Sonly Fatherly pride

The internet is not a place for the genuinely personal – not for me, at least (with exceptions) – but today is an exception. Let me tell you a story.

It was a damp spring day in 1981 when I ran to keep up with my Dad as he walked around the Blind Lane workshop. He’d come up to Bredhurst to meet my Great Uncle Joe, his de facto father-in-law, and ask for some desk space in which to start a new business.

Just nine years earlier Geoff had only £40 in the bank and was painting Joe’s weatherboarding for a little spare cash when he found out his wife was pregnant. A few months later he was an technical drawing teacher in Earley when I popped out, narrowly missing Reading as my place of birth for the equally classy Chatham. The combination of compasses and disruly pupils, along with the lack of a teaching qualification, was a dangerous mix so the young Down family moved back to its roots in North Kent.

After leaving school Geoff had completed a diploma in graphic design at the local school of art thus, with a new family to support, it was a logical step to take a correspondence course in packaging design and find regular office-based work.

Soon he was working as a designer for Greenwich Packaging. He drove from Kent every day, and I can remember being asked to go with him to ‘get something out of the car’ every August 1st to be shown by that year’s new car with the latest registration. It was always exciting and, judging by Pop Down’s later acquisitions, he had a thing for new cars too.

Yet such corporate extravagence didn’t fit with the difficult economic circumstances of the late 1970s and it was clear to many at Greenwich that, following a series of bad investment decisions, the company was heading towards bankruptcy.

Hence the search for desk space. Geoff was going to lead three colleagues into a new business, trading in cardboard packaging. There were no production facilities, just salesmen on the road and a smart designer. A startup date was set for late July 1981. Various names were brainstormed but industrial action at Companies House meant only off-the-shelf firms were available, so, Faringline Ltd began trading as Line Packaging from a shared office at the back of the workshop.

Like every business, there were good years and bad years. It soon expanded from one desk to the first company machine, still in use today, bearing the marks from the molegrips used to turn it by hand when it became clear that there wasn’t enough power to operate it on the first day to meet a rush order. The dark days came when its biggest customer went bankrupt and left huge debts.

Later, a move to a new factory, and expansion to a second unit, and eventually to a site with tens of thousands of square feet available for manufacture and assembly. Investing hundreds of thousands of pounds in the largest machines of their type in Britain, expanding into the new areas of business, gaining a reputation for speedy service and high standards, winning industry awards.

Move forward twenty five years and admire the progress of Line Packaging and Display, turning over millions a year, employing well over a hundred permanent staff and many more contractors, an industry leader supplying Britain’s biggest brands, a success where many others have failed.

And it’s all a tribute to the work of Geoff Down. Not many can claim to have built a successful business in a competitive market without making enemies along the way, but Geoff has succeeded.

That’s why I’m telling this story now: today sees the firm’s 25th birthday party, an event for hundreds of people at the family’s Kent ‘estate’. The property itself is testament to his success, as are the expensive cars parked outside and the hot air balloons in the barn. But the scale and inclusivity of the party demonstrate his generosity and desire to share his success with others, both family and friends.

I’m very proud of what he’s achieved, and wanted to share that with you here. It’ll be a great day. With dodgems, a hog roast, a free bar and a whole lotta love, how can it fail to be?!

29 July 2006 | History | Comments

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