We found a manager to open in Newcastle in the year 2000 and we found some premises as well on an industrial estate that looked quite nice. I paid 50K for them. We held an opening ceremony that went quite well, apart from the fact that it took us about 6 hours to get there because the road conditions were awful.
We managed to win one contract and it went very well but we couldn’t sustain it. We just couldn’t get more work and so inevitably we had to decide to close the premises down again.
I had arranged a meeting one morning at 8.00 am with the staff. I drove up on the previous evening. Since I didn’t fancy eating in the restaurant alone I spent the evening with a computer mag, a packet of service station sandwiches and a bottle of wine. Ah, the glamour of it all!
I ended up trying to sell the premises after the company had been taken over by SEC. It was taking an age to sell so I thought that I’d better go and have a look. An airline called Eastern Airways flew on a daily basis between Birmingham and Newcastle so I took the flight. The standard of service was amazing. There was free food and free drink and even heated face wipes.
I hired a car as soon as I got to the airport to drive out to the premises. They couldn’t get their head around the idea of someone who only wants to hire a car for about four hours but they let me have it. I drove to the premises had a look around and then drove out to the coast before returning home with the wonderful standards of hospitality on the back flight. We sold a few weeks later in February 2008 for £175K.