Recently, we asked the members of the UK’s largest and most active forum for tiling professionals – Tilers Community – to share their work and stories with us for a series of articles in the magazine. For this month’s edition of the Community Spotlight, we spoke with James Tully, who co-founded The Oxford Tiling Company in 2013, exploring his opinions on a range of industry topics.
James took an unconventional path into the industry, initially going to university to study IT before realising it wasn’t the right choice for him. Later, while taking on some labouring work, he began to learn the trade from a local tiler, supplementing that external education with his own independent study and practice. This is one example of the tenacity and self-motivation which seem to have served James well throughout his career.
For another, a pivotal moment came when James learned of a job in America on a cruise ship. Although the original job was for a labourer, he explains, he ended up helping with the tiling as well – taking advantage of the opportunity to learn a huge amount from the other tilers while he was there!
A few years later he met Tom – his current business partner and the other co-founder of The Oxford Tiling Company. “He was a subcontractor for a local flooring company, and I managed to get my foot in the door there a little bit and so we would work together,” James says. “Then Tom and I started taking on some sort of smaller jobs, subcontracting for other local tiling companies. Then as we were getting a bit older and a bit more experienced, we were both starting to think, you know, we can do that ourselves!”
From there, the pair started working together for a few years before officially creating Oxford Tiling in 2013. James considers this early period one of the most important in the company’s history, as it was during this time that he built up many of the contacts that remain on his client list now. “Site managers and quantity surveyors, contract managers, they’re quite transient – they move around,” he explains. “Once you meet people and your name gets about, you’re in somebody’s contact list and as long as you keep doing a good job, you’ll never leave it.”
Growth and change
Today, of course, things look very different for the company. As is obvious to anyone who looks at its work, Oxford Tiling is capable of incredibly high-end installations, both in the commercial and domestic sectors. The luxury residential properties are where James believes the company excels the most, and looking at the results it’s hard to argue! However, these jobs come with their complications, one being a class of clientele which can be incredibly demanding. “They spend millions on these houses, so they demand excellence the whole way through,” says James. “For us, I find we’re often under incredible scrutiny because tiles are so personal.”
Although the high-end residential work is undeniably the most beautiful and exciting, one of the big keys to Oxford Tiling’s continued success is its adaptability, says James. “You have to be adaptable. You have to be able to do all,” he says. “All types of tiling.” For example, in addition to the homes of the ultra-wealthy, the company is also responsible for the tiling in central Oxford university halls, as well as local new build housing developments. “So there isn’t really a standard, you’ve got to be able to do it all, I find.”
As the business has grown, so too have its personnel requirements. From its relatively humble beginnings as a two-man outfit, Oxford Tiling has now taken on several full-time tilers who work exclusively for the company. “Having them on board has given us so much more flexibility,” James explains. “Getting people who work essentially full-time for us is the best thing we ever did.”
With that crucial part of the company’s workforce now accounted for, James made the decision two years ago to come off the tools himself. “It was always going to have to happen eventually,” he says, as the level of work they were winning began to scale beyond their capacity to both complete the jobs and run a company simultaneously. “It was all based on a sandy foundation really,” James explains. “I was trying to go out and tile, amongst pricing things and trying to manage other jobs. I was starting to do nothing particularly well, so I needed to come off the tools eventually to really focus on developing and running the business from a desk – we’ve only grown since then.”
Big picture
Nowadays, James gets his job satisfaction from the success of Oxford Tiling as a company, whether that’s procuring business in the first place or seeing the work finally complete. “I do get excited about winning the work and knowing that it’s coming up. I guess that’s because I know we’re busy and that we’re secure, because we’re still a small business at the end of the day, and my job is to keep the work coming in.” Of course, that’s no easy task, particularly in the UK’s current economic climate! Tendering in particular can be time-consuming and difficult, because contractors are under a lot of pressure to be diligent and only award work to the right subcontractors.
“There’s quite a lot of scrutiny on us, so they’ll ask for price breakdowns in certain areas, just to make sure we’ve included everything. It’s a tricky one to navigate really, because you can’t be the most expensive, but you’ve got to provide value.” Even once the work is won, the project management side of working on large developments can be especially challenging, requiring James to work with the main contractor’s site team to manage each aspect of the job.
The race down
Undeniably, the recent economic volatility in England has made James’ job harder, but fortunately it hasn’t had any deleterious effects on the company’s prospects so far, “touch wood! The company is still growing, if slowly, he says, and has actually taken on two new tilers in the last month alone. One of the keys to Oxford Tiling’s continued success in this environment has been refusing to participate in the race to the bottom for pricing. “We found we have to stick to our guns. We always price jobs in a way that we’re comfortable with, so we don’t have to walk into any job thinking: Oh, we’ve got to get this job done quick or we’re not doing well.”
Naturally, this means that certain areas have become too competitive for the company to really be in contention. Smaller housing developments, for example, used to comprise a percentage of its business, but when James has priced up these jobs over the last few years, they’ve gone to cheaper alternatives. “But then I look at that,” he says, “And again, we’re pricing it up in a way where we’re comfortable to do it. Tom and I have been busy fools in the past. It took a long time for us to realise and learn, because there’s been nobody to teach us how to build a business.”
The benefits of community
Today, of course, things are a little different. Not only is there a plethora of manufacturer-created resources designed to teach tilers the basics of the trade, there’s support and guidance on everything from product selection to running a business through groups like Tilers Community. James was an early member of the group, joining shortly after its creation on the merits of its founder, Sam Hoffman. “I think what he’s doing is great actually. I don’t know him very well, but I notice he’s always very helpful to people, and has genuinely brought a sense of community to the industry.”
Beyond that, the group is helping the tiling trade advocate for itself in a way James says it has maybe struggled to in the past. “I feel like we’ve lagged behind some other trades a little bit – tiling hasn’t always got the recognition that it deserves as a trade really, especially with the quality levels people are able to produce and the workmanship that people are putting out there.”
Ultimately, James explains, Tilers Community shows how the industry is developing and evolving. “There are so many experienced guys on there an, and some of the work they’re putting out is incredible. I learn a lot from them, and I’m not the most active but if I feel I can add a bit of value and share something, then I do.”
www.theoxfordtilingcompany.co.uk
