I didn't notice any recording either; for the dubious benefit of those who are interested herewith my notes:
Butler-Adams joined the company by accident; he was working for ICI managing chemical plants in the North-East, and had done an MBA, and then on a coach journey got chatting to a friend of Andrew Ritchie (and Brompton Chairman), who asked him to come and help improve the Brompton factory's efficiency. The company was surviving, but it was in unsuitable premises, holding too much stock, and had antiquated machinery. (One anecdote was that the only large pillar drill the company had was a c. 1890 belt-driven model that Ritchie had picked up cheap and fitted with a jury-rigged electric motor and belt. When the company moved premises they tried giving it to an industrial museum but they didn't want it; Butler-Adams now wishes they'd kept it for display.) Back then the company had about 23 staff; these days it's got about 300 staff and a turnover of ~£43m; they make about 300 bikes a day in their new Greenford factory, and still have capacity to expand production there.
He'd brought an e-Brompton with him as a demonstrator - he said though they said in their press releases it had been under development for 6 years, in reality it was more like 10; they'd spent about £2.5m on development, with Williams (the F1 company) helping them lighten the bike. He mentioned (and this was something I really wish he'd been able to expand on!) that the electric motor had an epicyclic gearbox; Williams had pointed them at a US company that made gearboxes for UAVs, and Brompton had found a UK company making engineering polymers that were suitable for the gears.
He talked about innovation, and about the importance of innovation beyond the purely technical. Examples were Brompton working hours; though they work a 40-hour week, you can either do this over 5 days a week, 4.5 days a week, or do 80 hours over 9 working days (i.e. every other Friday off). Another thing was what he called the 'fuck-it fund'* - from his time doing project management at ICI he'd learned that the projections for the financial upside of a project could be varied hugely and near-invisibly by minor tweaks to the assumptions; as a result, predicted ROI is basically a made-up number. On the other hand, he said, you can generally predict worst-case losses quite accurately. The fuck-it fund is basically written off at the beginning of the year, and is used to cover the potential losses of any speculative project; any profits are then gravy. It started out as a £5K fund, and these days the fund is £250K, with projects able to bid for £50K at a time. This was how the Brompton docks started, though he said they've spent about £3m on them to date.
He was also interesting on the marketing; he doesn't like to spend big money on ad campaigns, and would rather spend money on relatively cheap events like the Brompton World Championships that are fun and generate their own publicity. 'Fun' was a concept that cropped up a couple of times, often contrasted with the grey, boring way that business usually operated. As noted in a previous post, I couldn't decide whether he'd be great and visionary or possibly a bit of a nightmare to work for; maybe both?
They have 1,500 dealers worldwide, but the Brompton Junction concept stores were an attempt to try and target the 95% of people that wouldn't go into a bike shop (his stats were that 4% of Londoners are 'cyclists', but 99% know how to ride a bike). The gender balance for Brompton Junctions wasn't quite 50/50, but was getting close.
In the last bit of the talk he got more evangelical about the value of bikes for cities; over half of the world's populations live in them, but there are huge problems about health, air quality, etc. - nothing new and earth-shattering for YACF denziens, but interesting to see a successful MD making these kinds of arguments.
*In general he was quite entertainingly sweary, and not the kind of polished spokesperson you might have expected.