MEETING WITH TONY MUNDIN, MANERO LTD on Cinemas
16 May 2025
I love it when we have a real enthusiast at Business Club, someone who has turned a passion into a dynamic business. Tony Mundin was already successful with his company Oyster Retail Packaging based in Nottingham, producing quality retail packaging, and clearly has an eye for an underperforming asset. But not many people would dive into a niche market a century after its heyday, just as technology has wiped most value off the map.
Belper, he said, used to have two cinemas in a listed theatre building dating back to 1882. Downstairs had become a bingo hall, as had happened to many cinemas; upstairs still had two small screens, but the only entrance was through the main door, which caused problems with gambling licensing laws. Then in 2006 the whole building came up for sale, and he was sorely tempted.
Lots of questions needed thought, which applied to all his acquisitions, though he didn’t know it yet. What kind of cinema? Was the location OK? Where was the competition (apart from in our living rooms)? A multiplex was only 10 minutes away but in Belper the audience was slightly older and a mixed venue with a broad appeal, not too arty, looked a possibility. How to pay for it..? An EU Fund for the reinstatement of upper floors of retail proved useful, as refurbishment of the Masson Mills heritage site was under way with Belper becoming a tourist destination. And the bingo is still there, with the cinema having a separate entrance. The Ritz cinema was born.
Industry advice at the time was to have as many seats as possible, but Tony felt that reducing the number of seats and making them a great deal more comfortable was a better way forward. If patrons can enjoy watching a movie at home while lounging on a sofa with a glass of wine, that’s the minimum they’ll expect from a cinema. Add a really wide screen and very high quality sound (Dolby 7.1) and the experience is vastly enhanced, especially for big movies. So the Ritz went from 400 seats to 99 with a great deal more comfort, the screen is 8.5 metres, the sound system is the best available but used at only 30% capacity; the “sub-woofer is a six-man lift”.
Marketing stated before the opening, with invitations to join a subscription service – that gives four free tickets and (more important) a regular monthly mailing showing all the offering. Nobody knew whether this would appeal, but £5,000 came in.. and on opening day, 2,000 people were queuing outside! Since then, Belper has won High Street of the Year twice, with both presentations taking place at The Ritz.
Appetite whetted, but still running the packaging business, Tony kept in touch with other enthusiasts. One was John Merryweather who owned the Regal in Melton Mowbray. When he died in 2012, his widow said he’d wanted Tony to take it over. “It was a traditional cinema, cheap tickets.. that doesn’t help with investment. So we did it up ourselves.” That meant him and his wife and three boys – “the eldest has his own business but helped with fitting out.” It reopened in 2013. This time, the pre-opening subscriptions rant to £10,000. He was clearly on to something special.
The Savoy Heaton Moor (my favourite) came next in 2015, a glorious art deco listed building with 480 seats which had had no money spent on it since the 1970s and was “near derelict.” Now it has 180 seats, and I am a subscriber. “It was an object lesson in how to restore handsome heritage buildings,” said Tony. One feature is the best loos in the area with beautiful mirrors and tiling and real towels – “they cost about the same as other systems, and they say, you’re in a luxury location,” he smiled. After ten years’ heavy use, it has just been refurbished – again, mainly by family effort – and is managed by his son Louis, who was only 10 years old when this adventure started. It’s also become a popular venue for weddings with twelve booked this year. You can see a video of the refurbishment on Tony’s LinkedIn page – looks like a lot of hard work! https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-mundin-4a136015/recent-activity/all/
The Rex in Wilmslow was a furniture store, but once had a ballroom upstairs (you never know what’s behind the tatty partitions in these old properties). Sorting out access was again the key, and this gave scope for two screens. It opened in 2018, and this time took a whopping £220k in pre-opening subscriptions! “Gotta love Wilmslow..” as Tony puts it. He showed us the touches which make such a difference in these boutique cinemas – for example, real brass edging on the carpeted stairs in the auditorium, which help with safety but are stylish and luxurious. One small room at the top was a puzzle, until he came up with a “VIP Room” which can be booked for £100 with all drinks and snacks included; it provides complete privacy for (say) a footballer and his family, who can tiptoe out into the cinema once the lights have gone down. I reckon that’s cheap at the price.
And then there was Wirksworth, the Northern Light Cinema, where Tony after some wrangling took a 15 year lease on the cinema rather than an outright purchase.. And then Covid hit. “It decimated the business,“ he said, with barely 18,000 seats sold across their four sites.
Post Covid, he has concentrated on the cinemas. Recovery has been challenging, as some older people who’d regularly made a day out including a film no longer come.
In the year to March 2025 the portfolio of now 6 cinemas has sold 218,000 seats with the well-established Ritz, Regal and Rex leading the pack. In March 2020 that number was 252,000 in 4 cinemas; “If I had a conspiracy theory about Covid, it’s that it was caused by Disney,” he said ruefully. But from this, heroes have emerged including Tom Cruise. Cruise was adamant that “Top Gun: Maverick” debut in theatres, not on a streaming service, and refused to consider a Netflix deal, even for $400 million. The actor emphasized the importance of the shared, communal cinematic experience and the difference between making a movie for the big screen versus streaming. This decision was despite the film’s release being delayed multiple times due to the pandemic. In the end the film turned over a whopping $1.2 billion, and was still sold many months after launch for $200m – to Netflix.
“If you put a movie on in theatres, and stream it at the same time, you lose it to pirates in no time,” Tony pointed out, and that destroys multiple value. However the business is unlike any other, in that the product is acquired and paid for only after it’s been sold to the public, with 60% going to distributors in the first couple of weeks, dropping to 35% after that – and some films come back many times. So it’s a cash generative operation with fixed overheads, service orientated. It helps, in my view, if your staff are all enthusiasts with a strong stake in the business’s future; current sites are managed by family members, but that could put a limit on how big Manero can grow.
His most recent acquisition last year in Stanley Square, Sale was a 5000 sq ft former W H Smith shop in a retail space which had been in a “truly depressing, horrible” outdoor shopping centre, but the developers wanted cinemas to be included in the refurbishment. The space proved relatively easy to convert, taking only 14 weeks with no stairs to lug equipment up (including those sub-woofers). The Northern Light cinema in Sale opened in November 2024 with three micro screens (54, 54 and 32 seats) and is helping the area really raise its game. Even the bar area is gorgeous, with chandeliers, soft lighting and art work. Tony says now he wouldn’t look at anything other than retail, for ease of conversion and access, from here on. And is currently negotiating yet another site.
So I’ve just booked to see the latest Tom Cruise, who has gone up in my estimation. Enjoy!