This week a circle closed that opened in 2006, in a shared office at the Centro de Negocios Reding, in Málaga.
Not long before, I had decided to go out on my own. After a spell in a friend’s garage and another working from the kitchen table, I moved to La Malagueta, the neighbourhood where Málaga’s better-known architects had their offices.
Working alone in an office is not that different from working alone at home. So when my best friend told me that his business partner in an audiobook start-up was looking for somewhere to work, and for a reason to get out of the house herself, I didn’t hesitate: I rang a complete stranger. Victoria, like most people starting something, was holding down more than one job — alongside the audiobooks she worked remotely for AJE Andalucía, the Andalusian arm of Spain’s young entrepreneurs’ association.
I got to know AJE through her, and Málaga’s business scene through AJE Málaga.
A lot has happened since. Five oddly good years in the middle of the crash, on the back of the refurbishment work we were doing on housing blocks for AVRA, the Andalusian regional government’s public housing agency. Building a proper team, with first-rate people: Antonio Ramírez Escalona, Natalia Poluektova, and a fellow student from university who ended up as my partner in life as well as at work, Ruth Buján Varela.
The crash. Ours arrived late, and when it did it took everything with it. It left Ruth and me alone in the office, getting by on small refurbishments, expert-witness and planning work, and the odd one-off project: the Promálaga Coworking at the PTA, Málaga’s technology park, and the Roman villa at Cortijo Robledo. Nothing like the steady flow of commissions you need to keep a team together. Easily one of the worst stretches of my life.
The grind. Learning to run a business in a downturn (at ESESA, a Málaga business school). Learning to sell (at Hiagora). Fighting tooth and nail for work in the one sector still standing in our area: we set up a brand, renovahoteles, with a colleague, Sandra Diéguez, and worked the coast from one end of the province to the other, cold calling hotel after hotel. It came to nothing.
The break. It came through retail, and through contacts made at AJE. We started working for a gym chain that was expanding fast, Synergym, as partners of a practice specialising in sports buildings (Bm2 Arquitectos), and at last had enough continuity of work to put a team together again. In parallel, several years after our first attempt, we landed our first hotel commission: the Kid’s Club at the Hotel Puente Romano in Marbella, again referred by an AJE member, Ricardo Llamas of Deportae, the company that was going to run it. First hotel job, and we threw everything at it. We didn’t only design it; we ran the works too, to make sure the result was the one we had drawn.
Growing again: the hotel niche. Puente Romano got us the next hotel job, the beachfront restaurant at the Hotel Puente Real and the extension of its pool area. That second commission was the one that mattered, because when one of its neighbours, the Hotel Camino Real, decided on a full refurbishment and brought in a large engineering firm, TYPSA, they needed a local partner and came to us. Without the contacts we had made on a property master’s at the Cátedra Inmobiliaria, that would not have happened either. Since then we have aimed all our commercial effort at that sector, and it is finally paying off, built on the experience already earned and a good team of professionals. That one strategic bet has tripled our turnover in the past year and doubled our headcount, and it has put us in an excellent niche in this province. We hope it carries us through the low points, because construction runs in peaks and troughs and always will.
The award. Those were the credentials we put forward this year, as convinced of our chances as we were of the strength of the field. And strong it was. Any of the candidates for the AJE Málaga 2019 award for business track record (trayectoria empresarial), which recognises a company’s record over the years rather than a single project, would have been a worthy winner, and I congratulate Harper and Neyer, Pontesal Publicidad, Erkiaga Properties and Eventos Tu Hada Madrina without reservation. When we heard our name read out my heart nearly came out of my chest, and my partner and I walked up on stage with the “intern”, Gabi, our best project, now at the site supervision stage.
The line. I said a lot of things. Ruth said a few. Gabi said only a handful, and they were the ones that got us: “my parents have worked very hard to get this.” I think we are doing a decent job. In every sense.
The circle. Last Thursday I felt a circle close, a full one, that started twelve years ago in a shared office when I met AJE. Thank you to everyone who is part of this family of business owners and people starting out. Getting to know you and being part of it is what has made us grow, and the real prize is having met you all.
