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Meet my partner
Serena Allott interviews three couples where the husband has taken the plunge, given up his career and joined his wife’s rapidly expanding business. Portraits by Eva Vermandel
The Johnsons
In 1981, when Claire Johnson’s children were three and five, her husband, Willie, asked her: “What are you going to do now?” She had been a travel agent, but office life no longer appealed; she had a talent for embroidery but piecework didn’t make sense. When Willie suggested buying a printing press, Claire hit on the idea of printing children’s stationery. Initially most orders were taken at children’s birthday parties, then Claire was invited to a charity fair: “I made £800 selling packets of stationery for £2.50 each — that’s when I began to see the potential in this business.”
Orders kept coming and by 1987 Modip was bursting out of the third bedroom of their terraced house in Sheen. (The name is a marketing acronym, Market Orientation Development Implementation and Planning, which Willie had already registered as a company name long before the business was conceived.) That same year — prompted by the sale of the marketing consultancy of which he was chairman — Willie set up Decision Partnership, a one–man band. Keen to get their two children out of London, the Johnsons moved to Chichester and set up their respective businesses upstairs and downstairs in a unit on an industrial estate.
Modip really took off with the arrival of digital printing: Claire can combine top–quality work with tiny print runs if required. The personalised product range now includes adult stationery and invitations and is sold wholesale, mail order, at charity fairs and online. Last year with Claire, 58, working all the hours she could and Decision Partnership on the wane, Willie, 64, started working for Modip. Now based in a well–insulated shed in the Johnson’s garden, turnover is £200,000.
Claire Johnson “We still sell most through mail order. I can’t remember what I did yesterday, but I never forget a customer and they like that personal touch. If I wanted to stop tomorrow I couldn’t, because the orders keep coming in. It got to the stage when I was so busy being busy that I really needed Willie. He had to adjust a bit. The first trade fair he came to with me he was looking for the restaurant and I told him I’d brought sandwiches — but that’s the difference between men and women, isn’t it? At first he was full of plans and strategies, but I didn’t take any notice and the bank didn’t either. There was no need; this is such a straightforward business.
“He was quite critical of some of my systems at first, but once he used them he realised they were very good. He’s also introduced systems of his own; some of his input has been fantastic. Because he has always helped me with setting up computer programs I think he was offended when I paid an outsider to build our website, but I felt I needed to. Usually, though, we make decisions jointly.
“We had been living and working in the same building long before he joined Modip and there has never been any issue about who makes the tea or lunch or having to say when we’re going out. Of course I can multitask and Willie can’t. If he’s setting up something on the computer and I talk to him and what he’s doing goes wrong, then it’s my fault for having distracted him. We do have occasional flare–ups but they never last more than two seconds and it’s never major. I think we’re very lucky that this has developed into a family business.”
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