PRINCESS OF WALES PICKS COTSWOLD JEWELLERY DESIGNER’S EARRINGS FOR CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW

The Princess of Wales chose fern leaf earrings designed by Cotswold jewellery designer Catherine Zoraida on her visit to this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

The princess joined the flower show’s Children's Picnic, and it was her first visit to the show since 2019. Her choice of earrings – shaped as a fern leaf and retailing at £165 – seemed appropriate, said the delighted designer.

Catherine has just opened a new design studio at Elkstone, near Cirencester, and will be opening her first shop there in August. The Princess of Wales was an early supporter of the designer and, says Catherine, "now has a lovely collection of Zoraida pieces."

Catherine was born in Colombia, raised in Scotland, and trained in jewellery making and silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art before moving to Cirencester.

Mira Showers buys Recoup Energy

Cheltenham-based Mira Showers has acquired waste water heat recovery business Recoup Energy Solutions.

The acquisition of the business, founded in 2011, will expand Mira's offering in a growing area as new build developers look to achieve government-set Part L targets, and consumers look at ways to reduce rising energy costs.

Emma Foster, Managing Director of Kohler Mira, said: “The acquisition of Recoup Energy Solutions is an important step in our plan to offer our customers a larger suite of sustainable

GFirst LEP announces delivery plan to March 2024

With the government considering withdrawing support from local enterprise partnerships (LEPS), transferring their responsibilities to local authorities from next year, Gloucestershire’s Local Enterprise Partnership (GFirst LEP) has announced its 10-point plan to deliver against known economic priorities and contractual requirements to March 2024.

The 38 LEPS across England are responsible for local economic development and play a central role in determining the economic priorities and undertaking activities to drive growth and the creation of local jobs.

The chancellor said: “The government is committed to empowering democratically elected local leaders. To this end, the government intends for the functions of local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) to be delivered by local government in the future.” products and further reinforces our commitment to pioneering environmentally-friendly change through our products and services.

Central government support for LEPS is likely to cease from April next year.

GFirst LEP is producing a Gloucestershire Economic Strategy in partnership with Gloucestershire County Council and the district authorities. It will consist of a clear five-year plan and a long-term perspective up to 2050 and will be published by the end of the year.

Kieron Dudley, Co-Founder of Recoup Energy Solutions, added: “Mira Showers is one of the most recognised and trusted consumer brands in the UK showering market. We were very impressed with Mira’s history of bringing innovation to the bathroom industry to improve their customers’ showering experience in a more sustainable way and look forward to working together to develop these further.”

This will be helpful to local authority partners as well as the private sector to support future bidding documents, it said.

Ruth Dooley, Chair of GFirst LEP, said: "The next 12 months will be a pivotal time for GFirst LEP as we continue to lead the local economy through challenging times.

“We will be working to ensure the voice of business is still as strong as ever for decision making in Gloucestershire.”

David Owen, CEO of GFirst LEP, added: “Our leadership team will focus on delivering a smooth transition over to Gloucestershire County Council and ensuring that our great assets and functions are retained.”

By Nicky Godding, Editor

From Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s early days on BBC’s Changing Rooms to his most recent project – a gloriously over-the-top showroom in Cirencester which opened in 2021, you can’t ignore the man or his uncompromising “maximalist” taste.

The Llewelyn-Bowen shop is a riot of colour, big design and creativity, with a largerthan-life image of Laurence gazing almost malevolently at visitors when they enter.

Laurence calls himself the original gangster of maximalism but, like King Charles and his trenchant environmental opinions, he has always been ahead of his time. "Maximalism has incredible green credentials,” said Laurence. “Manmade got us into the mess we’re in, maximalism is all about reuse and repurpose.

“Forget the massive tundra of a white sitting room with oak flooring and floor-to-ceiling glazed windows which you can’t heat or cool, it’s about pulling the curtains, laying carpets to keep the heat in and improve the acoustic, and nik naks. There’s no budget to maximalism. It can be done from your attic or the local flea market.”

Why did he open a showroom? “Over lockdown my son-in-law Dan and I talked a lot about the business. I’d spent 10 years working on TV shows in Australia and Asia and at home we had a very stable and beneficial licence business with retailers like Very and Next.”

Living a wonderful design life

“Now I’m not big on legacy or how I’m going to be remembered – but I had a little moment of 'if they ever did a posthumous collection of what I'd ever done, what would it reveal?’ There would be the telepanto TV work I’d done, and a lot of grey duvet covers which paid incredibly well, and many people’s mortgages. But I felt I couldn’t face St Peter and say I’d lived a wonderful design life with that legacy.”

A mid-life crisis? Perhaps so. He was in his mid 50s with grandchildren and time on his hands. Then his friends, who happen to be the Earl and Countess Bathurst who own the Cirencester Park estate told him about a lovely but vacant old building they owned in the town. Would he like it?

“I felt strongly if we had a shop, and harnessed the incredible advantages of digital printing I could just design whatever I wanted, we could print a metre and put it in the shop. If it sold, great, if it didn’t – no matter. So that’s what we started doing.

“We have created a couture collection here. My job is to Lagerfeld it and this is now the house of Llewelyn-Bowen. Being uncommercial was the most commercial thing we have ever, ever done. Creativity has to have that sense of leadership.”

“Thirty eight years ago, Jackie was seduced by a romantic long-haired painter and found herself waking up to an orange TV celebrity”

Ambitious Leaders

With a degree in fine art and years of absorbing design and trends, Laurence also has business savvy alongside his artistic talent. He understands brand value and the responsibilities of being head of the House of Llewelyn-Bowen. “In terms of creativity, you have to be absolutely focused on your idea. I’m not a tortured creator who wants to distance themselves from society, I want my stuff to be commercial. Design is about communication, about talking with as many people as possible, and I want as many people as possible to own my designs.

“The business follows in my slipstream and picks up those pieces."

He’s not good at the dull business-y stuff – what entrepreneur is? Would we want Sir James Dyson preparing management accounts each month? Of course not. Visionary people need to be given the freedom to think big and wide.

The goose that lays the golden egg

Laurence puts it like this: “I am the goose that lays the golden egg and I need a farmer to keep me fed, watered and take the golden eggs to market.”

The farmer in recent years has been son-inlaw Dan Rajan, who has joined the family firm which comprises Laurence’s wife Jackie and daughters Cecile (who is married to Dan), Hermione and her husband Drew.

“Jackie used to do all that stuff, but Dan is now financial director and Hermione is marketing director. I love the indulgence of not having to worry about the income and VAT – not that I ever did.”

Despite Laurence’s theatricality (and he puts on a show even for this business writer who seldom finds herself in the hallowed presence of celebrities), he understands perfectly his commercial value thanks to the pandemic lockdown which the family harnessed to create new opportunities.

“An interesting business step change happened with us during Covid, and I am entirely in Dan’s debt on this,” said Laurence.

“Up until lockdown I’d been doing the telly thing for nearly 30 years. When Changing Rooms became successful in the late 1990s, my London clients were appalled. Though they liked the programme, they didn’t like the fact that everyone now knew who I was.” He credits Jackie with the solution. “She said, if you’re losing eight clients in Chelsea, let’s go after the millions of potential clients watching the programme.”

A licence to thrill

So, long before celebrity chefs such as Delia or Jamie put their names to anything commercial (says Laurence), he and Jackie began to licence his designs. “At that time licensing agents predominantly worked in sport. We went to see a couple of them, but they didn’t really understand us and wanted to take a big percentage, so we decided to talk to retailers ourselves.”

The first one to say yes was a wallpaper firm. “I was the star turn at a DIY conference, but I got a hard time from a couple of northerners who said that Changing Rooms was killing off the wallpaper industry because we were using paint, not wallpaper.”

“I said they were killing the wallpaper industry because they were not interested in design and their wallpaper looked like paint on a roll.”

By the conference tea break Laurence was discussing licensing with the wallpaper company Graham & Brown.

At his first briefing session he was told floral and large doesn’t sell. “So my first collection was the largest flowers you could think of, because it looks like wallpaper. I said if it looks like wallpaper, people are going to want it.”

Laurence had caught the Zeitgeist –suddenly pattern was everywhere, and that has continued to this day.

“I am emphatic about the worth of what we do. I believe people should pay for it, but I leave the sordid details of actual selling to everyone else.”

The long-haired painter returns

This year he says he’s turning his back on TV for a while and indulging himself by painting more – much to his wife’s delight.

“Thirty eight years ago, Jackie was seduced by a romantic long-haired painter and found herself waking up to an orange TV celebrity. Now that long-haired painter is back, creating grand designs for my showroom.

“Jackie’s always had this thing about derringdo. You think about British entrepreneurs such as Dyson, Branson and Jacqueline Gold. They don’t compromise.

“People are drawn to the brave and the different. At the panto, no-one fancies Peter Pan. They go for Captain Hook. He’s the one having all the fun.”