The joke we make about ourselves is that we aren’t clever enough to invent anything,” says Paul Campbell, co-founder of Clapham House, the AIM-listed holding company behind the likes of Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), Tootsies and The Real Greek. Indeed, he and business partner David Page, who made their names through Pizza Express, haven’t invented any of the aforementioned brands. Formed in 2003, Clapham House is a growth and acquisition vehicle where proven brands are bought into the group and then given the resources to expand. Its focus is food and restaurants, and its aim is to take advantage of a growing yet fragmented market.
Campbell is himself a trained accountant, a skill set that he values greatly, but ultimately didn’t want to pursue: “I did accountancy as a business qualification at PricewaterhouseCoopers, but then left a week after I qualified,” he says.
He moved into corporate finance and soon found an area he was attracted to. “One of the people I worked with was in the leisure industry, and it just looked so much more fun running a business instead of advising one,” he says.
The express route
Business is in Campbell’s blood. His father worked as a market trader and, as a youngster, he even ran his own stall, selling Rubik’s Cubes. He feels this gave him an early insight into what business was all about: “I learnt how hard it is to run a business. You have to get up on a Sunday morning, pack your van, set up the store and you haven’t even begun to sell anything. You might come back without having covered your costs.”
The struggles and ardour of those days have made an impression on him and created a drive to pursue bigger ambitions. “It was a good lesson in how hard business can be,” he says. “It was quite successful. We had a good time with it, but it probably taught me more than anything that it’s better to be involved in a business of scale.”
Campbell met David Page through his brother Richard, whom he met while studying history at university. In March 2002, Page brought Campbell into Pizza Express as the group’s finance director prior to exit. Previously, Campbell had been chief executive of Relaxion, a gym and leisure business which opened over 100 centres across the UK. There are parallels between running chains of restaurants and gyms, but whereas health and fitness became the big thing to do, eating out is here to stay, according to Campbell.
“David and I were planning the next stage and thought that restaurants were still a good place to be active. We believed it would be a growth market for probably the next 10-15 years,” he says. “I really liked working in restaurants as they were less faddy than health and fitness clubs – and it’s something people will always need.”