Battery Farm
笼架式的养鸡场
May 28th 2009 | EASTLEIGH
From The Economist print edition

A Heaven of Hopeful Endeavors
抱着希望的奋斗者之天堂

THOUGH British carmakers may face further shrinkage as General Motors abandons its Vauxhall plants at Luton and Ellesmere Port to sale or closure, there is life in the undergrowth where industrial monsters have fallen. Take Eastleigh in Hampshire, whose railway works once sustained the town. Pirelli also closed a cable factory there in 2002, and Ford has just cut 500 jobs and suspended production of vans at nearby Swaythling.

通用汽车通过出售或者关闭的方式放弃了其在卢顿与埃尔斯米尔港的沃克斯豪尔工厂，导致英国的汽车制造厂商许将面对更进一步的萎缩，即便如此，行业巨无霸倒下之处，荆棘之中依然有生机。拿铁路工业一度是支柱产业的汉普郡伊斯特雷格来说，倍耐力在2002年关闭了在当地的一家电缆工厂，而福特刚刚裁减了500个工作岗位，推迟了在邻近斯威凌地区的小货车生产。

Eastleigh is hardly a tourist town—a dour bronze railwayman is its main public monument—but it has a brilliant formula for incubating new businesses. Wessex House is a 40,000-square-foot redbrick building with 100 offices housing about 70 small firms. Among them are Happy’s Circus, run by Happy the Clown, Finblade, which makes mobile video games, and builders, architects and other providers of services based on clever ideas. Outstanding Results, a debt collector, has been busy chasing late payments, some of them on behalf of fellow tenants.

伊斯特雷格并非一个旅游城市——一座阴郁的铁路工人青铜雕像是它主要的公共纪念雕塑——但是在培养新办企业方面，伊斯特雷格确有聪明办法。韦塞克斯大楼是一座40,000平方英尺的红砖建筑，有100间办公室，容纳着大约70家小公司。这些小公司包括由”快乐小丑“经营的”快乐马戏团”，制造手机视频游戏的Finblade，还有建筑商、建筑师以及其他凭借金点子立足的服务提供商。“outstanding results ”是一家追债公司，忙于追讨拖欠债务，有时也代表大楼里其他房客追讨债务。

Wessex House is owned and run by Eastleigh Borough Council and makes enough money to pay its way. Firms can rent anything from a one-person office to a whole floor. Some have grown, shrunk and expanded again. A former tenant—Murphx, which provides IT services—now lives next door: the Bentley and Aston Martin in the car park tell the story.

伊斯特雷格区委会拥有并经营着韦塞克斯大楼，大楼收入足够支付各种开销。从一人办公室至整个楼层，公司都可以租赁。有些公司已经经历了成长、萎缩到再次扩张的过程。提供IT服务的公司Murphx是过去的租户，现在在隔壁大楼办公：停在汽车公园里的豪华车宾利、阿斯顿马丁说明了问题。

Some of these businesses are growing in the teeth of recession. Tucasi, a brainwave of three school governors, is selling software packages to schools, to manage the money parents pay for school dinners, outings and so on. So far Tucasi has collared 1,300 primary and secondary schools. Business has doubled in a year, says Peter Redding, a director. He could easily treble it but “that would bring its own risks,” he says.

部分公司在经济衰退中艰难成长。三个学校的管理层灵机一动，创立了Tucasi，卖给学校管理费用的软件套装，管理家长支付的学校餐费、出游费等费用。目前为止，Tucasi已经包办了1300家小学与初中业务。一主管彼特·瑞丁说一年之内生意增加了一倍，可以轻而易举地实现三倍增长，但他说，“这样也会带来自身风险”。

Rob Poole at Blacks, an estate agent, has found a niche between rivals on the internet and high-street firms. He operates from 韦塞克斯大楼, without a shop-window, and charges half the high-street fee. This is the model of the future, he says, insisting that business is “brisk”.

房产中介公司Blacks的罗勃·波勒在网络上和繁华商业圈内的竞争对手中找到了一条生存夹缝。他在韦塞克斯大楼办公，没有明亮大窗，费用只有繁华商圈一半。这是将来的模式，他坚称，这个行业是“脆弱”的。

Are such motley enterprises a barometer of British business in recession? The Confederation of British Industry’s May survey on the service sector points to an “outbreak of optimism” in the property world and a similar uptick in almost every consumer branch except travel. But expectations of new orders and business expansion in fact show only a marginal improvement on the dire mood that has prevailed since November. The Wessex House experience reflects that. Martin Brand, at Outstanding Results, has seen a huge increase in work but, as times are tough, “not necessarily an increase in what is collectable”.

这样混杂的小公司们是否是衰退中的英国商业晴雨表呢？英国工业联合会的五月份服务业调查指出房产界出现了“乐观情绪爆发“，除旅游业之外几乎所有消费行业都显现了相似的回升。但是对新订单与商业扩张的期望值实际上只在去年十一月开始蔓延的悲观情绪上有了一点微不足道的好转。韦塞克斯大楼的经验反映了这一点。就职于“Outstanding Results ”的马丁·布兰德见证，随着时世艰难，业务量出现了巨幅增长，“并不一定是追讨的债务金额出现了增加。”

Phil Davis, a building contractor, has no work at all, despite cutting his margins by ten percentage points. He and his wife are considering shifting their office to their home. The ability to move in and out of Wessex House with only a month’s notice is its major attraction for uncertain businesses. “Several tenants have gone back to work from home,” says Sandra Giles, who manages the business centre. Others have negotiated lower rents while slashing their own salaries too. Finblade, whose video-game team have been there in various guises since 2001, was forced to cut its staff savagely last year, from 14 to six, because of financial problems with customers that its bank was reluctant to ease. For all the human cost, “in a strange way it has left us in a better position as the market picks up,” says Fergus McNeill, the chief executive.

菲尔·戴维斯是一名建筑承包商，尽管将他的利润减少了10％，依然完全没工可开。他跟他老婆正在考虑将办公室搬回家。吸引不稳定的公司的一个主要因素是在韦塞克斯大楼迁出迁入只需提前一个月通知。“几个租户已经搬回家工作了”，管理着商务中心的桑德拉·贾尔斯说。其他公司一方面与她商量降低租金，一方面也在减少自己的薪水。Finblade的手机游戏团队自2001年已经变动许多次，去年不得不残忍地将员工数量从14名减少到6名，因为与顾客发生财政问题，而银行又不愿意出手相援。至于所有的人工开销，“从一个古怪的层面说来，市场又回暖之时，将我们置于一个较为有利的位置”， 董事长费格斯·麦克尼尔说。

Other firms in the rabbit warren are apparently recession-proof: Solent International, which fits out yachts abroad for the super-rich; Alkoomi, a consultancy which imparts “safety leadership” at construction sites such as Heathrow’s Terminal 5 and Britain’s Olympic Village; Kevin Walls, an architect upgrading hospitals for the National Health Service.

“养兔场”的其他公司显然都不惧怕衰退：Solent International，为国外超级富豪订做帆船；Alkoomi，为诸如希思罗机场的5号航运楼以及英国奥运村这些建筑工地提供“安全管理”的咨询；Kevin Walls，是家为英国国民保健署翻新医院的建筑公司。

The veterans of Wessex House are survivors but not shooting stars. They are service providers who live on low overheads, exploit niches and rely on smart staff. That is hardly a cross-section of the British Mittelstand. Nor is Eastleigh a post-industrial wasteland like some of north-eastern England. The railway works never died completely: in 2006 Knights Rail Services took over the premises to overhaul locomotives. But Eastleigh Council also plans to develop 130 hectares of the site, to encourage new businesses. Wessex House, it seems, has something to teach.

韦塞克斯大楼的老房客都是幸存者而非流星。他们是靠收取低廉服务费用维持的服务提供者，他们开发缝隙市场，他们依赖聪明的员工。 伊斯特雷格基本不能反映英国中小企业的情况，也非像英国东北部的部分地区一样是工业衰退的荒岛。铁路工业从未完全死亡：2006年骑士铁路公司接下一块地基用来修理机车。但是伊斯特雷格委员会也计划开发130公顷土地以鼓励培养新兴企业。看来韦塞克斯大楼颇有教益。