DENTON: Celebrating our 25th Anniversary - DENTON

This month we are excited to celebrate our 25th Anniversary within the inspiring and innovative world of Office Design & Fit Out. With a record-breaking start to the new financial year, it is safe to say we are looking forward to the celebrations early next month!

Join us, as we take a trip down memory lane with the founders, Mike Halewood and Richard Douglas and discover their journey to delivering dynamic designs and creative workplaces for clients through the years...

Where it all began…

The time was June 1996, the place was Barnes in London, and the setting was a spare room in a two-bed terrace. Mike Halewood, one of our founders, established Denton in his humble abode as a Chartered Civil Engineer with plenty of knowledge, experience and passion for the design and build industry.

Starting from the ground up Mike worked with a freelance Designer and Project Manager on his new venture to develop a client base. The team pitched for projects within central London, researching each project meticulously, to be ahead of the curve. Once inside the meeting, the aim was to understand the client’s needs and bring inspirational solutions to life. With no fixed overheads, this allowed Mike to concentrate fully on the business and grow it organically. He and the team then rented a space at Theobalds Road, London to continue the success of winning local projects.

“One of the most memorable pitches, I remember to this day, was a sizeable project at the time and it was down to us and another company, who pitched first. I remember sitting in the reception with the team patiently waiting for our turn. We saw the company we were up against leave, dressed very presentable and professional with A1 boards of their design ideas at which point we felt that we might be on the back foot with our ‘concise’ A3 presentation.

Undeterred, we went into the room and started to talk through our pitch, and as we were going through it, the client began to describe their vision and our designer opened his sketch pad and started illustrating their thoughts. It no sooner became a workshop rather than a pitch and we were working collaboratively with them to outline their workspace, winning the job!”

Mike Halewood, Board Director.

After two years of settling in, Denton became a Design and Build company that had two professionally qualified people at the helm of the business as Chartered surveyor, Richard Douglas joined, to develop the construction side of the business. From then on, the business continued to grow and so did our team.

Our head office relocated from Theobald’s Road to Furnival Street, to Old Jewry, then Ironmonger Lane and now our central location of St Mary Axe, by the Gherkin building. Our current office interior reflects our best practice in commercial interior design and allows us to showcase to prospective clients our innovative design and space configuration ideas.

A shared vision

Both Mike and Richard shared a passion for adopting a professional approach to designing and building office interiors. Central to this professionalism was to adopt a collaborative approach to work alongside our clients.

They also adopted a similar approach to recruitment, employing highly qualified self-motivated individuals to expand the business, and continuing to deliver schemes true to the company’s ethics.

The considered strategy worked, as Denton grew from strength to strength to become one of the most trusted and respected design-build companies in the UK.

Denton core values

Whilst the market for design and fit-out has changed beyond recognition over the past 25 years, our core values have remained constant. Creativity, experience, integrity, and value are as relevant today as when Denton entered the market.

“We have always taken pride in providing an exceptional service through creativity, experience, value, and integrity for each of our projects and we recognise the importance of building a rapport with our clients to understand their needs”.

Richard Douglas, Director.

Creativity

Our talented in-house team of experienced and youthful inquiring minds continue to push the boundaries of creative interior design. To achieve market-leading status, we employed 1st class design graduates, to create a cutting-edge group that consistently secured projects on creative prowess. We invested in and adopted pioneering 3D modelling software and we became market leaders in dynamic 3D walkthroughs.

To complement our creative design skills, we employed a team of dedicated technical designers and developed an in-house bespoke auto-CAD design palette, which has enabled us to consistently deliver to high technical standards.

Graphic design playing an important role too in recent years; considered, refined and well-presented documents complement and illustrate our creative design solution visuals.

Northern expansion

Denton established a name in the North and opened the Liverpool office in 2001, followed by Manchester in 2015, allowing the company to create strong partnerships with local clients which are designed and delivered by our local team.

So, what is next for Denton?

As a business, we strive to remain ahead of the curve and understand our client’s needs. Whilst remaining true to our core values and our Design and Build heritage, we have organically expanded our services to cater for the growing popularity of Landlord CAT A and CAT A+ services, led by new board members’ Martin Arlett and Kane Cummins.

Denton will turnover in excess of £40million this financial year and with a terrific start, working on national projects across London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow, we look forward to the future opportunities across the UK.

“It has been a challenging and rewarding journey so far, and we look forward to the future, with a focus on wellbeing, ergonomic design and working towards a better future through our forward-thinking initiative solutions.”

Richard Douglas, Director.

Level-up your workspace

From Uber to The Berkeley Partnership and LinkedIn, over the years we’ve partnered with businesses of all shapes, sizes and sectors to create innovative, dynamic, considered workplaces — right across the UK.

Honest design, emphatic delivery — we create spaces that perform aesthetically and technically; places in which to do business and call commercial home.

Let’s discuss your next project. Get in touch with our experienced, passionate team.