The Juggling Years

While I had the Deep End I embarked on several other fun (but not fruitful) projects. It was an exciting time as the internet took off, and with us generating a lot of cash, I thought I was pretty invincible.

The beer van

Because we were freehold, we got a great deal on our beer supply, and with a yearly bonus back to barrel one, thought it would be a good idea to distribute locally. We bought an old Bedford van from a boarding school and every week loaded it up and distributed to pubs, clubs and restaurants.

Ringtones

Around the same time we set up a ringtones and graphics business. It was the era when ringtones were going crazy. We were a little bit late to it, and in truth we just poured some money down the drain giving it a go.

I did learn a lot about premium rate SMS and that fed into the creation of PowerText (that became Airship).

Bar Rocket, Chesterfield

Then we bought a bar in Chesterfield called Norma Jeans and this was somewhat the start of our financial troubles.

We overspent tremendously on the fit-out and really didn’t get the market right. The Zanzibar nightclub (who later became an early PowerText customer) was right across the road, and they ran a free bar before 10pm to get customers in.

We were a premium spirits bar. I’d hired a cocktail specialist manager from a bar in Birmingham, convinced I’d pick off the premium customers of Chesterfield. It turned out the premium customers either went to Derby or they went to Sheffield.

I can’t even remember the date, but I remember standing on the front door on opening night and seeing a dust cloud come down the street. The first person to arrive, the very first, asked one question: “What’s your cheapest drink?”

We sweated profusely over the next couple of years trying to get that business going, and it never really got off the ground. Two hundred capacity, and I don’t think we ever had a hundred guests in. No food, just a late-night bar, and nearly everyone after a cheap drink. I used to drive between Hillsborough and Chesterfield trying to make it work, and even thirty minutes away, that second venue was a real struggle to keep going operationally. We never returned our investment. It was a real lesson.

The Art Room

Then, through friends, the opportunity came to take over a bar in Sheffield city centre. It had been the Golden Lion, and then Tin Pan Alley, and we took it on and rebranded it the Art Room.

I’d been collecting art since I was about sixteen, so I simply emptied my house and put it all up on the walls. It was a rundown site on a leftover lease, but we made the most of it, and we took a lot of what we’d learned at the Deep End with us.

We put a pianist in at lunchtimes (a quick kudos to Ryan Taylor, a bit of a Sheffield legend, who came in and played for us), ran songwriters’ nights and jazz in the evenings, and did good food. The food side of it was genuinely enjoyable, and being close to HSBC helped.

But by that point I was juggling cash between safes to keep different businesses alive, and we had no investment to put in.

Seraphic

At the same time, we set up a record label called Seraphic, with rehearsal rooms and a studio in the centre of Sheffield. A passion project, really, with my business partner Roo.

I set it up to record one band: the Lazy Dollies, who were under contract with a New York label and had supported Oasis. I loved them. I thought their music was insane.

We ended up recording others too, Four Day Hombre from Leeds and Teguin Roberts, and we published a book of poetry by Steve Haythorne. Most of them were Deep End regulars. We did produce an album for the Lazy Dollies, which we launched at Sheffield City Hall.

(I’ve still got a bunch of Lazy Dollies albums, by the way. If anyone wants one, give me a shout.)

But again: no investment, no traction, just spinning plates and moving money around to support all of the great ideas. Some of which weren’t so great.

The working men’s club

There was also a working men’s club at Oughtibridge in that period. I distinctly remember spending an entire day cleaning out a mouldy ice machine, only for it to break on the first night. I think we lasted about a month before we threw in the towel there as well.

The juggling

It was fun, but exhausting. We did some really cool stuff. We kitted out Hillsborough in Christmas trees one year. We got involved, both feet first, in everything we did and gave it a really good go.

But there were never really any financial controls in the business, which obviously isn’t great when you’re in your mid-twenties trying to do a hundred things at once.

That took us up to 2003, 2004. The last business I sold was the Art Room. And I remember locking the door, handing over the keys, walking down the road, and unlocking the door on the new offices of PowerText, which we’d been building for about two years.

One door closed. Another one, quite literally, opened.

The Horse

Let’s not talk about the Horse (ask me when you see me).