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Interview with Nick Hooper, MD of Tektura. (extracts)
Mix Interiors, July 2003
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Nick Hooper is the man in wallcoverings. Two things to note about that sentence. First, that’s quite a claim, second, he is. Managing Director of Tektura, Nick’s been in the industry for 25 years, and to use the vernacular, is really into it. We started by asking how he got into wallcoverings in the first place.
‘I left Kent University in 1968 with a degree in philosophy and English’.
That’s handy, we ventured.
‘I’ve leaned on it ever since, it’s all to do with your thought process’, smiles Nick. ‘I got married late and I’ve a young family. It’s striking how different the educational environment is today, In my day, education was an end in itself, which in my view is a good thing. I look at my kids - I’d love to take pressure off them. I don’t really think I had much pressure on me.
Having been at boarding school since the age of eleven - and I’m an only child - I was always pretty independent. I have to say that at university I wasn’t a very good student, and not very career minded.’
After university, Nick joined a subsidiary of the National Coal Board as the MD’s assistant.
‘I know it doesn’t sound very glamorous when you explain it was all to do with solid fuel and builders merchants, but it was quite fun’, explains Nick. After that was a stint at a finance company that dealt in equipment leasing. You almost sense Nick misses some of it: ‘great personalities, wicked and fast-moving’ are his words, but he also acknowledges that branch of the finance industry’s ‘tendency to the disreputable!’ After a few good years, Nick saw an opportunity and joined Muraspec as Marketing Manager in 1978.
‘Almost from the first I thought the wall coverings industry was wonderful. I enjoyed the variety of talking to both architects and contractors. If you click, I think there’s a good chance you would stay in this business for life. For me, who’s not a designer, it’s nice to be in the creative world.
In those days there was very little vinyl and a lot of textile - hessian was big then. In the 80’s vinyl became more sophisticated, though nothing like it is now, and the market developed.
The enthusiastic Mr Hooper rose from Marketing Manager to Managing Director at Muraspec during those growth years of the eighties, so we asked him to describe what’s going on in wallcoverings today.
‘The first thing to know is there is a very wide mix of projects and customers. Sometimes it’s a high profile job, sometimes you’re below the radar. The decision process is varied - Sometimes a specialist contractor may be influential - I think in many ways that’s why so few enter the market. It’s complex, and you have to put in a lot of legwork to get in touch with all the influencers. At Tektura we have holistic approach - we seek to work well with everybody involved. It’s an investment! - At Tektura we make it our business to see the client. To me a big part of the job is seeing facility managers with buildings to maintain.
‘During the 80’s and early 90’s there was a lot of demand for faux and speckly designs, and wallcoverings were propelled on the back of that. The taste for that fell away, but the surge in wallcoverings kept going - and that was when we all neglected to sell the benefits of our products. It’s fundamental. If you want colour, then paint is fine. It you’re also interested in maintenance then you have to think wallcoverings. If you’re also interested in maintenance, you’re intested in a performance product, and that means wallcoverings. This is not wallpaper, this is often a heavy duty product that resists marks and resists shock. It doesn’t have to be thought of as decoration at all. It needn’t cost much more on day one than paint - and what’s more you can’t touch up paint forever. I’m not saying anything new, but I think the industry is only just starting to say these things again. There are real lifecycle benefits.
‘I’m not criticising the A&D - the onus is on us to get the message across - but I don’t think they always get it. I think there’s an assumption we sell decorative wallpaper, with ragroll 70’s texture. The reality is wallcoverings stand up to wear and tear - and can be crisp and white. There’s a whole host of wallcovering finishes these days, that can give even specialist products such as polished plaster a real run for their money, and we find that we can excite even the most cynical architect when we get a chance to show what we've got.’
We backtracked to the career path to find out how the switch to Tektura came about.
‘I left Muraspec in 1998 when it was sold to the US company Ommova - the biggest manufacturer in the world. I was sceptical that the business could be compatible with such a large corporate, and I also thought they had an unrealistic plans - so I left. In fact I thought I was going to leave the industry, read Dickens and listen to Wagner. In 99, BN International - parent company of Tektura - approached me, and I have to say I’m excited with the potential. There’s a gap for us to fill - with designers who tend to be stimulated with new things. An example is our Syncopation range which has lots of sizzle - it’s not what people expect from a wallcovering. We have to show the A&D lots of new things, and keep them interested. So the gap is there to design products to keep people fascinated (which I think we’re doing well) and a gap for rock steady service (which I think we’re wonderful at!).’
Having talked about the past and the present, the logical conclusion is to ask Nick about the future. Clearly, the man is on a mission. ‘I’ve got the bit between my teeth,’ he smiles. ‘This is a great opportunity. My motivation is not to be the biggest, but to act with focus, to do good things and let the world decide if we’re going to be the biggest. I’m a wallcoverings person. I believe in the product, and I want to see it back where it should be.’
Somehow, you get the impression that if anybody’s going to do it, it’s Nick Hooper.
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