Reviewing 2022 ⁠– business leaders reflect on a challenging year

For But­ler-Adams, 2022 has been a “roller­coast­er ride”, fea­tur­ing “finan­cial­ly and emo­tion­al­ly test­ing” cir­cum­stances, but also pre­sent­ing time­ly busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties.

“Covid, Brex­it, sup­ply chain short­ages, logis­tics costs and infla­tion” have all caused headaches for the fold­ing bike man­u­fac­tur­er. “But we are a stronger, more deter­mined com­pa­ny as a result of every­thing we have been through,” But­ler-Adams says. “Hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion, team­work and a strong belief in what we are doing have got us through. Our mis­sion to cre­ate urban free­dom for hap­pi­er lives is more rel­e­vant now than it has ever been.”

Brompton’s great­est suc­cess of 2022, But­ler-Adams says, was launch­ing its new ultra-light 7.5kg T Line mod­el, made entire­ly on British soil. “The T Line is a total redesign of the Bromp­ton. Every part is dif­fer­ent, except the brake cal­lipers, every ele­ment opti­mised for weight and per­for­mance, tak­ing the engi­neer­ing to the lim­it. The T line has been a fig­ment of my imag­i­na­tion for many years so to now ride it is a joy.”

Bromp­ton has react­ed smart­ly to the world around it, But­ler-Adams claims. Dur­ing the numer­ous rail strikes of 2022, the com­pa­ny offered free rental of its bikes. “The results have been super pos­i­tive,” he reflects, “with around 20% of peo­ple who have used our bike hire going on to buy a bike and start cycling.”

The past year has yield­ed record-high tem­per­a­tures, adding an excla­ma­tion point to the need to act on cli­mate change, But­ler-Adams notes. “We have been told this [cli­mate change] has been com­ing for decades but didn’t believe the sci­ence. Now it is a real­i­ty with 40-degree days in the UK, rag­ing fires across the Amer­i­c­as and bib­li­cal floods in Asia.”

Bromp­ton is not a panacea, But­ler-Adams admits, “but it has an impor­tant part to play. We have a mil­lion Bromp­tons being rid­den around the world, and we have only just start­ed. Most of the peo­ple in the world live in cities and this is only going to increase.”

The past year should con­firm bikes as a “no-brain­er” com­po­nent of car­bon effi­cien­cy, he argues. “The solu­tion to our cities’ prob­lems is not the elec­tric car. This requires 2000kg to move an 80kg human less than 5km across a city, it takes up pre­cious space, and uses a large amount of car­bon to be pro­duced. You can deliv­er the same out­come with a 15kg elec­tric bicy­cle. It is good for your mind and soul, and all the rest.”

For inte­ri­or design­er Hop­pen, ‘longevi­ty’ is the watch­word for her indus­try in 2022. As peo­ple spend more time at home due to hybrid work­ing mod­els, she explains, it’s vital­ly impor­tant that her prod­ucts are long-last­ing and com­fort­able, con­tribut­ing to a pos­i­tive work­ing space.

This has been mir­rored by the mod­erni­sa­tion of her company’s stu­dio and its pol­i­cy on remote or flex­i­ble work­ing. “I had to fig­ure out how to engage every­one back in the stu­dio but more than that I had to fig­ure out how to com­mu­ni­cate again as I could see it wasn’t the same as before,” she says. “Once I had worked out what to do to engage and com­mu­ni­cate across my team and busi­ness, what I saw was that it was very quick for every­one to fall back into an easy, com­fort­able design work space.”

Staff well­be­ing will be key to any company’s capac­i­ty to weath­er the reces­sion. “Man­ag­ing our team as the pan­dem­ic has arguably affect­ed people’s men­tal health way more than any­one expect­ed” was an impor­tant learn­ing curve, Hop­pen notes. “Good comes from every sit­u­a­tion… Pos­i­tive thoughts and sup­port­ing each oth­er and know­ing there is a solu­tion for every­thing has helped us to over­come the chal­lenges of the past year.”

Although the UK is fac­ing a reces­sion, Hop­pen says the desire and need for lux­u­ry still exists. “If you are a busi­ness­woman or design­er, you are always watch­ing the trends through busi­ness, mar­kets, and peo­ple’s wants and needs and so you flow seam­less­ly with this,” she says. “Peo­ple observe how they live dif­fer­ent­ly now and there is a new type of appre­ci­a­tion not seen before, so it is a good thing in my eyes. Longevi­ty in the home is the key trend.”

Cozzi’s data com­pa­ny Emit­wise helps busi­ness­es cal­cu­late their car­bon foot­print and the cost to off­set it. Many com­pa­nies in 2022, he reflects, still viewed green­ing their busi­ness as a cost­ly bur­den rather than a long-term and reward­ing invest­ment. “Show­ing busi­ness­es that they will prof­it from respon­si­ble car­bon man­age­ment is the biggest chal­lenge we have encoun­tered,” he says. “To some deci­­sion-mak­ers, this can seem illog­i­cal, but it is com­plete­ly true that good envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards lead to good eco­nom­ic growth.”

Cozzi believes “more trans­paren­cy of car­bon data” is key to tack­ling cli­mate change. “Just last week I spoke with board mem­bers of two large pub­lic Euro­pean com­pa­nies who said that both boards are con­cerned about the qual­i­ty of their car­bon account­ing,” he says. “The real­i­ty is that some busi­ness­es will be say­ing one thing about their green cre­den­tials with­out gen­uine­ly deliv­er­ing. More and more reg­u­la­tions are com­ing into place.” For organ­i­sa­tions that don’t have a han­dle on their data, he warns, “such reg­u­la­tion could uncov­er green­wash­ing on a sig­nif­i­cant scale.”

For Cozzi, Emitwise’s biggest suc­cess in 2022 was hir­ing Marc Engel, ex-chief sup­ply chain offi­cer of Unilever, as an advis­er. “Marc is one of the top 10 glob­al lead­ers in sus­tain­abil­i­ty and he is tak­ing a hands-on approach at Emit­wise to help us dri­ve for­ward our mis­sion to decar­bonise the biggest sup­ply chains in the world.”

It has been a chal­leng­ing year for the UK prop­er­ty mar­ket, with the num­ber of hous­ing sales down and mort­gage inter­est rates up. Reflect­ing on 2022, Smith says the ener­gy cri­sis has “forced every­one to think about their prop­er­ties more and the dri­ve towards doing what they can do to be more aware of their homes’ per­for­mance.” Hope­ful­ly, she adds, “this will also [lead to] more land­lords invest­ing in retro­fitting to keep good ten­ants.”

Local and nation­al gov­ern­ment could have done more to sup­port the prop­er­ty indus­try over the past 12 months, Smith sug­gests. “Hous­ing deliv­ery, in terms of speed, amount and afford­abil­i­ty,  is a major issue for the coun­try,” she says. “Lack of clar­i­ty from the gov­ern­ment over the direc­tion of plan­ning reform or review and chron­ic under­fund­ing of plan­ning depart­ments is caus­ing huge uncer­tain­ty for coun­cils and devel­op­ers and providers alike. Local plans are being pulled or put on hold; exam­i­na­tions take years in some cas­es, with argu­ments over hous­ing num­bers or need, devel­op­ment of green­field or green belt, and devel­op­ment via­bil­i­ty.”

Afford­able hous­ing, Smith says, is the biggest los­er in this sit­u­a­tion, as it is ulti­mate­ly reliant on mar­ket deliv­ery. She notes that “30% or 40% of noth­ing is noth­ing.” The lack of a com­pre­hen­sive review of the green­belt pol­i­cy gen­er­al­ly and a lack of clar­i­ty on poten­tial reviews to how min­i­mum hous­ing need is cal­cu­lat­ed is a “sti­fling devel­op­ment”, Smith adds. “For me, the most sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy impacts are the ones that haven’t been made.”

Despite the chal­leng­ing year, Smith is proud of of her company’s inter­nal work in train­ing and devel­op­ing its staff. “To recruit tal­ent­ed peo­ple in an uncer­tain mar­ket is a chal­lenge as the best don’t want to move. How­ev­er, as we have just invest­ed in our peo­ple, brand and infra­struc­ture, we are con­fi­dent that with our pos­i­tive mes­sage ⁠– despite the gloomy eco­nom­ic out­look ⁠– we can attract tal­ent who want to work on inter­est­ing projects across the UK in a nice, col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment that rewards well.”