Radley designers, wholesalers and retailers of ladies handbags, was expanding rapidly and running out of warehouse and storage room in its North London, Willesden premises on which the lease was due to run out within two years – leading to a board decision to vacate the premises rather than renew the lease.

But Radley was still unclear about the commercial and strategic wisdom of what were seen as two basic options. The first was to select a new location and premises at which to collocate all the company's operations. The second was to identify dedicated and suitably strategically positioned separate warehouse space, whilst also deciding on the best location for the marketing, sales, administration and PR functions.

• We were called in by the Operations director to chair a meeting of the group's executive team and to help them review their options and advise on the strategic considerations of the two suggested alternatives. As a result of this lengthy meeting our recommendation was to quickly find a suitable location for a much larger warehouse function and to follow this up with a separate review of the best location for the other office based functions.

• We were therefore asked to advise Radley on a suitable catchment area that would enable cost effective delivery of goods inwards from Felixstowe, goods outwards to the main wholesalers (such as John Lewis, Debenhams, House of Fraser etc) and with easy accessibility by road and rail to and from London. Within this catchment area we were also instructed to locate suitable modern warehouse options with up to 60,000 square feet of accommodation.

• Over the next 8 weeks we carried out an extensive search of the catchment area and short listed an initial ten options which, after visiting with the Radley Operations director, we whittled down to three. These options were then examined and compared in detail by a leading firm of quantity surveyors and building economists (one of our associates) leading to our selection of a 55,000 square foot warehouse in Milton Keynes.

• We then negotiated successful – albeit protracted – heads of terms with the landlord's agents on behalf of Radley and were able to present their solicitors with an agreed deal to enable Radley to gain access to the premises within their required timescale.

Phase Two
Radley's UK based business was going from strength to strength and the board decided to investigate and research commercial opportunities overseas – and especially in the huge US market. Their market research identified a highly lucrative niche market for Radley in the US – almost identical to that which the company had developed in the UK.

A decision was therefore taken to expand the company through outside funding and the restructuring of the organisation by appointing a new Chief Executive. And on the back of these decisions it was decided to vacate the old, inefficient and rather dowdy existing offices in Willesden and choose a new location and offices to reflect the dynamism and attractiveness of the Radley brand.

• We were therefore commissioned to carry out an extensive but confidential search of the “right areas” of London for suitable offices based on a requirement for high quality space of up to 20,000 sq ft.
• We spent quite some time discussing with the Radley operations Director exactly what the company construed as being the “right areas” of London to concentrate our searches on as this would avoid unnecessary wheel spinning or traipsing around.