When a London fashion company needed new premises it struck a deal with SEGRO that met its needs and was also on time for the beginning of the season.
World Design and Trade designs, markets, sells and distributes fashion clothing worth more then £50 million a year. It has three main brands Sonnetti, Firetrap and Full Circle and is based on the Western Avenue, at Park Royal to the west of London.
The property is owned by SEGRO, which developed the site in close co-operation with World Design whose finance director, John Bailey, describes how the project was successfully carried out.
"SEGRO came up with a scheme for the five acre site here of which we needed about two thirds. They made it work by putting in a big unit, which is ours, a medium sized unit and then another six small units. It gave us a frontage on Western Avenue and the flexible space that we needed."
The glass and steel building was extensively adapted internally. It provides three showrooms - one for each of the brands - and enables World Design to project an image of leading edge fashion; important in the fashion world that is their market.
The internal fit out of building ran to a cost of £1.6 million and required a technically demanding floor design that posed some difficult issues to resolve. But important as this was in the overall scheme, the timing was crucial to World Design where missing the beginning of its season could have had serious consequences for the business.
John Bailey takes up the story. "They finished it on 8th May 2000 and the date we had to work to was the 1st June. While they did a good job on the actual construction it was on the project management side where they really impressed me."
"They are very skilled at getting projects done on time. Knowing what needs to be done at what point and what decisions need to taken when. And I think they reinforced that in as polite a way as they possibly could. Being the main person responsible here within the firm I was not aware of the timings and other considerations. Sometimes I felt I was being asked for things very early in the process but in the end they were right. When it all gels together at the end you are very much appreciative of why they have to ask for things at certain points."
The end result was that World Design met their deadline with a building ready and appropriate for showing their products to their highly design sensitive clientele. Close collaboration between the company and SEGRO was essential throughout a period of more than a year leading up to completion and John Bailey is well satisfied that the project was well run and managed to a successful result.