Coutts Woman

Making a personal partnership professional

It took an impending transfer to Singapore to focus City bankers Charles and Gina Hall on their ambition to buy a business and work together. ‘The removals men wanted to start shipping our stuff but we kept putting them off as I went round looking at opportunities,’ recalls Gina, co-founded of Hill Station, the luxury ice cream manufacturer.

‘We liked the UK and we felt it was a good environment for small companies,’ she says. ‘I had left my job and done some research into what we could do and where the opportunities were, and I found we both liked the idea of working in the food industry.’

The Halls recognised it was possible to start small in the food sector, with limited financial resources, and produce incredibly high quality goods. They settled on ice cream because, quite simply, ‘we like ice cream,’ explains Gina. ‘Every time I visited anywhere, I would sample the local ice cream.’

She visited deli owners and other stockists and discovered that they were keen for ‘ice cream in a super premium category, with interesting flavours. They wanted something a lot more exotic than the norm’.

Gina signed up for a five-day ice cream making course at Reading University, where she learned about hygiene, food safety and all aspects of the manufacturing process.

As American citizens, the Halls then had to present a business plan to the Home Office to gain a business person’s visa. ‘There was no guarantee that they would grant it, and I kept delaying the shippers. We had to promise to invest a small amount of money and hire local people.’

The application was made in January 1996, and Gina then started looking for premises. ‘We needed a factory within delivery distance of London, so I circled a two to two-and-a-half hour area and contacted the Ministry of Agriculture to ask where the cows were in the area. We narrowed it down to Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire.’

The Halls signed a lease on warehouse premises in May, but spent months turning it into a food manufacturing facility, and by November they had produced seven ice cream flavours in their own machines.

‘We took a stand at the BBC Good Food Show, and offered samples to passing people. I must have used 15,000 spoons, but everyone asked ‘Where can I buy this?’ We then had real evidence that there was demand.’

Hill Station started as a direct delivery service. ‘We bought a van and started knocking on doors,’ says Gina. ‘We covered thousands of miles.’ Two important early customers were Harvey Nichols’ Fifth Floor and wine merchants Jeroboam. ‘We spent money on marketing but our PR was word of mouth recommendations,’ explains Gina.

"I knew we could work well together, but I never knew how well."

They had two ‘rights issues’ in the early years, when they offered friends and family the chance to invest in Hill Station, but it soon became apparent that the company needed to raise significant funds to move up to the next level. They appointed a chairman, Peter Totté, a private equity veteran, but eventually opted to float Hill Station on the Aim stockmarket.

‘It raised our profile hugely, and we began to hear about opportunities we would never have heard of previously,’ explains Gina.

This led Hill Station to acquire ice cream makers Losely and Granelli McDermott and, bursting at the seams, the company moved to new premises last year.

‘It has been a rollercoaster. The highs have been very high, but the lows have been very low. I am not sure that I could have done all this alone,’ admits Gina. ‘I knew we could work well together, but I never knew how well.’