HE has turned Bournemouth Pier gold and shed light on some of London’s top museums as well as Lush stores worldwide.

But award-winning lighting designer Michael Grubb says his own business took off when he stopped focusing on the competition and concentrated on inspiring people.

He was the guest at the latest You Are the Media lunch club, held by Mark Masters of the ID Group, at Media Lounge in Bournemouth.

Mr Grubb studied industrial design at what was then the Arts Institute Bournemouth from 1990-93, before going on to Plymouth University. That was followed by 14 years with Sutton Vane Associates in London.

Since returning to Bournemouth to set up Michael Grubb Studio in Winton, he has created lighting for Lush, London’s V&A Museum and the Guinness Storehouse in London, as well as the Arts by the Sea Festival in Bournemouth and the special event which turned the pier gold for one night only.

Mr Grubb said the business had learned to focus on working with people, rather than bringing in orders by any means necessary.

“It’s quite easy to end up with a portfolio of amazing images and win more work but these projects often take two or three years. If you want to work with somebody for two or three years, you’ve got to like them,” he said.

“We’re very open and honest. We tell clients things maybe they don’t want to hear. We take feedback and criticism and so on.”

He added: “What you do essentially when you start on your own is you say ‘Who are the people I’m going to be competing with in an industry I know very well?’.

“Very quickly I thought that was totally the wrong way to do it. What I need to do is sit down and work out who I am, who I want the company to work with.”

He added: “Now I find it quite amusing where people are blatantly trying to be more like us.”

The company uses a YouTube channel, Instagram and a blog posts to encourage interest and discussion.

He said it was not easy to quantify the benefits of its use of social media channels. “We attract very good CVs because people follow us. Every year at graduation time from university, we get lots of CVs,” he said.

“Marketing is about more than just winning work. It’s also attracting good staff. Our staff retention rate is really good because marketing is feeding into that. I don’t necessarily need it to be bringing in X amount of work,” he added.He said his approach was “people-based promotion”.

The lighting market in the UK was a large one, he said. “We need a very small percentage of that, so rather than chasing around everything, being what we are, sharing our knowledge, sharing our skills, sharing our creativity, trying to inspire people to want to work with us, is bringing in a lot of people,” he added.