The kbbreview Interview // Paul O’Leary
Paul O’Leary the kbbreview interview
deVOL Interview: Andrew Davies
From stripping pine furniture and struggling to pay rent to TV shows and awards from the King, there is nothing traditional about the rise of one of the most enigmatic names in kitchens — deVOL. The secret? “Just don’t give up…” says co-founder Paul O’Leary
“T
here’s nothing a designer likes more than a problem that’s difficult to solve,” Paul O’Leary says, smiling to himself. “You see something that doesn’t work and you just can’t understand how anybody could have let that go. “It’s a disease, we can’t help it…”
While most accomplished designers will more than recognise the symptoms of this ‘disease’, there are very few who can claim that the manifestation of them has become the shorthand definition of a distinct style - the deVOL look. In person, co-founder O’Leary is as stylishly dishevelled as the kitchens his company is famous for. He is, although he would
modestly contest it, the embodiment of the brand’s ethos and despite the success still seems baffled that he has been able to turn this obsession into not just a career but a hugely lucrative lifestyle business. Loughborough University design graduates Philip deVries and Paul O’Leary squashed their names together to form deVOL in 1989, renovating antique furniture in their rented workshop. After 10 years, deVries left to set up a property business and O’Leary opened a shop in the Leicestershire village of Quorn, selling deVOL kitchen furniture. In 2012, he moved to Cotes Mill, a 16th-century water mill set in twelve acres of natural meadows and gardens on the banks
of the River Soar, just outside Loughborough. The rambling five-storey building has since become synonymous with the deVOL brand - the Repair Shop or River Cottage of kitchens. In 2011, O’Leary’s partner Helen Parker became creative director and Robin McLellan was appointed as managing director, marking an expansion that also saw the first London showroom in 2014 and New York in 2019. The move into America was closely followed by their own Emmy-nominated TV show - For The Love Of Kitchens and, back home, in April this year deVOL was given the King’s Award for Enterprise. While that CV seems like a rightly laudable rise-and-rise story, in conversation O’Leary is self-aware enough to constantly
refer to a tougher journey than the summary implies. There was, he says, as much luck as judgement. “We were broke for 15 years and struggled to pay the rent so I want people to know that success is always possible. My advice for anybody who’s been running a business for years and feels like they’re barely making ends meet is just don’t give up.”
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September 2024
kbbreview
29
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