Hello, I'm Georgie Corridge Cole, the founder and editor of Sherlock's, and welcome to this

success stories podcast. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by the co-founder of the legendary

fabric house, one of our absolute favourites that Sherlock's for Moie.

The founder in question is Martin Efsson, and he is one of the most revered names in the

interiors industry, as well as setting up his current enterprise. He's also responsible for making

Farrow and Ball a household name, proving he doesn't just have a sharply honed creative eye, but also business skill when it comes to building quintessentially British brands. Martin, welcome. I'm really excited for this one. We've been trying to make this happen for a while. So anyway, we've finally done it. I'm talking to you.

You're in Cork at the moment.

In your beautiful house, which I've actually found online,

and it's really rather lovely, which I'm not surprised to see.

Well, that's very kind, and I'm delighted to join you today.

And that was quite an introduction.

I hope I can live up to the your prologue.

Tell me, Martin, can we, can we, I mean, Farron Ball, wow, what a story, what a brand.

Can you talk to us about your life before Farrow and Ball and, you know, what you did a bit

about your upbringing and really what sent you down

this interior path.

I'm not quite sure where to start, but I guess I think I would probably be described as a serial

entrepreneur, not necessarily a very particularly positive thing to say about somebody because

it just sounds as though you sort of

would happily do a bit of this and a bit of that, which isn't actually the case.

But I had been involved in several businesses before Farrow and Ball, where I had learned a lot

but hadn't actually made a great deal of money. But it did set me up with a range of

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