Oliver Brown: The spa attraction

Oliver Brown’s daily work takes him to a haven of tranquillity but there has been little time for him to sit back and relax in recent months.

The 36-year-old has been hard at work in the family business as it works towards the opening of a £16m extension that will double the size of the luxury spa at Crow Wood.

The award-winning hotel and spa resort is an oasis of luxury, sitting on the edge of Burnley in 100 acres of parkland.

The vision of Oliver’s father, local entrepreneur Andrew Brown, Crow Wood was first established in 2001 as a private members facility. The transformation since then has been spectacular.

A £4.5m investment into The Woodland Spa and Betram’s restaurant followed in 2013 and in 2019, as an addition to 11 farmhouse bedrooms, the boutique Crow Wood Hotel opened its doors to guests after a £13.65m build project.

The latest investment will make it one of the UK’s largest luxury spas as it continues to attract visitors from across the UK.

The pressure to get it right is intense, but that is nothing new at Crow Wood. Oliver, who joined the business in 2011, says: “We opened the hotel in October 2019 and shut in March as a result of the pandemic.

“It was our first wedding season and we’d got some interest. We had 65 new staff and then the doors closed.”

It was a difficult time but the business got through it. This latest £16m investment is, Oliver says: “A lot of money for a family business in Burnley at today’s interest rates. However, it is also a big sign of confidence in the business.

“We’ve got an amazing asset that I’m not sure many in the country can beat. The size of the facility and its quality sets us apart from a lot of other places now.”

While we speak builders are hard at work putting the finishing touches to the spa extension before its opening. Oliver adds: “The race to get it open, paying interest with no revenue, that is what keeps you awake at night. Once it is up and running, we can relax substantially.”

The business now has 350 staff and is looking to achieve turnover of more than £19m this year. Crow Wood is very much a family affair with Oliver working with his dad, although he says that day-to-day their paths don’t cross that much.

Oliver’s business background and approach is also markedly different from his father, a straight-talking entrepreneur who began the Crow Wood story after he and his brother David decided to sell the family’s office supplies business, FH Brown.

Oliver began his working life at Daisy Communications, a company created by another Lancashire entrepreneur Matt Riley. While there he also studied for a business management degree at Edge Hill University.

He says: “I had a great time and learned a lot at Daisy, both Matt and dad are real entrepreneurs. Having had time to work elsewhere has been hugely beneficial.

“Dad said if you want to join the business I’d love it, but you need to bring something to it.”

His first role at Crow Wood was managing the Soccer Burnley football centre on the site.

Today his role has developed to being the director directly responsible for the leisure side of the operation as well as IT and HR. “I get involved in every aspect of the business,” he says, “It’s very much an MD-style role.”

Father and son may not have much contact daily but whenever they are together, they talk business, and that includes during family Sunday lunches.

He adds: “I’ve no memory of dad’s earlier business but massive respect for what he has done. We are similar in what we want to achieve but different in how we work.

“He’s very much a maverick, I’m more formal in my approach with a more corporate element so we balance each out very well. His great strength is rallying people around him, getting people on board. I’ve been working to put in more structure.

“He’s not walked away from the business, but keeps threatening to! His famous line to me is, ‘This will all be your problem someday’.”

Oliver’s career development also included studying for his MBA at a business school in London. It took him to places such as Vietnam and Las Vegas and put him in close contact with older, more senior business people.

He says: “The biggest thing I got from the MBA was confidence. I used to put entrepreneurial people like my dad and Matt Riley on a pedestal but working on projects and travelling made me realise I could hang with people like that. They didn’t have any magic secrets.”

Looking to the future, Oliver adds: “When the spa has settled down dad is likely to ease himself into the role of chairman.

“We’ve had a long understanding about the succession plan. However, it is not just me, we have a really good senior management team here. We’ve people who have been here for a long time.

“We are a family business, but you need to build that good team, bring people in who know things. We were not hoteliers, we had to bring in a general manager.

“We’ve worked hard to raise brand awareness and recognition of Crow Wood as a resort.

We’re now one of the premier wedding destinations for people across the North West.

“The question we had at the start was could we bring in from Greater Manchester, Liverpool and other parts of the north to Burnley for something that had a premier price? The answer is yes.”

There are no plans to branch out from the Burnley site and Oliver says the next few years will be about “consolidation and refining what we have built.”

He adds: “It’s a great place to work and it is all about delivering experiences for people. We’re sitting here in a beautiful part of the world, but just minutes from the centre of Burnley. That always surprises people.”