A history of JBI by Emma

I (Emma) officially joined James Broad Interiors in August 2020.
Unofficially? Well, unofficially I met James Broad back in February 2017 a couple of months after he set up what was called Timeline-Interiors and have supported him in one way or another ever since.

James Broad Interiors has seen many changes over the past 4 and a bit years from Timeline-Interiors, to Timeline Vintage to now being James Broad Interiors. Each name symbolising a slight change in direction for us with the latest iteration bringing us back to our more antique roots after a dip in the mid century /retro pond.

There was a brief stage around 2 years ago, where this business took a slight back seat whilst James pursued another antiques related business with a childhood friend turned business partner, Haydn.
Together they set about creating a subscription based antique selling platform, Intique. I saw first hand how amazingly they worked together as a team, both working all hours of the day and putting a huge amount of themselves into what could have been an incredibly successful website. Unfortunately, it was not to be for a number of reasons and the guys went their separate ways — though of course we are still good friends with Haydn and see him whenever he is back in the UK for a night of food, booze & Werewolf, and James has even been out to Amsterdam to visit too. Although it did not end how anyone wanted it to, Intique taught several very important lessons — mainly that hard work is never wasted and having someone else to bounce ideas off is absolutely invaluable.

It was after this that Timeline Vintage became what it is known as today, James Broad Interiors (JBI) and with that name change came a change within James as well. He took all of the lessons that he had learnt from Intique and threw himself head first into JBI with a new outlook, moving away from the mid century products that he previously coveted and falling more in love with a larger range of items all with a story behind them. James has a real eye for being able to see something in an incredibly sorry state and envision what it will look like with a little bit of TLC — from battered old Victorian armchairs to rusty factory lights to weird little curios. We’d love to be able to say that we can do all the restoration ourselves, however we just don’t have the skills! We are lucky enough to work with 2 very talented restorers, Kevin our upholsterer and Alan (who we call Al-dog) who can put his hand to pretty much anything we ask him to, even talking me through installing our own kitchen lights!

During all this, we took the next big step in our personal life and bought our very first home together (blog on this coming soon!) and with that came a whole new set of pressures. As anyone who is self employed knows, money is not always 100% steady and James therefore took on hours as porter & auctioneer at Whittaker & Biggs auction house where he had started his love affair with antiques when he was younger, to ensure that we always had enough money to pay the mortgage. At the start of 2020, he went full time there being promoted to manager and set about trying to make the auction as good as it could be and has worked damn hard to get it to where it is today even with a pesky pandemic getting in the way.

I think we have both agreed how lucky we were that James took this on when he did, especially when lockdown happened causing so much uncertainty and anxiety for all of the UK. We were both furloughed from March, with James deciding it would be a great idea, when popping into work at the auction to let a contractor in, to move a piano by himself. Obviously, this did not go well and he dropped it, breaking his foot meaning that he would be off his feet for a few weeks. Fine for the auction as this was closed anyway, however not so fine for JBI as we were still buying and selling where possible (in a socially distanced way of course)! This was where I came in, packing and posting smaller items, meeting couriers for the larger items and just generally doing bits and pieces around the warehouse which someone on crutches cannot do.

Not long after James went back to work, we decided to make another big step and get our dog, Bailey. This had been the whole idea behind us buying a house and we were finally at a stage where we could take the plunge and do it! Bailey came home to us in June whilst I was still furloughed from the interior design business that I had worked at for the previous 2 years. She settled in straight away and we were totally in love with her. As lockdown pressures increased, hundreds of thousands of people across the UK lost their jobs including myself when I was made redundant in July. Obviously this was far from ideal for us but somewhere within all the chaos, James came up with the ideal solution. I was officially employed by James Broad Interiors in August and believe me I understand how fortunate I was to be in that position when so many others were, and are, not.

I now take care of the day to day running of JBI, doing everything from mild restoration & photography of new stock; posting, packing and arranging deliveries, listings, buying stock, running the social media, accounts and just general admin and customer service while James is busy being a big fancy TV star / top class auctioneer!