In 2003, when the retail market was dominated by corporates and consolidation, Mark Nash and Andrew Bond set up their own retail agency, Nash Bond. Amber Rolt finds out how life as an independent is working for the pair.
“The market was dominated by the big six advisory firms when we started in 2003,” says Nash Bond’s founding director Andrew Bond. “In central London, there just weren’t many niche practices that focused exclusively on retail.”
“We felt there were more rewards to be had from running your own business,” adds co-founding director Mark Nash.
And so Nash Bond was born. Three years later, in 2006, as more independent firms such as Dalgleish were being sold, Nash Bond took on a big hitter in the shape of CBRE’s Cameron Scott.
Scott brought with him what would become one of the firm’s longest-standing clients – the £6bn Cadogan Estate, SW1.
Nash Bond is responsible for much of the identity of Sloane Street, securing Louis Vuitton, Prada, Chloé and Tom Ford as tenants.
It also brought The Sting to Piccadilly Circus, W1, where Nash Bond works with Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital on the Trocadero, and put together some of the capital’s most prominent restaurant deals, including TGI Fridays’ arrival in Leicester Square, WC2, in 2015 and letting the 150-year-old Criterion restaurant at Piccadilly Circus to Italian restaurant Savini.
The 23-strong team at Nash Bond collectively has 200 years of experience in retail property and a unique focus on London. And that focus is key to Nash Bond, say its founding partners.
While competitors may question why the firm has failed to establish an investment team to work alongside its agency and lease advisory teams, Nash Bond’s founders are adamant it does not need to expand into investment.
“We do not have an investment brokerage side of the business, which is something that has been raised before,” says Bond. While the team understands the investment acquisition process, it would rather stay focused on what it knows best than dilute its expertise.
What Nash Bond will focus on, however, is establishing long-term relationships.
“Rather than focusing on doing deals, we get much more satisfaction through building relationships with clients that we have had for a long time,” says Scott.
And being a manageably sized business means that Nash Bond can always offer
its clients relationships with its senior personnel.
“When we are instructed, it is always a senior director that gets involved and oversees the project and attends all the meetings,” says Bond. “This is something that we have been doing for a long time, so when a problem comes up it is normally something that we have dealt with before.”
But it is not just the long-standing members of the team that are important at Nash Bond. It takes pride in nurturing new members, giving graduates the opportunity to grow in a specialist market.
The team says that if the company was a football club, it would be Barcelona rather than Chelsea – taking care to train its team to make them the best, rather than buying them in.
“We have a 100% success rate on anyone taking the APC for the first time, and our graduate programme allows us to mould people to the way that we operate,” says Nash.
Those staff who have not been poached by other firms have the opportunity to make it all the way to director level.
Nash Bond has seen a lot of changes in London since its inception. This has helped it to prepare for the evolution of the city’s retail landscape.
“If you are going to use Nash Bond, you are going to use us because we know all about the London market,” says Scott. “London is changing all the time, and it is complex.”
One recent evolution in the agency’s business in response to market trends is the rise of shorter leases, which can be a struggle to find in central London.
“We like to promote leases that give our clients the opportunity to refresh tenant mix faster and allow vitality,” says Bond. “We try to make our clients’ ownership better, which is better for the retailer, the consumer and the landlord.”
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