Portuguese Architect Your Home invests five million in expansion to southern Europe

A year after Architect Your Home Portugal (AYH) purchased its parent company in the United Kingdom, the architecture studio led by Mariana Morgado Pedroso now wants to open a national headquarters that centralizes operations through a holding company that has already been created. However, the objectives include, within three years, expanding the company’s name to southern Europe, namely to Spain, France, Italy, but also to Belgium, in an investment of around five million euros.

In an interview with Jornal Económico (JE), the founder and general director of AYH discusses the company’s entire strategic plan at an international and national level, in which she hopes to add another 140 projects in 2024 to the more than 600 it already has in its portfolio. In terms of turnover, the target is to increase 10% compared to 2023.

Mariana Morgado Pedroso also regrets that many of the 150 projects she currently has active and in the pipeline are stuck in local authorities and believes that the new Simplex Urbanístico “is a step in the right direction” to hold everyone involved in this sector accountable.

What is your balance one year after the acquisition of Architect Your Home in the United Kingdom?

We got the brand in April last year. During 2023, we monitored the operation in the United Kingdom first-hand, with the team here and there, in order to understand how the business was operational there. In January of this year, we held a franchising in the United Kingdom, that is, one of the architects’ teams took on the work of headquarters, network management and we now have a local team working directly with all the architects, which is a more attractive methodology, because it is the one that works best. In other words, in each country there is a centralized management of a headquarters that helps architects to acquire their projects and develop them.

From January until now we have always been in permanent contact, giving them the support they need, training, everything that involves transitioning portfolios, etc. They are currently consolidating the business to continue leading this role of headquarterssupporting architects and attracting work.

And what are the objectives?

Our objective is to be able to have a headquarters here in Portugal that centralizes the operation, a holding which has already been created and which will then have several branches spread across several countries, and this first year of 2024 we will only remain with the United Kingdom, with the aim of making the operation bear fruit and from next year starting to expand to other countries with a very clear objective of being close countries, both in physical proximity and architectural habits.

What countries are these?

We are considering Spain, France and Italy, which are countries most related to us in several situations, to be able to achieve this growth. We are doing market research to find the right partners, because what we are looking for are architects/managers who have this taste for entrepreneurship. We do a lot of this market research, to attract customers based on a brand, it is very different from a traditional architectural system.

In a traditional studio, the architect does not do this type of work in the same way, it is much more based on the circle of influences that come from word of mouth, a more organic growth. We work on marketing completely. Since the Google Adwords to traditional media, public relations and institutional strategic positioning.

We work everything in order to have sustained growth that allows all these teams to work with us. We are in this phase of consolidation in the United Kingdom so that later, in 2025, we will have the capacity, so that the headquarters here can have this growth for other countries.

Under the Architect Your Home brand?

Ever. We now have Architect Your Home Portugal and in the United Kingdom. Then it will be Architect Your Home in Spain, France, Belgium, Italy. The idea is to have in these countries, exactly on the same system, the menu of services that we have here and which basically has all the spaces divided. People with this menu can do the process and we adapt it to each project.

This menu system also allows us to ensure that all these architects who work with us are working in the same way and, therefore, that we are all unanimous and uniform in the way we present our work.

Then, creativity, obviously everyone has their own and therefore projects come out of everyone’s head in their own way. The logistics part belongs to the organization, the backoffice is that it is managed by us. This then makes it easy for this to work in any country.

What is the investment value in these countries and the estimated time for opening these offices?

We have a three-year plan. The investment is expected to be around five million euros.

Is a number of offices defined?

We are considering countries in these three years. Basically, it was as if we could do one or two for the year and then another one, no more than that. Each country has its central office that will then expand its network.

When I say opening offices, I always mean opening a headquarters in each country. In Spain, a headquarters is opened that will then work in its market to attract architects who are part of its network to respond to the projects they have.

In Portugal we started with one office and in the second year we had four and then it grew slowly. Here they will do the same thing. They will grow with two or three in the first two years within the same country, in Madrid they do one, two, three, then in Barcelona one, two and they continue as they gain their market share.

How many architects do you want to have for each office in these countries?

We always carry out a market analysis in each country. We did it for Portugal and the United Kingdom. Depending on the size of the country and the number of possible projects they are working on. An analysis is always carried out for each country as to what can be done.

In the case of Portugal, we always established a maximum of 12 to 15 architects, because we were not interested in growing the business on a much larger scale for many projects. In Portugal it was very clear over the years that it didn’t make sense to do this on a mass scale, because our target were not the most low costfor example, where yes, it made sense to maybe have 30, 40, 50 architects to respond to many projects.

We came to the conclusion that it was not justified, the country was small, 12 to 15 teams, at most, covered the whole country and the number of projects that we understand to have per month, which is always, at least one to two for each architect. We are talking about between 12 and 24 new projects coming in per month, with projects always entering an initial consultancy phase.

The client consults with us, then, for various reasons, it may not move forward immediately or the consultancy was sufficient for the information they needed and the process ends there. Every time there is an action done with a customer in which there is obviously a payment for a service, it is considered an action. For Portugal, this is enough.

And how does it work in the UK?

For the United Kingdom the scale is different. At the moment, they have 12 offices, they had 15, they reduced to 12 and now they are increasing again. Between 18 and 20 do not need more, it is enough to be able to meet the needs they have there. Then it is a strategic question. We are not interested, then, in being on a very large scale, because that is not the company’s objective, it is not to become completely mass, it is to be able to have quality projects here.

These 18 to 20 offices involve how many architects?

It depends. There are offices that have one person, most have two and then there are several that have up to five employees each. We are talking in the UK easily at least 50 to 60 people. In Portugal, we are currently close to 35.

At the moment the United Kingdom must have another 30. What interests us is always being able to raise the number of projects necessary to be able to feed these offices. Obviously we want to grow and we have been growing a lot in Portugal, but with high quality projects and customer attention and to really get that attention you can’t go too mass.

How many projects do you intend to raise by the end of the year in Portugal?

We have a goal of 140. Last year we also did the same, we are aiming to grow at around 10% compared to the previous year.

Of these 140, how many have already been raised?

We are in our 30s, we are more or less meeting the ratio we had as a target, although it was a bit of a busy start to the year, with people hesitating, not closing things right away, but then in April there were several things which were from January and which effectively unlocked, which was good.

Then we obviously have to distribute this into themes. In other words, we do not want to attract projects indiscriminately. We have objectives of attracting B2B projects, which are larger projects, in the residential area, condominiums, buildings, industrial area, logistics, retail park.

Then in the B2C area we have planned projects for houses and apartments already with some size and decoration. We distribute as many of each as we want per month. Therefore, we intend to have one B2B, two B2C and we will distribute those we need in these categories. Then we do research on how we are going to raise money in B2B and B2C.

Is the market also segmented internationally?

It has always been focused on the B2C segment, completely focused on the home owner tradition that we had here at the beginning of our work, that is, the person who wants to do work on their home. Since we started taking care of the company last year, we started to create opportunities for them to then be able to work in other markets. This is a shift which has to be done slowly, it also has to gain a place in the market in this segment.

Will each of these countries have at least one cabinet?

Each of these with one office in the first year and with the expectation that there will always be more or less three offices or four in the second year, because it is necessary to make a bigger leap in the second year, because if not then that also won’t win. momentum. What interests me is to give them the support so that they can then do this. We do all the training, we have our own operating manual in all areas, whether internally, marketingpublic relations, sales, customer relations.

Looking at Portugal, what turnover volume do you expect for 2024?

Last year it was 1,100 million euros and the expectation for this year is to grow 10%, to 1,200 million. We have an accumulated turnover of 8,500 million euros, we have more than 600 projects developed and at the moment in our active portfolio we have 150 projects taking place, but many of them are stuck in chambers, others are under construction. Architectural offices always have this difficulty. It is very difficult to manage time because we are stopped for a long period of the process waiting for a camera to say something and we never know when that will happen.

Picking up on the theme of cameras. How do you see the new Simplex Urbanístico?

I think it will get better. We’re all going to have an adaptation period and be a little nervous at the beginning, but I think it’s positive for everyone. It will give more responsibility to the designers’ side and gives temporal responsibility to the chamber’s side of being obliged to respond within that deadline. It’s a step in the right direction.

Now we are all a bit confused here because the regulations have changed, all the requirements in the chambers, the portals have changed. We’ve been doing things one way for decades and then suddenly the requirements changed and we delivered something that wasn’t right, but now we have to take this in an optimistic way and look forward.