Moving and More

A profile of Russell Fewins by Steve Jordan

When is a moving company not a moving company?  Answer – when it’s much more.  Although Russell Fewins in Dartford sure enough started life in the moving business, time has done its work on the company allowing it to diversify to become almost unrecognisable from its humble beginnings.

It was back in 1998 that Charlie Russell and Paul Fewins left their jobs as foremen for their moving company employer and set up shop for themselves.  They explained that when they were with their old company they felt they were missing out on opportunities. “The amount of time we were telling clients ‘No’ didn’t make any sense,” they explained. “Can you dispose of this waste? Can you get rid of these toners? Can you dismantle this furniture? It seemed that we should be saying ‘yes’ not ‘no’.”

So that’s exactly what they did.  Starting from a small office with one phone, one desk, one computer and no experience of running a business, Charlie and Paul took a leap of faith. It paid off – eventually.

“It was scary,” said Charlie, “we had to spend some time telling our wives that there might not be much money around for a while.”  But business did pick up.  “You just have to make it work.” What that difficult, but not uncommon, start did was help build a very strong bond between the business owners and the staff. That bond was tested to the limit when the company suffered an arson attack and a flood all within a few weeks of each other. “The men were great,” said Charlie.  “Everyone pulled together and it made the bond between us even stronger.”

Mike Puszyk joined after a year or so.  It was supposed to be a temporary appointment but 12 years later he’s still there.  “Mike didn’t know anything about the business but he could use a PC and a phone so it made sense for Mike to stay and take the calls and book the appointments,” said Paul.  

Richard O’Sullivan joined 6 years ago. He was originally taken on as a business consultant but he stayed too. “We were both movers,” said Paul. “We knew what we wanted to do but not how to do it. The business had reached the size where it had to go forwards or fall back and Richard helped us move it on.”

The business started with domestic moving, then moved on to commercial work. Richard O’Sullivan said that the domestic work just wasn’t working for them. “Domestic moves were 5% of our turnover and 90% of our grief. What we were getting out of it wasn’t worth the effort,” he said.

Office clearances
Office clearances were the company’s first area of diversification. It does the work to a very high standard, producing the right certification, dealing with IT and even pushing the vacuum cleaner around before they leave.  Richard said that they will never get the work when companies are shutting down as they just want the work done as cheaply as possible.  “But the blue-chip companies need everything done properly and we win more of them.”

The company also specialises in the clearance and destruction of confidential information particularly contaminated waste.  This is often caused by floods, when information can become contaminated with sewage or mould; and by rodent infestation. “The guys are trained to deal with these difficult jobs.”

And it seems to be the difficult jobs that the chaps at Russell Fewins crave.  The harder the better.  Jobs where offices or companies are coming together, the job keeps changing, different occupation dates , sometimes politics are involved, , etc. “We’ve built something of a reputation for this type of work.  People know we can do it so we seem to get more,” said Richard.

Furniture supply
Then there’s the furniture supply operation.  Companies would often tell the movers that they weren’t taking their furniture, so it was an obvious opportunity to offer to supply new desks and chairs for their new office.  Now much of the company’s business is workspace design and furniture supply.  Mike explained that they have the ability to produce rendered illustrations of proposed work areas then arrange for furniture to be supplied, or even built to fit.
 
“We were always a moving company that did other things,” said Richard. “We decided that we would always win moves and some of the other things on the back of that. After all, who would choose a removal company to supply furniture? So we re-branded the company, hence not having a big lorry on the front of our brochure and offered a range of services with every one being as important as the next.”

It’s a service that Russell Fewins is happy to extend to any moving company.  If they see an opportunity to supply furniture to an office Richard and the team will do the designs and supply the furniture leaving enough in the kitty for everyone to make a living.  Why not give it a try?

BAR and CMG
8 years or so ago about 20% of domestic enquiries asked if they were members of BAR, so they joined. However, in terms of domestic business generated Paul is still not sure it helped much. “I’m not sure it made any difference really.  It’s still about price.  You can do the best presentation but it’s the bottom line that always counts.”

The company joined the CMG having gate-crashed a CMG conference and been enthusiastically welcomed by Andy Carr and David Bunting. As far as the CMG is concerned Paul is a little more positive. “I think it’s slowly getting there but not enough people have heard of CMG.  That’s the biggest thing. Richard agreed: “It’s fundamental to get the awareness up.”  Mike too said: “Everyone understands what’s meant by the term Safe Contractor or ISO 9001 but I always have to explain CMG”.

That said, Richard has been a member of the CMG Council for some time.  He is on the Marketing sub-committee working to raise the profile of the CMG.  He also values the camaraderie that being a member of the Group provides, and he finds it to be a useful way of keeping abreast of what’s going on in the industry.