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 said.
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 said.
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. 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.
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.
He 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,” he said. “I check and monitor everything so there was a five-year plan, updated every year.”
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