Nigel
Nigel has 30 years’ experience working in business. After 5 years in the Army he worked as a Retail Director in Allied Breweries and helped develop several well-known brands including Pitcher & Piano Bars. Nigel identified a niche market in analysing and reducing costs for such organisations. Hence the idea of setting up the Cost Reduction Company in 2010, based in Henley on Thames where he has lived and worked for 25 years.
He targets businesses that want to combine cost savings with long term carbon reduction. As well as reducing cost, Nigel embraces opportunities to help clients to use less stuff, an aspiration widely discussed in society but rarely achieved in earnest without outside help.
Nigel’s book, Using Less Stuff, will be invaluable to any organisations interested in knowing how to motivate staff to be environmentally friendly and to promote personal responsibility.
Danni
A keen creative with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Brighton, Danni joined the company in February 2023 as the Operations Manager. It is her role to ensure everything within the company runs as smoothly and seamlessly as possible from one day to another.
After a customer focused career in a broad range of industries across the UK and as far as Portugal, working mostly in the fast-paced worlds of Hospitality and Retail. She was keen to turn her head to an organisation with sustainability at its heart. In her personal life reducing her carbon footprint has always been at the core of her decision making and it was time to work for a company with those same values.
Harriet
Having studied Politics and Law at Southampton University, Harriet worked for Motiveforce Group, a full-service marketing and incentives agency. She started as an Account Manager running corporate incentive campaigns, then ran the Awards Services and Buying Departments.
Her time at Motiveforce was cut short when her husband’s job took them to the Far East, where she taught English as a foreign language, worked as a marketing consultant for an interior design company, and learnt to speak Thai.
Back in the UK, now with three children, Harriet wrote a Thai Cookery book, ran Thai cooking demonstrations and designed several websites. Once her youngest child started in full time school in 2012 it felt like the right time to return to the workplace, and she joined The Cost Reduction Company.
James
James trained as a professional orchestral musician at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and thereafter gained 34 years’ experience working in music education, the last 25 years as a full-time Director of music and schoolmaster at a boys’ boarding prep school. Keen for a career change, the opportunity to join The Cost Reduction Company as a partner seemed a good match for his experience in independent schools and transferable skills. James is keen to help schools, institutions and organisations increase their future security by reducing costs and moving towards more sustainable operation. He is particularly interested in helping organisations to understand, prepare and plan for the inevitable changes that will be needed in the coming decade making it imperative they adapt, and plan how and when they are going to do this and how they will pay for it.
‘I am very excited to be stepping into a completely different workplace, and hope that through collaboration with integrity I can develop positive relationships, bring ideas and encouragement, and become a trusted agency for change for the good for the organisations I work with.’
William
William has a geography degree from Newcastle University and trained as a chartered surveyor, working in commercial real estate in London and in Madrid. In 2003 he left surveying to set up a yoga and wellness studio in central Madrid. The studio worked well and so he subsequently set up in 2008, 2012 and 2017 pilates studios in Madrid and Barcelona. When the pandemic hit in 2020 William decided to sell the yoga studio and return with his family to the UK.
A growing interest in climate change and what we can do to improve the situation led William to organising events to increase awareness of climate change and to look at what paths were open to us as individuals and as companies to turn the clock back. When back in the UK he came across the Cost Reduction Company, also operating under the brand name of Using Less Stuff, and thought that this was a perfect way to start working with organisations. The issues of both cost and emission reduction are probably two of the most important issues that face the UK, if not the world, right now. The link between the two issues is so clear – if we use less stuff, we pay less and we protect the planet.
The Cost Reduction Company has given him the opportunity to take advantage of the strong brand name, an excellent team of professionals and of 12 years of experience. By choosing the franchise route, he can hit the ground running.
He is particularly excited by the self-funding opportunities that are now available with regard to LED transition, metering and monitoring energy usage, solar panel and heat pump installation. A serious consideration for all organisations in the coming years.
