Why Matt Welsh swapped furniture design for property investment

Matt Welsh was a design firm director, flying around the world selling office furniture to the likes of Facebook and Amazon. Now he’s a commercial property investor, writes Lizzie Murphy.
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It was 2013 when Matt Welsh decided to put an office chair in a bag, get on an aeroplane and take it on a two-week tour of America.

He was the sales director of office furniture design firm naughtone, which had become popular with the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Google in Europe. But Welsh was keen to go even bigger.

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“The furniture was fun and playful but with a contract quality, which appealed to the big tech firms. It seemed like the most obvious thing in the world, rather than dealing with these smaller regional offices in Europe, to go and work with their headquarters in the US,” he said.

Matt Walsh one of the joint owners of  Holly Park Mills at Calverley.Matt Walsh one of the joint owners of  Holly Park Mills at Calverley.
Matt Walsh one of the joint owners of Holly Park Mills at Calverley.

“I had a case made for one of the chairs. It was like a musician’s bag - an aluminium and black case. It was custom made and it was huge. Every time I turned up at the airport, they’d look as if to say ‘what on earth are we going to do with that?’”

He added: “But I managed to take it everywhere with me and it went really well. When I got back to the UK, I explained to my partners that we had to focus on the US market. We employed agents in the key regions and opened its first showroom in Chicago two years later. We were this little firm in Harrogate and we were getting orders for Nike, Google, Amazon and Microsoft.”

The US side of the business grew so rapidly that Welsh decided the firm needed a partnership. He sent a LinkedIn message to the chief executive of global designer and furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, a NASDAQ-listed $2.5bn turnover company who was keen to get involved with the business.

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Herman Miller bought 50 per cent of the business in 2016 and went on to acquire the remaining shares for $46.1m (£34.5m) last year.

“As an SME, you’re always teetering on the edge of an economic disaster so we wanted to safeguard the future of the business. For us, that meant going global,” Welsh said.

Following the sale, he stayed at the business he’d helped to build up since 2008 until July this year. “I didn’t have a defined plan around my exit. I was just going to do it until it felt like it was the right time to step away,” he said.

“We’d embedded a really great finance director and I’d been developing my team to make sure we had a succession plan. It felt like a natural time to move aside and let someone else have a go.”

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The sale of naughtone and departing from the business has enabled Welsh to take life at a slower pace over the last few months, something he’s not used to.

“It was a big part of my life that I was attached to emotionally and physically,” he said. “It took up a huge amount of my time because I managed Asia, Europe and the US. I’d have calls from Asia in the early mornings, European stuff happening throughout the day and then late afternoon the US would wake up and that would be going on until I closed my eyes. It’s nice to think about doing things at a different pace.”

He added: “I’ve got four young kids and having breakfast at home every day with them is one of those things that the sale of the naughtone business has allowed me to have.”

Welsh, 43, admitted there’s an element of him that misses the naughtone days but said: “There was a point where it became too much and it was out of my control.”

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He added: “This summer would have been the perfect time to rent a villa in Tuscany and have a month away with the kids but it just wasn’t to be. I have an active mind and August became a chance to take some time out but also think about what’s next.”

Welsh had earmarked property investment and development as a potential next step in his career and has already invested some of the money he made from the naughtone sale into two Yorkshire properties.

He joined forces with Rob Thompson, a former CEG asset manager turned property consultant, who will manage the development side.

The first was an office building at Hornbeam Park in Harrogate, which led to the purchase of Holly Park Mills, a former textiles mill in Calverley, West Yorkshire, which dates back to 1866.

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“I’ve always had a love for property from my early twenties - renovating and flipping properties. When I left naughtone I wanted to try and develop a passive income through property investment,” said Welsh.

Currently home to 15 companies, the 2.9-acre Holly Park Mills site offers more than 80,000 sq ft of commercial office space.

Welsh and Thompson plan to build on the site’s current offering, enhancing the commercial, studio and storage space available in order to support early stage businesses and offer flexible space for growing companies.

Welsh expects to spend around £500,000 across a number of projects at the mill over the next five years.

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“It’s probably a five-year phased project,” he said. “We want to create a hub for small-to-medium-sized businesses with great parking, onsite facilities. Historic buildings with exposed features in the 1,000 sq ft to 2,000 sq ft size range.”

He wants to tap into the start-up market after 2020 saw an abundance of new companies started during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There are a lot of new businesses coming out of the woodwork as people have made changes in their lives so we can provide space for them,” he said. “In addition we can offer an alternative for companies who have expensive city centre space with no car parking. We have an abundance of parking on site.”

He added: “We’ve also got space in some of the unused buildings to create an out of town regional hub where larger companies could open a satellite office. That’s something that a friend of mine is scaling in America”

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People might say a large office purchase in these times would be a gamble but Welsh insisted it never felt like a gamble to him.

“Companies still need offices although I think they are going to work slightly differently in the future. For medium and large companies offices will become more of a hub where people come and communicate,” he said.

He added: “People appreciate flexibility but crave that interaction so I think we’re going to see companies going for a hybrid approach to office space. You can’t build culture on Zoom.”

CURRICULUM VITAE

Job title: I don’t currently have one, so I guess director is appropriate for the mill business

Date of birth: January 19, 1977

Education: Manor School, York

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First job: Porters Menswear, Harrogate. It was also probably the most fun too

Favourite holiday destination: I have longed to spend some time in either Italy or the South of France this year.

Favourite film: Goodfellas, can’t beat a classic mobster movie.

Favourite song: Living for the city, by Stevie Wonder

Last book read: Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight

Car driven: Landrover Defender Heritage 110

Most proud of: My wife and four wonderful children

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