Hector Finch first started his lighting business from a small antiques centre in Preston in the mid-1980s, using his engineering expertise to source the best craftspeople to restore antique fittings into beautiful and bespoke lights for discerning customers.
Some of the work would be done by Hector himself, the rest would be in the hands of skilled metal craftsmen, glass blowers, metal finishers and wirers.
In 1991 Hector set up a small shop in Chiswick Lane, London, with two other dealers and rapidly grew a loyal clientele of interior designers. After moving to larger premises in Wandsworth Bridge Road in 1995, Hector started to stock modern lights and was the first shop in London to introduce a range of Moroccan lanterns which were then in vogue for restaurants and private houses.
After Hector’s wife Emma joined the business, the company started to design and manufacture a signature collection of fixtures, primarily for the interior design market. Emma also found a showroom in New York and in 2004 published a catalogue showcasing the high-quality range that still forms the basis of the Hector Finch Collection.
The business is now based at Easters Court in the Herefordshire market town of Leominster, with a showroom in Chelsea Harbour. The commitment to sustainability and supporting specialist craft makers is as strong as ever, and the firm boasts and enviable client list that sees Hector Finch lighting in some of the world’s finest homes, boutique hotels, restaurants and commercial buildings.
About 80 per cent of the finished lights are exported to America.
Hector and Emma identified a problem with their previous premises – it wasn’t big enough, and having components whizzing around the Midlands to different contractors for each stage of the production process was inefficient. They found a new site at Easters Court, but it needed work to transform into a headquarters, manufacturing base and warehouse all in the same place.
Emma said: “The Marches Growth Hub was hugely helpful in supporting us to access the funding. We initially aimed to create three jobs but we’ve created many more than that. The whole experience was extremely positive for us.”
The Marches Growth Hub helped the company access a £30,000 grant from the Business Growth Programme, which helped Hector Finch bring all production in house.
Emma added: “The grant from the Business Growth Programme (BGP) supported the purchase of kit-out costs in our new home and new production machinery, as well as creating a new loading bay.
“Our ability to grow since we have been at Easters Court has helped to deliver 50 per cent growth in the last two years. We would never have managed that in our old premises because we just physically didn’t have the space, either for the stock or the production, the boxes or the staff.”
Hub advisers also helped Emma and Hector to source the funding quickly, as they had a very small window of opportunity to secure the new premises.
As well as being able to move the whole business to a single site and bring manufacturing in-house, the BGP funding enabled Hector Finch Lighting to grow the business by 50 per cent in two years and create eight new jobs.
Many of the new employees were specialist engineers and craftspeople who had been made redundant, so their skills were retained in the local economy.
The new base at Easters Court had also helped the business to become more environmentally-sustainable and to reduce its carbon footprint by drastically reducing the number of miles each component has to travel during the manufacturing process.
The building itself also enjoys better insulation and energy saving measures, which has helped reduce energy waste and costs.
Hector added: “With the new investment we tried to make it much more of a full manufacturing process. What we buy in is the basic raw material, which is mainly brass, and we manufacture most of our components here on site with our new CNC machinery.
“The lights are then metal-finished and wired in-house. This is a big change on where we were a short time ago, when a lot of all the components, and the finishing and any painting, were all outsourced.”
The Business Growth Programme has now closed, but the Marches Growth Hub can help businesses access a huge range of funding and support. To see what is available visit https://www.marchesgrowthhub.co.uk/funding/
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