Redbrick Properties have reached a noticeable milestone as we are celebrating our 10th anniversary.
We formed Redbrick Properties a decade ago by a handshake in the Blues Bar in Harrogate after a motivating conference held by Yorkshire Forward for new businesses.
Our early formative meetings were usually held in local bars or clubs, and the pinnacle meeting with our accountant in the Stone Trough, Rawdon, where we formulated the company with the signing of the Companies House papers.
Even the name was inspired by the interior of the Hi-Fi club in Leeds!
It was nearing deadline day to decide a company name, and at the time our provisional name was Urban Edge, but this was missing something.
This was our last day to decide, the ambience in the club was perfect for putting forward suggestions, and names were banded about from a Dulux colour chart including Magnolia! Matt, in a moment of genius mentioned the name was right in front of us? Where? The walls of the club were exposed red-brick.
With the name as the focus of increased vigour, we signed a lease on a first floor office above our good friends in Headingley, Castlehill Estate Agents.
With limited funds we made our way to IKEA to furnish the office, we even made a trip down to London to pick up a donated computer! From Carl Phillipson.
With everything in place we opened up the office on the 15th November 2002 to the public. Working unpaid for the first few months, the hard work paid off and within 18 months we were VAT registered. The hours were long but we had fun establishing ourselves. Our office cordless phone range was around 100 metres and in our first Summer we took advantage, grabbed a note book and pen and sat in the Original Oak Beer Garden for a pint!
From the start we wanted to be different, this was perhaps highlighted best in one of our early marketing endeavours. An advertisement we commissioned on the sides of the number 96 bus through the City Centre displaying the slogan “Wake up with a Big Semi every Morning” during the summer of 2005 was a particular favourite.
Not happy to sit back we decided to move to a more prominent commercial property, a ground floor shop in Headingley in 2005. The move was almost seamless, apart from a decision to remove the plaster in the front office to uncover what we thought would be red-brick, this was not the case! There was a brief discussion to re-name to Yorkshire Stone Properties!
Fast forward to our 2012 rebrand, we turned to our graphic designer Alex Dale with the remit, “take Redbrick out of its comfort zone, surprise us”. He certainly did, new logo, new brand colours, even down to a new company font. The 20th April 2012 was a pivotal day for Redbrick, it was the launch of our website - version three and a memorable visit to London to attend the ESTA awards. The awards are industry recognized and based on questionnaires returned by our landlords. After a brief presentation by Phil Spencer in the Park Lane Hilton, we walked away with a Silver Award for excellence in customer service in Yorkshire & Humberside.
We now look forward with excitement to challenges the industry brings, whilst we can safely say we are established and knowledgeable, yet still have the energy and audacity of a young contender.