A newly-established interior design business has won exclusive rights to sell the Ralph Lauren home collection in Yorkshire. Ruth Campbell makes herself at home in the Harrogate showroom

INTERIOR designer Richard Grafton invites me to make myself at home. Sinking into a comfortable chair, surrounded by plumped-up cushions, sumptuous throws and with a cup of tea in hand, it’s hard not to.

With the TV on, a roaring fire in the grate and flickering candles by my side, I almost forget I’m in a showroom. And this is precisely Grafton’s intention. “People can sit and relax all afternoon if they want. We encourage it,” he says.

It’s a laid-back, homely feel, however, which belies the drive and determination behind a new business that has achieved a turnover of £1m in its first year of trading and almost tripled its initial staff from four to 11 in 12 months.

Richard Grafton Interiors surprised many in the industry when, having just launched in April 2012, it won the exclusive rights to sell Ralph Lauren home collection in Yorkshire last year. It was quite a coup for a newly established interiors firm, which had to be stringently vetted by representatives from the world famous fashion and lifestyle house before being allowed to sell the brand.

“They weren’t going to give it away to any old tin pot business in Harrogate,” says Grafton, who has worked in the industry for nearly 30 years.

He points to the Ralph Lauren Hepplewhite chair, in washed denim, and a striking handcarved walnut dining table, which he describes as “timeless classics”, but with a vintage and quite masculine feel. It fits well with RGI’s overall look of “country house” style with a contemporary twist, created by cleverly mixing old and new.

Grafton has always been interested in property, taking out a mortgage to buy his first home when he left school aged just 17 to start work in his family’s fabric business in Castleford.

“I have always been ambitious and saw beautiful houses as a symbol of hard work. I was passionate about property and passionate about success,” he says.

The Northern Echo:
Some of the stylish items in the store

He did up his first property and sold it six months later, making a 25 per cent return. With his next property, he tripled his investment in three years, then went on to do up several more, until, in his mid-30s, he was living in a grand manor house.

After rejecting the chance to study accountancy after leaving school, his hands-on approach to property development turned out to be the ideal training ground for what was to become his future career.

Now 47, he decided two years ago, having built up the interior design side of the family business in Harrogate and taken on a number of major projects including fitting out two Michelin-starred restaurants, to branch out on his own.

Despite the recession, Grafton was confident enough to invest £1m because he felt the time was right. “I got to the age where I thought, it’s now or never,” he says. “In this business, you have to serve an apprenticeship over many years to get the knowledge and skills you need.”

But he doesn’t think good interior design can be taught. “I think you either can do it or you can’t,” he says.

He has a passion for architecture and was particularly inspired, he says, during a recent trip to Rome, by the Coliseum, Vatican and Pantheon buildings. Drawn towards what he describes as “a contemporary colour palette” of calm, neutral colours, he is not a lover of minimalism. “It’s far too sterile when you have to live in it. A home has to have a personality,” he says.

He also enjoys using contrasting accent colours and introducing quirky surprises, such as opening the door into a downstairs toilet to discover the walls are lined in prints of brightly-coloured Penguin paperback covers.

The Northern Echo:
Richard Grafton built up the interior design side of the family business

The father of three’s most recent personal property venture is a barn conversion which he and his wife Milly have gutted and transformed to create a beautiful family home.

A keen runner, he finds his early morning jogs along leafy North Yorkshire lanes before work inspirational, both because the colours and textures of nature spark off ideas for interior schemes, and because this is when he thinks through how he is developing the business.

HAVING acquired another Harrogate interiors business last year and launching a new joint venture bedroom and bathroom design company with another firm, Grafton has no intention of standing still. Even RGI’s three-storey showrooms, which showcase other top names from the world of interior furnishings including Mulberry and Colefax and Fowler and include a stunning fully fitted kitchen and limestone bathroom, undergo regular extensive makeovers, including a recent £50,000 refurbishment.

Grafton, who goes on regular buying trips to France and Italy, now plans to build up the RGI brand to include manufacturing some of its own designs.

There is something for everybody in his shop, he says, picking up a glass on a side table to reveal a £7 price tag. “We want to be aspirational, but I am attracted to the idea of affordable luxury. Some of our fabrics may be more than £100 a metre, but you can use them for the cushions, rather than the whole sofa.”

While some of the bathroom and kitchen projects he works on cost many tens of thousands of pounds, he is also happy to take on work that brings in as little as £100. “That’s how word spreads about the business,” he says.

But one of RGI’s strengths, he stresses, is that it can offer the complete interior design package.

The Northern Echo:
Some of the stylish items in the store

“Many customers tend to look at things in isolation because the whole thing fazes them. But you can’t choose a wallpaper if you don’t know what colour stone floor you are intending to have. It’s like looking at the top left of the jigsaw and forgetting about the other three quarters. You need a vision for the house from the front door.”