Monday Spotlight: Acquisition trail looks like a walk in the park for Southerns chief executive Andy Kendall-Jones
A career selling office furniture is a far cry from Andy Kendall-Jones’s beginnings as a street trader selling eggs and as a Royal Air Force during the Falklands conflict, but he seems to have taken to it just as well.
The chief executive of Leeds-based furniture, fixtures and equipment business Southerns, Kendall-Jones has had an unconventional route into business.
Bramley born and bred, his first foray into business wasn’t until after his stint in the RAF, when he joined the Burton Group. Before that he had been a market trader, selling eggs from a West Yorkshire stall.
“After I’d travelled most of the world in and after the RAF, I went looking for a job. I remember going into Brooks Street Bureau. They said I was too highly qualified and there was no work in airports at the time,” he said.
“So I thought, I’ll work anywhere. I ended up getting a warehouse job and worked there seven days a week for nine months.”
After working for the Burton Group for several years he moved to Southerns, which he later acquired with the help of Clipper Logistics chief executive Steve Parkin.
“When I started I wanted to grow the business and I had a couple of core ideas I mentioned to a friend of mine, Steve Parkin. One idea was to join back up the group.”
With the backing of fellow Leeds United supporter, Steve Parkin, Andy was able to acquire Southerns’ Bolton namesake in 2015, creating a £17m business. This brought together two businesses that had been separated in the 1990s and expanded the geographical reach of the enlarged Southerns business.
But his ambitions were bigger than that, and Southerns has been on the acquisition trail since, acquiring Broadstock Office Furniture and Space Invader, a design agency with offices in Manchester and London. Now Southerns is on track for more than £40m in turnover and has 200 employees.
“They were very strategic acquisitions, not off the cuff at all. We know exactly where we’re going and what we need to do to get where we need to be,” he said.
“All the businesses so far are vertically aligned and the next strategic move will be to grow horizontally, complementing all the way down the chain.
David Hodkin, Andrew Kendall-Jones, Tim Worne and Steve Parkin following the acquisition of Southerns’ Bolton-based namesake, with help from Knaresborough Investments.
“We’re working on several big opportunities to take the business to the next level and beyond – we’ll be opening an office for Space Invader in Leeds, we’ve bought new units to create more manufacturing in Leeds and look to develop all the areas of our business to serve existing and new clients.”
He might have a £40m-turnover business and play golf with Leeds United’s Massimo Cellino these days, but Andy is still a homebird at heart and would never consider moving himself or his business out of the region.
He said: “Leeds will always be our spiritual home, I love it, I’m from here and Leeds is where we see massive opportunities for growth.”
