SpaceZero sets sights on £10m revenue target
MANCHESTER-based interior architect SpaceZero has designs on becoming a £10m turnover business within the next four years.
The company founded by managing director Wayne Taylor in 2009 currently has revenue of £4.1m and has just won work on 12 schemes in the North West.
SpaceZero, which will soon move from its 2,300sq ft offices on Lloyd Street to accommodation nearly twice the size at Spring Gardens, and is opening an office in Soho, London, regards itself as “champion” of the education sector, but Taylor is now targeting other sectors.
“Up to now, we have done work all over the country, but not much in this region, but we’ve just won 12 contracts in the North West,” said 48-year-old Taylor, a native of Burnley.
The company took off after being appointed to the Government’s £52bn Building Schools for the Future programme before the 2010 General Election and has continued to grow despite the cutbacks in the scheme forced by the Coalition administration’s subsequent austerity measures.
“We went from working on beautiful curvy buildings worth between £20m and £30m to austere boxes, designed just to save money,” said Taylor.
SpaceZero was recently the only company to win two out of four contracts it bid for on the PF2 project – the replacement for the BSF programme.
Taylor puts the growing success of the company down to the company’s reputation among the architect and contractor community, to such an extent SpaceZero’s expertise is being exported to places like the Middle East.
“We work with a lot of top architects in the country,” he said. “It took a lot of time for us to convince them that we are not competing with them.
“We also know a lot of contractors who ask us to bid for projects because they like working with us.”
Taylor argues that key to the SpaceZero success is the way the company gets the “best value” for its clients.
“We operate a soft service,” he said. “We are advocates for the clients and we are not driven by margin and we believe in transparency.
“We are very technology driven, using the building information management (BIM) system which helps clients visualise projects and gives them the wow factor.”
However, Taylor is serious about directing the company into other areas at the same time as maintaining SpaceZero’s supremacy in the education sector.
“The space between the education sector and commercial offices is becoming ever more blurred,” he added.
“By the time we get to £10m turnover we only want 60% reliance on education. The rest will be healthcare, international offices, commercial and miscellaneous.”
