Flooring company Create City has built its success from the ground up, developing its staff to expand the company. As part of this month’s Success feature, in conjunction with the North East Chamber of Commerce, Peter Jackson charts its rise.

CREATE CITY, Shildon-based parent of Maguires Wholesale Carpets and Frank’s The Flooring Store, now forms a North-East flooring empire.

It heads a group of companies which cover carpet retailing – known throughout the region for its advertising slogan “I love carpets, me” – property investment and property development.

It has a Frank’s network of 18 retail outlets throughout the North-East, claims the title of the region’s largest independent flooring retailer, and it has 70 direct employees.

Frank’s The Flooring Stores are based throughout the North-East, and Maguires delivers from the North of Scotland to South Yorkshire, including Cumbria and Lancashire.

It stocks carpets, floor coverings, laminate flooring, vinyl flooring and wood flooring from leading manufacturers in Europe and the US.

But the business began from extremely modest beginnings only 40 years ago with Billy Maguire selling carpet remnants in an open market.

In the late Seventies, Mr Maguire moved from his native Yorkshire to Shildon, County Durham, to set up the successful B&G wholesale business with his friend, George Oswald.

He taught the trade to his sons, Billy, Frank and Jason, and, when Billy Snr decided to sell his shares in the business in 1993, his boys were already running the Stockton store, even though Billy, the eldest, was only 27 and Jason, the youngest, was 18.

Ten years later, the business had five stores around the region, and only five years ago the group had just six stores.

Since then it has expanded at a rapid rate, growing its retail side through franchises.

To accommodate this growth, and to lay the foundations for future expansion, CreateCity bought the George Reynolds Industrial Estate, in Shildon – the town where Billy Maguire started the business.

Having outgrown its home in Whessoe Road, Darlington, the business moved its main operations to the estate, which – with 150,000sq ft – provided three times as much warehousing space.

Even during the recession, which has hit the high street severely and retailers dependent on the housing market more than most, the company is still thriving.

Joanna Lupton, human resources and administration manager, says: “We are performing very well in a tough climate and the reason for that is a number of strategic decisions made by the management in terms of purchasing and warehousing, so we hold significant stocks.

For all of our manufacturers we are a valued customer, which gives us an ability to buy stock competitively and efficiently.

“We are performing extremely well. In such a climate, companies often look for redundancies, short-time working, pay cuts and pay freezes – we have not considered any of these.

“In fact, this year, we have awarded a two per cent pay increase and last year we awarded a four per cent pay increase, because we believe that when the company is doing well, we should give some of that back to the employees.”

It is that emphasis on the employee and the development of the individual staff member as the basic building block of the company that management believes has contributed so much to the company’s success and growth.

“We believe that the company is only as good as its people,’’ says Ms Lupton.

“To deliver good quality and good service, our people have to know how to deliver.’’ This emphasis was recognised by the North East Chamber of Commerce (NECC) at its inaugural learning awards at the Tees annual dinner held at Middlesbrough Town Hall recently.

There, minister for the North-East Nick Brown and Graham Henderson, vicechancellor of Teesside University, presented CreateCity with the employer of the year award, along with a £1,000 NECC training grant.

Receiving the award, Ms Lupton said: “We consider it a privilege and an honour to be recognised by NECC with this award. In tough times it is extremely rewarding to know that our efforts are making a difference. It is our firm intention to continue developing the company by improving the skills and training of our staff with help from NECC.

“It is vital to continue improving the skills level throughout the business and receiving awards such as this help to engrain this ethos throughout the company.”

CreateCity regards training as a constant process and works alongside NECC to put its staff through a minimum of NVQ Level 2 and many through Level 3 in warehousing, customer service and business administration. And this is not limited to staff on the shop or warehouse floor, as finance director David Stubbs signed up to study for the NVQ Level 5 in management with NECC.

“We very much work on multi-skilling the whole of the workforce,” says Ms Lupton.

“It looks quite a big operation, but we run a fairly tight ship in terms of numbers of employees.

“We have about 70 direct employees across retail and wholesale, so we are very much focused on getting people trained up to be as flexible as possible.

“The fact that we have a multi-skilled workforce means people are prepared to do what’s required to get the job done. We are about to go into our busy period now, so it’s all hands on deck, including me, I’ve just been helping out in the sales office.”

After Christmas and into January, inevitably comes a quieter period, and it is then that CreateCity really concentrates on training its staff in new skills to prepare them for the next busy period.

All staff – from management to drivers and shop floor workers – are given quarterly reviews to assess their performance and to identify any training needs, taking into account their wishes on training and development requirements.

The company also has a performance-related pay structure to maximise incentives.

“We also achieved the Investors in People standard for the third time last year and these new standards place the emphasis very much on consistently striving to improve and we are very much focused on that,’’ says Ms Lupton.

“We have also taken on a number of apprentices, a route we very much support in terms of getting people into the workplace and giving them experience, and doing it in such a way as to develop them and keep them.’’ The company is also assisted in its apprenticeship programme, as in all its training, by the NECC.

The NECC sends NVQ assessors to the company to work with and assess the staff and take them through each module of their courses.

All this is repaid with a very high staff retention rate.

“We have very low staff turnover and some of our employees have been with the firm since day one,’’ says Ms Lupton.

The company also regards it as a strength that the majority of its franchisees are family or former employees and the company is keen to support any employee who wishes to take that route.

Create City is still very much a family firm, being run by the two brothers, Frank and Jason.

Finance director David Stubbs become the first nonfamily member on the board when he joined the firm in 2000. His efforts were instrumental in the company winning Investors in People and gained an award from The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

The company is growing, but it is determined to retain its culture and emphasis on staff development and engagement, however big it grows.

As Ms Lupton says: “Our focus is to build long-term, productive partnerships with everyone that we deal with.

We are committed to encouraging and promoting a culture of mutual respect to collectively celebrate success and will actively encourage and promote an environment of highly motivated, committed and satisfied people who collectively and consistently strive for excellence."