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After just 18 months in the bodybuilding business Carlton Valley Coachworks has outgrown its workshops. How did it build up an expanding customer base?
• Carlton Valley Coachworks was set up 18 months ago by Eric Mosley, with a definite aim in mind: "I don't ever want to be a bodybuilder who gets to the production line stage," he says, "I want to be an old-fashioned, one-off bodybuilder. There are not that many of us left around nowadays."
He became disenchanted with working for large bodybuilders at King and Taylor in Godalming, Surrey, where he was the body shop manager. He decided, for the second time in his career, that it was time to try going it alone. The new company officially opened in January 1986.
Having worked his way around the indsutry with spells at Reeve Burgess, Neville Charrold, and Whittaker's, Mosley knew the blend of skills he would need to get things off the ground successfully. Luckily he was able to persuade the right men to join him; but how did he actually get started?
"I went out with some drawings and a business card and knocked on people's doors," he says. "I concentrated on truck dealers in the South East." Carlton is based at Bordon Camp, near Aldershot in Hampshire. Mosley told the dealers he was new in the area and that the firm would undertake anything, within reason. "I was really flying on a hope and prayer. I knew a number of customers in the North, where I come from, but I did not know that many in the South.'"
STARTING WORK
Some of the dealers Mosley visited put work his way. The company did some box vans and then a butcher's van conversion for a local company. Alton (International) ordered an international removals van with lift-up side panels and a barn door at the rear and then work began to flow more freely. Carlton tried hard to establish a reputation for top quality.
Mosley is astute. He has started to look carefully at the horsebox business: "I've been told that if we can produce a good little horsebox unit with a small kitchen and a sleeping area for between £15,000 to £20,000, we will be able to sell as many as we can make." His design is for a twoto three-animal 7.5-tonne integral unit.
Advertising has not been necessary so far: Mosley has found that business has grown in line with firm's five-year plan, just by word of mouth. He knows that more and more dealers in the area area are coming to the company with their out of the ordinary one-off special projects.
Two Mercedes dealers in particular, Puttocks at Guildford and Panda Diesels at Newhaven, have been good contacts: "We like working on Mercs," says Mosley. "People are prepared to pay a few hundred more usually, to get a proper job done." bigger operators are taking an interest too. Ryder Truck Rentals has been putting quite a few crash repairs into Carlton's workshops and Cranley Freight, which runs a large number of curtainsiders and tilts on the Continent, also has been using the company regularly.
Are there any dark clouds on the horizon? "Yes," says Mosley, "space. We have run out of room. At the moment we build bodies for anything between small vans to 16-tanners, but we cannot squash anthing bigger into the workshop." The firm is working out of a light industrial estate unit, rented from the council. Mosely has found some local land which would be ideal to build a larger factory on, but planning permission will be hard to get. It is ironic that this problem did not beset an attempt earlier in his career to build up a similar bodybuilding business in the Doncaster area. Low-cost rents, council assistance and other forms of grant help could not overcome the lack of business at that time, he recalls. "Space is now our biggest headache," he says, "I did think of going into the fire engine market but the vehicles are just too big for us to handle at present." He has eight staff on the books, and has already set up a pension fund for the workforce. Keeping the men happy is important, he says, otherwise the benefits of coming to a small firm would be lost.
Further expansion will also be hampered by getting the right quality of skilled bodyshop men. Mosley would like to have his own paintshop complete with an oven, if there was more room.
Mosley aims to get four bodies a week through the shop soon, and to increase his 220-24,000-a-month cashflow. He will continue to do as much fabrication work in-house as possible. "The one thing I've learned after 20 years in the bodybuilding business," he says, "is that you can control your own destiny far better if you make all your own frames." Despite a shortage of storage space Carlton has its own large guillotine and folder tucked away in a corner of the workshops. O by Geoff Hadwick