GARDINERS TAKE GIANT STEPS INTO THE NEW RETAIL LANDSCAPE

On a windy industrial estate on the edge of Gloucester, inside a group of ordinary-looking warehouses, sit almost one million pairs of shoes ready for despatch

By Nicky Godding

From Hush Puppies to Muck Boots, Crocs to Dr Martens and Rocket Dogs, pretty much every form of shoe attire, apart from really high-end fashion (we’ll come to that later), can be found on the racks of Gardiners, the UK’s biggest distributor of everyday, work and safety footwear in the UK.

This 140-year old family business, which turns over £50 million annually, is now being run by the descendants of the first Gardiners, who started the business in Alvin Street, Gloucester in 1860.

A matching pair of businesses embrace diversification to grow

The Gardiners Bros Group is two businesses: Footsure and Gardiners.

Footsure distributes primarily work and safety footwear and the CAT range of work clothing. Its biggest accounts include Screwfix, Mole Valley Farmers, Wynnstay and independent construction or agricultural retailers.

Gardiners distributes non-safety related footwear and sells dozens of well-known brands.

The backbone of that business was the smaller independent retailers, but increasingly the company is servicing national retailers such as Debenhams and John Lewis, where online e-commerce is as important as the traditional stores.

Footsure makes up around 60 per cent of the Group’s business.

The Group’s brand extension business, where it buys and holds brands to sell through retailers’ websites, makes up around 20 per cent of the whole business.

Chief Executive James Gardiner, 45, works alongside his cousins, directors Ben Gardiner, 45, and Mark Holloway, 47.

James, an accountant by profession, joined the business in 2000, moving back to Gloucestershire from London. Ben arrived three years later and Mark joined around 10 years ago, bringing IT expertise from running a technology business.

The family members sit within a sevenstrong management team that has grown an already successful business from an £8 million turnover when James arrived to work alongside his father and uncle, Jolyon and Peter Gardiner, to its current turnover of around £50 million.

Now the company is aiming to double its turnover again. But with high street retail struggling, the company’s traditional customer base – how come the business is doing so well?

While fewer of us shop in store, more are buying online. And Gardiners adapted early and successfully to online retail.

Visit a bricks and mortar store such as Next, and you’ll see a limited range of shoes. Visit the website and there are dozens more. Called range extension, this is where Gardiners is winning.

James explained: “We list additional products on their website, uploading images and data, integrating with their systems.

“Their orders filter through to us and we despatch to the consumer. This widens consumer choice without the retailer taking the stock risk.”

The retailer can try out new brands and Gardiners can put its huge stock-holding through many different retailers. To achieve this the business has invested heavily in technology, employing four full-time developers building the software to integrate with its customers’ systems.