Paul Rowland and Angelika Kotarska | THE KBBREVIEW INTERVIEW
Paul Rowland, MD of CP Hart, won our 2024 Special Achievement Award. After 20 years running one of the UK’s most high-profile
GENERATION GAME “
It’s incredible isn’t it?”, Angelika Kotarska is having the full tour of CP Hart’s flagship showroom in Waterloo. The 20,000 sq ft space, a series of interlinked railway arches, is always a revelation for first-time visitors and Kotarska’s guide is fastidiously adjusting and checking displays as he goes. Paul Rowland, the company’s managing director since 2003, clearly still enjoys the reaction
and takes Kotarska from one display to the next, explaining the point and purpose of each in the wider context of the business and its customers without pausing for thought. He is clearly a stickler for the details.
bathroom retailers his expertise is unparalleled, so who better to take to see him than our Rising Star Angelika Kotarska. Andrew Davies met them both at CP Hart’s Waterloo showroom…
Rowland began his KBB career with Magnet, chalking up 15 years and rising to the position of sales director until it was acquired by Nobia in 2001. Magnet had bought CP Hart from the Hart family several years earlier and the new owners gave him the MD’s role, tasking him with turning the business around. Two decades later and a £15m turnover has become £50m and five showrooms have grown to 15. It’s safe to say he fulfilled the brief. The company passed from Nobia to Charco in 2007 and then to the Wolseley Group in 2022 but Rowland’s consistent presence is the steady hand that guides its fortune - and made him the deserved recipient of the Special Achievement Award at the kbbreview Retail & Design Awards in March. Kotarska, in contrast, is at the other end of the career path but her ambition and drive is no less
impressive. Just 24 years old, she started her own bathroom retail showroom - Angelic Bathrooms - in Northampton when she was 22. Her father is a bathroom fitter and, after graduating in accountancy and finance, this led her into the industry where her work ethic, attention to detail and determined nature won her the Rising Star of the Year trophy at the same awards. And it’s clear that she is soaking up everything she can when given the opportunity to not only get
the full CP Hart showroom tour, but also sit down with Rowland and pick his brains…
June 2024 •
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