In the ever-evolving landscape of commercial fleet branding, Burgess Hill-based PVL UK’s name stands out.
With a profound commitment to quality and a vision that transcends mere graphics, owner Nick Broom and his company have been leaving an indelible mark on the industry for over two decades.
At the heart of PVL’s unique approach is a singular mission: to make your fleet vehicles not just visible but unforgettable. Imagine your emergency services, highway contractors, and blue-chip companies adorned with a livery that not only enhances their visibility but also communicates a message of reliability and trust. PVL has been turning this vision into reality since 1999.
Constant Evolution
But what sets Nick and PVL apart in a crowded field of fleet branding companies? It’s a journey defined by constant evolution and an unshakable commitment to putting customers first. PVL doesn’t just supply reflective livery; they craft a narrative of safety and professionalism for the World’s finest emergency services.
It’s no secret that PVL UK’s location right here in the Gatwick Diamond has helped shape the company’s 25-year success story. Join us as we sit down with Nick to hear his story. We discuss:
- The importance of agility in growth
- Cracking export markets
- How location in Gatwick Diamond affects manufacturing success
- The importance of engagement with the local community
- Igniting curiosity and embracing failure, and
- An exciting year ahead for PVL UK.
First Question:
Nick, who are you? And tell me a little bit about your business, please.
Nick Broom:
Yes, I’m Nick Broom, and I own a company called PVL UK, which is part of the Preview Visual Communications Group. We are a specialist manufacturer of reflective and brand markings for vehicles and signage and graphics in Burgess Hill.
Question:
What attracted you to that kind of business?
Nick Broom:
How did I get into it? I already had a design and marketing business, and prior to that, I’d been in a technical industry where I was advising CAD and graphics people on machinery and equipment to buy.
So I was sort of aware of what would happen in manufacturing but only on a minor scale, and an opportunity arose where I was told that the industry in the police market, particularly, was changing what they use on police cars.
Changing from the old jam sandwich striping to the Battenberg design that we now have, but the new people who’d entered the market had really missed the point in terms of service and sales.
What I felt was I could deliver service, we could work out how to make the parts later, and that was the beginning of the business, just two of us starting to make parts for police vehicles in the basement of an office I had.
Question:
Do you think it’s important that businesses strategise less and act more when they see an opportunity?
Nick Broom:
Oh yes, we’ve just come out of a board meeting where that was one of the topics of conversation. We’ve now come to the size where we’re 50-plus people, and we do need to do a lot more planning; it’s just strategising. However, sometimes opportunities arise, and they’re gone by the time you’ve planned how to deal with them.
So yes, I think jumping in within reason, jumping in and giving them a go is absolutely the way we want to approach market opportunities.
Question:
What has been the secret to your growth?
Nick Broom:
You know what, I think that the strongest thing we had, that I had in my favour initially, and that we’ve carried us through a lot of things, is not knowing how it was already done. So there have been a couple of times I’ve arrived at things, and people have said: “Oh no, it’s not done like that! No, no, you don’t do like that!”
And I don’t know if I’m bloody-minded or belligerent or just don’t believe other people, but that to me is an opportunity to say, well, actually, I want to understand how we get to that point because that doesn’t seem like the right output for me.
And that has enabled us to innovate. I do hate the word innovate, but it has enabled us to innovate in ways that other people really haven’t seen coming. For example, we are the only UK company of our type that exports, and that’s because, for everyone else, it was too difficult. Well, it is difficult, but we’ve gone off and looked at markets and tried to understand them.
We’ve changed our equipment and how we manufacture, and we know you are something different to everybody else in the industry. So, not knowing what works and how it got there is really powerful sometimes.
Question:
It is because you’re not sabotaged or restricted by older ways of doing things and just going through formulaic motions.
Nick Broom:
Yes, one of my absolute pet hates is [saying]: “We’ve always done it like that.” Because we didn’t! Whatever we did when we were children, we’re not doing now in most events. We either can’t do them like that anymore, or we found better ways of doing it.
So I think as the business grows, we need to grow and challenge the things that we do to check that it’s relevant, check that it’s right for now, and it’s right for our audience, absolutely. I think what’s at the core of everything we do is our customer, very easily said, but genuinely.
We’ll do what the customer demands. That means running around in circles because of their disorganisation. We’ll take that on within reason. We’ll take that on. I think being light, nimble and agile is critical, but for us, that’s about responsiveness as well.
Managing expectations, responding to often quite unrealistic and poor expectations. However, it’s our industry. So we know what goes with it. There’s never a dull moment there.
Question:
How have you succeeded in those export markets? What’s been the secret to that?
Nick Broom:
I became an ambulance chaser! We were asked to do some graphics and markings for a fledgling ambulance operation in Abu Dhabi, and it seemed odd to me that we were doing six different designs on six ambulances to be sent out, whereas in the UK, we’d have done that on CAD drawings and videos and meetings and we’d have signed it off before we got anywhere.
We were asked to do physical vehicles, and then those vehicles were being shipped to Abu Dhabi, and it just seemed the oddest thing.
So I went out, and sure enough, there was a Sheik behind it. And he wanted to physically see what the vehicles looked like before he’d make a decision. Those six vehicles were delivered three times before we got to a final solution. But, in doing that, I got to understand the customers, how they operated, what they were after, and what they needed.
And they didn’t want what the British made for the British market. They wanted something for the Abu Dhabi market. But the mechanisms that we’ve got, the products we work with, and the materials we work with were relevant to their market, and they wanted the expertise on how to implement it.
And I was able to learn that from them, bring it back, manufacture, and that was the beginning of 10 to 12 years’ worth of export to The Middle East region, and we followed those opportunities up through different areas where expertise is required, and a high-level product is what’s requested for the marketplace. But yes, I chased ambulances.
Question:
Manufacturing order in this country, or do you subcontract the manufacturing abroad?
Nick Broom
No, proudly British, we buy raw materials in; they do come from all over the world, typically Germany, Japan, China, and America. But we manufacture from a raw product into finished materials, and the kits that we produce when they leave here are ready to fit the vehicle.
Question:
So, your agile brain has built quite a complicated multinational organisation! What are the benefits of being located in Gatwick Diamond to make that all work?
Nick Broom
So transport links are critical. For export, we’re in the best place. Ironically, for our UK market, we’re in the wrong place. We ought to be up north somewhere because that’s where most of our customer base is. But we service customers nationwide.
But internationally, being near that Gatwick link and sandwiched between the Gatwick link and the port of Calais means that we’ve got various mechanisms to get to Europe, but more importantly, to the rest of the world.
The UK is still a good transport hub, and what Gatwick’s done in terms of its investment and continual growth and investment has given us the ability to bring people into the country easily and get out again. But we’re 15 minutes, 20 minutes from Gatwick.
We’re also finding that the expertise and technical knowledge that we need as we grow our team is available because of the workforce in the local market. It is a vibrant hub; it’s an overused phrase, but it is a vibrant hub of activity.
And there are some really good manufacturers as well. So, there are also good mechanisms there for us to learn from our peers in the marketplace, as well as from a recruitment and connectivity perspective.
Question:
Get with Diamond offers your business specifically anything more than just great connections.
Nick Broom
Ooh, so we deal with a lot of airports, but we don’t yet deal with Gatwick. We’re on a mission to get into Gatwick. We’re on a plan at the moment. We’ve engaged them, and we’re working hard with them. So there is a business opportunity for us in the area.
There are other businesses around here that are our target, but it’s not our core focus. Our focus is nationwide, wherever the demand is for our products. There’s more demand outside of the region, but less demand locally isn’t a problem. That’s not negative about Gatwick.
Question:
I know that you visited Horsham College recently, answering a Q&A with students. How was that?
Nick Broom
Yes, we are engaged locally. We work with local schools, Woodlands Mead. Locally, we have a special additional needs school, and we actually recruit students from there who have additional needs. They have proved to be fantastic workers in the workplace.
Everyone’s got different skills and capabilities, but some of my best workers have come from that school, so we work with them as well. I’m an ambassador for Woodlands Mead. Yes, I work with the local college in Horsham. It’s one good example where they have a not-go-to-university course for people to study and look into.
Because the university isn’t the answer for everybody, and as somebody who didn’t get into university for a variety of reasons, I can show that there is actually another way through life. It may take longer sometimes, and perhaps it would have been quicker if I had.
So, telling my story and engaging with students to understand what they’re studying now and how that will impact them could impact them for future employability. Yes, something close to my heart if I can help others to find a route in life.
I think it’s one of the biggest things I hear out of youngsters is I don’t know what I want to do. I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I’d been doing it for about ten years.
Question:
What do you think is important in education?
Nick Broom:
I think that appetite. If they [students] could leave school or education, whatever it is, with appetite, that’s all we need here. [At PVL UK] We’ll take attitude over a qualification anytime because of that want and desire to try stuff out, and you’ve got to fail. You’ve got to be allowed to fail. I think, unfortunately, the school system now stops a lot of people from failing.
It prevents that failure, which means they don’t understand what happens when you do fail and how you can learn from it. We run a continuous improvement program in the business, and that will only work if we make mistakes.
No one doesn’t make mistakes, but if you make a mistake, the important thing is to look at it, analyse it, and go, right, what can we do to avoid that? How can we do that better? Quicker, shorter, faster, less injuries, whatever.
Yes, so I think if we can educate our students about that, that’s the best thing.
Question:
So you’re talking about this idea of failing fast, which is a very popular entrepreneurial way of thinking. Is that something that you think helps make Gatwick Diamond uniquely innovative?
Nick Broom
I think in certain business sizes, yes. I’ve never worked for a business bigger than this, other than indirectly or as a consultant in a previous job. So, one of my limiting factors now is that I’m a person who’s never worked for a big organisation. But I’ve realised that early on and recruited other people around me who have and will help me build the structure as we grow further. I think for the SME, failing fast is part and parcel of that journey.
Learning from it and moving on. I belong to various networking groups and peer networking groups in the Gatwick region, comprised solely of people who live and work in the Gatwick region. And I can say it’s really vibrant. We have very energetic, enthusiastic, challenging conversations with each other about, well, why are you doing that? How does that work? Oh, could I learn? Oh, can we share? So sometimes we’re preventing the failure. Other times, we might accelerate a failure because we now know it’s not gonna work out.
But through that knowledge sharing and peer support, the Gatwick Diamond region has so many of these networks. All you have to do is go and look.
Question:
What are you excited about for PVL over the next 12 months?
Nick Broom
The biggest thing is we are refocusing. So PVL grew out of my other company called Preview. Preview was known for design marketing and branding. PVL has become known for vehicle graphics, particularly the emergency services marketing, sorry, which we’ve taken abroad and nationwide and into some other market areas. So we’re on the cusp of now refocusing our branding to be the Preview Visual Communications Group.
PVL is the specialist division that does emergency services markings because we are a very bad, very well-kept secret that there are so many other things we could do, from interior markings and walls and manifestation and architectural wraps to colour changes to commercial vehicle overhauls. There are so many.
Other services that we can offer, but the PVL brand is now starting to hold us up. So I’m excited, really excited by that when you look at the opportunity that is ahead of us. We grew nearly 30% last year, and we didn’t have a sales direction because we were too busy accommodating the stuff that we’d already won. So, can you imagine what we could do if we actually started focusing on the market errors we really want? So 2024 is a very, very exciting year for us.
We’ve now got all the base ingredients together that I’ve been trying to get for ages for my corporate structure: my board structure, to enable us to now really look at market areas quite carefully and say … do you know what actually maybe not that carefully? I just go and smash into them and see what happens! Come back, report, have a look, regroup, and try again, but there’s definitely a lot of stuff out there for us, so we’ve got high hopes for the coming years.
Question:
Imagine I am a globally successful entrepreneur, and I’m looking for places to relocate. Why should Gatwick Diamond be on my list? And if I did move, what would my experience as a business owner be?
Nick Broom
I think the Gatwick Diamond region is so well defined, unlike other areas that brand themselves. It’s so well defined with a core that is Gatwick, which is self-explanatory and is in a program and process of evolution and growth now. And that will naturally spill out to the local area, in all areas.
Whether that’s recruitment, procurement, international travel, or transport, there are so many different things that will come from that. But it’s not just that. Even if that’s not good enough for you as a [new] business coming in, there are very well-served business areas. There is a willing and able workforce that’s growing.
Yes, we’re in the southeast, and the southeast isn’t the cheapest place in the country, but those transport links and all of the benefits of being in that local area are right on your doorstep. The[Gatwick] Diamond that reaches out too; you’ve got Farnborough. And you’ve got all the activity going on over there that’s high-tech.
And going the other way, you’re off towards the Kent side of things. Again, more vibrant energy is going in that direction, too. So, I think there is so much on offer. [If I was looking to invest in Gatwick Diamond] I’d ask questions, and I travel around the country a lot. I’d question where else in the country you get that mix.
There are some good industrial areas in the country, without a doubt. There are some good technology areas in the country, without a doubt. Gatwick combines an awful lot of that in the same area. And I think as we see things like the technology parks and so on grow further, and the universities that serve this area engage more., we’ll see even more benefits moving forward.
Certainly, what we’re trying to do is engage with those communities within the colleges and universities because that’s where we see our future candidates and team members coming from.
ENDS