a Christmas rush, and then take long backpacking holidays through January and beyond, while the work usually died right off.’
www.caterhamcarpets.co.uk