Labs: People power reigns at Optimum Coatings

‘You get to a point where you start to think about exit strategies,’ says Optimum Coatings sales director Mark Marland as he begins to explain the backstory to how the company’s 74 members of staff became its owners. 

Marland and company managing director Paul Bailey could quite easily have formed an exit strategy that saw them walking into the sunset, but as Marland explains, that was not an option: ‘There were too many unknowns over what would happen with staff. What are they left with? Who’s looking out for their interests? Who’s running the show? 

‘Our legal team introduced the concept of an employee ownership trust (EOT), which we didn’t know about at the time. We spent a year with the lawyers and advisors learning about how it worked and it very quickly became clear that this was the right thing to do, as it protects the staff, their future and jobs in a community where finding work isn’t easy,’ he says.