Brintons goes from staid to sexy with a little help from Manolo

Business Profile: Family stalwart hopes New York chic will help revive the fortunes of the 200-year-old carpets dynasty

Michael Brinton, the chairman of Brintons, the Kidderminster-based carpet company, has turned to Manolo Blahnik, the shoe designer, for a spot of advertising help.

It is an unusual partnership - a country gentleman who loves to shoot and fish and a world-famous shoe designer whose footwear has been immortalised in the cult TV seriesSex and the City.

Nor would you think that Brintons - with a client list that includes the Kremlin, 10 Downing Street, the White House and the Queen -- would need much help.

Brintons recently won the world's largest-ever order for woven carpet, from Hong Kong airport, and also carpets many of the casinos in Las Vegas as well as a raft of cruise ships.

On the other hand, Brintons, family-owned since its foundation in 1783, has had more than its fair share of bad luck in the past few years. The 11 September terrorist attacks in New York and Washington knocked Brintons' US turnover by 30 per cent in 2001 and left group turnover down 15 per cent. Sars has had a similarly debilitating effect in the Far East.

More recently, there has been a currency impact since around two-thirds of its sales are overseas, as well as competitive pressures from China and rising wool prices. The wool from one in eight UK sheep ends up in a Brinton carpet, apparently.

Then there is the cyclical nature of the industry. "Every time there's a recession, carpets get hard hit," Mr Brinton says, noting that sales are also obviously linked to the housing market. Add the changing trends in home furnishings to the mix -- many people have taken up the carpets in their homes and put down wooden floors -- and you find a business that has seen better times.

It all helps explain why the company sank into the red in the year to 29 June, with an operating loss of £1.2m against a profit of £7.3m the year before. Sales fell to £94.5m from £109.6m.

Not that Mr Brinton - the sixth generation of his family to hold the chairman's post - seems particularly fazed. Perhaps that is because of his softly spoken manner, or perhaps because he has been at the family company since he was 21 and has witnessed many a tough time over the years.

In the 1950s, there were about 20 carpet businesses in the Kidderminster area employing about 30,000 workers. Today, there are just a handful left, with a workforce of about 3,000. Once the undisputed carpet capital of Britain, the town is now better known for "a pint and a fight on a Friday night", my taxi driver assures me.

Michael Brinton readily admits that if the company had remained purely a UK business then it too could have fallen by the wayside. Its geographic spread and having a healthy mix of contract business, where it sells to hotels and cruise liners, have proved its saving grace.

Though it has survived, Brintons remains under pressure and obviously now feels it needs a helping hand. So it's Manolo to the rescue, which Brintons hopes will make the brand seem more "cool". The company is hoping the £1m advertising campaign, which features three different Manolo designs, each lined with a different type of Brintons carpet, will encourage consumers to splash out on the woollen stuff.

It is also obviously hoping to emulate the success of its previous major advertising campaign, which came after another tough year in 1992. Then it teamed up with the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood in a campaign that saw models wearing floor-length dresses made of carpet.

It is a smart move. On the retail side of the business, which accounts for about a third of sales, most buyers are women and, as Sex and the City demonstrates, a lot of women love shoes.

Putting the two together should, in theory, prove a winning combination. That is, of course, if consumer spending doesn't take a nasty knock.

Mr Brinton acknowledges that life could get much tougher than it already is. "I do think the level of consumer debt is a concern and so far we haven't noticed it," he says, adding: "We are cyclical and I'd expect a downturn in the next 12-18 months."

Surely he might as well sell the business, or float it, before life gets any worse? "No," he says. While he later concedes that everything has its price, the business would have to be wrestled from him after more than two centuries in the family.

Brintons is the only business he has ever really known. After leaving Eton, instead of going to university he spent time in Vienna, in Perugia, Italy, and in Aix-en-Provence, France, before joining Brintons. He is fluent in both German and French but rates his Italian as "conversational".

He has been at the company for 41 years and has been chairman for the past 12, although he has recently moved to a non-executive role - something that has allowed him a bit more free time.

Aside from getting the company back on track, his focus at the moment is recruiting new family members into the business. Including himself, there are just three Brintons left - his cousin John Pilling is managing director.

His own children have slipped through the net so far. His eldest son once worked for Brintons but now runs his own company, his daughter is in the fashion industry and his other son is a photographer.

The recruitment drive could prove interesting. The Brintons headquarters in Kidderminster is charmingly stuffy, epitomised by the wood-panelled boardroom from which portraits of the Brinton family look down.

There are clearly some advantages, though. It is one of the few companies in the UK that continues that time-honoured tradition of giving employees a watch after 40 years of service. Such is staff loyalty to the business, it has to hand out between 10 and 12 every year in a special ceremony. Then there is the annual dinner for pensioners.

Nor can Brintons be that boring a place to work. Shortly after Manolo dropped by for a visit, Prince Andrew came for a tour of the factories. Mr Brinton also has high hopes for the business and reckons a new loom the company has designed should help it to produce smaller quantities of carpet more cheaply.

"We want to get the younger family more involved," he says, adding: "We set up a family council about two years ago to try to generate more interest."

After all that, if he is still having problems getting in a new generation of Brintons, perhaps he should call on his new friend Manolo to help him with recruitment as well as advertising. The way things are going, surely there is every chance a non-Brinton could end up at the helm? Conceivable but not likely, he says.

MICHAEL BRINTON: FAMILY MATTERS

Title: Non-executive chairman.

Age: 62

Salary: Undisclosed

Career history: After leaving Eton, he spent three years in Vienna, in Perugia, Italy, and in Aix-en-Provence, France, instead of going to university, before joining the family business at 21. He is fluent in German and French but rates his Italian as "conversational". He has held a number of positions at the family company, including marketing director, before becoming chairman in 1991. He moved to a non-executive role when he turned 62 in October.

Interests: He loves the country sports of shooting and fishing as well as classic cars. He is also Lord-Lieutenant of Worcestershire, the Queen's representative of the county.