How we built a business out of recession - chapter 30 - Q is for Quentin
The story of CitNOW*
This is the 30th chapter about CitNOW, the company started from a kitchen table in Winnersh, Berkshire. If you’d like to read from the beginning, here’s a link to chpt 1. Each chapter is a 5-minute read. It’s an early draft of a book.
CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although it was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company, and it has been sold again since.
What sort of name is Quentin? I guess the real question is, why be such a cruel parent, burdening your child for a lifetime?
I’ve only ever known two. One was at St. Saviours School in Oxton, Birkenhead. He was an oddball but the best friend of one of my best friends, John. Neither played football at break time - it couldn’t get much odder. Instead, they preferred to work on their comic, which was kept in a tatty exercise book, written and drawn with a blunt pencil. They poured over it like they’d found a precious treasure map.
I gave up one of my footballing lunchtimes to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe I’d enjoy playing with them more than struggling to keep in with Stu, Grant and Shippo, who were the stars of our school team. Stu was the captain, and I always hoped that he might put in a good word for me, assuming he had any say at all in an under-nines team. Mr Ley, who picked the team, stubbornly refused to start me, leaving me to watch from the touchline while I waited for my moment. So frustrating. So many rubbish players on the pitch should have been queueing up behind me.
It was immediately obvious that Quentin didn’t welcome or want a third wheel, even on this first exploratory encounter. He was entertaining me because John had asked him to. There was a lot of laughing at the latest drawings and scribbles from their unfinished comic, which I didn’t understand. Half the time, I couldn’t tell what had been drawn; when I could, it just wasn’t funny. I’d basically wasted a whole lunchtime.
I left early to see if I could rescue something and play a bit of football. No one would let me because the match had only ten minutes left, and the sides were evenly split. Instead, I had to make do with the girls, mooching around them until the bell went.
John told me later that I needed to use my imagination more. There wouldn’t be a next time.
I first met the second Quentin at J Sheekey in London. It’s a reasonably famous fish restaurant in the heart of London’s theatre land which I’d eaten in once before. Donna and I joined Alistair and Quentin for lunch to discuss how he could help groom the company for sale. Automotive was his sector, apparently, and he had plenty of connections. He felt he could help a lot with due diligence, prepping us correctly before being put up for sale.
It all seemed to be going quite well until Quentin decided to leave rather abruptly. I wasn’t impressed. He left our lunch without picking up the tab, late for another meeting. Understandable, but at least take the extra two minutes needed to pay the bill as a token gesture. First impressions are so important - mine were slanting towards cheap, disorganised, perhaps both, and we should at least look to see who else might be a suitable alternative authority in his space.
Alistair had met him before and was already in love, not even vaguely put off by his tight-fisted, cut-and-run behaviour. We briefly argued as I made my point. We were, after all, the potential buyer, and he’d just fucked off. Quentin would have been a recommendation to Alistair from someone who I’ll never know, which meant he was under some pressure to at least give him a go. Alistair also suffered from shiny shiny syndrome, which he’d jokingly shared with me about the car industry - not being able to resist the next new thing, person, technology, either would do. The attraction was new, and the promise of better results because of the hire or purchase. Both required a change in thinking and process, which the buyer was often reluctant to make. Hence the never-ending search for something else that was new.
I’m not saying Quentin wouldn’t be helpful, maybe perfect for the job we needed to do; it was just a strange way to start a potentially lucrative relationship given the fees he would be hoping to charge.
The conversation had started with Alistair talking for too long about how Quentin could help make us rich and fast-track our progress. Wasn’t that what we all wanted? The Janet and John pitch wasn’t appreciated, even though the sentiment was right. We’d have preferred to hear more from Quentin on why he would be indispensable, but we’d run out of time.
Alistair was basically admitting that he needed some help, and there’s nothing wrong with that. None of the current shareholders, including myself, had the experience to ensure we achieved our longer-term goal of selling the company for the highest possible price. It seemed that to get where we wanted to go, we needed to listen and learn, which would prove harder for some than others.
Although all this might sound quite harsh, the caution resulted from previous stupid decisions.
Like the day wasted in Manchester to meet HSBC bank. Nice guys who really wanted to help us just as soon as we were a better fit - bigger and more secure for their fat interest rates. The meeting had been very premature and seemed more to do with Alistair wanting a northern-based bank close to home.
It also explains why we had to have a northern office. We ended up having two on two separate occasions and closing both of them. They were pointless because no one used them except Alistair, who was rarely there. The only person who might have benefitted was our CFO, Steve. He lived near Birmingham, so whether he travelled south to Wokingham or north to the new office made little difference. The significance was the lack of staff he’d bump into if he sat alone in Manchester.
Alistair insisted on having his own chauffeur so he could be more productive. But why would you need one when you had a new modern office in Warrington, then Manchester to sit in? We sacked him as well, even though he supported Liverpool.
The ego was worryingly out of control. By now, the only thing Alistair and I could definitely agree on was we wanted shot of each other as soon as practically possible. We both thought we could use Quentin to our advantage. It was very similar to when we’d hired Steve. I hoped it would bring some new discipline to the company, which it did up to a point. But Steve was finding it hard to control Alistair. Perhaps Quentin could lend some weight to what was really needed to prep us for sale and avoid at least some of this ridiculous vanity expenditure.
*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.
I recall sending an email to Alistair about Japan and east Asian markets based on my experience with working there for Motorola. He gave me a short “you don’t know what your talking about because you haven’t come from the automotive market” meeting and then proceeded to spaff tens of thousands up the wall