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 leading 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 many entrepreneurs, was juggling more than one job: alongside running her audiobook project, she worked remotely as a technical officer 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 great team, with first-rate professionals such as Antonio Ramírez Escalona, Natalia Poluektova and a fellow student from university who eventually became my partner in life, 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 renovations, 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 struggle. 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.
Hope. 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 at the time was due to run the kids’ club. Our first hotel job, and we threw everything at it. We didn’t only design it; we ran the works too, to get exactly the result we wanted.
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 renovation of its facilities 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. I can only say that any of the candidates for the track record award would have been a worthy winner, which is why I wholeheartedly congratulate Harper and Neyer, Pontesal Publicidad, Erkiaga Properties and Eventos Tu Hada Madrina. When we heard our name read out as the winners 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, but they went straight to our hearts: “My parents have worked very hard to get this.” I think we are doing a good job. In every sense.
The circle. Last Thursday I felt a perfect circle close, 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 entrepreneurs. Getting to know you and being part of it is what has made us grow, and the real prize is having met you all.
