Stephen Brett · proprietor, Derry & Donegal
A portfolio, in three trades

He calls them harebrained schemes. Derry calls them businesses.

Stephen Brett has a habit. He gets an idea that sounds daft at the kitchen table, announces it as his latest harebrained scheme, and then quietly turns it into a place with a door, a phone number and a queue of people who recommend it to their friends.

The ideas so far: a furniture workshop that builds sofas to your measurements, a kickboxing gym run with his brother, and a pair of hot-tub lodges in the Donegal hills. Three trades, two counties, one man who never learned the word “no”.

Ventures trading
3
Counties
Derry · Donegal
Workshop recommend rate
96%
Workshop followers
4,800+
Home base
Lenamore Business Park
Schemes abandoned
0 (on record)
Everything he builds is for one of three things
Sit. Sofas rebuilt, re-covered and made from scratch to the inch. Dutch Furniture Workshop Stand. Kickboxing for kids and adults, coached by two Brett brothers. Elite Martial Arts Rest. Two timber lodges with private hot tubs, twelve minutes from the city. Mount Anne View Lodges
Furniture repair & upholstery · Derry

Dutch Furniture Workshop

Custom made sofas, any size, any style, made to your measurements.

The original scheme, and the one that proved the pattern. From Unit 1a at Lenamore Business Park, the workshop takes in tired leather sofas and sends them home looking new, re-covers full suites, kits out bars and restaurants, and builds seating from the frame up when nothing off the shelf will fit the room.

Forty-five people have gone out of their way to review it. Ninety-six per cent of them recommend it. In a trade where word of mouth is the only marketing that counts, that number is the whole story.

Get your orders in now. Custom made sofas, any size, any style, folks, made to YOUR measurements. Stephen, to 4,800 followers, February 2016
Kickboxing gym · Derry

Elite Martial Arts

Discipline. Strength. Elite.

Most people who open a furniture workshop stop there. Stephen looked at the same business park and decided it also needed a kickboxing gym. So he opened one, a few doors from the sofas, with his brother Andy as co-head coach. It is the only address in Derry where you can get your suite re-covered and your left hook corrected in the same visit.

The gym runs kids’ classes built on confidence, focus and discipline, and adult sessions that work through technique, combinations, pad work and conditioning. Beginners get a free trial. Everyone, from the smallest junior to the fittest adult, trains as part of one family-first community, because that is how the Bretts run everything.

Derry / Londonderry’s kickboxing gym for kids and adults. Hands-on coaching, adapted to your level. elitemartialartsderry.com
Luxury lodges · Co. Donegal

Mount Anne View Lodges

Real wood, real quiet.

Having taught half of Derry to sit down properly and the other half to stand their ground, the logical next scheme was to give them somewhere to lie back. Twelve minutes over the border at Drung, Quigley’s Point, Stephen built two timber lodges on a hillside with nothing in front of them but Lough Foyle and the weather.

The Family Lodge sleeps six across a king-size bedroom and a double sofa bed, with a full kitchen, walk-in shower and its own outdoor hot tub. The Couples’ Retreat is a one-bedroom cabin for two, with the same hot tub and the same silence. It is glamping for people who like the glamour part to include a proper roof.

The perfect escape: modern comfort in a tranquil setting, for couples, families and business travellers alike. mountannbnb.com
The Brett method

How a harebrained scheme becomes a going concern

Build it with your hands

Sofa frames, fighters, timber cabins. Every venture in the portfolio is something Stephen can physically make better himself, which is why none of them has ever needed a consultant.

Keep the family in it

Brother Andy shares the coaching at the gym, and the gym itself shares a business park with the workshop. The Bretts do not outsource what they can do at home.

Never leave Lenamore, except to go to Donegal

Two of the three businesses sit at the same postcode. The third is twelve minutes away. The empire is compact, deliberately, so the owner can be in the building.

Let the customers do the talking

A 96 per cent recommend rate from 45 reviews is not a marketing budget. It is a decade of people getting exactly what they were promised, to the measurement.

Next harebrained scheme: pending. Derry is advised to keep its sofa, its guard and its weekends free.
Stephen Brett Dutch Furniture Workshop · +44 28 7135 9286 Elite Martial Arts · Lenamore Business Park, BT48 8NA Mount Anne View Lodges · 078 5115 2396