The multi-millionaire founder of Pimlico Plumbers, Charlie Mullins, today hit out at Mayor Sadiq Khan as “the single biggest thing holding London business back” as he discussed the Capital’s entrepreneurial success stories.
Speaking at SME XPO, the Evening Standard’s networking event for start-ups and scale-ups, taking place at ExCel London, Mullins said: "London is a great place to do business - I should know, I’ve been at it for near enough half a century.
“There’s such a huge sense of opportunity here. But whilst there have always been challenges to face, now including recession, inflation, getting enough skilled people into jobs, and the double scourge of Brexit and Covid - Mayor Sadiq Khan’s anti-traffic, anti-business bloody-mindedness is now strangling London to death.”
Mullins hit out at the ULEZ emission zone scheme, the congestion charge and what he claimed were underused cycle lanes. He said: “We have traded through the Black Death and The Great Fire, we were attacked by Zeppelins during WW1 and Hitler tried to bomb London off the face of the earth - we will see off our weak excuse for a mayor. We need to get London moving again." The entrepreneur, who sold Pimlico Plumbers for some £140 million in 2021, also offered practical advice to some of the 5000 founders and executives attending SME XPO.
He recommended entrepreneurs immediately find an office, “which, if at all possible, isn’t your actual home. Call me old fashioned, but customers like to know a business has solid foundations and a trading address gives you that kind of credibility.”
On scaling up, Mullins bluntly explained: “It ain’t rocket science - you need to hire more people. Whatever way you do your accounts, 25 per cent of the income of ten people is way more than you can make as a one man band. Because of the advantages of size, the ten people on your books will also make more money than they would on their own.”
Mullins was one of more than 60 speakers at SME XPO, many of whom focused on using technology to fuel growth. Steve Young, CEO of computing giant Dell in the UK, discussed how, in the face of multiple crises, SMEs “are turning to technology to help overcome their most important business challenges.” He talked of data centre Deep Green, which is using the heat generated by its technology to warm a public swimming pool to about 30C. “Don’t be afraid of this kind of risk-taking innovation,” Young added.
“We all saw in the pandemic – when we had no choice but to adapt and to do so with technology – the benefits that it drove in enabling remote working, facilitating online sales, and improving customer experiences. We need to catalyse a similar mindset today – that innovation is a necessity in driving business growth, not a nice-to-have.”
