Cumming and Brookes fly Nest

The St Luke’s-backed design group The Nest is closing its interiors offering to focus on brand communications and graphics, resulting in the departure of two creative directors and a number of redundancies.

As part of the restructuring, creative directors and retail interiors specialists Bill Cumming and Giles Brookes are leaving to set up on their own, and The Nest will lose several clients.

According to managing director Sophie Hatch, there will be up to five redundancies from the 30-strong office, as well as staff who will follow Cumming and Brookes to their new venture.

Hatch says the decision was ‘collaborative’ and ‘amicable’, and not the result of financial problems. She says that while there is a slowdown in interiors generally because clients are spending more on on-line marketing, this has not affected The Nest directly.

‘We have started to focus on the brand communications and graphics side rather than interiors, and [to present] an integrated offer. As a result, we will be smaller so there will be redundancies, but no more than five. The amount of work we have been getting has been growing and last year was our most successful. Economic considerations have nothing to do with this decision – it is about making sure our offer makes sense in the context of what we have been producing,’ Hatch adds.

St Luke’s planning partner Phil Teer says, ‘We are finding at St Luke’s that more clients are coming to us and wanting one point of contact, one team and one creative execution. The demand has not gone, but we are becoming more integrated.’

The Nest intends to employ one creative director with a background in graphics to replace Cumming and Brookes.

Founded by Alex Willcock, Russell Pinch and Rachel Marshall in 1999, The Nest was acquired by advertising agency St Luke’s for an undisclosed sum in November 2004 (DW 18 November 2004).

Pinch left the business in February 2004 to return to furniture design, Marshall left in 2001 to move to Australia, while Willcock handed over the reins on the sale to St Luke’s.

WELL-FEATHERED
• Last year, The Nest’s fee-income was £2.46m, while the turnover was £2.8m
• Current clients include the Arts Council, BAA, Britvic, Clarks, Camden Council, Mandarin Oriental Hotels, Maplin, Procter & Gamble, Nirah, Waterstone’s and Luxury Briefing