In the press

EasyJet Magazine - December 2007

A Woman’s Touch

An (almost all-female company is changing the face of the building Industry … and leaving the loo seat down!

WITH A HOUSE IN NEED OF REPAIR AND TIME ON HER HANDS after quitting her career in investment banking in London some four years earlier, Kerrie Keeling set about the thankless task of trying to find a good, trustworthy builder in the capital.

“I rang ten companies.  Only one got back to me and then they didn’t bother to send the quote.  It was disgusting”, says Kerrie, 33.  “When I did find one, they kept leaving the loo seat up and cigarette butts in the sink”.

Her experience with unsavoury builders got her thinking.  “One of the key things I learnt in my business degree is that business is about solving other people’s pain, so I saw a glorious opportunity to solve other people’s  pain – and my own – by setting up a team of trades people who did things the way I’d want them done”, she explains.

That’s how A Woman’s Touch was born.  The almost all-female team of carpenters, plasterers, plumbers, electricians and interior designers deals with mobs ranging from niggling chores you can’t be bothered to do yourself, all the way up to full renovations.  Prices start from well under £100.

“The name of the company implies more about the way the business is run than the fact that nearly all our staff are women”, says Kerrie, who is British Telecom’s 2007 Female Entrepreneur of the Year.  “Most of our employees are women, but there are a few men.  I pick the best person for the job, also we don’t tut and say “Oh no love you can’t do that”.

Unsurprisingly, Kerrie has found a big demand among women clients for female labourers.  But she has also discovered a DIY-challenged sector of men – particularly City bankers, it seems who would rather admit their handyman failures to a woman than a beefy male builder.

“We’ve had several guys from the City who call up in a panic saying they have a dreadful problem with their plumbing, and when you turn up you find they simply need a new washer”, says Kerrie.  “One guy paid us just to bang a few nails into the wall and hang up some pictures”.

Kerrie’s tradeswomen have also built up a big gay clientele, particularly in Brighton.  “Partly because the attitude of your average male builder wouldn’t be favourable to gay men”, she thinks, “but also because gay couples often have a dual income and are willing to spend more and listen to advice.

“And recruiting women in Brighton is far easier than in London.  People see a load of girls up a ladder with a banner saying A Woman’s Touch and they want to know more about us”.

Word of mouth has got Kerrie’s team a long way, including into Richard Branson’s Notting Hill home and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen.

“We were recommended to Gordon Ramsay who was looking for some specialist paint effects in his restaurant in London’s Connaught hotel, two years ago”, says Kerrie.  “Ordinary decorators weren’t up to the job.  We had to work throughout the night, when the restaurant was shut between dinner and breakfast, and we came up with all sorts of techniques, including using crayons to recreate the existing effects.  We did about 50 different test sheets before we let ourselves loose on the walls.  Gordon drifted by one morning and said ‘fantastic’”, she smiles.  Slightly different to his usual abrupt feedback!

Gordon’s head chef at the Connaught, Angela Hartnett, was similarly impressed and recruited Kerri’s team to renovate her home near Brick Lane in London’s East End.  “It is a beautiful Edwardian house on the jack the Ripper tour route, so we’d see all the groups traipse past each night”, says Kerrie.

Such has been the success in the UK of a Woman’s Touch, the first female-run company to be awarded Federation of Master Builders status, that Kerrie has also just launched in Spain.  Her team – so far all English women – is based in Marbella and covers the Costa del Sol.

“It was so much easier than we expected to recruit women in Spain, as the opportunities don’t exist there for them to work, and other building companies are pretty anti-women”, says Kerrie who speaks fluent Spanish, as does her Marbella office manager.

“Our customers in Spain so far have been British expats.  Many have had bad experiences with cowboy builders or are scared to hire Spanish builders because they don’t speak the language, or want something quickly but are hampered by the laidback attitude to work, “ she says.

Jobs so far include renovating a bar in central Marbella and a lot of whitewashing.  “The girls are starting to go a bit snow-blind with all the white villas, so if anyone is contemplating a funky colour for the outside of their property, we’re happy to oblige,” laughs Kerrie, who comments on the joys of working outside in Spain compared with rain-sodden England.  “In London there’s never anywhere to park your car or put your equipment, whereas in Spain there’s such a wonderful sense of space”.

“The all-female team are a source of intrigue on the Costa del Sol”, she says.  “One middle-aged couple were scrutinising us everyday while we were doing some repairs on a neighbouring villa, near Puerto Banus, which is something we’re quite used to”, she adds, “they were skulking around behind the walls in a rather strange way and just as we were packing up, they called us in for a quote to repaint their villa”.

Within the year, Kerrie hopes to roll out the business around Spain to Barcelona, Costa Blanca, Almeria and Madrid.  “I’m also thinking of bringing the concept of a woman’s touch to other areas of business”, adds Kerrie.

First, though, there is one destination she would like to take her tradeswomen: “I’d like to set up a branch in Poland, where there is a massive shortage of builders because they’ve all moved to England.  I just love the irony of it”.