Costing the Dream: Iron & Stone

It was while perched on top of a block of Regency-style apartments in Cheltenham that conservation roofing contractor Rhyddian Gilberston decided window boxes could be a good business.

Anna Hodgson, his sister and partner in their company Iron & Stone, says: "Rhyddian thought window boxes would add the finishing architectural touch to old and new buildings and give flat-dwellers a little garden of their own."

That was 12 years ago, when the siblings and Hodgson's husband Nick were running a business selling sculptures imported from Zimbabwe. "We set it up to help friends in Zimbabwe who desperately needed money to survive," Hodgson says. "We sold all of them and made a £35,000 profit." Gilberston then broached the idea of setting up a window box company, a proposal that appealed to Anna, a teacher, and to Nick, an environmental development planner.

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"The so-called window boxes you see on Victorian buildings are just restrainers to prevent pots falling off the window sill," she explains. "They're made of iron and would be expensive for a homeowner to have made. We found one company making bespoke boxes, and some others making window boxes from wood which would rot pretty quickly."

Helped by Nick's father Ian, an architect, Gilberston designed a self-assembly window box - "more like a plant balconette," according to Hodgson - made from recycled cast aluminium, which is light but can hold 50kg in weight, and is maintenance and rust-free.

"To keep costs to a minimum, our plan was to mainly sell via a website. Flatpacks could be stored in a barn on Rhyddian's property and would be easy to post to customers," Hodgson explains.

Taeno, an industrial designer in Wantage, Oxfordshire, produced a resin mock-up and Nick looked for a manufacturer. UK firms proved too expensive, so he searched abroad.

But then disaster struck. Nick was diagnosed with asbestos-related cancerand died, aged 51, in December 2004.

"He worked up to a week before he died," Hodgson recalls. "It was a very difficult time for me and the project was put on hold."

In June 2005, Gilberston registered Iron & Stone as a company and told Hodgson he wanted to proceed, but needed her help.

"I said yes, then went upstairs and cried because I didn't want to do it any more after Nick's death," Hodgson says. "But, later that year, I was going through Nick's papers and came across a UK foundry he had approached and I decided he'd have wanted me to carry on."

That foundry - Novacast, in Melksham, Wiltshire - agreed to act as middle man between Iron & Stone and a factory in China. So, in 2008, Gilberston extended his mortgage to raise £70,000. They chose three designs - Regency, Georgian and Victorian - in three sizes. However, the factory's early samples were shoddy and the pieces didn't fit.

"There was a lot of toing and froing until they got it right," Hodgson says.

Finally, the couple ordered 900 window box kits, paying £50,000 upfront.

They fixed a price with a 100 per cent gross margin to cover costs. Gilberston was to deal with funding and dispatch, while Hodgson did sales and administration.

They launched at the Hampton Court garden show, but had a disappointing start. "We sold a few, but discovered that garden shows are not the place to sell window boxes," Hodgson says. "Shows are expensive - it cost us £3,000 - and people go to buy plants and look at displays."

Garden centres were not a success, either. "They wanted a 40 per cent discount which we couldn't give because our costs were too high."

They decided to concentrate on their website, but struggled to attract traffic.

"Neither of us knew about retailing and what I know about marketing you could write on a stamp," Hodgson says.

But, just a few years later, the company has won a Local Business Accelerator 2012 award. Among the judges' recommendations was cutting manufacturing costs and lowering prices from £90-£130 to £60-£100. Although Iron & Stone offers a discretionary product when consumers are cutting back, the founders had wondered if it is correctly priced.

Given the problems they were already having with the Chinese factory, switching suppliers and cutting costs became any easy decision to make.

"The third shipment from China had gone badly wrong," Hodgson says. "It was late, the parts didn't fit and the finish was very bad. We'd paid upfront and couldn't send them back, so Rhyddian had to grind them down and repaint them, which took hours. It was a bitter lesson."

Hodgson is now in talks with a Polish factory to supply the product direct, which will cut costs, save on import duty and enable cheaper, modern designs to be offered. Dealing with a manufacturer closer to home should also cut costs and help maintain quality control. Sharper marketing would help, too - targeting clients for whom the product adds business value, such as property developers and small hotels.

On the plus side, Hodgson and Gilberston are committed to paring costs and have other income while building the business. They also enjoy a good level of repeat orders. At 10 boxes a week, sales are still too low to allow either partner to earn a living. However, having won big orders from Staffordshire Housing Association and English Heritage, Hodgson is optimistic that they can make it pay. "I still think it's a good product, we just need more people to know about it."

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