Family firm dresses for success

Angels has enough costumes - more than one million - to make your imagination run riot

By Will Smale
Business reporter, BBC News

Growing up with Tim Angel as your father would have made you rather popular at school.

Forget wanting a famous footballer or rock star as a dad, Mr Angel runs the UK's largest costume hire company.

And with more than eight miles of costumes hanging up at Angels' headquarters in north London, you would have gone down a storm at fancy dress parties.

From medieval knight to 1960s hippy, Queen Victoria to World War II soldier, Angels' has pretty much any outfit you could dream of among its collection of more than one million items.

Supplying the film, TV and theatre industries, as well as the public, both in the UK and abroad, Mr Angel, 59, is the sixth generation of his family to lead the 169-year-old company.

If you are a chief executive of a multi-national firm, you can always think at the back of your mind that you can walk away, but that isn't the case if you own your own firm Tim Angel

With its clothes winning 31 Best Costume Design Oscars - the most recent coming this year for The Duchess - Angels is a household name among Hollywood film-makers.

Other recent films it has worked on include the Harry Potter movies, Australia, and Iron Man. While for television it has supplied outfits for Ashes to Ashes, Dr Who and Torchwood among others.

Mr Angel, who himself joined the firm aged 17 in 1966, and has led the company since 1986, describes the business "as like another one of my kids".

And with his three children all employed at Angels - Emma, 32, Daniel, 31, and Jeremy, 27, it remains firmly a family-run enterprise.

Family dynamic

Yet with the global recession hitting the film and TV industries as hard as other sectors of the economy, is being a family-run company a help or a hindrance when times are tough?

"The problem with family businesses is that most don't make it past three generations," says Mr Angel.

"Suddenly you find the dynamic of the company changes, and you have all the grandchildren and their spouses wanting their say in how things are run. That is when all the trouble starts.

"We have certainly had family members over the generations here who have been a disaster, we've suffered from all that over the years, but hopefully that is all in the past."

In pictures: Angels

With an annual turnover said to be around £12m, and 120 employees, Angels is a busy operation.

From archivists to teams of tailors and wigmakers, and administrative staff, it is a hive of activity.

But as Mr Angel admits, the past year has been difficult.

"Interestingly, this recession is the first that has hit the film industry, everyone is cutting back," he says.

"But the situation in television is much worse."

"ITV is in a terrible mess [because of the downturn in advertising revenue]", and he adds that other broadcasters are asking for "deals at silly prices".

Realising the business had to adapt to the falling revenues, Mr Angel laid off 18 staff in January.

"We knew we had to make some tough decisions, but we agonised over the redundancies over last Christmas before making the announcement in January. It was a tough time."

'Fight harder'

But does Mr Angel think being a family-run firm is a help during a recession?

"Emotion doesn't come into it, but it certainly makes you fight harder," he says.

Angels has an in-house team of tailors

"If you are a chief executive of a multi-national firm, you can always think at the back of your mind that you can walk away, but that isn't the case if you own your own firm."

Management expert Nigel Nicholson, a professor at the London Business School, agrees that being a family-run firm can be an advantage during a recession.

"Family run firms often have a longer term perspective - they can see recessions like this in an historical context," he says.

"In addition, they often run on cash and hate debt, and have long order books to go with their stable networks of suppliers and customers.

"They find it easier to go back to the fundamentals - they know what they are - priorities are not problematic."

Personal heroes

Back in the world of costume hire, what is it like to work with family members on a day-to-day basis?

"It's an interesting dynamic, you don't normally see your [grown up] kids 24/7," says Mr Angel.

"My three children are fantastic, but it has been tough for them.

"They all had to start at the bottom, and have to work twice as hard - I expect far more from them."

At 59 years of age, Mr Angel, who was also chairman of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) for three years from 1997 to 2000, has no immediate plans to retire.

"I'm not really the type for retiring and putting my feet up," he says.

"I've had a wonderful life, and have got to meet and work with personal heroes like Lawrence Olivier, Alex Guinness and Francis Ford Coppola.

"But I've still got all my motivation, and still get a kick from seeing our clothes in films or on stage in the West End."

But what about the succession plans?

"The children will have to sort that out amongst themselves," he chuckles.