Glass cut by the people who answer the phone.

In 2004, Sonny opened a glass works on the Fulham Road with a cutting bench, a van and a simple idea: that people buying glass should be able to talk to the person cutting it.

London was building. Flats were being carved out of old houses, kitchens were being knocked through, and everybody needed glass quickly and needed it right. Sonny took the jobs the bigger merchants found awkward, the odd shapes, the tight deadlines, the Saturday morning emergencies, and cut them properly. Word travelled the way it does on building sites: one fit-out contractor tells another, and that one tells his glazier.

Twenty years on, the work has grown, and so has the range: toughened, laminated, mirrored, painted, cut to the millimetre for high-end residential developers, building contractors, fit-out specialists, and for the homeowner who needs one shelf. A second branch at Park Royal now carries the hinges, handles, clamps and seals to go with it, so a shower enclosure can leave here as one job rather than three.

What has not changed is the bit Sonny started with. The glass is still cut in our own workshop. The vans are still ours, with our own drivers. And if you ring the counter, you are speaking to someone who can walk over to the bench and look at your job.