Countrywide is chopping one of its best known brands to merge it into John D Wood & Co, and folding six others by re-branding them as ‘part of John D Wood & Co’.
It is describing the exercise as an expansion.
The official announcement, which critics will undoubtedly see as heavily spun, was made under the headline “John D Wood & Co is expanding – delivering more for its customers”.
It describes John D Wood as a “traditionally modern” estate agent and talks about a family of brands creating a London powerhouse.
The announcement says that the expansion comes about after “the largest customer insight project undertaken by any company in the sector, which found that people want to access a full range of expertise under one roof”.
Because of this, it went on: “We are making some significant changes to our business to enable us to offer our clients and customers an even better level of service.”
Faron Sutarian is being merged into John D Wood, which will become a 51-branch network through the merger and “other collaborations”.
Brands Alan de Maid, Hetheringtons, Vanet, Fitz-Gibbon, APW Lettings, and CHK Mountford are all being re-labelled.
The press release says that John D Wood will now offer several new benefits, including an increased branch network; more staff with local expertise; specialist departments; residential development; and agricultural sales and estate management.
Faron Sutaria has been a well known player in the London property market for over 40 years.
Faron Sutaria’s Chiswick branch has already relocated into a neighbouring John D Wood & Co office, on Turnham Green Terrace.
During the rest of the year, Faron Sutaria’s offices in Lower Sloane Street, Earls Court, Fulham Broadway, Islington, Notting Hill Gate, Shepherds Bush and South Kensington will prominently feature in the merger, “being fully rebranded in due course”.
The announcement goes on: “Alan de Maid and Hetheringtons have enjoyed a long relationship with John D Wood & Co through its London Country Association, benefiting from the co-marketing of outer London and country property to London buyers.
“These two companies will now be co-branded as ‘part of John D Wood & Co.’ as will Vanet, based in Canary Wharf, and three specialist lettings agencies in west London and Surrey, Fitz-Gibbon, APW Lettings and CHK Mountford.”
Ben Taylor, managing director of John D Wood & Co, said: “We are bringing together a family of innovative, bespoke and personal estate agency brands to create a London powerhouse to serve our discerning client base.
“We are taking the best practice from each company and combining this with the in depth knowledge, professionalism and excellent customer service our whole team delivers.
“This is a very exciting time for John D Wood & Co and for our customers who will benefit from our increased size and strength. Expect to see a lot of activity over the coming months.”
Taylor has been managing director of John D Wood since last November.
Before that, he was responsible for sales, lettings and professional services across John D Wood, Faron Sutaria, APW, CHK Mountford, Vanet, Hetheringtons, Alan de Maid and Fitz Gibbon.
Prior to that, he was managing director of another Countrywide brand, Carson & Co, and earlier to that, managing director of Gascoigne Pees.
I worked with Ben Taylor for a while. very passionate and motivated man. It would not surprise me if he ends up running CW.
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I am glad something is happening I have always felt sorry for John D Wood ever since Countrywide acquired Hamptons. It seemed there was no future for the business with all the investment going into enlarging Hamptons.
This does not solve the longer-term problem that JDW and Hamptons are in the same market place, sooner or later Countrywide will have to make a decision to either close or sell-off one of the businesses (more likely JDW at this point).
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The perverse PR law of inverse reality. Yesterday we heard that losing £12, million and being over £50 million behind target in 2 years is a success and here brand rationalisation is described as expansion.
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Ben Parker is a great leader and agent.
That aside,the best agencies are small,self contained and operate in their own local market places. It is a therefore a shame that these well regarded local names are being ‘absorbed’ and presumably ‘lost’ because of corporate logistics and presumably central cost cutting.
John D Wood is a great company so I assume the well respected yet departed Peter Young is apoplectic at this latest news.
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PS
Apologies
Of course I mean Ben Taylor
Not the first time I’ve done this as I know a Ben Parker!
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For many years both John D Wood and Faron Sutaria we’re extremely successful businesses, but operating in different markets with JDW dealing principally with high end (£1.5m-£5m) homes, whilst FS’s strength tended to be in the (£500k-£1m) west-end flats market. It will be very interesting to observe which market Ben Taylor’s (good bloke!) enlarged team seeks to major upon because very very few London agency businesses succeed in both.
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I echo a lot of the thoughts on here.
Ben Taylor (Chap) is in my opinion the right man for the job. I would hope he one days ends up at he helm running CW to get it back to where it should be.
Harry is right, my first thoughts when i read the article was WOW, John.D.Wood are incredibly preciousness over the name, brand and staff are just not countrywide folk. Mixing a very countrywide brand such as Faron’s will be a challenge at least.
I suspect although keeping the John.D.Wood name they will be more Faron type run branches.
I can only see this as yet another step back in the great scheme of things.
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I wonder if anyone at Countrywide reads these comments? I wonder if any of the shareholders do? Was not John D. Wood one of the most profitable companies in the Countrywide crown and if so why on earth have they broken the wheel to invent some vast new Agentopoly with tiers of MBA wielding retailers at the top, a pointless layer of stick waving, figures reporting, area managers who have been brought in over highly experienced managers (who have been doing a fabulous job for years), to form a business and culture which we the customers will do our very best to avoid? An excellent company which punched way above its weight with an ethos, culture and values that stand out these days. How very short-sighted to subsume it in this way!
I wish I could forecast great success ahead, but I am sure the first victims will be the excellent managers and teams who will very unhappy with these changes. So, if I was recruiting I would be after these guys today even in a tricky market.
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