It’s not so much a business model – more a model business!

Former Dewsbury Art College student Rob Curran is combining his creative talents with business know-how as founder and director of The Wonderworks.

The company, which has its offices at Lindley’s Heritage Exchange and workshops at Shaw Lane, Halifax, supplies animated and static display items for shopping malls, garden centres and leisure venues.

Visitors to the workshop – housed on the ground floor of a Victorian mill – are confronted by an array of colourful characters including elves, bears, reindeer, a robot toymaker and sculptures made of polystyrene and clay – all the work of Rob and a select band of artists, sculptors and specialist engineers.

Rob, 36, who lives in Lindley, attended Reinwood Junior School and Salendine Nook High School, but says: “I only had two passions at school – football was one and the other was art. The academic stuff I left to my sister! As far as a career, it was going to be something creative or sporty.”

Rob Curran, The Wonder Works
Rob Curran, The Wonder Works

Rob studied spatial design at Dewsbury Art College and was all ready to pursue a degree course at Huddersfield University when a Sheffield interior design firm approached the college looking for a talented recruit. “They asked to talk to the best five students on the course,” he says. “They had one job to offer and I got that job.

“My tutors advised me to get into the industry sooner rather than later. As a result, I got four years on most of my friends who were doing a degree.”

The reality of work was not what Rob had expected. “I thought it would be all about designing cool bars and fashionable trainer shops,” he recalls. “I found myself helping people pick curtains for their homes.”

The big break came in 2001 when Rob joined Lockwood-based KD Decoratives, a leading player in the design, manufacture and installation of display items for shopping centres, cruise liners and theme parks.

Rob Curran, The Wonder Works
Rob Curran, The Wonder Works

Rob remains grateful for the experience he gained working for the company headed by Richard and Gloria Kitchen-Dunn – although it was their son Jamie who offered Rob a job after being impressed with examples of his artwork. Rob went on to work with Jamie’s brothers Matthew and David.

“I worked in the design department, but I also went out on installations,” says Rob. “I was really lucky – going to Barbados to deck out the P&O liners for Christmas. I went all over the UK, too. It was a really good time and I enjoyed it there. It taught me a lot about business and I learned a lot from all the brothers.”

Later, Rob joined a Halifax-based Christmas-led design company. “They were a smaller company than KD,” he says. “I was there for 10 years. That taught me even more. In the 10 years I was there the company progressed so much. I would like to think that I was part of the reason.

“I started in the art department and I was there for four years before they asked me to be a sales person. I had been going out to see clients with the managing director as the ‘creative guy’. It was completely new to me and so different from what I had been doing. Later, I was going out on my own, drawing up presentations and meeting clients’ marketing managers.

“The company now had a young creative person who could sit with the client and talk about colours and designs.”

Armed with new skills, Rob decided the time had come to run his own business. It was a classic clash between commercial and creative forces. “I wanted that little bit of control,” he says. “I was losing that because the business was about getting as many big contracts as you can.”

Rob says: “Other people I have known who tried to set up in their industry did not have the client base. I had that client base, which gave me a route in.”

Rob Curran, The Wonder Works
Rob Curran, The Wonder Works

Rob left his employment in April last year and launched The Wonderworks in June. “I sat on things for a little bit,” he says. “I thought about it, but I had made my mind up to leave anyway.”

A friend was able to offer Rob space at his Shaw Lane factory while Heritage Exchange offered a convenient site for offices.

Rob’s wife Lucy is also a director of the firm. “She is an accountant so she looks after the money side of things,” says Rob. “I do the sales and design side. She sometimes looks over the books and asks: ‘Do you really need to buy so much paint and lacquer?’

“I have been lucky in knowing a lot of creative people. There is a sculptor who makes polystyrene sculptures and another who works in clay.”

The Wonderworks has already built up an impressive portfolio of work. Rob added: “We have been commissioned to make a six-foot tall mobile phone for a major shopping centre to promote its free Wi-Fi and we have made props such as big hamburgers and drinks containers for cinema chains. We’ve also made a talking reindeer which speaks with a Welsh accent!”

The firm has produced displays for gardens centres in Scotland, Kent, Dorset and the Isle of Wight and created eye-catching shop window displays featuring glittering fish and colourful coral for the Yorkshire Soap Company in Hebden Bridge and Leeds.

It also constructed a set of “selfie” pods for visitors to a Bristol shopping centre to take pictures of themselves to share on Facebook.

Rob recognises the realities of running a business – the drudgery of paperwork and the hard-headed negotiating of contracts. But he says: “I like to keep involved in the creative aspects of what I do. I wouldn’t want to do this if I couldn’t still be creative.”

Rob freely admits that the best thing about running his own business is the creative control – and the flexibility that enables him to spend more family time.

“When I was working for the firm in Halifax it was 7.30am to 5pm,” he says. “I was away six weeks solid in the run-up to Christmas and we were back working the day after Boxing Day. Now I can dictate what things come in and go out.”

The plan for the next year or two is to continue growing the business and expand in terms of space.

“The jobs that are going out this year will all come back, so we will need more storage space,” says Rob. “Ideally, I would like a unit in Huddersfield so I don’t have to drive along the Elland bypass every morning!”