Staff spun off at Revolution

Design group Revolution’s 20-strong environments division has been placed in receivership, resulting in a dozen job losses, despite ranking 11th in the 1999 Design Week Top 100 table for interior design.

While it is not known precisely how events unfolded, five staff are known to have resigned prior to the board’s decision to give the division up.

Seven more have been made redundant, while a core team of eight will be retained in a strategic capacity, but cease to work on retail interior projects.

Despite its Design Week ranking, Revolution chairman Ray Taylor says the environment division has been lagging behind the group’s other activities. The consultancy is using its imminent move to Clerkenwell, from its current Enfield base, as an opportunity to refocus its business.

“Our core competency is marketing and brands work and the environments division has shifted more and more away from our core competency. The strategic and directional elements have got less and less, and it is low margin [work],” says Taylor.

Taylor says the group would like to assist the parting team in taking charge of the division’s contracts and reforming independently.

Revolution posted a turnover of 12.5m last year and has a client list including Marks & Spencer, Coutts, the Woolwich, Microsoft Europe and Selfridges.

See News Analysis, page 8