SIMON Howie admitted to feeling understandably mixed emotions as he discussed the sale of his Shore Laminates and Mermaid Panels companies to American giant Wilsonart Engineered Surfaces. This, after all, was a business the entrepreneur had been able to establish with money bequeathed to him by his mother, who died at the all too young age of 50.
Shore is a company that Mr Howie, a butcher to trade, has had to patiently nurture over the years. As he conceded yesterday, the early days were tough. Cash flow was tight at times and it took a while to build up a body of work that gave it credibility and allowed it to win the bigger contracts.
Those rewards would come of course. Announcing the Wilsonart deal yesterday, the company highlighted the importance of landing contracts with major companies such as Glasgow Airport and Standard Life.
But it was not just patience and perseverance which Mr Howie displayed in building a business from scratch into an enterprise worth £30 million. That he had the nous to launch the business in the first instance (the idea came after he struggled to source laminate products for his butcher shops) showed the entrepreneurial spark Mr Howie has since come to be known for. It was a spark that also illuminated his subsequent, and equally astute, decisions to branch out into different products, and to acquire companies which took it into different markets.
As Mr Howie’s CV shows, the success he has had with Shore is reflected across his myriad business interests. One suspects that there is plenty more where that came from.
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