A Fife property developer who now employs almost 50 staff has described his life as being packed full of entrepreneurial business moves.
And he has a clear message to those thinking of starting a business – “go for it”.
Keith Davidson is the CEO of Easy Living Developments which has completed major housing projects in Kirkcaldy, Lochgelly and East Wemyss.
The sales of hundreds of homes on these sites can be measured in the tens of millions.
His company is also behind the Glenrothes developments for Marks and Spencer and Iceland.
For the first time, Keith has detailed his business journey which includes joining the Royal Navy at 16, selling nappies, becoming a quarry owner, finding investments for wealthy Chinese and now scaling up his Fife property development company.
From Falklands to starting nappy business
Keith, who was born in London and brought up in Devon, spent 12 years in the Royal Navy after joining at 16.
From the Falklands War in 1982 followed by Red Sea mine clearance operations a couple of years later, he rose through the ranks to become the First Lieutenant/second in command of the Minesweeper/Fisheries Protection warship HMS Bereton.
During this time, he was based in Rosyth and he met his now wife Tracey, who hails from Kirkcaldy, who insisted they stay in Fife.
Upon leaving the Royal Navy in 1991, Keith’s first entrepreneurial venture was a same-day nappy delivery business called Tops for Bottoms.
For six months it was a great success, until, in Keith’s words, “the bottom fell out of the market”.
He recalls: “It was so successful initially we thought about franchising it. But then Toys R Us started selling big boxes of nappies as a loss leader.
“Then everyone else cut the price of their nappies as well and we couldn’t compete.”
In 1993, Keith had another dramatic change in career when he set up financial services firm, 4L.
Within four years the business had four offices, from Edinburgh to Kinross, offering advice to businesses and personal clients.
From quarries to property
Through this business he started working with miners at the Monktonhall colliery, near Musselburgh, which was the start of a new chapter of his life.
He recalls: “It was the first mine British Coal was trying to sell off as part of privatisation process and we were helping the miners raise the funds.
“At the last minute of the 11th hour, the coal board said it wouldn’t sell the mine but instead lease it to the miners and therefore the financing could not proceed as there was no asset to lend against.
“But I became fascinated with mining. I sold out of 4L in 1996 and started investing in coal mines and quarries.”
Keith’s companies ended up owning a quarry in Mansfield which supplied the Houses of Parliament and another in Chilmark in Tilsbury which supplied Salisbury Cathedral with green limestone and a third near Ancaster producing a hard white limestone.
From investing for Chinese to forming own company
Keith first became involved in property development when the quarry in Mansfield was sold for development for a Sainsbury’s.
But his life then took another dramatic detour when he was headhunted by the Hong Kong-based Chyau Fwu group to find investments for them in Europe.
Working with them for eight years, and becoming European CEO, he led investments in everything from a dog food business in Devon, to a military vehicle business to property developments.
He left when the next generation of the family business took control.
Keith, who lives in Kirkcaldy, formed Easy Living Developments with Tracey in November 2011.
He said: “We didn’t do much in the first couple of years. We built a holiday home in Pitlochry which we sold on the day it was completed to a person we met on the High Street.
“We were then looking for something else to do and bought a land in the west end of Glenrothes at Minto Place.
“Initially we were going to do a residential development but we were approached by an agent acting for Tesco who said they would like us to build a Tesco Extra.
“Tesco pulled out when we were part way through the build but an agent acting for Iceland said they would like it.
“We sold the block, which also includes Lloyds Pharmacy, to an Israeli pension fund but this was during the time of the referendum. It was quite a sticky time because the deal was only going to go through if Scotland voted no.
“It ended up being a very successful project, which we sold for almost £1 million. This set us up well for future projects.”
Building Easy Living Developments
Another job constructing the Iceland in Dundee’s Pitkerro Road followed, as well as some individual homes in Fife.
In 2016, it embarked on the Glenrothes retail park which now contains Marks and Spencer and Farmfoods.
As part of the deal, the Ciswo club was relocated into Fife Council’s former social work department offices, which now has a 550 seat auditorium, function room and snooker room.
Keith, 61, sold the retail park to Liverpool-based property company Atmore, which was the start of a valuable relationship.
“We sold it to them part-way through the development so we had the cash to finish it.
“A couple of things happened at the same time. We bought a large development site in Lochgelly for housing. And Atmore said they might be looking to get involved in residential developments.
“We formed a new joint venture company between us, called AEL Developments, with the new company acquiring land and Easy Living Developments undertaking the build out.
“In doing this, we’re debt free and masters of our own destiny.”
The Lochgelly development, called The Avenues, has recently completed its 168 homes, built over the course of five years.
Other Easy Living Developments projects
In the meantime, Easy Living Developments has also turned the former Forth Park maternity hospital in Kirkcaldy into homes. It is in the process of building 100 homes at Castle Gait in East Wemyss.
Keith said the projects have not been without their challenges, but all have been successful, with sales of around £30m in Lochgelly, £14m for Forth Park and another £30m estimated for Castle Gait.
“The Forth Park project was particularly challenging. Travelling folk moved in and took the lead off the roof while the project was going through planning,” he said.
“The buildings were left in a very sorry state. In effect, for the two listed buildings, it became a façade retention.
“When we came to knock down the existing hospital, we found unrecorded asbestos everywhere. That increased our demolition costs by about 75%.
“Then Covid hit and there were rapid price increases for materials. That project was the first large scale, gas free development with heating and hot water being provided by air-sourced heat pumps in the east of Scotland.
We also nicknamed the project the gift that kept taking due to its considerable number of unforeseen challenges however, we managed to get out with our shifts still on our backs and we’re all really proud of the end result.”
“East Wemyss is going really well. It’s 90% sold and 65% complete.
“And we’ve just started the construction phase at our Coaltown of Balgonie site in Fife on a site that will contain 80 new homes, all with ground-source heat pumps.”
The company is also spending £2m creating 16 much-needed small industrial units in Lochgelly, an asset it plans to keep.
It also owns the former RM Law sawmill site at Cupar Muir, where it hopes to build a retirement development.
Other projects also include a joint venture called Devonshaw Leisure Ltd for a large scale leisure development that recently gained planning approval for 114 luxury lodges and associated facilities near Powmill in Perth and Kinross.
Meanwhile, Keith’s also found time to invest in Loch Leven Brewery in Kinross, where he is also managing director.
Keith’s advice for entrepreneurs
Clearly it’s been a busy decade for Easy Living Developments, which Keith co-owns with wife Tracey and technical director Scott McKechnie.
Keith said it was always his hope for the company to become a major developer admitting to being “adventurous” with his business ambitions.
So what would be his advice to other entrepreneurs?
“The answer is to go for it,” he said.
“It helps if you take advice from people who’ve done it before and learn from their mistakes and indeed successes.
“And when you make a mistake, as we all do, and on a regular basis, get up, dust yourself down and learn from it.”
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