The 2026 Back Office Report

We looked at the public websites of 176 UK firms that build things for a living: exhibition stands, shopfits and fit-outs, joinery, and live-event production. Every firm is a member of a trade body (ESSA or FIS). We read each firm's home page and contact page, checked its record at Companies House, and ran Google's mobile speed test on its site. We did not contact anyone, fill in any form or test anyone's phone line. We name no firm.

168 of the 176 sites could be read. The numbers below use those 168 unless we say otherwise. This is what a stranger can see from the outside. It is not a survey of how the firms behave, and it is not every firm in the trade.

Only 9.5% (16 of 168) say when the office is open. Just 1.2% (2 of 168) offer any way to reach a person out of hours. For the other 98.8% a customer who writes at 8pm, or from a site visit on a Saturday, gets no word on when to expect an answer.

We can only see what is written. Some of these firms may well pick up the phone at 7am. They do not say so.

We matched 132 of the 176 firms to a single active company at Companies House. We cannot read headcount from the public file, so we use the type of accounts a firm files as a rough size marker. Of the 113 matched firms we could read that filed micro or small accounts, 25.7% had neither form nor chat. Of the 13 that filed full accounts, 61.5% (8) did. That second group is small, so take it as a pointer and nothing firmer.

Google's mobile speed test gave a median score of 61 out of 100 across 165 sites. 14.5% (24) scored below 50; 6.1% (10) scored 90 or more. Fit-out, joinery and exhibition sites sat within three points of each other (59 to 63 median), so this is the trade's norm, not one corner's problem. Nearly all sites (98.2%, 165 of 168) load securely over https.

Hobfolk runs the office side of firms that make things, overnight, so the owner starts the day with the admin done. We wanted to know what the front of those firms looks like before the morning starts. What we found is a trade that is tidy on paper, reached by phone in office hours, and mostly quiet about everything else. We will repeat the count each year, and the method and sample rules are open to anyone who wants to check them.