CONSUMING INTEREST
Vanishing Breed
By LESLIE ADRIAN
They have not, however, completely vanished. In fact, I hear that numbers of skilled and will- ing workers in this field have escaped from bondage to the big contractors and are setting up self-employed groups. And one outfit in London that knows where they are and how much they charge is Lardner-Burke of 9 Coptic Street, New Oxford Street, W1 (LANgham 0566). It would not surprise me to find more Lardner-Burkes coming into existence in the next few years in urban centres, because the service they offer seems to fit well into our confusing and con- fused way of living. They are 'decorating brokers.'
Briefly, this means that they keep a register of teams of cleaners, decorators, plumbers and even
designers to which their clients can have access with one telephone call. The L-B boys pop round, size up the job, write out a specification and agree it with you, then put it out to tender among the most likely groups on their books. They watch the job progress and see that it keeps to schedule, check it when it is done and, they claim, save their clients anything from 20 to 25 per cent of the cost of the job if it were done by one of the usual sub-contractors. What's the catch? Very wicked, I'm afraid. These self- employed craftsmen are willing to work all hours, weekends and nights included, for the same rates as skilled workers employed by con- ventional contractors. They pack more work into every hour, because the more jobs -they do the more money they make. They have no overheads, because they have no offices. All their paperwork goes through Lardner-Burke's office. And be- cause of the broking operation they get a steady flow of jobs.
The boss of the broking firm, which has now been going for two years and has just done up Harvey Orkin's offices, the 400 Club in Leicester Square (in two weeks, going twenty-four hours a day), as well as a big job for the Rank Or- ganisation, says that spring is his quiet time. Most private individuals seem to take a new look at their homes in the late summer and autumn, when they get back from holiday and see how shabby the old place is beginning to look. Spring-cleaning they can arrange, but it is not their forte. Nor is emergency repair work, which they find unprofitable. They prefer to specialise in low-cost, first-class all-round cleaning and decorating at any speed that suits the customer. Who says you can't get this kind of service nowadays?
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