Jason Mohr’s office couldn’t be further removed from the lavish surroundings
he once enjoyed. As a banker at the blueblood City firm NM Rothschild,
mahogany desks and marble floors were the norm.
At his new company, the desk, chair, phone, even the pens and paper are all
scavenged from abandoned offices. His headquarters, a modular building on an
industrial estate in south London, shakes when lorries rumble past.
But he is not complaining. “I probably went to the City for ego reasons. It’s
a place that encourages hard work, professionalism and making money, not
entrepreneurialism,” he said. “If I had stayed I would probably be very
well-off right now, but I wanted to look back and be able to say that I had
achieved something.”
Rubbish clearance wouldn’t be the first idea that jumps to most people’s minds
but after taking his last bonus cheque five years ago, Mohr decided that was
his game and set about building Any Junk, a modern-day Steptoe & Son.
Mohr, 39, was moving into an industry that isn’t really an industry at all.
The business is dominated by the “man with a van” or, as Mohr describes it,
“a dodgy geezer who shows up at your house to take your rubbish to who knows
where”. The other option is hiring a skip.
His idea was to provide a professional service to get rid of whatever is no
longer needed – a single sofa, an entire office, building-site debris,
whatever. The company can show up within 24 hours, get rid of any and all
junk and clean up after. The real key, however, is where the rubbish goes
from there. Instead of dumping it in the nearest landfill, only about a
quarter of the 5,500 tonnes waste Any Junk handled last year was buried. The
rest was recycled or reused.
It is a proposition that environmentally conscious companies find attractive.
Any Junk has recently signed deals with B&Q, Wm Morrison, Rentokil
Initial, and Foxtons, the state agent. The company provides details of where
the rubbish ends up, and the clients can use this information to back up
their own environmental claims.
About 10% is reused through partnerships the company has with the British
Heart Foundation and Oxfam, which take clothes and kitchen appliances for
resale in charity shops. Another 25% goes to recycling centres, while the
rest is taken by so-called Material Recovery Facilities (MRF) or other
depots with advanced salvage machinery.
Workers receive bonuses based on how much of the waste they collect is
diverted from landfill, so they are motivated to take it to centres with
good recycling records. The government’s policy of ratcheting up landfill
tax each year has helped increase interest from industries that in the past
may have just dumped their waste.
The variety of junk the company picks up is astonishing. At the main warehouse
in Vauxhall, south London, bins full of electrical wiring are stacked next
to children’s books and golf clubs. Between old computers and battered
guitars, workers have cleared a space to take turns on an electric
bull-riding machine. It may be, strictly speaking, a health and safety
hazard, but its lazy undulations present little threat of throwing any of
them to the floor.
It is all a long way from Mohr’s old City stamping grounds. He bounds between
the piles of flotsam in shorts and trainers, clearly relishing that he is
not in cufflinks and loafers. (He changed into more sensible trousers and
collared shirt for the Sunday Times photographer. “I hate to wear suits,” he
said.)
When the company started, with a single truck more than four years ago, Mohr
spent nearly a year doing the removals himself, an experience he called
“addictive”. Today the group has 18 lorries and 50 employees.
He hasn’t left all his former life behind. A trained lawyer and and MBA
graduate from the Cranfield School of Management, Mohr still harbours the
naked ambition that helped him get along in the Square Mile. He wants the
company to one day be a national brand, “the Hoover of on-demand bulky
rubbish removal”.
Inspired by the happy-go-lucky image cultivated by “ethical” brands such as
Innocent smoothies, the company’s vehicles feature a white elephant against
a red background and drivers are encouraged to play jingles through
loudspeakers.
Mohr has attracted some serious backers. His angel investors include James
Gibson and Adrian Lee, the founder and operations director, respectively, of
Big Yellow Storage, and Ben Black, founder of My Family Care, a nanny
service.
Today about 80% of the company’s turnover comes from commercial business, the
rest from residential. On the back of several large contracts with the likes
of B&Q – Any Junk handles the detritus from bathroom and kitchen refits
– Mohr is planning to go nationwide. By the end of the year he expects to be
turning over an annual £5m, up from about £2m now.
It has not been easy. When he decided to launch the company five years ago, he
had lunch with a partner at a private-equity firm he used to do deals for at
Rothschild. “I thought I would do this for a couple of years and move on. He
told me, ‘No matter what you do, it will be five years before you start
making any money.’ He was right.”
For the first three years Any Junk oscillated between losing money and barely
breaking even. Now it is profitable, he said, but declined to give numbers.
The model for the company is a Canadian outfit called 1-800 Got Junk?, which
Mohr came across when he was trawling for business ideas. It has grown into
a business with annual turnover of $150m.
“We want to make it so that you will cease to hear the ‘man and a van’
expression,” he said. The idea is that once Any Junk has established a
national network for business users, he will launch a marketing push to
capture more of the consumer market. The smallest jobs, say removing a sofa
or refrigerator, cost about £50, and prices go up from there.
Even so, he insists that in nearly all instances it is cheaper and involves
less time and hassle than other options. He said: “Once you pay for the
permit from the council and everything else, a skip will cost you at least
£150 to £180. We can replace the skip for the domestic market.”
Glamorous it is not. Does he miss the rough and tumble world of high finance?
He answers with an emphatic “No”. “When it got to Friday I would just be
marking time until the end of the day. Then a deal would come in and guys
would get all excited. I wouldn’t – I’d have already made plans. I figured
it was probably time to go do something else.”
