Linley keeps his head above water with £30k surf boards!

HIS marriage has come to an end, but there is surely a spring in David Linley’s step. For I can disclose that the Queen’s nephew — who became the 2nd earl of Snowdon on his father’s death three years ago — has overseen a dazzling resurgence at his eponymous company, Linley.

The firm, which makes bespoke furniture and luxury goods, as well as undertaking interior design projects around the world, has just notched up a £720,000 profit and record sales of £14 million — £3 million up on the year before, when the company suffered a loss of nearly £2 million.

The stunning turnaround vindicates the strategy of extending its services to yacht interiors and undertaking commissions for commercial clients. It will be especially heartening for Lord Snowdon who, early in his career, became inured to being sneeringly referred to as ‘a carpenter’, even though his tutor at John makepeace’s woodwork college, Greg Powlesland, adjudged him the most creative and inventive student he had ever taught.

even after establishing an international reputation, it wasn’t all plain sailing for Linley, particularly during the financial crisis. Russian oligarch, Sergei Pugachev, so-called ‘Cashier to the Kremlin’ and, at the time, lover of socialite and author alexandra Tolstoy, loaned the company £400,000, only to sever his links abruptly a while later. Since the coronavirus outbreak, the company, whose main shareholder is now malaysian tycoon Dato’ Sri Nazir Razak, has furloughed its marketing department, but says that online sales have ‘burgeoned and alternative sales arrangements have been instituted to offset the adverse high street environment’.

and it remains determined to look after its core market — the indecently rich or ‘Ultra HighNet Worth individuals’, as it calls them. The company’s products include everything from a £250 corkscrew to a £30,000 surfboard crafted from ‘sustainably sourced balsa wood’, with ‘natural and dyed veneers’ of american walnut, ripple sycamore and figured, fumed eucalyptus.

Just the thing on which Snowdon, who in February jointly announced with his wife Serena that they had ‘amicably agreed’ that their marriage had ended, can contend with any choppy financial waters ahead.