A business consultant and accountant, Paul knew the numbers had to add up before he bought the Old Courthouse Gallery (OCG) in Ambleside with his wife Caroline and friends Andy and Rebecca Thelwell eight years ago.
“We came at it with a full corporate mindset, we were steeped in things like due diligence so we absolutely ran the rule over the business, we came in with our eyes open because we couldn’t afford to make a mistake,” he says.
“My wife and I had always aspired to move up here if we could. We had admired the OCG for many years and looked into it out of curiosity more than anything else when we saw it was for sale. To cut a long story short we bought it along with a couple of our friends. One of the couple worked in an art gallery in Cheshire so had that background. Sometimes looking back you wonder how it all happened, but we were always looking for an excuse to move here and thought it would be later in life once our son had left home but the opportunity was too good to miss.”
At the time Paul had more than 30 years’ corporate experience as a management accountant in Merseyside and also ran his own consultancy as a freelance finance director.
“We love art but really it was this business, it’s special. It may sound rather an eccentric thing to have done but it’s worked out well for us and between the four of us we had a great deal of skill in finance, marketing, HR, we know how to run a business and it was translating that into running a gallery. That was the challenge, an enormous amount to learn about the artists, the customer base,” he says.
For the first three years they ran the business remotely, coming up at weekends. “Fortunately, the team at the gallery stayed on and that was one of the primary reasons we considered doing it… that Gosia (Gosia Michalska, the gallery manager) and two of the gallery assistants stayed with the business. It wouldn’t have been viable otherwise. They are fantastic and taught us an enormous amount.”
Now Paul and his wife own the business outright – they bought their friends’ minority share three years ago when they moved to Cumbria – and have been busy extending the gallery, rebranding the business and setting up a new website.
In 2021 they extended into the former travel agents next door to provide more room and also extend their presence on the street. Both buildings are owned by the Ambleside Welfare Charity and the rents from them are spent on improving the town. Shortly afterwards Paul accessed grant assistance through Low Carbon Lake District to convert the lighting to LED and put in a more efficient heating system.
Paul stopped running his financial consultancy in 2023 and has been focussing full-time on the gallery since then. “Since expanding we have increased turnover by 20 per cent and since 2016 we have increased turnover by 64 per cent, exceeding expectations,” says Paul. “I really value data,” he says. “I check and monitor everything so there was a five-year plan, updated every year. It’s an extremely difficult business to predict. The pandemic threw all the plans out of the window but we came back strong. We have a budget each year, keep control of the costs base, all the things you would expect really. That’s just second nature to me.”
The gallery stocks more than 120 artists, from painters to ceramicists, cabinet makers to sculptors – many of them Cumbria-based or people who have been inspired by the county.
“I feel one thing we do well is that the pieces sit well together. It’s never going to be a gallery full of pop art for example because that wouldn’t sit well in our overall look and feel,” he says.
The gallery in the town’s former law courts marked its 30th anniversary last year; it was opened by Sylvia and Andrew Brammall who retired in 2016 and the gallery still stocks their son Chris’s work.
“We are mindful that we are selling is luxury, nothing here is essential. We keep a range of art that is affordable, we have things from £10 to £10,000. Everything here is handmade by an individual we know, they are not brought in on a pallet, these are individual things at every price point which are all lovely,” he says.
Now Paul, with his wife Caroline – who works part time as a specialist NHS nurse – is looking to improve their visibility through print advertising, tourist leaflets and also a focus on their digital marketing. “We have a good online presence which is a good base. The gallery has a phenomenal reputation, our artists tend to be thrilled to be included because of its reputation for quality, we have a loyal customer base, repeat visitors and repeat purchasers and quite a few local people too.”
Since they launched their new website online sales have increased by about 40 per cent yoy. “Online is never really a large part of our business because of what we sell. People want to see, experience and for 3D art, touch and feel what they are buying,” he says. “What we want is footfall in the gallery and that is our key driver so we can show people the art, have conversations, show off the building.
“We would be rich and retired by now if we had a pound for every person who comes in and says ‘we didn’t know you were here, I’m glad I popped in’. It’s unbelievable. I think ‘what have we been doing wrong?!’
“There’s a certain element of seasonality in this business, but there’s one thing I’ve discovered is that you never know what’s going to happen in retail. Every day is an adventure! You have to open the door and see what happens,” he says.
They have looked at setting up another gallery but decided against it. “I think it would devalue it if we had another location, so our future plans are all about making the best of what we have got. We are eight years in but I have only been fully focussed on it for two so I feel as though I have only just got warmed up…”
The gallery is part of the OWN ART scheme where buyers can spread the purchase cost over 10 months interest free. It currently accounts for about five per cent of the gallery’s turnover, however they have seen take up of the scheme double in the past three years.
