Steptoes walking tall after decades of

By Miranda Robertson miranda@westdorsetmag.co.uk

Bridport’s Lyndon ‘Riff’

Tilbury of Steptoes has had quite the journey –showing patience and agility still pays off in retail, despite massive changes in the high street over the past few decades. And the 72-year-old shoe seller shows no sign of slowing down. Though he’d quite like to go back to his real name.

“I used to play in a band years ago – I still play in a band – and they called me Riff. Now I think I quite like my real name, but I don’t know how to get people to start calling me that…”

Riff, whose full name is Lyndon Edgar Flawn Tilbury, started selling footwear from a market stall 40 years ago – till he discovered that the rent on a shop worked out about the same price and saved him erecting a 50ft market stand every day.

There were many difficult patches along the way, with Riff robbing Peter to pay Paul, using post-dated cheques to stay afloat and occasionally buying ‘absolutely useless’ stock as he tried to smell what sells.

Now he is celebrating 30 years in his hugely popular shop near the traffic lights in East Street, having seen other shoe shops come and go and reaching the stage where he has a full stock room and no debts. He is chipper.

He said: “I didn’t start the business to make a fortune. “I just wanted us to have enough, to be secure. “We put all our money back into the business. We don’t owe anybody anything.”

Riff ‘dropped out’ aged 19 and went to India. When he returned to the UK his mother had remarried and moved to Weymouth with her new husband. As he was unemployed, he was forced to move back in with mum.

He said: “I stayed here after she moved back to

Aylesbury. I worked at Henry Ling’s printers in Dorchester for five years and they gave me a room. “Then I worked on a market stall selling espadrilles imported from Spain. I had a hamper full of espadrilles and a Ford Escort estate and would sell outside Wimpy.

“At first I wasn’t very good at buying stock. I did 18 festivals with the espadrilles for the first year, but of course they don’t really sell in winter. The second year I went to Bristol and started looking at slippers and stuff I hated. But I bought a few boxes and put them on the pavement, and all these old ladies came and bought them. I also spent £10,000 on absolutely useless stock…”

He met wife Julie and her little brother Jason Thorne and they started working together, doing all the markets and festivals. He said: “We formed a working combination where we all brought different stuff to the company. I was the one with the big mouth who made all the mistakes, Julie was the one with the attention to detail and Jason followed everything his sister did.

“This was 38 years ago. We worked really hard, attending most of the fairs, working straight through from 6am on the Friday to 6pm on the Sunday.

“We had no money – we used a lot of trade credit and post-dated cheques. “But eventually we started doing a bit better. We became huge Oakley sunglasses dealers. We moved from Dorchester to Bridport as I know so many people here.”

In Bridport, Riff found his spiritual home, among leftleaning, socially-minded folk. “We are socially motivated,” he said. “The customer comes first.

“We’ve still got plenty of independent retailers here.

“People come on holiday and always buy their shoes here. And people come