SURVEY - FINANCIAL TIMES PROPERTY SUPPLEMENT

The Financial Times 13th February 1999

'I install the cat flap and take the aggro': Sarah Kampe, secretary turned removals ace, tells Clive Fewins of the secret of her success.

When Sarah Kampe hit on her big idea, she wasted no time. It promised freedom from a succession of secretarial and PA jobs.

Within four weeks, in August 1996, she had quit her job and had launched Moving Solutions, a business that arranges every aspect of moving house.

She will appoint and supervise removal companies for clients, employ plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen, deal with insurance, organise storage, arrange garden contractors - even arrange for a cat flap to be installed.

About 70% of her work is in the London area: "Having helped a few friends move in the past and discovered that something often seems to go wrong, I realised there was a need for a professional service to be available to people who simply want to take all the aggravation out of moving house."

The business got off to a slow start. Three months after the launch, she had spent £3,000 capital on a computer and a set of brochures which she deposited with estate agents and removal companies. With the aid of a £500 business start-up grant from her local Training and Enterprise Council and a little marketing, the work began to flow in. One job involved a complete move at two hours' notice and another sorting 750 compact discs into alphabetical order.

By the summer of 1997 business was so hectic she took on some part-time help. The jobs were certainly varied. For one client, she moved a 7,000-volume library into another house, repositioning it with photographic accuracy. For another, she hired a crane to lift several large items of furniture over a roof and through the french windows of a second-floor flat.On one occasion she was even asked to arrange a house-warming party for a family she had helped move.

The frenetic activity of that first summer proved short-lived, however. By October business had gone completely flat. "I had been a little naive in expecting it would continue to be so busy, and the penny finally dropped that this is a seasonal business," she said.

"I often work a 15 or 16-hour day from March to September, when I regularly oversee six to seven moves a week," Kampe said. "I have to stay away from home quite a lot and frequently work a seven-day week but after many years of feeling unfulfilled at work, I now have the satisfaction of using my organisational skills and helping people at a stressful time in their lives."

Competition is a fear, but in her favour is the experience that comes with having supervised more than 100 removals, and the fact that about half her business is by recommendation. "I quite often gain repeat business from clients who might be doing what I call a double or a triple hop - moving into a rented home while their new house is being renovated, or even in and out again before moving back when the work is complete." "My service is so specific to the client and so personal that the more business I gain, the more I believe the word will get around."

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