My £8,000 garden furniture was not up to scratch, so I took on the job

Tim Appleton was enjoying a glass of wine in the garden of his Harrogate home and casting an eye over his new furniture when he came up with his business idea.
He had paid £8,000 for an outdoor dining table and chairs and was unhappy with the quality and workmanship, despite it being “hideously expensive”. Having previously run his family’s fourth-generation textile business, he thought he could do better and embarked on a six-month tour of southern China, where, he said, “nearly all outdoor furniture is manufactured”.
On his trip he discovered that there was a gap in the market for well-made outdoor furniture that could be sold for commercial use, mainly to hotel groups and cruise liners. One hotel company told him they have to replace their sun-loungers every 18 months because they weren’t built to withstand commercial use.
“You’ll have hundreds of people lying on that sun lounger, drinking and smoking and wearing Hawaiian Tropic sun oil. So I thought, ‘How can we make them so they last longer?’.”
Today, Akula designs and manufactures outdoor tables, chairs and sun loungers and supplies them to hoteliers including Marriott, Hilton and Four Seasons, and the cruise company Holland America Line.
Last year, Akula Living recorded a pre-tax profit of £6 million on sales of £21.1 million. It was enough to catch the eye of BGF, an investment company that provides growth capital for small and medium-sized businesses, who snapped up a minority stake in a “multimillion-pound” deal in January this year.
Although it may seem like a departure from the textiles sector, there has been much that Appleton, 56, has been able to apply from his early career. Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, his earliest childhood memories are of the family business, which spun and wove materials made from cashmere, mohair and wool before they were used in fashion and homewares.
“We had a spinning mill near Bradford and also one in Northern Ireland. They were massive — you’re talking 500 to 1,000 employees — and I just remember the smell of wool. It’s a pretty grim smell when it’s wet.”
At home, the conversation always turned to the family business, where Appleton started working aged 22 after dropping out of a business and marketing degree at Bournemouth University. But by then, the business had changed dramatically with manufacturing increasingly outsourced to China where materials and labour were easier and cheaper to access.
“By the time I got involved, it was more like a trading business than an actual manufacturing business, buying wool and cashmere at the right price, and selling it to spinning mills.”
In 2003, the demise of the industry in the UK combined with Appleton’s desire to “do something different”, resulted in him selling the company for £500,000 to a Bradford-based business.
Were there any family members left disgruntled by his decision? He said not. His sisters weren’t involved in the business, forging careers in other industries, and his parents had retired to Portugal.
“They were quite happy for me to start afresh,” said Appleton.
For the next couple of years, he worked as a consultant with large fashion brands including Loro Piana, Chanel and Giorgio Armani, helping to source raw materials. But all the while he was looking for the next big idea.
Having stumbled across the outdoor furniture market, he found a partner in southern China and together they built the Akula factory. “The next step was finding someone who actually wanted to buy them. And that was really, really, really difficult,” laughed Appleton.
“I thought we’d just walk into Marriott and charm them, but actually they said, ‘We don’t own anything here, Tim. We run 30,000 hotels and we don’t own any of them. The owners are individuals or PLC companies and they use interior designers, who could be anywhere in the world, and there are probably also landscape architects involved.’ I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? The factory was structured to make about 30 to 40 containers of furniture a month.”
When it became clear that the business would be a slower burn, Appleton focused on innovation and invested in developing new materials and marine-grade coatings that help outdoor furniture stand the test of time. Then “six or seven years” after he started the business, sales started to “absolutely rocket”, said Appleton. “My friends take the mickey and say, ‘What have you done this week? Have you sold a few chairs to a pub?’ But the deals can be massive. I’m doing a $6.5 million project in Arizona now. Some hotel owners are buying $20 to $30 million of furniture a year.”
Key hotel projects have included the Venetian in Las Vegas and Atlantis The Royal in Dubai, where Beyoncé played a set at the opening party in January 2023. Appleton said he was disappointed not to get an invite.
He did, however, get an invitation to Buckingham Palace last summer to collect his King’s Award for Enterprise, recognising Akula’s exporting success. Nearly all — 95 per cent — of sales come from outside the UK. Appleton said he was so surprised when King Charles “crept up behind me” that he blurted out, “Hi, Charles”, as if the pair were on first-name terms. “I thought, Oh God, I’ve just broken the protocol that they’d been telling me about all the way up the stairs’. He obviously realised I was a bit of a cheeky chappie because as he turned to walk away he said, ‘Did you enjoy filling in the form?’ and laughed, because the form is about an inch thick.”
Appleton puts his success in overseas markets down to his previous experience in the textiles business. “I had spent a lot of time dealing with different cultures and a lot of it is about listening and not speaking too much until you understand the market. And manners and politeness plays a big part in opening doors,” he said, adding that he’s happy to be firm when it’s necessary.
“It’s happened to me where they will ask you to make prototype after prototype, sample after sample, when all they want to do is copy you. So my advice is to be polite, learn, spend lots of time travelling on the ground, but also be cautious.”
Appleton still spends six months of the year travelling, and has just returned from a three-week trip to drum up business in Saudi Arabia. “I have a very understanding and supportive wife,” he laughed.
My hero… Richard Branson. I know he’s very successful and he’s very clever but I like the way he’s done it, taking massive risks along the way. Like buying Necker Island without enough money to do it. Us Brits can be a bit cautious and Branson is just fearless.My best decision… to break away from textiles, an industry I knew very well, and to go into unknown waters. Putting yourself outside of your comfort zone brings an element of competitiveness.My worst decision… In the early days we didn’t “soft launch” new product ranges, we just launched them and went into production straight away. This cost us an awful lot of money — hundreds of thousands of pounds — just because I was impatient.Funniest moment… Akula Living is a play on words because we use a mohair fibre which keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer. So it’s like, “A cooler way of living’.” A colleague came up with it, and I thought it was a genius idea so we went with it. Then a few weeks later I flew out to Russia and I’m sitting with a Russian guy and he goes, “Why is your company called Shark?” It turns out Akula means shark in Russian.Best business tip… Be honest about what’s possible. Because if you let a big company down in any way, or they get an inkling that you’ve misled them, they’ll never deal with you again.