The Simons Group
April 2008

Simons is a privately-owned construction, property development and consultancy group with an annual turnover in excess of £200M. Its services fit into three clear disciplines: development, construction and design. It provides single, selected services as well as full-circle building and property options, made possible by close links between divisions.
Simons Design was formed in 1972 to provide a full interior design service, including concept design, space planning, project management and contract administration for retail interiors and full architectural services for retail shell development.

Simons Fit Out was formed in 1997 and has grown from working largely with just two customers during those early days, to working with many blue chip retailers today and turning over £55M last year.

“Yes,” agrees Richard Donnerstag, Divisional Director, “it’s key to the success of the project that both teams work well together. We try to ensure that there is consistency in the project teams that we allocate to our customer’s projects, so that continuous improvements can be capitalised upon.”

How does Simons continue to anticipate and adapt to clients’ wishes to ensure that the group maintains continually strong relationships?
“We have a very experienced team who have spent all of their working life in a retail design environment,” explains Major. “We are used to the pressures of retail and understand that the project has the potential to change right up until the opening.”
“Having the same core team on all House of Fraser projects maintains good quality communication between us and helps us to anticipate and adapt to their requirements,” says Donnerstag. “Also, having a good understanding of the retail market generally, and strong supply chain relationships, enables us to provide good solutions.”

Simons’ client portfolio has certainly benefited from this approach having grown significantly in recent years — this year, two new strategically important customers, John Lewis and The Co-Operative have been added.

In the last two years, the design company’s retail fit-out workload has evolved to include approximately 50 per cent design and build with Simons Construction for customers such as House of Fraser and Boots and 50 per cent sourced from outside of the Group — in contrast to two years ago, when the majority of retail fit-out was design and build with the construction division and other contractors for clients such as Debenhams.

For the full article please see the RLI April 2008 issue