Fiona Scott of Scott Media talks to a couple from Texas who have invested in Wiltshire – in the town of Malmesbury to be precise.
What was the appeal, for an American couple, of this market town with its roots so intertwined with Anglo Saxon England? What on earth had brought them 5,000 miles from their home to this little Cotswolds corner of the UK? I recently met with Whit and Kim Hanks, successful American entrepreneurs, to find out. We met in the Old Bell Hotel in Malmesbury which they now own.
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Whit Hanks and I’m a real estate developer – that’s my background and I’ve had considerable success in that sector. I created Whim Hospitality with my wife Kim after we met and started working together some years before. Kim was running her own small business in our home town of Dripping Springs in Texas and she had heard that I had brought a church from Vietnam on to my parents’ ranch at Camp Lucy. She told me she could bring weddings to the ranch using the church and the area as a venue and I believed her.
Kim – what’s your memory of that time?
I have to roll back a bit to explain. I’d lived in Puerto Rico with my children and my first husband for four years and we were moving back to California. I missed my life in Puerto Rico, my friends, and I missed their passionate zest for life. Literally to combat this I binge-watched Jennifer Lopez movies (her parents were from Puerto Rico) and I was influenced by a film called The Wedding Planner, and I felt that I was being called to be a wedding planner.
I persuaded my then husband that we should move to Texas, I would start a rental company where people could rent ‘wedding goods’ from me such as tables, chairs etc etc and I would be a wedding planner. He wanted to leave his role and start his own business, I had family in Dripping Springs and we moved. Once in Texas, I began and very soon had booked 40 weddings in the first full year.
What happened next?
I learned that I didn’t actually want to be a wedding planner. Planning a wedding is very hard work and also very unsocial hours. I will work hard but I’m a morning person, I’m up early and I like to be in bed by 9pm. Many weddings mean you are working until 2am. I started to sub-contract out the work as we had plenty of it, and then I started to add things into the business such as floristry. I love my work, I loved the people and I was busy.
The business grew and we needed more venues – at the time there were really only two venues available locally. Then I heard from a friend that this guy on Camp Lucy had bought a church over from Vietnam to put on the land and didn’t really have a plan for it. I felt I needed to talk to him.
I heard he was holding a staff party and I literally gate-crashed it, went up to him and told him I could make use of his church through booking weddings. He got out his little notebook and wrote my details down and said come over tomorrow.
I was so pleased, I thought I really must have made an impression that this very successful businessman would see me so quickly. I later learned that Whit does that to everyone – he always has his notebook on him and keeps notes routinely. It’s part of who he is!
I turned up and saw all of these workmen and asked to see Whit. They said ‘yes he’s up there and pointed to the church tower’. I thought they were mistaken. This very successful businessman would not be doing the work and being so hands-on surely? Yet he was. We met, chatted about possibilities and he agreed to work with me. That was how our business relationship began.
Whit – do you remember that?
Of course. We started working together. I realised that her business was successful and vibrant but not that profitable and with some investment and support it could grow and scale.
Kim looked at my church – which I often called ‘my folly’ – and she could see a future for it that I’d not envisaged.
Over time I realised that Kim was sub-contracting out a lot of her work and felt that if she had more in-house assets such as her own tables, chairs and wedding accessories, she’d make more money. That required some capital. I asked Kim what kind of investment would help her and she said $100,000.
I looked at her business and took into account a 15 per cent profit margin over time and a cap rate of 7.5 per cent – and I wanted to support Kim. She is so full of energy and ideas and she brings people to her.
We started all of this in 2008 and the wedding venue at Camp Lucy was opened in 2010. Kim had 58 weddings booked before we even opened. Now we employ around 150 people and the business is still growing and we offer event organisation for weddings and parties – we started offering the same opportunities to the corporate sector during the pandemic and that has grown impressively. Our company Whim Hospitality is a combination of our names.
Interestingly we now have a warehouse full of our assets such as tables, chairs and we manage events for organisations including the University of Texas, the City of Austin and also the SXSW Music Festival which is huge – and we have learned that we will never have enough equipment!
Whit, where did your entrepreneurial flair come from?
My dad was in real estate and I’ve always been a finance specialist. I was born in 1952 and was brought up around this world. I was an intern at JP Morgan and I knew I wanted to have my own business and started out on my own when I was 26.
The truth was that when I was in college I bought 13 properties and I was already a millionaire. I knew I had the ability to make property work and my analytical mind allows me to do the numbers. I’m not saying that to be arrogant at all, it’s simply what happened.
Today I relate success very much to net worth. What is my net worth and is it increasing? And I do feel deflated if it’s going down.
Having Kim in my life now has created a new dimension in joy for me. She sees opportunity in so much and takes such joy in many things. She’s all about helping people and giving them opportunity.
What’s the future for Whim Hospitality in Texas?
We cater for around 100 weddings a year, we have added a second timber-framed venue and we’re growing the venue to include more bedrooms. Having somewhere to stay overnight at a wedding is an asset. We now can offer 41 rooms and soon that will be increased to 54.
We want to continue being a venue of choice in Texas for leisure travellers and, especially on the weekdays for corporate/business events. Now our income is pretty much evenly divided between the two sectors.
We are also developing a vineyard and we are aiming to produce 10,000 bottles a year. And now Wiltshire is part of our future vision as well.
How did Wiltshire come into your life Whit?
I’d known that my grandfather came from Wiltshire for almost 40 years. During my career, I’ve also been an antiques dealer specialising in architectural antiques and I often visited the UK to attend auctions. About six years ago we landed at Heathrow and got in our rental car and thought ‘why don’t we go to Wiltshire?’ it’s not that far. We headed for Garsdon, a parish near Malmesbury where we believed my family came from. We wanted to look at the parish records. We went there, we even attended a service in the church – it was freezing!
We made some close friends – still friends today – and we were told about a ‘Hanks’ clock in the museum in Malmesbury. We also stayed at the Old Bell Hotel and our real relationship with this county began.
Kim, what did you think of the Old Bell Hotel?
We loved the hotel with its heritage and character. We were already considering buying a hotel to create a UK arm to our business – we’d seen about 15 or 16 and none quite felt right for us. The Old Bell Hotel was initially sold to another party but in the end we were able to buy it and we’ve invested in it for future growth.
Why is Wiltshire so important to you now Kim?
We love the ebb and flow of life here and we visit as often as we can. It’s so different to Texas and a town where heritage is so clear and strong. There is a real community feel here where dedicated people work together for the good of the town. We want to work with the local community to help Malmesbury and the surrounding area thrive and we want to spread the word that this area of the Cotswolds is beautiful and it’s worth visiting. We feel that the community is so welcoming to us and we’re proud to be part of it. We do feel we can establish a connection between Texas and Wiltshire!
Factfile:
You can find The Old Bell Hotel here – https://www.oldbellhotel.co.uk
https://www.whimhospitality.com – registered in the UK in 2020.