Talkin' bout an Evolution: From rugby magazines to custom motorcycles
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Nestled on the shoreline of Lough Neagh, at the picturesque Kinnego Marina, Evolution Motor Works is a unique business owned by husband and wife duo Manus and Emma Lappin. The company specialises in custom bespoke motorcycles for customers home and abroad.
For 49-year-old Manus, it feels like he has come full circle in life. He’s the man responsible for some outlandish ideas but admits he’s “extremely fortunate to have a wise and sane woman” by his side. Emma has been by his side in business since 2003 – even longer personally.
Evolution Motor Works began in 2014. The couple, who have two daughters – Rose and Clara – had just sold a popular and hugely profitable Irish rugby magazine (more on that in a bit) when they opened up the store. Life, with two children, changed for them. Hospital visits became the norm in the early days after Clara – their youngest was born with Down’s Syndrome in 2012. The sale of their magazine came at the right time in their lives; they had been approached about a buyout six months earlier. It was, to a degree, all about timing.
For Manus, he took the long route around to opening up a motorcycle shop. It wasn’t conventional by any stretch.
“Whenever I was very young, I was into motorbikes and it's quite bizarre because neither my mum, or my dad, were into them, they didn't even like them,” Manus recalled.
“When I was really young, dad wouldn't allow me to have one, so I built one. Whenever I did eventually pluck up the courage to bring one home – instead of keeping them at a friend's house – he had to resign himself to the fact that you can only fight it for so long, that it was inevitable I was always going to be involved with motorbikes.
“But the one thing my dad always said to me was ‘get yourself an education, because it's a lot easier carried than a toolbox’. And, you know what, he was right.”
Manus headed in a different direction than one maybe he thought he was destined for. He went off to university and studied computers, graduating to become a programmer. He spent about 10 years in the IT industry, all the while building motorbikes in his spare time.
“I remember sitting in board meetings and covering my black fingernails. People would just turn and say, ‘well Manus, what were you working on this weekend?’ It was always one of those inevitable things that was consistent right through through my life.”
Manus enjoyed working in IT; it forged an understanding of business in him that he would use to his advantage.
“I was in IT at a time when it was a tremendously collaborative environment – it probably still is. There were lots of people bouncing ideas off each other and people genuinely were interdependent. You relied on your work colleagues to stimulate your thoughts and vice-versa, it was really a very creative environment and a great space to work in and I was very fortunate to work with a lot of really good people, really smart, intelligent, intuitive business people.
“From a relatively early stage in my career, I got to work alongside lots of different companies and from that I got some great exposure.”
In the latter half of his IT career Manus worked as a consultant, collaborating with all sorts of companies to redesign their processes and making their businesses more efficient by using appropriate IT solutions.
“I got to go work alongside farmers, Formula One teams, central government, banking and insurance companies, so I had a huge exposure to all those different sorts of processes and how those different businesses worked.
“That was wonderful but I always had this hankering to do something for myself.”
It wasn’t motorbikes at this stage…that was still to come.
Emma, who had a background in publishing, had just started a high-level marketing role with BT. Manus, who has a passion for rugby (he played with Portadown RFC for 15 years), had been travelling a lot with work. The year was 2003.
Manus explained: “I was doing a lot of travelling in airports and I couldn't find a really good Irish rugby magazine. I remember coming home from an overseas trip and saying to Emma, ‘what about doing a rugby magazine?’ She thought I was mad.
“I started planning it all out. I did the figures, projections, the costings and everything else, and brought it all down and put in front of Emma.”
Emma didn’t say no – Manus had his buy in!
Shortly after, Emma left her job and the pair started a publishing company called Extreme Publications – apt, given the nature of their decision. For the next 12 years, the couple – with the help of a team – produced a monthly Irish rugby magazine and website called Emerald Rugby. An infamous row with Ireland Rugby coach, Joe Schmidt, couldn’t even put a damper on it. Manus was on the right end of that argument and Joe admitted it in the end. Those 12 years would fill a book.
The couple sold the company for an undisclosed sum in 2014 before going on to open Evolution Motor Works.
“When we sold the business I had some more free time,” Manus explained. “People started coming asking me to build them a custom motorbike, which was great, but then it became a little bit all consuming.”
So what did Manus do? True to form…
“I remember going down and saying to Emma, ‘what about opening up a motorbike shop to build custom bikes?’ She kind of rolled her eyes and said, ‘not again!’
“I did my costings and really tricked my brain into thinking that these were accurate – they weren't accurate at all.”
The pair looked around for premises and found the perfect location down at Kinnego Marina. The unit had been empty for the best part of two years. The couple put their money down and in 2014 Manus opened up his dream business.
It has been the change of pace that has really helped Manus and Emma.
Emma has been so supportive and her role in each of the businesses they have ran together since 2003 cannot be understated. Manus doesn’t understate it either; he speaks effusively of his wife – they are the dream team.
“I think it's important because most entrepreneurs think of it as being a lonely path, and for some it is, but for me, it certainly wouldn't have been possible to do the things that I have done without somebody there with you.
“People think motorbikes and think the man, and it's a traditional view, but Emma is 50% of the business, if not 60-70% and has been with all the businesses.
“I know people think I am the one cutting and welding and putting bikes together but without Emma there to promote the business, and to do the marketing side of things, to pick the correct stock for the shop and all those things, there wouldn't be a business and that's the cold truth of it.”
It’s what Manus describes as a stage of interdependence – “where you rely heavily on the people around you, whether that be friends, family, a spouse, your work colleagues…”
Manus relies on Emma’s acumen and has also garnered skills and knowledge from others over the years because he was open to learning from those around him.
“This is what the IT industry taught me, that nobody will know everything, but there's lots of people who know plenty and if you're open and receptive to that knowledge and that information, you'll make yourself a better person, and you'll make better decisions.
“I suppose that's really what business is about, is making consistently good decisions. Now, you don't always make good decisions; you have to make bad ones to appreciate the good ones. Everybody who runs a business will tell you they have made their fair share of bad decisions, but hopefully, in the round, it's a majority of good decisions you make.”
A good decision which, at times looked like a bad one for Manus, was his choice to get rid of the repair work they carried out at the store. For a number of years people could bring their motorcycles in to be fixed but it tended to be more hassle than they needed.
“A number of years ago, we put focus back on building custom bikes, which is what we set out to be from the outset, and that's really what we're focused on over the last, maybe five or six years. It has been good but don't get me wrong, when you're turning down maybe £8,000-9,000 of repair work a week and you're saying, ‘no sorry, we don't do repair work anymore’, you're thinking 'have we made the right decision?'
“But what you find is, when you clear that space, you get the proper work in that you want to do. When you're busy doing all that other stuff that you don't really want to do then there is no capacity to take anything else in and other opportunities pass you by.”
That said, Manus has made his mistakes, but he’s followed one piece of advice published by a professor at the Harvard Business School.
“Focus on the revenue rather than the costs,” Manus recited. “So, if you concentrate on bringing in money and generating money, the costs will look after themselves, and that may sound a wee bit naive. Yes, you need to have a benchmark of what you need to bring in to cover your costs but at the same time, if you just focus on building the business and building the revenue for the business, it will help with the costs. If you focus on the costs, you'll only be dealing with the costs and that'll not get you anywhere.”
It’s advice Manus swears by, and while it helps moving the business forward, the father-of-two is at a point where huge expansion and exponential growth is not at the forefront of his thinking – but never say never.
“Emma and I did the rat race,” he said. “We both worked in the big cities and we both did a lot of travel but we made a conscious decision that whenever we had kids, we would want to be there to drop them off at school and to pick them up and to be able to do things with them.
“And again, I’m well aware that not everybody has that luxury but there has been a lot of sacrifices along the way to do that.
“For us, money isn't the be all and end all. It might sound funny for some because it's normally the driver for people to start their own business, but it was never really a thing for me. It's surprising how little you can survive on when you have to. You want to have time to share with other people as well. You want to do something you enjoy and that was more of the point for me.”
Manus has found his groove, found his niche, but is still always one to challenge himself – by his very nature he’s someone who needs to be brought outside his comfort zone.
“I feel that I act best when I'm under a little bit of pressure – I'm fortunate enough to have a wise and sane woman by my side who can keep me in check all the time.
But that’s easier said than done.
“There are always opportunities out there. There's always things that can blindside you on a Friday afternoon, to think, ‘my goodness, I never thought of that’.”
That’s exactly what happened about a month ago. An opportunity to stock a range of low capacity motorcycles from English manufacturer ‘Herald’ – which Manus can customise off the shelf – and become the official distributor across the island of Ireland.
“It's an opportunity for us to expand into a side of the business that we hadn't really explored. Obviously our unique position, being in Northern Ireland and able to trade with Ireland and the UK, there's probably an opportunity there, which a lot of businesses are either taking, or will be taking very soon. We would be foolish not to be looking at it.”
And when opportunity knocks, you cannot ignore it. What’s next for Manus – dare we even ask!
He may no longer be that young teenager but he’s certainly living that dream. It really has been an evolution
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