Features / Feature
No place like home
Our urban hive of activity has bred some big businesses over the years, not bad for a modest city of 442,500. But perhaps more remarkably, many of those companies choose not to fly the nest but stay put.
International trivia portal IMDb is housed in the Castlemead Tower at the edge of Cabot Circus. You’ll find the world’s fourth largest international cigarette company, Imperial Tobacco – the company behind Rizla, Lambert & Butler and Golden Virginia – in Ashton. One of Bristol’s most cherished exports – Aardman Animations – famous for the Creature Comforts ads as well as Wallace, Gromit and friends, announced its first overseas production studio in September, establishing a permanent base in New York through a strategic merger, but HQ is firmly lodged on Spike Island.
After several heavyweight acquisitions by the likes of Nokia and Microsoft, MixRadio is now a global streaming service available in 31 countries with a catalogue of more than 36 million tunes. Its offices are in Wine Street, overlooking Castle Park.
“MixRadio has gone through many incarnations as a company, but our Bristol base has remained a constant throughout these changes and developments,” says Mark Wheatley, Head of Product. It has representatives in most of its countries of operation and major offices in New York, Beijing and Delhi, but this is still home.
Though many enterprises are tempted by the drift to the big smoke as they grow, for MixRadio the city’s musical and tech DNA makes it a logical base within the streaming sector, and there’s little case for relocating: “Bristol has a rich music heritage and more recently has become a hub for tech in the UK – making a perfect base for us. We have a workforce who are both passionate about music but leaders in their respective fields in the technology space too.”
Robust business management advice recommends an analytical location strategy, matching company aims and objectives with access to market, workers, logistics and materials etc. Fortunately for both native companies and inward migrants, Bristol ranks well.
“Bristol is the largest city in the south other than London and has strategic connectivity to all points of the compass by sea, air, road and rail,” says James Durie, Executive Director of Bristol Chamber of Commerce at Business West, pointing to the large pool of talent and breadth of opportunity within the economy as well. “There’s a benefit of scale. We’re smaller than London so companies can access everything they need without getting lost.”
Cost is by no means unimportant. Whether real estate, staff wages or office rental, larger cities tend to come with heftier overheads. Businesses accumulate assets in their original field of operation and changing them can sometimes be more hassle than it’s worth, as Simon Evans, Group Media Relations Manager at Imperial Tobacco alludes: “There was an obvious cost synergy when choosing to build our new head office three years ago on land we already owned in Winterstoke Road, the site of our former cigar factory.”
“There’s a sense of overheating in London and, cost-wise, not all companies need to be operating from a London base,” says James.
However many of our biggest homegrown players seem to be here because they like it too much to leave as much as practical considerations. Bristol is not consistently voted the country’s most liveable city for nothing.
“Our long history is inextricably linked to Bristol,” says Simon. Though the international wholesaler has offices in every continent to serve its 160 markets, this city “is very much our home. Bristol and the surrounding area is also the family home of the vast majority of the 600+ skilled people who are based at our Winterstoke Road offices.”
Of course there are drawbacks, mostly around the distance from major business partners in London, but these are outweighed by advantages. “Being based in Bristol does mean that international partners and employees have a little further to travel, but Bristol’s appeal as a city, both as a music and cultural hub, means we never have any complaints,” says Mark. Besides, adds Simon “the City is only a 1hr 45min train journey away”.
Image: Destination Bristol