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Charles Tyrwhitt founder on why there's 'no point whinging about the government'
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Mar 25, 2025
"Politicians rarely come from a business background," Nick Wheeler told City AM's Editor in Chief Christian May. In this episode of the Editor's Interview, the founder of Charles Tyrwhitt, Nick Wheeler, has said there's "no point whinging about what the government are doing or not doing, because they're not going to change", adding that "I've got to get on and make my own decisions". Wheeler also touches on how the business is wargaming scenarios as Trump's tariffs loom and how the Covid pandemic gave his business "a kick up the arse". Read more of the story here 👇 https://www.cityam.com/charles-tyrwhitt-founder-says-no-point-whinging-about-the-government/ Get more of City AM 👇 🌐 http://www.cityam.com X(formerly Twitter): http://twitter.com/CityAM Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cityam Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/city_am LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/cityam Produced by: Christian May, Emmanuel Nwosu, Joe Lee, Joseph Curay Teneda #news #politics #opinion #business #interview #uk #uknews #ukpolitics #ukbusiness #retail #clothing #clothingbusiness #smartwear
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0:00
i had a photography business a Christmas tree business a shoe business all complete disasters you know I was
0:05
starting a business because I wanted to have control of my own destiny as soon as somebody else has a stake in your
0:11
business they have a right to to a say in how it's run and and I just didn't want that we had 9 million quid worth of
0:17
stock in women's and children's clothes that nobody wanted to buy and the business very very nearly went bust again there have been very few
0:22
governments in my lifetime where the rhetoric matches reality politicians very rarely come from a business
0:28
background i think it's well publicized this government have not they they have not had business experience the world is
0:34
what it is i've got to make the most of it there's no point winging about what the government are doing or not doing
0:40
because they're not going to change oh god i mean what was I thinking i mean I've often asked myself what what what
0:46
was I thinking why did I think it was going to be different this time now in this episode of the editor's
0:53
interview at City AM I am joined by Nick Charles Turret Wheeler and that Charles
0:59
Turret is not in quote marks that is his middle name and the name of the business he founded back in 1986 now first things
1:06
first a hand on my heart this is a pure coincidence because I don't tend to check my labels but I did notice this
1:12
morning that I am wearing an appropriately labeled jacket i actually noticed when I walked in this morning
1:17
you were an incredibly well-dressed young man well well that's very nice of you to say i particularly appreciate the
1:23
young reference but um it's one of my favorite jackets and it's I have to say I think I've probably had it for about
1:28
seven years so credit to you it's good you It's good you're wearing that because a lot of people think of us as
1:34
just being work shirts and it and we do a hell of a lot more than that so it's it's nice that you're wearing it and
1:39
you've commented on it which Well there you go okay well that that's enough of the advertising we'll move on um Charles
1:45
Turret I mean nobody I mean I'd say nobody in the city but I'm sure obviously of course it goes far wider than that people are very familiar with
1:51
you as a as a physical presence no less on on on high streets i believe you
1:56
started this business from your student digs in Bristol yeah in the 80s tell us
2:02
about how that all came to be i think I was a sort of slightly strange
2:08
student most people I think go off to university to um drink a lot uh and do
2:14
very little work i was quite kid on the very little work and actually quite good on the drinking a lot but I always
2:19
wanted to have my own business and I when I was at school I had little businesses and I was always looking for
2:25
things to do sort of ducking and diving i knew I was going to have my own business later on in life i just didn't
2:31
know what it was going to be so I tried lots of things and I think university was actually university is good for
2:37
different people in different ways and it was good for me because it gave me an umbrella of sort of respectability to
2:44
try funny little businesses so you know my my father didn't give me a hard time for for for for wasting time um because
2:52
I was ultimately I was doing a degree but um yeah it gave you cover it gave me
2:57
cover it gave me cover and and it meant I could experiment you know once you leave university you say "I'm going to
3:02
start my own business." You you're out there and you've got to get on with it um but I was sort of hidden away and I was try I tried lots of different things
3:08
i had a photography business a Christmas tree business a shoe business all complete disasters and then I thought
3:15
well you know when when the shoes didn't work I thought what can I do instead of shoes and I I I went for shirts and what
3:21
were the what was the first model um of the business how did it start to operate what were the first few years like the
3:28
first few years I think everyone thought it was a bit of a bit of a joke you know people sort of
3:33
um they couldn't see it working you know it's not there's nothing clever about starting a shirt business you know I
3:39
think Michael Dell started Dell in 1984 which is two years before me charles
3:45
Dunston started Carphone Warehouse in 1988 two years after me they were both quite clever businesses you know
3:51
portable computers were taking off mobile phones were taking off the market was doing that i think doing shirts was
3:56
was was just um you know not not a clever thing but um I just wanted
4:04
something that I wanted a product that I understood and I wanted a product I
4:09
always knew everybody said when you start a business and it applies today you know people say you start a business
4:15
first thing you got to do is go out and get investment i always knew I didn't want investment you know I was starting
4:21
a business because I wanted to have control of my own destiny and as soon as you get investment as soon as somebody
4:27
else has a stake in your business they have a obviously they have a right to to a say in how it's run and and I just
4:34
didn't want that so um you know I thought I'm going to start a business i'm going to do it very very slowly i
4:39
I'm going to I'm going to take a long time and this is people saying look you've got to make a decision you can
4:44
have a large slice of a small pie which is what you're going to end up with if you just self-fund and grow it very
4:51
slowly or you have a small slice of a large pie everybody with the with the with the innuendo that it was good to
4:57
have a large pie and I always I've always been a greedy little thing but I I always quite like the idea of having a
5:03
large slice of a large pie and if it took me a hundred years if I was still alive in 100 years that was fine with me
5:09
i've read that you you've given that advice at a few opportunities about whether to take on external investment
5:16
and I think reasonably recently you were asked it in the context of Dragon's Den um and Dragon's Den has has has got a
5:24
lot to answer for for for better and for worse on our sort of entrepreneurial culture and the way people think about
5:30
businesses and starting businesses and what you have to do and the hoops you have to go through and you've been quite
5:36
adamant and you've just reiterated it now that it's not absolutely essential to you know give away 20% to get some
5:43
seed funding etc i mean obviously you know it's a huge part of business uh
5:48
ecosystem different forms of investment VC etc it's obviously a huge part but your point really I suppose is it's not
5:54
right for everybody it's not a given that you need to go out and find that i think it's it's definitely not right but
6:01
not right for everybody i think actually the people who are prepared to do what I've done are quite few and far between
6:08
you know a lot of people say to me "How the hell can you get out of bed every morning for 38 years saying "Well Pete today I'm going to sell a few shirts."
6:14
You know you only live once you know you surely want to do something else and and I think that which is very valid and and
6:20
I and also I think there there are businesses where you can't do that you know I started a shirt business and
6:25
there are people who started shirt businesses in 1900 in 1986 when I did there are people who started them in 2000 and this year there are people
6:32
starting shirt businesses you can start a shirt business shirts are it's not a high-tech business if you've got a an
6:38
amazing high-tech business idea you can't do what I've done because someone
6:43
will come along and they will see what you're doing and they will do it better faster quicker they'll develop it faster
6:49
and you'll get left behind you won't have a chance so it it rather depends on on what the product you're doing is and
6:55
there aren't that many products that are or not that many businesses that are so sort of I basically call it well I would
7:01
call it basic a basic business selling shirts is a basic business and you can do it and you can do it very very slowly
7:08
and you can do it ultimately very very well but it you know it takes a long time but I think most people a don't
7:13
want to spend the time doing it they want variety in life i get that completely or or they they want to go into an industry where you just can't do
7:20
it because people will come along and and take you out well we'll we'll get on to present day where you've got I more
7:27
than 50 stores more than a thousand people working for you turnover in the hundreds of millions but we'll just take
7:33
our time to get there because it's not all been plain sailing I'm assuming and indeed I've read you know I mean
7:39
something happened in the mid '9s that I'm assuming was a reasonably formative lesson what happened
7:45
i think the mid '9s it was 1994 um I finally got to that stage i started
7:53
in '86 i left university in ' 87 i left B i went to work at Bane for two years
7:58
in '89 and the business had done £12,000 a year for the first four years so when I said to people I'm going into this
8:05
business full-time everybody said you're absolutely mad but I thought no it's going to work there was no reason to
8:12
think that and there was nothing clever in in thinking that it just I felt in my heart i can't really explain it but it's
8:17
sort of an entrepreneurs's thing you just have a you you believe it's a bit of belief so I believed it was going to
8:22
work nobody thought it would work but you know so 1989 I went I went full-time
8:28
and by 1994 I finally I'd got it to this position i think we were doing two half million pound sales making 250,000
8:35
profit which is you know a lot of money now it was even more money then it was you know I was doing better than most of
8:40
my friends who'd left university before they were all very surprised um and I started I made this
8:47
huge mistake i've I've sort of always said it's important to focus to decide what you're good at and do that you know
8:52
if you if you have one thing to do it's easier to do one thing well than to do two things you you do two things you're
8:59
going to do them worse and uh in 1994 I had a friend of mine who came to me and
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he had a children's clothing business a children's retail business they had five children's shops and I'd built a little
9:11
business doing well selling shirts to men by mail order and quite what I was
9:17
thinking that it would be a good idea to buy a chain of five children's clothes shops selling children's clothes to
9:24
usually young mothers completely different market completely different you know mail order against retail
9:30
nothing no similarity at all and I bought it and I lost more money in three months than I made in the last three
9:35
years and went bust so that was a bit of a shock to the system so how did you rebuild from there
9:42
um I bas I bought the business back uh for about
9:48
£250,000 with the help for which I will be forever grateful from my father who reorggaged his house and lent me the
9:55
money um quite how he had the faith in me but anyway he did and um and off I went
10:02
again and it sort of you know I remembered this lesson I think it's it's very easy you know people will always
10:07
tell you when you when you're when you're running your own business people will will give you advice but listening
10:12
to advice and actually finding out firsthand making that mistake yourself are two very very different things so
10:18
having made that mistake myself that focus is is important I thought right I'm going to focus on the business i'm
10:25
going to focus on selling men's shirts to men by mail order and so round the clock forward off
10:32
we went for another 10 years 10 years later I'd got it from 2 and a half million to 40 million sales this is 2005
10:39
making4 million pounds profit so this was it was a great business and at that point I decided that for a while you
10:46
know basically I I'm an entrepreneur i was an entrepreneur is not I always think the only thing you have to do as
10:52
an entrepreneur is to decide who is the right person to run my business some entrepreneurs can carry on doing it
10:58
forever very very few but there comes a point when a lot of entrepreneurs will hit a glass ceiling they they think
11:04
they're the best person they can't hand over and the business stops growing i I I wasn't the right person to run this
11:10
business so I brought somebody in he came from Ralph Lauren lovely guy and we sat down and we talked about the
11:16
strategy for the business and he said "Look I think you should do women's and children's clothes." Now you know
11:24
looking back I I can see how ridiculously stupid I was to think that I could sell children's clothes again 10
11:30
years later that you know you do you make the same mistake twice it's not going to end up with a different result and it didn't you know a year later we
11:37
went from making4 million pounds a year to making nothing we had 9 million quids worth of stock in women's and children's clothes and nobody wanted to buy and the
11:44
business very very nearly went bust again so that was sort of I mean those two mistakes were pretty horrendous and
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they taught me that you know stick to the knitting all the old cliches focus
11:56
focus focus and and that's sort of really what I've tried to do but definitely not plain sailing what was it
12:02
then that period where you decided I'm going to diversify again you had built a
12:07
business that was growing that as you put it selling men's shirts to men appreciate you know there's more in wardrobe than that
12:14
but can you look back at that and think well I didn't get it right first time round moving into children's clothes or
12:20
another line but this time it's different why why do you think you you mean you mean this time in terms of of
12:26
broadening the product range to men no to um the second round oh god I mean
12:33
what was I thinking I mean I mean I've I've often asked myself what what what was I thinking why did I think it was
12:39
going to be different this time and I think I've always really actually I've always really admired Ralph Lauren as a
12:46
business i think he just is an incredible it's an incredible business story and I think there's a little piece
12:52
of me that sort of wanted to be Ralph Lauren and so when I I recruited this guy he came from Ralph Lauren and he
12:58
said "Look we can make you into the new Ralph Lauren." And I think I was blinded by the idea of being the new Ralph Lauren and and it was um I don't know 10
13:06
years is a long time i'd sort of forgotten the lesson which is which again is an important lesson because
13:11
that was now 20 years ago and I hope I'm not going to forget that lesson again i
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think you can forget a lesson once i say to people when they join the business look this is a business I want if you make a mistake that's absolutely fine
13:23
but just learn from it and move on now I have to say look it's fine to make the same mistake twice but just don't make
13:28
it three times um but why why did I do it why why did I think it was going to be different i mean I wish I could
13:35
answer that question and it' be interesting to to see where the business would be now if I if I hadn't make that
13:40
made that mistake second time round because one thing it did do is it reinforced my belief that you know Charles Tret is a business that's going
13:46
to sell clothing to men we're going to make it easy for men to dress well and
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so you've been going now for decades you've had your you've had your your learning moments i'm sure there are many
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yeah what remains as true now as it was when you sold your first shirt in 1986
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what's the for all those ups and downs and we'll come on to some of the bigger downs whether that's pandemics or
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whatever it might be but you know throughout the the main sort of narrative arc of your business what
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what's been the constant it maybe is something you only identify in hindsight but what's as true now as it was when
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you started i think the constant is there are some very simple business
14:29
rules that I think that every business should stick to and actually a surprising number of businesses don't
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stick to and I think that's why a lot of businesses get into trouble along the way um but they are and it's very simple
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I mean it's basically it's quality value service so just sell a good quality product good value for money and and
14:49
offer great service and I think that I've always I've always believed that right from the
14:55
beginning i thought I want to offer you know a better shirt at a better price and I want to give great service i will bend over backwards for the customers
15:01
and I've done that literally from day one and then I think subsequent to that I've sort of added on to that that and I
15:08
always say to people look you know I want Charles Stewart to be a great business and they say what is a great
15:14
business what's the definition of great business some people will say it's a big business or it's a profitable business
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or it's a and I think a great business is um it's a business where the people who work in the business love working in
15:25
the business um where the customers love the business which is where the service comes in and where the suppliers love the business
15:31
and and in a way now you know I don't run the business now I have a chief exec who's fantastic much better than I ever
15:37
was but I have those real beliefs that I want I want the people the thing that I
15:42
love doing is if I walk into the store the store down here Now if I walk into the store and somebody says to me I love
15:48
working in this business i just have to say I love working it that's what really makes a difference to me or a customer
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comes in and says gosh you're Nick Wheeler gosh I absolutely love the show you know I love your shirts and I think
15:59
that is the that's the basis for a great business and I think those are the the you know the ground rules that that you
16:05
have to have people have to love love working within within an organization if people don't enjoy it they're not going to do a good job well I mentioned the
16:13
word pandemic and um won't surprise you to learn that it as a as a free daily
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business commuting newspaper it obviously took its toll on us um can't believe it was five years ago
16:28
how did it affect your business and I'm interested in particular as to whether
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there's the kind of crisis point of impact but also longer term perhaps led
16:38
to some changes that have been beneficial or that you perhaps otherwise wouldn't have made so it's not too painful let's just talk
16:46
a bit about how hit you in the early stages versus you know how it shapes you
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now yeah it's an interesting it's an interesting one that because it was the
16:56
pandemic was apart from going bust in 1994 probably the worst day or sequence of
17:04
days in my life the beginning of the pandemic literally the worst days of my life because it was we went from being I
17:11
always thought okay Michael Dell sold computers Charles Dunston sold mobile phones I wish I'd done those things but
17:16
I sold shirts but the great thing about shirts is that people are always going to need shirts they're always going to go to work you know forever more they'll
17:23
it's a product that is just going to be steady you know and I can do this for a long time i woke up at the beginning of the pandemic nobody going to work it was
17:29
like sort of this is just impossible and our sales did decline very rapidly you
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know we we were very much a formal shirt tie suit business and nobody was buying
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that product and I think in a way so so that from that point of view it was it was the worst time of my life longer
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term it was probably the best thing that could possibly have happened to me because I think we were a bit a bit like
17:56
an ostrich with a with its head in the sand you know dress down Friday is something that when did that start in
18:02
the 1990s 1980s probably you know there'd been a gradual move people were dressing down not just on Fridays they
18:09
were they were being more casual at at work and we were sort of um you know so the general trend was was sort of down
18:16
for that formal wear and we just weren't you know we were doing quite well we were doing quite a good job of selling
18:21
shirts so our sales were going up but we were going up in a in a in a tide that was going out and so we were
18:27
underperentializing the business the business was it had started to plateau off um by then we were doing sales of
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about 200 million and it was a bit flat we couldn't really understand why it was flat and it was flat because we were
18:40
selling product that our customer didn't want you know they they would go they'd gone more casual and in the pandemic
18:46
they didn't just go more more casual they just they just went casual I mean it just they stopped the formal alto together so it was a damn go kick up the
18:52
ass that we needed and subsequent to that we made some pretty radical changes to the business and postcoid we we've
18:59
had a great time and so you can slot the effects of covid on your business and on
19:05
your customers behavior into a longer story about people's sense of formal
19:12
wear changing or fashion changing or smart casual changing or the professional um the sort of the reality
19:20
of of of professional life particularly for men which remains your customer base had been changing
19:25
um do you feel like you've got a a good sense on on how it's changing how it
19:31
might change again is there any bit of you that's nostalgic for the days where suit and tie was what you wore to work
19:37
versus what you see now walking around the square mile um I I think what happens is that the
19:44
suit and tie is actually still it's pretty important um and just recently
19:49
there's been increasing movement uh amongst well publicized movement
19:55
amongst some of the big banks and some of the you know big companies who are just saying look you're coming back to the office 5 days a week so we you know
20:01
people say to me you're still selling ties does anyone buy a tie you know our ties are double digit up this year and
20:07
last year suits are double digit up this year and last year big growth in ties and suits but but what it's done what
20:14
the pandemic's done with the with making us realize that actually men don't just want to wear suits and ties it's opened
20:20
up the huge you know there is a huge market for men's wear outside of that formal you know the the um the semi the
20:27
the the the semismart and the casual and the and the you the weekend wear and got
20:33
what you wear if you go and play golf or you know there's a the the market is so much more than just the formal side and
20:38
and one of the big battles for us is actually you know we have a pretty broad range now and it's making people
20:44
understand that we we sell much more than just shirts and shirts and ties and suits um so it's been a it's been a very
20:51
good thing um and I think we've adapted because we had to because if we hadn't
20:56
we would have gone bust again uh we've adapted pretty well to it and we now sell you know the the range is is I say
21:04
very broad but not too broad i hope not too broad um tell us about differences if there are any between the UK market
21:11
and in the US where are you in the US market how many stores do you have operating there at the moment we have 14
21:17
stores in the US okay from when when was the first the first one was in um 2001 okay so you've had a footprint
21:24
there for a while we've actually had a footprint for a while yeah is it growing more recently uh the US is our biggest
21:29
market much bigger than the UK actually um and so the US is a great market for us i mean the US is a much bigger market
21:35
than the UK so it it sort of you know we've been we've been there for 20 nearly 25 years so it's well actually
21:40
knowing the doing the mail order we've been there more than 25 years so we've been there a long time we've done
21:46
it you know like the rest of the business who done it slowly and it's grown it's grown very well and and I
21:51
think one of the um one of the nice things about selling shirts is that you know you can go pretty much anywhere in
21:57
the world and people will men wear not dissimilar clothing anywhere pretty much
22:03
anywhere in the world there's a few places where they don't and the US is it's a very different customer their
22:09
mindset is very different and a lot of retail well publicized go to America thinking oh well it's just five times
22:15
bigger than the UK do what we do in the UK Okay and it it'll it'll it'll it'll work well um but when it comes to the
22:21
the the customer themselves but the but the actual what they wear is quite similar so that works very well for us
22:27
because we can sell pretty much the range you know we don't do anything special for the US you know we might
22:34
find that they wear more white shirts in the US than they do here so there's a slight different range in in in in in
22:40
the product they like or in Germany they don't like pink shirts and you know different markets have different slight
22:46
nuances but um basically we sell the same product range in the US as we do in the in in the UK and it's um makes life
22:54
much easier well the retail sector is is always in the news uh it is with us at
23:00
least anyway yeah um and particularly so these days where and it's not just the
23:05
retail sector but all sorts of businesses facing challenges what you might say foreign and domestic yeah um
23:12
we've got trade issues we've got tariff issues and then closer to home there's all kinds of twists and turns in
23:19
government policy consumer confidence etc so we'll just try to unpick a few of those but how um we'll come on to the
23:26
sort of UK market UK's own issues in a moment um how um how vulnerable do you
23:32
feel how exposed are you in any way to the sort of the larger global economic forces and and those forces are often
23:39
now being shaped by American policy in particular tariffs a concern the trade
23:44
barriers a concern are you having to war game any scenarios or Yeah we are we are wargaming scenarios I mean one of the
23:50
big things for anybody shipping into the US direct which is what we do so we ship from our warehouse in Milton Kes into
23:56
the US is we have um you know the US has a day minimous charge on and anything
24:02
under $800 can go into the US duty-free and Trump decided to take that
24:07
away one day then the next day it was absolute chaos so he then put it he took it away again so but there is a
24:12
possibility he will say everything everything going into the US you pay you pay you pay duty at whatever rate he
24:18
decides it's going to be whether it's 200% on French wine or quite what he's going to decide on on shirts I don't
24:23
know but um that is you know US is our biggest market we do ship everything
24:29
direct so we ship it in at at retail price so if we're paying full duty at
24:34
retail price on products going into the US that's going to be very very expensive for us so we do wargame that
24:40
and and it's likely that if we if he did do that you know we're looking at you know
24:46
building a warehouse in the US and and shipping in at wholes you know shipping in wholesale and then and then doing all
24:51
the pick and pack and distri distribution out of the US which is would be very expensive in many ways as
24:58
complexity to the business because it at the moment we have one big warehouse in Milton Kes and we can have you know 500
25:04
white shirts in a 16 collar with a 34 sleeve and a single cuff if you suddenly have to split it across
25:10
two warehouses you're always going to find that the people in the UK want to buy the stuff that's in the US warehouse it just becomes its complexity so it's
25:17
not good for us but we are wargaming that and and I think you know trade I mean tariffs are I don't think any any
25:24
retail business is going to argue that you know tariffs are good for them uh whether governments decide that it's
25:30
better for the overall uh state of the their their particular economy is down to you know well it's
25:36
it's up for debate but you're not going to find a retailer who's going to agree that it's a good idea no I suspect not
25:42
so you're wargaming that i wonder I mean is there any chance that you're forced into making quite substantial logistical
25:49
operational changes to your business as a result of Trump policy is there any chance perhaps that you know in a bit
25:55
like the way CO gave you a kick up the ass that you might look back in six or seven years and say like I can't believe we never had a warehouse in America is
26:02
there any way that might actually No that's that's that's a that's a really good point because it is something you
26:08
know at the moment you know we don't have that many stores in the US we have a lot more well a few twice the number
26:14
of stores in the UK as we do in the US um which is slightly strange when the US market is five times bigger than the UK
26:20
you'd think we'd have more stores if it everything else being we should have more stores in the US we do have a we
26:25
have a our logistics company manage a warehouse for us in the US which handles the store so with for the store stuff we
26:32
ship it in and they manage it for us um but you know they're slightly bursting
26:38
at the seams and that's slightly constraining the number of stores we can open in the US so you know we're sort of
26:43
saying hang on a minute you know let's not look forward and this is the great thing about being private you can sort of you can look forward 10 years 20
26:50
years you know in 20 years time I suspect our business in the US will be not just a bit bigger than the UK it'll be much bigger than the UK and I suspect
26:56
we'll have more stores in the US than we will in the UK so obviously there will come a point when we will need a full-on
27:03
warehouse in the US it's just a question of when because it's a question of Yeah it's a question of of of how quick the
27:09
payback is right now the payback is going to be slower than if we did it when we wanted to do it if we're forced
27:15
into doing it it's it's now is not quite the right time but as you say you know I think in 20 years time if we look back
27:21
and we do have a warehouse there we'll think this has been great and sticking with the UK again um retail is a sector
27:29
hospitality is another sectors that you know that particularly have high rates of of employment particularly employment
27:36
of young people people starting out in their career or part-time people have been particularly battered by changes to
27:42
national insurance yeah and also I hear a lot of people talk about concerns around changes to just the regulation
27:48
around employment with the employment uh rights bill currently being debated yeah
27:53
taking those two things separately or if you like together do you feel like the UK is currently fertile or supportive
28:01
territory for a business like yours yeah I
28:06
mean the UK is not alone in having a few issues with their overall balance sheet
28:14
you know the problem is is that the UK doesn't have any money but nor does France nor does Germany nor does America actually you know nobody has any money
28:21
and if if you're a business you know you're trying to make yourself into a better business you've got to either
28:27
increase your sales or reduce your costs and a government's sort of in a
28:32
fortunate position of being able to It's sort of easier for them to increase sales increase sales is basically
28:38
putting up taxes it's easier for them to do that than to reduce costs in a business it's quite hard to increase
28:43
sales if you're in because you're in a competitive environment and uh you you can put the prices up you know no
28:49
problem but if the customer stops buying you know which they're imperfectly entitled to do you've got a problem i
28:55
think if the government puts up taxes there's not a lot you can do about it um other than you start to make changes to
29:01
your business and the question is are you going to end up being a smaller business generating less tax or is the
29:08
you know your customers going to adapt to it and accept that they're you know you're going to put your prices up because you got to pay more you know
29:14
what what's going to happen i mean no one no one really knows but I'd say that it's not easy doing business in the UK
29:20
um it's not that easy doing business in in in in in many other countries in Western Europe um either so it's a sort
29:28
of you know we're sort of all in the same boat together it it's well publicized problems that all these
29:34
countries have and I think as a business owner you got to be a bit careful because you can either be you can either
29:39
I always think you can either be in business or you can be in politics but I think business people who tried to go into politics have I think almost
29:45
without exception have failed um and equally politicians going into business that doesn't really happen
29:51
either so it's a sort of different skills i suppose it depends what you mean about business quite a few of them end up on boards after they've after
29:58
they've performed their public service that's true that's a different it's a different kind of business they don't become entrepreneurs ne necessarily they
30:04
don't they don't become entrepreneur they're not they're not at the front end they're opening doors it's the world's most famous businessman has become the
30:11
world's most famous president and forcing you to build warehouses you didn't want to build um he wasn't necessarily a great businessman but
30:17
that's up for debate as well certainly is yeah um well we had the prime minister K Star here writing in city um
30:26
very recently and in which he was saying that there is nothing more important to him than economic growth um and he
30:32
obviously knew his audience via this um newspaper because he said all the right things that you and I would like to hear
30:39
a prime minister say about how there's nothing more important than the private sector nothing more dynamic than entrepreneurs nothing more valuable than
30:46
family businesses and you know I went through that article line by line and I thought well that's true but actually
30:52
you've undermined it by this and you've undermined that by that so do you feel like this is a government and it might
30:57
not be unique to this government by the way because politicians are a strange breed but thinking about this government and its focus on economic growth does
31:04
their rhetoric match reality the reality that you see because you will have got a
31:09
number you'll have a number that you wouldn't otherwise have had to calculate about the you know additional costs on your wage bill for example um so do you
31:18
do you think that that rhetoric matches reality at the moment i don't think I mean there are very few there have been
31:23
very few governments in my lifetime where their rhetoric matches reality um
31:29
as I said politicians very rarely come from a business background i think it's well publicized that this cabinet or
31:36
this government have not they they have not had business experience but to be fair you know the previous government
31:41
not many of them had either you know they made some pretty unfriendly decisions towards businesses and I think
31:47
you know it would take a you you'd have to be you know from from another planet
31:52
to think that actually business is the most it is the most important thing it's the only thing that that creates what
31:59
the wealth to pay for everything else you know it's it's it's large business and in this country there's a lot of
32:05
small business that creates that wealth so you know it's it's great that Karma says that that businesses are most
32:11
important but it's just that is just obvious i mean I don't think anyone's going to disagree with that the problem is is that you know you know how do you
32:19
help those businesses to grow at a time when your cost base is very very high
32:25
and you know that that's the problem and and when I look at what what this government have done and what the last government did I don't see much help to
32:32
businesses actually um and I think that's you know you you
32:37
have a choice as as a business person either you say right this is ridiculous I'm going to go into politics and change
32:43
it or you say Right I'm in business the world is what it is i've got to make the
32:49
most of it there's no point winging about what the government are doing or not doing because they're not going to change i've got to get on and make my
32:56
own decisions in my own business to make sure that this business succeeds and I think you know most good you know good
33:02
businesses will touch wood always they'll always succeed they'll always come through because they will work with
33:08
the whatever the economic environment gives them um I mean it's always I mean it's think the cliche in in in retail is
33:16
I always think when a retailer starts talking about the weather that that's a that's a bad retailer because the
33:21
weather the weather has been basically the same it's been the same forever you get you know sometimes it's a bit less
33:27
sunny and sometimes it's a bit colder and sometimes a bit hotter when you start blaming the weather that that's you're losing they've lost the plot it's
33:34
not about the weather it's you know you you need to you know you should know your business well enough you know the
33:39
weather's going to be variable you've got to you know you've got to take cost out of the business you got to be more efficient you got to be more productive
33:45
i mean it's there's some basic business things that a lot of businesses sort of ignore and I think that's the same with the with the macroeconomic picture
33:51
you've got to be it is what it is you know we're probably going to get we're going to get hit because there is no money and you know cutting costs
33:59
is you know cutting costs is a big deal at the moment the the concept of it doing it is rather harder um you know it
34:07
it's it's easier said than done so I mean in tangible terms are you going to have uh fewer people working for you in
34:13
a year than you would otherwise have or you going to have in absolute terms a reduction in your headcount across the
34:18
business i think one of the things that came out of I I I said with COVID that COVID was initially the worst time of my
34:25
life and laterally probably one of the best things that ever happened to me because it it it woke me up as to what
34:31
was going on in the business one of the things we did because we had to was we
34:37
had to have a real close look at our business and the number of people we had in the business and what they were all
34:43
doing and we had to make some very very difficult decisions about losing people so we had um a thousand people when when
34:51
COVID hit we had to make 250 people redundant and we went through and you
34:58
know we tried to you know we we we you know you know we it's a hard decision
35:04
but ultimately you know we lost some people who maybe weren't as productive as they could have been uh people who
35:10
would sort of sit in meeting I have a bit of an allergy to meetings generally but sit in meetings and sort of
35:15
pontificate about things and come out of the having never made decisions and you
35:20
know it's a tough one but what what we ended up with was 250 less people so I think now as a business we're pretty
35:26
lean but I think a lot of businesses who weren't forced to you know if we hadn't been forced by co to do that we'd still
35:32
have those 250 people and we'd be a much less efficient business so I think we
35:37
were lucky um in in with with hindsight going through going through co but I
35:42
think there's a lot of businesses who are going through that process now because in a the you know the changes to
35:48
you know there's national insurance and all the all all um you know the all all the changes
35:55
they're changing the way you can do business and it's forcing you to make a change and people will be employing
36:01
fewer people well look it's been fascinating to talk to you and um I will
36:07
I'll end on one final question thinking of perhaps a student watching this maybe in their own student digs now thinking
36:14
about starting a business or wondering whether they should start a business versus join a grad scheme or something
36:19
what advice do you give would you give now to somebody who feels they want to be an entrepreneur whether or not
36:25
they've got the right idea yet what advice would you give i think it's not
36:30
about the idea it's about the if you feel you want to be an entrepreneur and you're 19 years old and
36:40
you've never been to a cash and carry bought a bulk load of Jimmy Dodger biscuits and
36:47
sold them in the playground or you know gone around car washing for
36:53
your neighbors to make a few few bucks you're probably or possibly not
37:00
the right person to be a grad a 19-year-old entrepreneur you've
37:05
got to be you know I think for the right person it's the best thing in the world you
37:10
know I feel like I started the business 38 years ago i feel like I I've never really done a day's work in my life and
37:17
it's probably looking through rose tinted spectacles but I feel you know I've loved I've you know I I don't feel like
37:23
I've done a job you know I I've never got up on on Monday morning thinking "Oh god I've got to go to work." I I've loved Mondays i've loved Fridays i've
37:30
loved Sundays but I think I was you know I was always sort of hustling i was sort of one of those slightly annoying
37:36
hustlers i had lots of little businesses before I started the shirt business and I think if you're the sort of if you're
37:42
if you're if you haven't done that and it's not it doesn't have to be in your blood to be an entrepreneur because I
37:49
think you know the alternative you can be an entrepreneur at any stage of your life it does become harder as you get older but there are people who started
37:55
amazing businesses you know they go off and they do they learn their their trade in other businesses and they start a
38:00
business at 30 or 40 or 50 and they become incredible entrepreneurs you know
38:06
it's um that's perfectly possible but to be a to be a you know to do it straight out of school or university you need to
38:13
have you need to be a hustler and it's not something you can say "Oh well I'd like to be an entrepreneur so I'm going to go and do it." I think it's that's
38:18
that's tough all right a hustler but a well-dressed hustler i hope so all right Nick thanks so much for talking to us
38:24
it's this year and thank you thank you very much
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