Rick Petini, owner of Delcor
Sep 6 2010 by Christopher Knox, The Journal
When it comes to interior design and style, Rick Petini is certainly a perfectionist. Christopher Knox talks to the owner of upmarket furniture maker and retailer Delcor and finds how his family have spurred him to build an increasingly successful business.
DESIGN is ingrained in Italian culture and although Rick Petini was born in England he traces his obsession with making the world look good to his family's roots.
His strong sense of the culture of the “old country” informs everything Petini has done at the upmarket bespoke furniture firm Delcor since he took over as managing director of the Seaton Delaval business five years ago.
The 50-year-old makes sure he has a say in every shape of sofa and every piece of fabric used by the company he decided to buy two years ago.
The Petini family came to the UK after the Second World War when his grandfather got his first taste of England in a prisoner of war camp in Nottingham.
His grandfather was quickly released and began work in a local steelworks. His family soon settled into a council house in nearby Ilkeston.
Petini, who was born in 1960, quickly realised that his family set up was a little different than those of his friends.
He says: “It was absolutely mad round our house as it was very loud, with a lot of importance placed on mealtimes. The house was very Italian and was everything like the way you expect an Italian family to live. I used to love going round to my friends’ houses to get sausage and chips and they would love coming around ours to have lasagna.
“I was very lucky, looking back, as my childhood helped me establish an appreciation for nice things at a young age. We were even the first family on the street to have a television.”
However, it was these strong roots that initially caused Petini a few problems growing up, particularly at nursery school where he was initially sent back home due to the fact that he couldn’t speak more than a few words of English.
But although the young Petini found it difficult to study English and maths, he found considerably more success in art and design.
“Although by secondary school I was fluent in two languages, I wasn’t very good in most other academic fields. However, one thing I was always had a keen eye for was art,” he recounts.
“I believe this stems from my Italian roots as we are known for being very passionate, artistic people. I would always draw as a child, whether it be cars or, even back then, chairs as I liked to improve on what had gone before.
“I did everything from painting to sculpture and my arts teachers wanted me to stay on and go to art college, but I would have had to stay on and get good grades elsewhere. I just wanted to get into work and start making money.”
It was just as well as Petini would go on to live, what even now, would be considered to be an expensive lifestyle.
He says: “I always liked to wear nice clothes as fashion was one of my biggest passions as a kid. In my late teens and early 20s I was wearing labels like Paul Smith, which is everywhere now, but back then was seen as out of most people’s reach. I’ve always had a passion for cars and clothes.”
Despite knowing that he wanted to enter the art and design world, Petini wasn’t sure what route to take and found himself working at a hotel in Nottingham.
He says: “I left school not really knowing what I wanted to do but I knew it had to be something to do with art and design. However, I ended up at a hotel as a trainee manager at Novotel Group.
“Pretty soon I managed to be promoted to the role of head wine waiter, mostly because of the fact that I could speak Italian. The hours were certainly an improvement, but it still meant I’d be up until the early hours serving wine.”
It would be a friend of the family who would give him his big break in upholstery and provide his life with the focus he had been looking for.
He says: “Its funny how I got into upholstery. This guy had been talking to my parents about me and it just so happens that he was a sewing machine mechanic.
“He turned up at the hotel and told me there were some jobs coming up at the factory he worked at. My dad had told him that working at a hotel just wasn’t for me and that I had this artistic flair that wasn’t being used.”
The company turned out to be Buoyant Upholstery, which was founded in 1909 and, Petini stresses, it was then synonymous with style and top quality.
“I started working for Bouyant at just the right time, before it was bought out and started making sofas and beds for Silent Night and became a mass producer,” he says. “Back then it was very bespoke upholstery work, which taught me an awful lot about the colours and shapes that worked well together.
“After working with the company for a couple of years, its managing director saw that I was always volunteering for stuff and keen to learn new things, so he suggested that I consider going to college to further my education in upholstery. That’s when it all really started for me.”
During his time at Basford Hall College, he passed his City and Guilds in upholstery and an HND in furniture manufacture, management and furniture design. Indeed his tutors were so impressed with his knowledge and expertise that they asked him to stay on as a lecturer. But big changes were happening at Buoyant, which would create even bigger opportunities for Petini.
He says: “The boss of Buoyant passed away and a new management team was brought in to run the ship. New production director John Bonsall took me under his wing and gave me lots of additional training and advice.
“He also provided me with heaps of confidence and always used to tell me that there are only a handful of people in this world that are skilled as well as passionate about what they do and I was one of them.”
“Don’t get me wrong, he would tell you off if he had to, but you would come out of it feeling motivated.”
Following the acquisition of Buoyant by the Wade Furniture Group, Petini was appointed as a director of Nottingham- based upholstery firm Welbeck House, where he was instrumental in securing a contract with Laura Ashley.
He says: “Soon enough I was being asked to travel down to London for some of the big meetings, not just to discuss what was happening on the factory floor but to provide my input on what fabrics we should be using.”
In 2001, the Wade Furniture Group purchased Delcor after the North Tyneside company began to suffer as a result of cheaper imports from overseas and Petini joined as manufacturing director.
He explains: “The big furniture chains started to really slash their prices, and as Delcor was synonymous with upmarket quality and made its products in the UK, it just couldn’t compete.”
As a result, a number of cuts to staff had to made, which resulted in the closure of most of Delcor’s stores across the UK, leaving only its showroom in Seaton Delaval and a shop on fashionable King’s Road, in Chelsea.
He says: “By 2005, I was left to run the ship as managing director and didn’t know how things were going to pan out. I knew that I had to do something and started to introduce more vibrant fabrics, change a few shapes and add more bespoke features.
“For example, we did a re-covering recently for a 90-year-old customer on a suite that was more than 30 years old. With the wide range of fabrics we now have and the skills we have on site, we can do pretty much anything the customer wants.
“However, this isn’t cheap, but it’s this top end, bespoke, niche of the market that is really starting to help us sell sofas again.
“In fact, the recession has actually helped us as our customers are once more looking for products that last ... not to be part of a throw-away society. There is a real buzz coming back to the market when it comes to quality interiors and we are right at the heart of this.”
The firm, which has 37 staff, has seen its revenues go up by nearly 20% to around £2.5m in the last year and he is now looking to rebuild its nationwide store chain.
At one point, Delcor sold its Northumberland-made designs from stores in Guildford, Tunbridge Wells, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Solihull.
Petini says: “When things started to not go right, they started closing stores but we are still getting people calling every week from those areas. We would probably like to open one a year, maybe two. It will probably be Glasgow first, followed by Guildford, Tunbridge Wells and Bristol.”
He is passionate about the brand and compares Delcor sofas to BMW, Mercedes and Aston Martin cars and calls the firm’s dedicated customers “Delcorians”.
“I have been making quality, bespoke furniture ever since I left school. My son says my best friends are sofas,” he laughs.
“Five years ago, I got the opportunity to be the managing director and take it back to its grass roots. We brought back the re-covering service and a bespoke service where you can have furniture made in any size you want.
“Nobody else can do that, we are unique, but it doesn’t cost you an arm and leg. We make it in the UK and we use the best materials. We offer assembly on site. Our drivers and porters are trained so they can all dismantle the furniture and put it back together in the house. We can get any of our sofas and chairs in anywhere.”
Petini’s success in turning around Delcor gave him the confidence to purchase the firm in 2008. That year was also the darkest of Petini’s life.
In July 2007 his 18-year-old son Daniel was diagnosed with leukaemia and he died early the next year. The tragic death of the promising young actor and model was a massive blow to the family. Petini’s wife Janet did not return to her job at Delcor for months.
Photos of the teenager fill the family home in Hepscott Park, Stannington, near Morpeth in Northumberland, which they share with their other sons Matthew, 23, and Joe, 16.
However, Petini threw himself into his work and was so determination to make a success of Delcor amid his personal loss that owner Charles Wade approached him to sell him the business.
Petini says: “It was a massive rollercoaster of a time for us as a family. What made me realise that taking Delcor on was the right thing to do was the fact that Daniel was the only one of our three boys that had said that I should consider buying the business.
“That’s why the opportunity to take it on so soon after his death felt like the right time for me. My wife and I really believe that he had some part to play in me purchasing the company and this is another reason why I am determined to make it an even bigger success than it already is.”
