‘We want Rovers to be the best-run club in Super League’: Titans of business team up to lay new foundations at Craven Park
CHEMISTRY: MKM founder David Kilburn, left, and Sewell Group Chair Paul Sewell, who have joined forces on the Board at Hull KR. Picture by Sean Spencer / Hull News & Pictures
Chewing the Fat: Out to lunch with Phil Ascough
This week’s guests: Paul Sewell and David Kilburn
For two of Hull’s biggest achievers, each with over 50 years in business on the CV, this was a fascinating first. Paul Sewell and David Kilburn had never before sat down for a joint interview.
In no time at all the game changed. Don’t worry about the questions. Just let them talk, and keep writing. Capture the chemistry of two 70-somethings with so much in common.
They’ve excelled in their respective branches of the construction sector, Paul as Chair of Sewell Group and David as founder of MKM, where he still sits on the board to support CEO Kate Tinsley.
They’ve worked together on a few projects which have brought lasting benefits to the city and surrounding region. Now they’re board colleagues at Hull Kingston Rovers. Football men stepping into the world of rugby league purely because they see an opportunity to help others, and to have some fun along the way.
Sharing a sofa in one of the executive boxes at Sewell Group Craven Park, they’re looking forward with excitement as they gaze across the pitch and consider the club’s on-field and off-field potential. They’re also casting their minds back through their exceptional careers. It’s compelling stuff. We should have sold tickets for this!
The first meeting they recall was in the late 1970s or maybe 1980. But by letting them off the leash we discover that the first time they were in the same room was probably for a Beatles gig at the ABC in the early 1960s. Paul would have been about 12, and David seven years older. They both remember not being able to hear the band, and constantly ducking for safety from the hail of confectionery hurled by adoring fans because Ringo Starr had happened to mention that he liked jelly babies.
IN HARMONY: Paul Sewell, left, and David Kilburn, who both attended the same Beatles gig in Hull in the 1960s. Picture by Sean Spencer / Hull News & Pictures
The passion for music remains. Paul’s birthday celebrations last year included a trip to Liverpool to see The Rolling Stones. David remembers seeing Buddy Holly in Hull in 1958, part of a variety show compered by Des O’Connor.
He recalled: “Rationing had not been gone that long. In the Suez crisis we all had petrol coupons again and I remember my dad wondering whether he had enough fuel to take us to school. JFK was taking off in the US, the first time we’d seen a politician who was young, active and good looking.”
Paul added: “When the cultural revolution came along David was more in the middle of it. Things were happening in politics and music and because of the few years between us we shared it from slightly different perspectives.”
Rod Stewart will be playing at Sewell Group Craven Park on July 4, with The Who to follow two days later. Conscious that David helped to put on Stewart’s gig at the MKM Stadium in aid of the Daisy Appeal in 2016, I ask how they got along.
Turns out David first saw him as a member of Steampacket circa 1965: “He’s just a geezer. He’s the same age as me!”
As we stray dangerously close to getting wrapped up in rock family trees, a quick intervention brings us back to construction.
SUPPORT: Rovers fans in the ‘Craven Streat’ section at Sewell Group Craven Park. Picture by swpix on behalf of Hull KR
During the 1970s David was building his career with Dawber Townley, a Hull firm of builders merchants with depots across East Yorkshire, and then Graham’s, who had a branch in Bridlington and opened one in Hull. Towards the end of the decade he opened a branch in Clough Road with Peter Murray, an avid Robins fan who later became one of the Ms as a co-founder of MKM.
Paul tells in his part business book-part memoir Half a Lettuce how both of his “expected careers” went awry during the 70s. He didn’t make it as a professional footballer and he didn’t join the family fruit and veg firm. Instead a first in a BSc Building course at Leeds University provided a route into construction, and after spending a few years learning the ropes with a business in West Yorkshire he returned to Hull in 1978 to join F Sewell & Son (Hull) Ltd.
Paul’s new employer dated back to 1876 and was a family firm, but not Paul’s Sewell family. Over the years the business has evolved, branching into filling stations and convenience stores, facilities management, consultancy, investments, data mapping and intelligence.
It employs more than 500 people and looks after them better than most firms in the country, winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for Promoting Opportunity and making countless appearances in the UK’s 100 Best Companies to Work For Awards.
David founded MKM in 1995 and the business boomed thanks to a strategy of rolling out a network of branches managed by people who were local to that community, and who held a stake in the business. MKM now employs 2,600 people working across more than 100 sites nationwide.
“We struck on a business model that happened to be a winner and had scale,” he said.
POTENTIAL: Paul Sewell, left, and David Kilburn gaze out over the stadium at Sewell Group Craven Park. Picture by Sean Spencer / Hull News & Pictures
The commitment to supporting the local economy was there from the start and both men recall how that led in the late 1980s to the formation of the Hull Local Purchasing Initiative.
David said: “At the first meeting we played the funeral march and displayed pictures of all the sites around the city that were being developed by out of town businesses.
“We started to lobby the local authority who always said the right things about local jobs for local people, but when it came to the procurement stage it always ended up going out of town. Why ask for money from London when we don’t then keep the investment in the city?”
Paul added: “Both businesses have gone on to be very successful so this isn’t whingeing and bitterness but when I look at those businesses which are no longer here I think about how they could be taking on apprentices and providing employment. Sewell Group is only here because it diversified.”
David explained how the consequences are still being felt now: “We have lost an industry and a generation or two of apprentices to produce skilled trades people. You try to get a plumber or a joiner now. In those days the companies that would have taken these people on couldn’t get the work to support it and the public procurement was an absolute scandal.”
Paul has taken inspiration over the years from Germany’s Mittelstand model of mid-sized companies as they commit to training, generate jobs and play a key part in driving the economy.
‘A VIBRANT COMBINATION OF STREET FOOD STALLS AND LIVEWIRE MUSIC’: Fans enjoying the pre-match gathering in ‘Craven Streat’. Picture by swpix on behalf of Hull KR
He said: “MKM, Sewell Group and others are anchor institutions and when you choose these Mittelstand businesses they are the ones that support the local economy because they naturally capture the wealth and keep it circulating around the area.
“But we lost that argument at the time so our businesses had to make a living where they could and the others just went. MKM still has the localisation, with local branch managers and a local base. We are exactly the same – local people in local businesses serving local communities. Place-based companies.”
David added: “The thing that has changed now is that local authorities don’t have as much money to spend anyway.”
That commitment to local communities explains why the pair have come together to revolutionise the off-field activities at the Robins, and it’s also a factor in why they chose rugby rather than football.
I remember bumping into a very excited David Kilburn in Essex in March 2008. It was the last game under floodlights at Colchester United’s old Layer Road ground, and Hull City ran riot with Fraizer Campbell scoring twice in a 3–1 win that took the Tiger a big step closer to that first Premier League promotion.
When I say we shared taxis between the station and the stadium I mean David paid. He’s committed plenty more in terms of support for the club, financially as demonstrated by the MKM Stadium sponsorship, and giving time and guidance to some of the owners over the years.
SHARING IDEAS: Paul Sewell, left, and David Kilburn, who have built and led two of Hull’s most successful companies. Picture by Sean Spencer / Hull News & Pictures
But with rugby league David is captivated by an openness which is so rare in modern football, and he clearly admired the traditional style and glowing potential of Rovers’ stadium from his perch on the sofa.
He admitted: “Rugby has never been my game. My old headmaster at Marist was very dismissive and disrespectful about rugby league.
“I’ve been to rugby league games here once, and once at the Boulevard and we are going back a long time. It could be 60 years. I’ve never played it and it was never on the agenda but I would like a crack at kicking goals, maybe even playing half-back.
“It’s a simple game in many ways and that’s why it attracts a lot of families but the reason I am here is because of Paul. He came to me and asked if I would be interested.”
‘THE BEST COMPANIES INVEST IN THEIR COMMUNITIES’: Sewell Group Chair Paul Sewell
Paul’s connections with Rovers began when his son Patrick sponsored the club with the Sewell On The Go brand, the club playing its part by committing to player appearances at the filling stations.
Paul said: “Patrick found the club really good to work with. They gave really good value. In doing that we came across Neil Hudgell, and got to know him as friends. That led to the stadium sponsorship and they over-delivered and were so eager to please. I found I quite liked it here.
“There was one person I knew I could work with and I took the view that if you don’t ask you don’t get. David said he would think about it and then came in. It gives us the opportunity to work together at the end of our careers and it’s now or never for this club.”
Robins fans shouldn’t start getting all starry-eyed and dreaming of an influx of superstar Aussies and Kiwis, but they should be excited about the commitment to sustainability outlined by two men who know more than most what that means.
A key appointment by Neil Hudgell in November 2020 was CEO Paul Lakin, a former commercial director with the Robins. Paul worked in football with Stoke City and Wolves and then came back to East Hull. His brief was to sell the club, but the prospect of a new structure changed all that.
‘HULL SHOULD NEVER ACCEPT SECOND BEST’: David Kilburn. Picture by Sean Spencer / Hull News & Pictures
Chairman Paul said: “Neil couldn’t put any more money in and he wasn’t used to working with a board. Paul Lakin wasn’t used to working without a board. I agreed a business plan with Paul and set about finding a board and a chair. They looked around and asked me to do it.”
The biggest move in paving the way to the new era was the deal agreed by CEO Paul with Hull City Council to get the stadium into the club’s ownership. Rovers also hold an option on 15 acres of neighbouring land which will provide a variety of mixed-use opportunities currently being explored by specialist developers Genr8, who are known to the CEO for a transformational project which they delivered in Stoke.
The view to the south and east of the stadium shows the economic transformation already under way with Siemens, Green Port, Saltend and the Yorkshire Energy Park.
The outline for the area around Sewell Group Craven park is more modest but equally relevant to a club noted for maximising its resources through the ages. Nobody who visited the previous Craven Park on Holderness Road will ever forget the old railway carriages which served as a snack bar at the back of a stand.
The current venue lacks the concourse opportunities of the MKM Stadium but gets a real buzz from “Craven Streat” – the area behind the goal at the southern end which tempts fans into the grounds well before kick-off with its vibrant combination of street food stalls and livewire music. The club’s commercial team reports rising attendances and a boost in food and beverage sales, adding up to ingenious and lucrative use of space which previously had little to offer.
Between them the new arrivals could certainly muster the financial clout to transform the Robins, but in a sporting world full of stories of boom and bust the priority is to lighten the load on the owner and build a sustainable future in line with the IMG masterplan.
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Chairman Paul said: “We are a board that has come here to help and to attract investment and make this the best-run Super League club in the country, not the richest. That’s why we’ve got the best business people I know. David will be a great mentor for some of the people here.
“It’s a community. This place is owned by Hull and for Hull. The focus is about leading the local economy and making the world a better place for the people wo live here.”
David added: “It’s about getting a better environment in the city that we are proud of. I want to live in an environment where we all have access to all the things any other major city would have.
“Why should we accept second best as a city? We haven’t built second-best businesses. We have built first-class businesses, and if we can do that we can help other people do that.”
What sets them apart from many business leaders in the region is that they weren’t born into business empires and nor were they head-hunted to run an organisation built by somebody else. They have achieved great success by assembling their own teams and they still have a hunger and passion in an age of lifestyle businesses when for many it’s about sell up and feet up.
Paul said: “I have had offers to go and join an existing board but that’s boring. Here there’s so much to achieve.”
David added: “I feel no different now from when I was 50 and Peter and I started MKM.”