Rags to riches: Rob’s journey from money woe to success

Financially, at least, his future looked bleak. He was consumed by fear, panic, concern and a whole gamut of feelings as he worried about how to pay the bills.

But then a flickering light of hope sparked inside him, a potential business idea. From tiny acorns mighty oaks grow, they say.

Fast forward nine years and Telford-based Rob's Instaloft empire has grown to become the largest loft storage installer in the UK, with £15 million revenue, installing over 10,000 lofts a year.

From an idea in his living room, he now has more than 150 employees across eight depots around the UK.

“It is crazy looking back,” he reflects. “I was in something of a do-or-die situation in 2014, I’ll be honest. It was a very challenging time in my life, where I didn’t even have enough income to feed my family.

“I was out of work and trying to think about how to rebuild my career. I was borrowing money off my parents. I remember sitting on my living room floor and getting quite emotional thinking ‘what on earth am I going to do to try and pay my way?’”

But then he had a lightbulb moment as he googled franchise opportunities.

“I started googling about how to protect insulation when people use their loft for storage,” he reflects.

“I came across LoftZone, who had patented a raised floor system designed to protect loft insulation and meet relevant building regulations. I thought it seemed a unique product.

“I didn’t have experience in loft installations. I’m not a carpenter by any stretch of the imagination. But the LoftZone solution made the process incredibly safe and easy.”

After watching multiple YouTube videos, Rob purchased some tools via a £200 credit card, created a basic logo and launched Instaloft.

“I put few adverts on Facebook to see if there was interest. I told people my idea and people laughed at me as you’d expect,” he recalls.

“People were like ‘What are you doing this for Rob? You can’t even hold a saw properly’.”

But he got a customer and the next thing was to get more equipment, with no money.

“I phoned LoftZone up and asked if I could buy some stock off them. They said ‘what do you need?’.”

“I told them and they gave me the price. I said: ‘That’s the problem, I can’t afford to pay for it’.

“And they were like ‘nice knowing you!’ I explained I had a customer willing to pay me £900 and I could do the job and pay them back on the same day. For the life of me, I don’t know why but they agreed it.

“I had said I’d work really hard and promised I’d become a big installer. They let me and it went from there. I did the job and started doing two to three jobs a week, this balancing act, getting money off customers and paying for the stock.”

An accident while on a job then led Rob’s business scaling up. Call it bad luck, a eureka moment or a twist of fate.

“I was doing a quote and fell down someone’s stairs and sprained my wrist,” he recalls. “I was in a situation where I couldn’t do the work so I was going to be back to square one. That was when I put an advert out looking for help.

“I took on a lad called Scotty, my first employee, and that was a turning point. I realised I could spend more time doing marketing and grow the business while he did other work.

“It built momentum from there. I ended up with five vans on the road in Telford and then LoftZone phoned me up and said: ‘Can you reach as far as Reading?’ They said they had inquiries from there.

“I decided to go for it and set up a depot down there to see if it would work and it taught me a lot about managing people remotely as well.

“I learned how to do it on a tight budget and we have carried on replicating it around different areas of the country.”

Now the plan is to expand and build on an incredible year. Instaloft turned over £14 million last year and is also celebrating a profitable first year of trading for the company’s electrical brand, Instaspark, which offers full electrical services to homes and businesses throughout the UK, from re-wiring and routine repairs to adaptive heating controls and smart lighting.

Rob’s said: "We have opened new depots in Devon, Kent and the north west, and plan to do more in the north east.

“We are poised to do a lot of work this year. We are looking at garage transformations too, making a dreary garage into a nice one to show off – making humble spaces into really nice ones.

"What else can we do after that? We go by what customers say, so we might expand into under-stair storage, windows, doors, you name it, the world’s your oyster when you get the formula right.

“I’m proud of what has been achieved and I hope it inspires people to go on their own journey as well. You don’t need a Dragon to tell you if it’s a good idea or not.

“If you have an idea and you can work it and have customers, it’s about getting it out there and getting friends and family to talk about it. There’s been a lot of soul searching at times and difficult moments. You question yourself and if it’s all worthwhile at times. But it is. We had our first Christmas party since Covid in December and there were 150 people there.

“You realise that’s a whole lot of families who earn a wage as a result of this idea I had in my living room. It’s small moments like that which make you realise what you have done and what you have achieved.”