John Davey: The colours of money

Oct 20 2009 by Jez Davison, Evening Gazette

John Davey emerged from the shadow of one of Britain's best-known entrepreneurs to build a £5m business. Jez Davison met him.

JOHN DAVEY sees the irony in deciding to make a career from selling industrial paints when you're partially colour-blind.

But the handicap didn’t cloud the serial entrepreneur and one-time Gerald Ronson protege’s 20-20 business vision as he built an empire that spans retailing, distribution, manufacturing and leisure.

Now he’s eyeing further growth at paint and chemical distributor John Davey Ltd (JDL), which is aiming to double turnover to around £10m by opening distribution outlets in Leeds and Newcastle to accompany existing sites in Middlesbrough and Darlington.

The move will allow it to ramp up the speedy distribution of products made by Italian paint manufacturer Lechler and give JDL a greater foothold in the industrial heartlands of Tyneside and West Yorkshire.

It’s the next step in the company’s evolution from regional distributor to national player with customers including British Gas, Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon Homes.

John’s hawkish eye for an opportunity was brought into focus under the watch of former mentor Gerald Ronson, the controversial property tycoon who became embroiled in the infamous Guinness share-trading scandal of the 1990s.

John was running up to 40 operations at Ronson’s property investment firm Heron International in the late 1970s and has a healthy respect for the man’s aggressive management style.

“He was hard but fair. He didn’t expect you to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself.”

John was used to taskmasters, having joined Heron from a five year stint in the RAF. Born in the military town of Aldershot, Hampshire, he left school at 15 to train as an apprentice sheet metal worker before becoming a motor vehicle mechanic for the airforce. In 1967 he was posted to Leeming in North Yorkshire where he met his wife of nearly 40 years, Alma, with whom he’s renewing his vows on December 20.

An accomplished athlete in his teens, he starred in RAF rugby teams alongside teammates who would go on to claim international honours. But by 1973 he was keen to join a different kind of scrum and took a fast-track management role at Heron, where he became regional manager looking after more than 20 sites in the Midlands.

In 1977 he moved back to North Yorkshire to be near Alma and took a job running regional sites for Brown Brothers, a paint manufacturer owned by US-listed automotive engineering firm Dana Corporation.

But an entrepreneurial desire kick-started the John Davey empire when ICI invited him to establish a distribution outlet in Middlesbrough supplying paints and chemicals to North-east automotive firms.

For a while, the formula worked - but cheap imports from Europe threatened to blow up the business before the blue-touch paper had been lit.

“We started importing paints from Italy and it reduced our costs by 40%. We couldn’t have survived just on ICI.”

The chemical giant’s gradual divestment and the trend of fast-expanding automotive multiples turning to national distributors hit revenues, which John arrested by manufacturing some products and diversifying into shampoos, bleaches, disinfectants and cleaning equipment through a new venture, Norchem Distribution.

Formed in 1988 when John bought Cleveland Detergent Products and Krystal Hair Products, Norchem became part of JDL in 1999.

Eight years earlier, John had bought Autopaints in Darlington for easy shipment of goods up and down the A1 corridor.

“Automotive companies were struggling in the (early 1990s) recession but it was the right time to buy. We knew there was still a space for the regional player on the paints side once the economy recovered.”

In 2003 John opened another depot in Northallerton two years after launching Norchem Distribution and Signs, which makes hoardings for national builders and Middlesbrough Football Club.

Now heading up a group which has no debt and deals with up to 100 sales invoices a day, he’s keen to boost distribution of own-branded products and, if conditions allow, expand the manufacturing operation that accounts for around 20% of the business.

Although he’s lost touch with his former mentor, Ronson would no doubt be proud of him - especially since he seems to be emulating Heron’s supremely successful move into the leisure arena, albeit not anywhere near the same scale.

John’s other main venture, Riverside Leisure Promotions Ltd, has just secured a ten-year contract renewal to run shows at Billingham Forum from 2011.

The theatre, which is closed while the Forum Leisure Complex undergoes a £15m revamp, was racking up six-figure losses before he took over the facilities with forum director Derek Cooper in 1998.

“It has secured the future at the theatre for the next ten years”, says John.

From paints and chemicals to the arts, his business life is an exciting rainbow mix. And with retirement not an option for now, there promises to be several more colourful chapters to this entrepreneur’s story.