Harrison flies the flag

THE car tries to grip the road that has just had a powdery dusting of snow, covering the icy tracks in Darlington’s Borough Road. The search is on for the offices of Harrison External Display Systems. And just when it appears we may have to slide/drive around the block again, a flagpole appears, bearing a fluttering Union flag. For anyone trying to find its offices, it is a beacon of light in an industrial winter wilderness.

Harrison’s has been a firm fixture of Borough Road for about 50 years and is in its third generation of family ownership, initially offering steeplejack services until the company began getting an increasing number of inquiries for flagpoles.

Today, it remains a family firm, with Adrian Harrison still heavily involved in various divisions of the business. Harrison’s is one of Europe’s biggest manufacturers and suppliers of flags and flagpoles, selling about 25,000 poles a year. The company has an array of high profile events and clients it has catered for and, according to its new managing director, Andrew Hobson, the future is definitely bright.

“The fact that Harrison’s already has a great reputation for the quality of its flags and flagpoles is a great platform to build on for the future,” he says.

“We’ve just spent 18 months restructuring and now we are ready to start shouting about what we do.”

There’s plenty to shout about. The firm has won coveted work supplying flags and its specialist glass fibre poles to Taylor Wimpey, one of Britain’s biggest house builders, for its 400 sites across the UK. It has also supplied flags, flagpoles and rollout banner branding for outside Buckingham Palace, the London Marathon, BBC Proms, the hotel chain Malmaison, the electrical retailer Currys and, most recently, BMW for its garages across the country.

In addition, the business supplies the event management market and will work with several London agencies over the coming months, which are planning events for the likes of Nike and Adidas.

Part of Harrison’s success, says Andrew, lies in the fact that they are bespoke. Any design of flag is catered for with its in-house artwork team and its engineers have created new business opportunities after developing bespoke flagpoles for clients. One event planning agency, for example, came to it asking to design a flagpole that could fly a flag at all times – even if there was no wind.

“We started looking into it and we produced a fan-assisted flagpole which works by sending a continuous gust of air up the pole from the base of the unit,” says Andrew. “Now we produce those poles within our range. We’ve just supplied five of them for the Winter Olympic Games in Canada in February. They’re also ideal for events like indoor exhibitions where there’s no wind.”

Other requests, however, can be more unusual. Andrew recounts how the Indian Embassy in London contacted him to say they were on the move. Harrison’s had supplied their flagpole previously and would they be interested in either moving it for them or buying it back?

“The surprising thing was that it was 27 or 28 years old,” he laughs.

“We thought that was amazing – one that it must have been in good quality for them to suggest we buy it back and two that it had lasted so long.”

But perhaps it is understandable given the firm prides itself on the quality of its products and offers a ten year warranty with each flagpole. Twenty years ago, glass fibre was the most popular choice of flagpole on the market until aluminium came along at a lower cost, albeit a less durable solution.

Today, the company produces a cost effective glass fibre cylindrical design, used by the likes of Taylor Wimpey, which is a more accessible option for customers.

With its reputation for quality, any challenges the company has faced through the recession has been more as a result of demand.

“A flag or a flagpole is not an essential part of somebody’s plan and it can be the first thing to get cut in budgets, particularly if you’re an agency planning an event,” says Andrew. “But we very much take a consultative approach with customers. We work with them to come up with answers to their problems, be it budgetary or otherwise.

“With the business during the recession, we’ve restructured and looked at every single part of it to reduce cost without losing the quality.” The company manufactures all its UK flagpoles on site by hand and many of the flags are hand stitched by their in-house seamstresses. It employs 18 people in Darlington and is looking to develop its sales team in the new year.

The company also has a plant in Sri Lanka to cater for the US and Middle Eastern markets.

Harrison’s has been in the Middle East for ten years but has recently won two large contracts worth about £500,000. One is for the Royal Equestrian Centre, owned by the Qatar Royal Family and the second is for the Government of Oman.

“For the Oman Government it was about supplying their motorways with flagpoles and flags which are then raised on days such as Royal family birthdays,” says Andrew.

“Our strategy for next year is to build on what we’ve got and have other Middle Eastern countries with Harrison agents.”

While in Britain, its market is 80 per cent commercial and 20 per cent domestic, in the star spangled banner-loving US, the figures are the exact opposite – 80 per cent domestic and 20 per cent commercial. The company supplies to the US market via Annin, a New Jersey based flag business. Its reinforced flagpoles and flags are also supplied to hurricane prone areas which are capable of withstanding wind speeds of up to 125mph.

Plans for the company’s future include further developing its innovative Pollite Pole System, which supports the lighting used on airport runways. It has taken eight years to develop by the team at Harrison’s and incorporates the safety factor of being able to break in two if it is hit by a plane. It has just received ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) and FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) certification and Andrew explains there are only three other companies in the world providing anything similar.

“We launched it at the air show in Munich and the feedback was amazing,” he recalls. “As a result, the company which owns 70 per cent of the global market for supplying runway lighting is interested in working with us.”

An obvious contender for Harrison’s flags is the London 2012 Olympics and Andrew has already been to London to meet the committee. It came after the company was commissioned to manufacture the first London 2012 flag and fan assisted flagpole last year which were used in the official flag raising ceremony attended by Lord Sebastian Coe and Olympics minister Tessa Jowell.

It was a proud moment for Harrison’s, but while Andrew believes the company is in a strong position to win further Olympic contracts, his main focus for 2010 is on strengthening current markets, such as the UK market and the Middle East. The company goes to the North East Chamber of Commerce for export advice and will be working with the chamber in 2010 to further develop its agent network in the Middle East.

“We really want to focus on building Harrison’s further and if we were to win the contract to supply the London 2012 Olympics that would be a bonus,” he says.

Due to the restructure and new developments such as Pollite and new markets being explored, Andrew is confident the turnover of the company will be doubled within the next 18 months.

“It’s a really exciting time for us,”

he says. “We’ll continue to source the best products for the best prices and build on the reputation we already have worldwide.”