Excellent insight and reflection on the current state of the Dorset Economy

1. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
“They fell 86% to £72million,” reports
David l’Anson, managing partner at the
Poole office of chartered accountants
and business advisers Mazars. “Actually,
though, there’s a very good reason why
you can remain standing. Fitness First
reported a £451million impairment of
assets, while Bournemouth International
Airport have a £38.5million impairment,
and if we take those two companies
out of the equation, actually pre-tax
profits rose by 32% to £786million.”
The biggest company in the county,
in terms of turnover, is LV – Liverpool
Victoria Friendly Society, with
sales of £2.2billion, up 27%. Next is
Cobham plc with £1.7billion, which
represents a 5.7% reduction, with
Meggitt plc much closer on their
heels at £1.6billion as a consequence
of a 10.3% topline improvement.
The biggest independently-owned
company is Lush Cosmetics. The
cosmetics manufacturer and retailer
achieved sales of £272million, up 3.8%.
Leaving aside companies which have
gained turnover as a consequence of
acquisitions, the biggest increase was
achieved - organically - by New Earth
Solutions Group. Their sales increased
122% to £24.7million, and during
the course of the last financial year
developed its own patented technology
which can convert waste-devised fuel
into a high calorific gas which in turn
can be converted into electricity.
The last year has seen some
consolidation, notably in agricultural
machinery supplies where Dorchester
based C Smart Ltd lifted turnover
by 60% to £19.8million, mainly as a
consequence of acquiring Ashworth Farm
Machinery And there could be signs
of improvement within the construction
industry. McCarthy & Stone managed
to improve sales by 14% over the year
to £234.7million, while most contractors
who filed full or medium accounts
managed double digit percentage growth.
The biggest pre-tax profit? That was
achieved by Meggitt plc with £292million,
and a margin of 18.2%, followed by
Cobham with £206million and a margin
of 11.8%. The biggest percentage
increase in pre-tax profit was achieved
by Sunseeker International. The luxury
boatbuilder converted pre-tax losses of
£7million to a profit of £17million.
And special mention should be
made of Merlin Entertainment. While
the registered office of the private-
DORSET Economy
Report & Accounts
TOP 150 COMPANIES IN DORSET
On each individual company: Financial data -
turnover, pre-tax profit, profit margin: Employment
data - staff numbers, average salary, productivity;
together with previous year comparison.
Available to download at www.decisionmagazine.co.uk
The collective turnover of the top 150 companies in Dorset
was £13.6billion, an increase of 10.6% over the year.
But maybe you need to be sitting down before
seeing the collective pre-tax profit figures.

2. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
equity owned top company is based in
Luxembourg, the long-established and
consistent management team led by chief
executive Nick Varney have built Merlin
to become the second largest visitor
attraction in the world – the largest in
Europe – from offices here in Poole.
Over the year they upped their pre-tax
profits from £25.5million to £95million.
The current assets of the 200 largest
companies in Dorset totalled £5.3billion,
an increase of 1.5% over the year.
Current liabilities rose 1.4% to £3.6
billion, while combined assets of £15.3
billion outstripped current liabilities by
31%. If we look at net assets of £4 billion,
that figures represents a decrease of 5.5%.
But that figure is mainly the consequence
of a further fall of 672 million in the net
asset value of Fitness First. If we pare that
figure back level with last year’s figure
for that company, then net asset values
for the other top companies collectively
rose 10%. The company which achieved
the biggest percentage increase in net
assets - and we’ve taken £1million as
the starting point - is AIM Aviation,
up from £1.9million to £6.2million.
“While Dorset is home to the
headquarters of a number of companies
with a global reach, our research provides
empirical evidence of the importance of
growing the SMEs in the county because
of their mission critical importance
to its economic prosperity,” explains
Jonathan Sibbett, managing director
of property advisers Sibbett Gregory.
“The top 25 companies in Dorset
employ 91,998 staff. The next 175
companies contribute another 20,333.
Even if we factor in the 4000 jobs at JP
Morgan in Bournemouth, a company not
included in the ranking because it isn’t
the head office of either the group or one
of its subsidiaries, the top 200 companies
in Dorset contribute the equivalent of
26% of the actual jobs in the county.
“Now a number of the leading
companies based in Dorset employ people
across the world, not just here, and we
haven’t factored in public sector jobs. But
the point is that public sector jobs aren’t
going to be the future, and it isn’t likely,
because of their sphere of operation, that
Dorset will be the beneficiary if some of
our major employers create more jobs.”
“Overall, the number of people
employed by the top 200 companies in
Dorset is 112,331, an increase of 4.4%
“The largest independent company
in terms of staff numbers is Lush
Cosmetics, with 5007 staff, an increase of
9.3%. The total salaries paid by the top
200 companies, leaving aside national
insurance contributions by both parties is
£2.7biillion, compared to £2.4billion the
year before. The average salary, shorn of
NI and pension contributions, is £27,766,
which is a slight decrease of 0.3%.
“The remuneration of the highest
paid directors at the largest 150
companies in the county decreased
as well – by 8.5%. The average
remuneration was £261,000.”
BUSINESS PORTRAITS
History provides the
leadership platform
“We’ve always used our heritage as a
foundation, the base from which we
can more firmly see the way forward,”
explains Anthony Woodhouse,
managing director of brewers Hall
& Woodhouse (established 1777).
Absolutely they’ve being doing that.
But even given the location of their head
office in the more rural climes of Dorset,
it would be hard to assemble the number
of bushels the company has somehow
kept its lights under over the years.
Hall & Woodhouse have tended to
take the leadership role among regional
brewers - establishing Badger as a
brand, the first to produce bitter in cans.
The company opened the (perhaps
unfortunately named) Badger Steak
Houses before a more famous national
name served their first prawn cocktail,
as well as creating a national soft drinks
brand, Panda Pops, which Hall &
Woodhouse sold to Nicholls plc in 2005.
Today the company still produces its Rio
range of fruit-based sparkling water.
Innovation in terms of the estate
as well; one of its latest pubs, in
Portishead, is built out of twenty-
eight shipping containers.
“Whether it’s a property or a brand,
our approach has always been - will
this still have the ability to thrive in
years to come?” Woodhouse explains.
“There has always been change in
the licensed trade. Two centuries ago,
rural pubs looked much like someone’s
home. Workers would come in off the
fields down a few pints, and then go
home. Today, that workforce is a tiny
percentage of the population, and it
isn’t socially acceptable to drink that
much and then go home to the family.
“Today, 75% of our pubs are food-
led. Fifteen years ago our beer sales
would have been 75% through the
on-trade, but today the majority comes
through supermarkets. But we only
supply Badger cask ale to our own pubs
to give them a point of difference.”
“We’ve been entrusted with the
family silver to polish,” says Anthony
Woodhouse. “Our role is to add more
lustre with active and responsible
stewardship so we can then hand it on
to the next generation in even better
condition. Whether you have a long-
term or short-term view fundamentally
alters how you run a business. But any
business has to expect the unexpected,
and every year we take two days out to
review strategy. We’re brewers and proud
of it, it is our life and soul, otherwise we’d
just be another any old pub company;
but that doesn’t mean we stop looking at
where our capital is parked so we don’t
become dependent on any one activity.”
That commitment to brewing is
demonstrated by a £5million investment
in new production facilities, funded
by the sale of land owned by the
company in Sussex - which took seven
years to get through planning.
“We are always looking for the
equivalent of a Waitrose niche in a
market dominated by large managed
operations that have vast economies of
scale,” explains Anthony Woodhouse.
“Our vulnerability to the vagaries of the
weather comes from the predominantly
rural position of our houses; metropolitan
locations still fare well despite the
weather. Demographics are on our
side in that the south and south-west
are affluent, and have fared relatively
well, and we are bolstered by the
attractiveness of the area as a tourist
destination and a place to retire.”
Expansion naturally would come from
consolidation, with one independent
acquiring another. Fullers acquiring
George Gale & Co is one example, and
Hall & Woodhouse bought Sussex-based
King & Barnes, which added fifty-house

3. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
pubs to their estate. It used to be an
attractive way of expanding, but Hall
& Woodhouse are more cautious than
before. “If you look at what could be
gained now, how many could provide
us with the houses of the future rather
than the ‘tail’ pubs that nobody really
wants? muses Anthony Woodhouse.
“I think we are better investing in
specific locations than an estate.”
Having been an investment banker
for twelve years, Anthony Woodhouse
left the City to set up a cricket coaching
academy for children and a charity
for the homeless. When his brother
David died suddenly in 2009, Anthony
Woodhouse became managing director
of Hall & Woodhouse. Why hadn’t he
joined before? “Because the business is
there to generate wealth, not to create
employment for the family,” he explains.
In the last couple of years the
company set up the Hall & Woodhouse
Academy (with two full-time trainers)
to promote what it calls its DNA - which
stands for Development of technical
and behavioural skills, Nuturing the
culture, Acknowledgement of positive
performance. Every member of staff
goes through the academy - no matter
how many years they have been with the
business - so that the Ways of Woodhouse
(the name of the pocket book which
goes with the course) are embedded.
“It’s important to explore, develop, and
implement the company culture,” says
Anthony Woodhouse, “but it can’t be a
fad. The truth is rooted in our history, and
this just enables everyone to understand
those fundamental front-line values.”
But this isn’t a company using history
as a comfort blanket. The Hall &
Woodhouse board includes Tim Clarke,
a former CEO of Mitchells & Butler
(a pub operating company), and Mike
Street previously director of customer
service and operations at British Airways
as non execs. “The board room isn’t a
cosy place,” says Anthony Woodhouse.
Not surprisingly, Hall & Woodhouse
take a view on tied houses (where the
landlord is obliged to buy all of the beer
and other drinks from the brewery or
pub operating company) which isn’t the
industry norm. “It should be obvious
that if you are a member of a ‘club’, you
should be able to buy things cheaper
rather than dearer,” says Anthony
Woodhouse, “so if the arrangement
meant our tied landlords are having to
pay more for their beer, wine, and spirits,
it would mean we would lose our most
entrepreneurial people. We see them
as business partners, not tenants, and
establish a fair trade figure. It wasn’t
the tie which was the problem but the
share of the pie. It meant that we took
a £500k hit on our P&L but we did it
because it was the right thing to do.”
www.hall-woodhouse.co.uk
Anthony Woodhouse

4. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
Planning creates the
market leader
How does one of the country’s leading
planning consultancies manage to keep its
flag flying when its offices were nowhere
near most of its clients and projects.
“We always enter projects for
awards as we want to be the best at
what we do and recognition from the
industry helps that process,” explains
managing director Tim Hancock.
Among those received is the Royal
Town Planning Institute planning
consultancy of the year award,
although the practice had been in
two minds about putting themselves
forward. “We are happy to promote
the quality of a project but we didn’t
want to shout about ourselves,”
explains Hancock. “But the award
re-affirmed our position as a national
practice which happens to be based in
Bournemouth rather than a peripheral,
regionally-focused consultancy.”
Although how predominantly London-
based potential clients should think
otherwise is a bit of a mystery. Because
on the master-planning roll of honour
is the McLaren Technology Centre,
Woking, (built on Green Belt land with
the support of the local authorities
concerned), the Rolls-Royce car plant
(nestling in to the South Downs, again
with local authority approval), the Warner
Bros Leavesden Studios (Harry Potter),
a proposed new town at Northstowe,
near Cambridge, and the Mercedes-
Benz World project at Brooklands.
“Fundamentally,” says Hancock, “our
approach follows the belief that planning
problems are there to be solved.”
As well as opportunities to be identified.
Hancock recalls persuading industrial
conglomerate Hanson to let the practice
undertake a land review in one particular
region of the country for one of his
companies. Three possible development
schemes were identified within three
months, including a motorway service
area. Six months later, Terence O’Rourke
gained the necessary planning permission
and the site was was sold on. Impressed,
the client gave the practice the contract to
review the company’s national land assets.
Twenty years later, Terence O’Rourke are
still working on projects which came out
of that review, such as the site of some
old gravel workings outside Cambridge.
“Our mantra used to be good
developments should happen,” Hancock
explains, “but we now talk about
creating successful environments.
Planning is still at the core, but design
and sustainability are key elements.”
And he can provide an example of
how that all comes together. At the
650acre former airfield at Kings Hill,
Kent, Terence O’Rourke put together
a mixed-use community for a US-based
developer, with four million sqft of BI
building, 500 houses, community facilities,
and retail. “We created an integrated
community, what the developers describe
as total life experience, where people
can live, work, and play,” says Hancock.
“Today, nearly 20% of the people who
live at Kings Hill work at Kings Hill.”
A forensic, almost investigative
approach to find a link between a
proposed development and the locale
was certainly in evidence at Brooklands.
“When the racing circuit opened in
1907,” says Hancock, “our research
found that the founder of Mercedes-
Benz donated a trophy for the first race,
which incidentally was won by one his
cars. Suddenly we had the link between
the company and the location for their
proposed development. What that
enabled us to do was to demonstrate the
relevance of Mercedes-Benz to the site,
that they cherished the location, and that
we had added some restoration of the old
track as a consequence. We also built in a
covenant that if the company should ever
leave what is now called Mercedes-Benz
World, the driver experience part of the
site would revert to the local council.”
Localism is part of the Terence
O’Rourke approach. “In addition to
producing a robust masterplan, we
need to be able to identify the key
people,” says Hancock, “the influencers
who could be there for us, those in the
middle, and those who will be against
the project. The strategy is to put
ourselves in the shoes of the objectors.”
Although Hancock talks about the
company having a strong brand which
is associated with complex, challenging
projects, one word could encapsulate his
description - incinerators. And they’ve
got planning permission for eight of the
nine schemes they were involved with.
“We are only associated with schemes
where the operators have an integrated
waste strategy which encompasses
recycling facilities and energy recovery,”
he says. “Our ethos is sustainability,
so we we have to be satisfied about
the risk to the environment.”
But the desire to have a London
presence preyed heavily on the company,
which opened offices there last year.
“I think we needed a presence there if
only to get work from new prospects
based in London, even if they then use
us for schemes outside of the capital,”
muses Hancock. “It has also been more
difficult to recruit graduates in Dorset.”
To address that, Terence O’Rourke
sponsor them to gain post-grad
qualifications. “It buys us goodwill,
and it means they have bought into
our culture and want to be here for
the right reasons,” says Hancock. “The
constraint of this is the effect on the
pace of growth we can achieve.”
www.torltd.co.uk
Planting the question
to discover inspiration
Inspiration, says Warren Haskins. He
pauses after answering what had been
rather a direct question - what is the
main reason why people drive to one of
his company’s four garden centres?
“We’re here to stimulate their
thinking,” continues the chairman of
Haskins Garden Centres. “They might
have a project in mind, bedding plants
for a border for example, but they
haven’t a shopping list like they would
have for the supermarket. Yes; I would
say they are looking for inspiration.
“Twenty years ago garden centre
businesses would still be describing
themselves as plantsmen, but although
the customer wants and expects
informed advice and service, we have to
be retailers first and foremost because
the customer wants to same experience
as when they go to a John Lewis. I try
not to use the word gardening when
I describe our offer. When you buy a
meal, it’s all about the flavours, the
aroma, not the frying pan and the stove.
“This is a touchy, feely, aromatic
business, and you can’t replicate
that on the internet.”
When Warren Haskins took over as the
fourth generation of the family in 1969,
he focused on retail, relinquishing the
nursery, the landscaping business, and the

5. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
annual obligation to exhibit at the Chelsea
Flower Show. All for one reason. “Retail
generated revenue more quickly than
growing plants,” he explains. “It meant
we could stock a bigger range of plants
and focus on the best quality available
rather than the best we were able to
grow. When we stopped growing our own
plants the quality of our stock improved
because we could buy from specialist
growers. If you grow your own, that’s
what you stock, regardless of quality.
“So shrubs are hand-picked by our
buyers mainly in the UK but we also
select them from all over Europe - and
the growers know we will only unload
top quality product from their lorries.”
He didn’t leave anything to chance.
Haskins brought in a consultant from
California to help design what was
then the flagship garden centre, the
consequence of J Sainsbury acquiring its
original site. Touches included moving
volume goods (compost for example) as
close as possible to the goods-inwards
door so that there’s no disruption to
the shopping experience if re-stocking
has to take place during store hours.
Outside, covered walkways encircle the
plant displays - so the customer can
still inspect the plants when it rains.
Twenty years on, the master plan was
reviewed, and although the visuals have
a contemporary feel, the conceptual
thinking is pretty much the same.
The range has expanded to include
garden furniture, clothing, and the
barbecue, but Haskins hasn’t blurred
the borders by adding kitchens and
double glazing concessionaires. But
everything else is large scale - the
restaurant at Ferndown, for example,
has 450 covers, and includes a traditional
pizza oven and a carvery. At Christmas
the garden centre stocks a range of
gifts and decorations in place of the
barbecues and furniture which nobody
contemplates buying at that time of year.
Warren Haskins

6. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
It was in 1996, after another of his
retail therapy trips to the USA, that
Haskins went on to set up Hobbycraft,
an out-of-town superstore concept
which sells what the name suggests.
Subsequently, after initially thinking
about a public offering, he sold to
private equity in 2010 but not before
opening the best part of fifty stores.
To give himself the time and space
to make that happen, he brought in
a professional management team for
the garden centre business, taking
the role of CEO at Hobbycraft and
maintaining a non-exec presence at
Haskins as chairman. He still maintains
the latter post, having promoted his
merchandise manager of twenty years,
Julian Whitfield to be chief executive.
Each of the four garden centre outlets
will carry some 35,000 different lines,
10,000 of which change every year
because they are seasonal. Expansion
isn’t so straightforward; Haskins needs
a minimum of ten acres, and an outlet
would have to be within two-and-a-
half hours drive from HQ; a part of the
country not known for cheap real estate.
‘We commission demographic studies
based on customer profiles at existing
gardens centres in an area we are
considering,” explains Haskins. “It means
we can be precise about the attributes of
specific locations. We know that Reading
and Oxford would be good for us.”
The intention is to open a new garden
centre every three years, although
maybe hope is a better description.
“This is a capital intensive business
- we invested £15million over a twenty-
four-month period in a new centre and
refurbishment - but in a recession we
thought there would be sites and assets
available,” muses Haskins. “That hasn’t
been the case though. The size of a
site we would look at will be akin to
a retail park development, so if it has
planning permission for retail, then the
land value is going to be prohibitive.”
If California though is where garden
centres were born, it’s interesting
that their descendants now visit
Haskins to see what can be done. And
Warren Haskins is still in demand
as a speaker internationally; he was
asked to give a talk for example to the
management team at Palmers Garden
Centres, recognised as the foremost
retailer of its kind in New Zealand.
www.haskins.co.uk
Niche distributor
with plenty of legs
With a BSc Hons in biology, his
intention was to work in marine biology,
but Gareth Thomas ended up selling
medical products. “Basically it was
because I needed to eat,” he says. When
employers Dale Corning sold off their
orthopaedic product division, he took
the redundancy package and set up
OsteoTec to distribute the products for
the new owners in the UK and Ireland.
But after ten years, Wright Medical
Technology acquired an Italian business
which had its own UK office, and decided
to take its distribution in-house.
“Over the years we’d brought in
niche, complementary products,
including the plates and screws to
repair the now infamous metatarsal,
but at the time we faced the loss of
46% of our business,” he recalls.
To make matters worse, OsteoTec
was struggling to get product liability
cover because insurers were chary about
companies of their size. Eventually
Thomas re-mortgaged the house
(“again”) but he was confident about
the products in his locker, especially
the Ascension implants, a pyrocarbon
implant which is as hard wearing as
a diamond but with some elasticity
so it doesn’t wear against the bone,
and which is self-lubricating.
Customers include individual surgeons
(200 specialising in feet, 250 on hands)
and surgical podiatrists (there are 150 in
the country, and 110 of them attended the
last annual OsteoTec spring conference).
“A distributor needs a lot of different
legs, so we decided to start producing
our own products, which now account
for 12% of sales,” explains Thomas.
Not that initial attempts paid off in the
way he would have hoped. “We signed
up to the Teaching Company Scheme
at the University of Bath to help with
the development of a wrist implant,” he
recalls. “But when we realised that it
would take more time and money than we
could afford to get it to market, we sold it
to another company; they then shelved it.”
Undeterred, OsteoTec went on
to product a finger implant which is
produced by a contract manufacturer.
Producing their own products
didn’t just increase their range. It also
widened their geography, and today
OsteoTec have distributors in nine
countries. “As a distributor ourselves
in the UK, we know what would attract
a distributor,” says Thomas, “which
is either that they need a portfolio of
products for a particular market or a
footnote at the end of their catalogue.”
Over the last five years, OsteoTec
have developed five new products,
including what is called a distraction
system, which allows soft tissue
healing to occur. “We come up with
product ideas because we are always
talking to surgeons,” says Thomas.
But he has also diversified away from
medical devices. Thomas acquired
the Crazywater outdoor pursuits shop
and on-line business and is thinking of
introducing his own brand products.
www.osteotec.co.uk
www.crazywater.co.uk
Synergy and reputation
provide real collateral
Even in a good year, fork-truck
distributors aren’t as mass-market as you
might think, because only in the order
of 30,000 new vehicles will be purchased
in the UK. When the recession came,
numbers dropped to just over 20,000.
Locators started opportunistically
in 1985 when Brian Cowles was
made redundant by a manufacturer
and persuaded Toyota, who were
looking for representation in
the south, to appoint him.
After one meeting with a prospective
customer, Cowles noticed a racking
and storage salesman waiting to go
in next. “I immediately realised that
the synergy between fork-trucks and
storage hadn’t really been recognised,”
he recalls, “so we began to supply a
turn-key service by providing both.
Certainly Toyota were pleased with
Locators’ performance, and gave them
additional territories stretching into
London, which prompted the company
to open a facility in Thatcham.
It was in 2007 that Toyota acquired
BT Rolatruc, which sold direct to
the customer, and as a consequence
they began to buy out some of their
distributors. “I didn’t want to sell Locators
because it was my legacy,” says Cowles,
“and what they wanted was the business
and the customers, not our people.”
So Toyota gave him six months’
notice. “We were facing the prospect
of losing a lot of our business through
no fault of my own,” he explains. And

7. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
that is when Locators realised that
doing things right in business gives you
a reputation which serves as collateral.
The German fork-truck manufacturer
Still appointed Locators, and invited
all the staff to spend a weekend at their
factory. They came back motivated.
But how did Locators’ Totoya-
based customer base react? “Fork-lift
manufacturers can have almost an
arrogance about their brand,” says
Cowles. “But it’s not like a car. The
customer sees a fork-truck, and the
loyalty is to the supplier of the service.
In fact, 2008 was our best ever year.
We retained 95% of our customer base
as well as developing new markets
not immediately associated with
materials handling and storage.”
Locators went on to import and
distribute the Goupil range of electric
utility vehicles from France, adding a
range of access equipment from Manitou
(also from France) and JLG (USA).
Then there’s the truck designed for
marinas to lift boats in and out of the
water which Locators have supplied to the
Royal Marines and the Olympic sailing
centre at Portland. “The more wheels
we have out there, the busier our parts
and service business,” says Cowles.
“What do we do which is better?
Well, we don’t have a call centre, and
our engineers aren’t in vans with big
fleet numbers on the side,” says Cowles
indicatively, who last year appointed
long-serving (twenty years) sales director
Keith Stewart as managing director.
www.locators.co.uk
Making intelligent use
of developed resources
“Marketing-wise, our name does make
us sound parochial, but there are real
advantages in terms of the cost-base,
says Jonathan Gerson, and managing
director of Dorset Software Services.
“My sales spiel is that actually, we’re
located between London and India.”
Which gives a rather more accurate
impression of the company, which has an
eclectic client roster from Vodafone to the
Luxembourg Natural History Museum.
But actually, the location overlooking
Poole Bay does have its attractions.
“Graduates might be attracted to the
bright lights of the City, but we always
talk to them about flexitime so they can
knock off early for a barbecue on the
beach,” says Gerson. “But if they’re the
type of person who wants to work in a
more corporate environment, it wouldn’t
matter where we are based, they would
still be attracted to go to a Cap Gemini.
“We look for maths and physics
graduates and choose the universities,
such as Warwick and Southampton,
carefully. We go for graduates and put
them through a four-month training
course rather than experienced
programmers because when Microsoft
comes up with a new platform,
everyone has to re-train, so there is
no point in us taking someone on
simply for their existing skill-set.
Started a quarter of a century ago by
Gerson, a programmer who started his
career at Plessey before contracting for
companies such as IBM and a subsidiary
of Eldridge Pope where he co-wrote a
system for managing brewery accounts.
“Contracting then was about putting
lots of us in a building with unlimited
overtime, fourteen-hour days, and pizza
boxes stacked to the ceiling,” he recalls.
In 1991 he was in Germany for a
subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet when
he realised that more hands were
required, so in effect he recruited two
sub-contractors to work with him. “So
really, Dorset Software was effectively
started in Frankfurt,” Gerson observes.
“It was the time of German
reunification, when pharmaceuticals
in East Germany had to be subsidised
because of the difference in pay levels
with West Germany, but this left the
door open for corruption with drugs
being bought in the east and then being
sold in the west. So we developed
software which would monitor the
transactions made by wholesalers.”
A year later, Gerson returned to the
UK, with his two ‘staff’ to rattle around
in an eight-roomed Georgian building
which he mistakenly thought could be
divided and sub-let. But then the Dun &
Bradstreet company asked him to go to
Basel. He returned with a bigger pot of
money this time, but still no UK work.
“We were almost on our last legs when all
of a sudden I got a call from Switzerland
to ask if we would write a specification,”
says Gerson. “I said I would squeeze them
in, and that bought us nine months.”
During which time, other pharma
clients, including Sanofi began to
emerge. “Probably what helped us
was that we had built up experience,
although we hadn’t gone out to develop
that sector,” explains Gerson. “Now it
would be more difficult to find work in
pharmaceuticals because with so many
consolidations the companies are huge.’
Then came an order from a GEC joint
venture which required fifteen program
testers, followed by a successful bid for
a £300,000 contract to write software
which would track information being
given to independent financial advisers
(“won against eleven other firms”).
By now Dorset Software had a staff
complement of twenty and was winning
work from companies in its home county
such as Beales and Teachers Assurance.
At the millennium, staff numbers had
risen to thirty-eight, but the combination
of the dot com bubble bursting, 9-11,
and economic uncertainty suddenly
contributed to a 50% drop in turnover.
Gerson acted decisively. By keeping on
all his staff. “I’d convinced myself that
this was just a short-term blip because
of unforeseen circumstances, that a
turnaround was just around the corner
and that we needed to have the resources
on board be able to earn our way up
the ladder,” he recalls. “Fortunately
that turned out to be true, but the bad
patch lasted for a year and a half rather
than the six months I thought. We were
losing £30,000 a month, so perhaps I
should have listened and downsized.”
To keep everyone busy, the
company produced a web-based
time and attendance system called
TRACE which attracted a number
of purchasers such as Kent County
Council and Black & Decker.
It was in the autumn of 2003 that
Dorset Software put in a bid to write
software for the NHS. “At the time, I
thought it was something we should
then forget about, because there was no
way that we were going to win it against
some of the world’s major players,” says
Gerson. “Then in the November we heard
we had made it to the last three. Then we
had to visit five of their sites, which took
us out of the office for a week. This was
costing us £30,000 at a time when we were
losing £30,000 a week! But in February
2003 we were named as the preferred
contractor for their £1million contract.
We started work in the March, and were
paid on a time and materials basis because
the contract wasn’t ready to sign, but this
gave us an advantage because the further
we went into the project, the harder it
would have been to get rid of us!”
Work slowed again in 2009, and this

8. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
time Gerson read the runes differently.
The company made 25% of its fifty staff
redundant, and everyone else took a
10% pay cut. “It made us profitable, but
it was hard, very hard, to say goodbye to
people who had been with us for fifteen
years,” muses Gerson. “Before we had
been saved by what I call commercial
miracles, but the chances of that
happening this time were slim; I hadn’t
seen anything as bad as this recession.”
Today Dorset Software is back up to full
strength, with the company developing
software to sell as well as bespoke
commissions, such as a communication
system which ties together two Microsoft
products and means a company can
dispense with its PBX telephone system
with calls at a fraction of the usual cost.
It’s not branded Intelligent Comms
for nothing. If, for example, a call
comes in from a particular country,
it can be routed automatically to the
representative covering that geography.
And as soon as it’s picked up, the
caller’s records appear on screen.
“We’ve also developed a hosted
version,” explains Gerson, “which
removes the biggest barrier to a
large company investing in a new
product - the cost of hardware.”
www.dorsetsoftware.com
Happy holidays but
closer to home
Curious, that at one level, a company
which has already celebrated its centenary
should still be talking about educating
the customer concerning its product.
But the tectonic plates of the leisure
and industry have been shifting, since
the economic downturn of 2008 and
the emergence of the stay-cation.
Which is why, over the last few years
Hoburne have been attracting people
who would have been previously
disposed to foreign vacation to buy
a holiday home at one of their seven
holiday parks in the south and west of
England. The age profile of purchasers
tends to be over fifty, but they bring at
least two other generations with them.
Jonathan Gerson

9. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
“The media has promoted this notion
of nostalgia, of a return to childhood
pleasures,” says Rosie Kennar, chairman
and great-granddaughter of the founder,
“but people will only buy or book
a holiday with us if we deliver their
contemporary expectations of comfort.
“People who may not have stepped
inside a caravan since their own childhood
holidays would have a big surprise.
Gone are the days of cramped spaces
and brown velour; in our top-of-the-
range accommodation today you’ll find
whirlpool baths, iPod docking stations
and Xbox 360 consoles. At Hoburne
we hear people say ‘this is as good as
a hotel’. But the fact of the matter is
that there are holiday parks elsewhere
where the provision is still pretty poor.”
And when Kennar talks about the need
to develop a long-term relationship with
the customer, she’s not glibly quoting
from a management manual. Because
repeat business represents 75% of holiday
bookings, and generally that’s people
going back to the same park as before.
This comes from knowing your
customers (at Hoburne they tend to be
families), and cloaking the offer around
them. Which is why, for example, the
live entertainment clubs close at eleven
at night. “We don’t want a lot of noise
at that time, or people wandering
back to their lodges inebriated,” says
Kennar. “We’re not being a nanny
operator exactly; taking a commercial
view, we aren’t trying to attract the
party-going, stag party market.”
At the beginning of every season,
Hoburne’s chairman and managing
director visit each location to brief the
staff, a kind of annual roadshow to make
sure everyone is calibrated. Not that
the message is set in stone. When four
general managers out of seven retired
at the end of the same season, Kennar
took a positive view of change. “To hear
the views of people from elsewhere in
the leisure industry is interesting,” she
says. “Of course we have to get across our
values to anyone joining the company,
but any business needs an injection of
new blood to keep it on its toes.”
Interestingly, Hoburne haven’t
acquired an additional site for a
quarter of their century. “It isn’t just
calibre of location,” explains Kennar.
“VC interest in our sector has had an
influence on prices and good locations
have come at too high a premium.”
What the company has been doing is
to grow laterally as it were; there’s the
construction of holiday home lodges
at the Hoburne Naish park, priced up
to £240,000, with views across to the
Isle of Wight and the Purbeck Hills.
Kennar is the great-granddaughter of
the founder John Burry, who acquired
what the locals called ‘Hubborn’ farm
at Christchurch two years before the
outbreak of the First World War, and
converted some existing farm cottages
into holiday homes. An ambitious
man in his late forties, he went on to
buy nearby Naish Farm, and gradually
agriculture was replaced by tourism
as he capitalised on the panoramic
views from the cliff top location.
After a secretarial job with Courtaulds
in London, then the marketing
department at Butlin’s HQ in Oxford
Street, which sent her on a day-release
course to develop marketing skills, Rosie
Kennar joined the family business in
1986 as the sales and marketing director’s
assistant. “It gave me the chance to learn
about the business first-hand but without
being in the front line,” she recalls.
Five years later she was on the board,
and became chairman in 2002 when her
father turned seventy. “It is too early
to say who will take Hoburne into the
fifth generation of family ownership,”
she says. But her eldest son, who
graduated from Oxford University with
a degree in politics, philosophy, and
economics, and has a career in fund
management, “is eminently capable
of being chairman if he wanted to.”
Certainly the centenary has contributed
to legacy; bookings continued to
rise for the fifth consecutive year.
www.hoburne.com
Evervescent approach
captures world markets
The bomb capital of the world is
arguably Dorset. The county is home to
three international names in cosmetics,
including the two which make the bath
bombs which effervesce when wet,
adding scent and colour to the water.
Get Fresh Cosmetics, which trades
as Bomb Cosmetics, started with
the product fifteen years ago. “We
launched at a trade show and looking
back, the stand looked hideous, but we
were mobbed. I think it was because
the bombs looked so different, so
unpackaged,” recalls co-founder and
managing director Robert Philpott.
“We export to over forty-five
countries, mostly through distributors.
We can ship to France and Germany
for about the same cost as within the
UK, and the north European market
is worth over £1.5million a year.”
The company makes about 20,000
bombs a day by hand, which retail at
around £2.99, plus a home fragrance
range of candles, air fragrances, and
holds patents in the UK, Europe, and the
USA. “Dorset isn’t the cheapest place
in the world to manufacture hand-made
products,” muses Philpott, “but I live here
and it’s a great life style. It’s a selling point
that our products are made in the UK.
For a while, Get Fresh Cosmetics were
also contract manufacturing for The
Body Shop and a major supermarket,
but margins were squeezed, and Robert
Philpott decided to focus on retail.
But even though the company
produces point-of-sale displays free for
the retailer, there are just fifty or so
outlets in the UK, which account for
30% of sales. Bomb Cosmetics had a
concession in Selfridges for a while but
the cost consumed most off the margin.
The origins of Lush Cosmetics
can be found in what was the spare
bedroom of Mark and Mo Constantine,
who recovered from the demise of
their Cosmetics to Go business (as
a consequence of a catastrophic and
complete computer failure) to set up
a manufacturing and retail business
which now has more than 830 outlets
in over fifty countries. In a previous
manifestation, Mark Constantine’ had
a company which for a time was the
biggest supplier to The Body Shop.
It was in 1981 that the first Neal’s
Yard Remedies shop was opened in
Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden, offering
dried herbs, homoeopathic remedies,
essential oils, and a range of toiletries
based on herbs and essential oils.
Four years’ later a small factory
was opened in south London to meet
increasing demand. In 2005 the head
office for Neal’s Yard moved to a
new purpose-built eco-factory facility
at near Gillingham, Dorset. That
same year the business was acquired

10. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
by Peter Kindersley, co-founder of
publishers Dorling KIndersley and
owner of Sheepdrove organic farm. In
2008, Neal’s Yard Remedies became
the first UK high-street retailer
to be certified carbon neutral.
Today the company has some forty
shops, therapy rooms and four hundred
stockists in the UK, including Waitrose.
They have also expanded overseas, with
outlets in Japan, US, UAE, Oman, Hong
Kong, Taiwan, Greece, Norway, Belgium,
Italy, Mexico, South Africa and Australia.
But cosmetics aren’t the only Dorset
‘cluster’. In 1934, aged just twenty-four,
Keith Spicer stared his own business
blending teas from his family home in
Bournemouth. He would purchase
the tea from Southampton docks and
after the blending would set off on an
old butchers bike to sell and deliver the
tea. Later that same year, he purchased
his first motor vehicle with the £100
left to him by his grandfather .
In 1936, Keith Spicer won two
Gold Medals for blending ‘the most
perfect pound of tea’ at the Grocer’s
Exhibition in London. By 1970, the
company had moved to a purpose-built
factory, and more recently launched
its Dorset Tea, a blend from Kenya,
India, and Sri Lanka. In 2010 the
company was acquired by private label
producers Harris Freeman & Co Inc.
Clipper Teas was started in 1984
by Mike and Lorraine Brehme and
launched the first Fairtrade tea a
decade later, becoming the UK
market leader in organic tea. In
2012, with a £16million turnover
and some ninety staff, the company
was acquired by Royal Wessanen, a
Dutch group which owns food brands
such as Kallo, and Whole Earth.
Another international brand
incorporates the name of the county.
Dorset Cereals, credited with establishing
muesli as both trendy and premium,
was acquired by Langholm Capital
and then the Wellness Foods Group
(owned by Irish horse racing tycoons
JP McManus and John Magnier). The
hessian-and-flax effect packaging blends
with a Farrow & Ball decorated kitchen
Robert Philpott

11. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
(the paint and wallpaper manufacturers
are also based in Dorset), and today,
the company has broadened its range
from a dozen different muesli styles
to include granola and breakfast
bars, selling to seventy countries, and
has a been engaged in talks about a
partnership arrangement in China.
For years, cheese was merely a by-
product of the much more lucrative
butter market. Milk was of little value
before the railways as it couldn’t be
brought to market before it went off,
so cheese and butter production was
the main focus of dairy farms. Dorset
butter was highly regarded in London
where it fetched a premium price but
making butter left the farmers with large
quantities of skimmed milk which they
turned into a hard, crumbly cheese.
Dorset Blue Vinney was the most
common farmhouse cheese for hundreds
of years until production ceased in
the 1970s. Woodbridge Farm revived
the old recipe a decade later.
Meanwhile, Ashley Chase had become
the largest agricultural estate in hand in
Dorset as well as one of the largest in
south west, owned by Louis Littman, the
scholar and businessman who in 1966
turned his hand to farming. In twenty-two
years, Ashley Chase had grown to almost
3000acres, become a highly efficient dairy
farm, one of Britain’s largest producers
of goats’ milk, and was a prize-winning
manufacturer of cheddar cheese.
When he died, the estate was split
between his two sons. Ford Farm took
over the cheese-making mantle. They
produce a hand-made farmhouse
cheddar wrapped in cloth and matured
deep in the caves at Wookey Hole for
six months, where it’s something of a
visitors’ attraction. “The humidity and
temperature doesn’t change in the cave,”
explains finance director Claire Pike.
“It’s more natural than a cold store.
“We couldn’t compete with automated
producers. Our traditional approach
with open vats treats the cheese as a
live product, with recipes which can
‘move’ on a daily basis. We have sixty
staff and our cheese is hand-formed.”
Today, a third of production is exported
- the USA is their main market - which is
where they have two sales representatives,
in New York and Seattle. The Ford
Farm Coastal brand is the biggest selling
English farmhouse cheddar in the US,
where there is a taste for blended cheese
- one with chocolate in particular.
Ford Farm also make a potted
cheddar to a exclusive (Pike
described it as “secret”) recipe (it
includes alcohol) for Harrods.
Another line is cheese wedding cakes,
with a different cheese for each layer,
all decorated with fruit and flowers. A
two-foot tall version will cost about £60.
www.bombcosmetics.co.uk
www.lush.co.uk
www.nealsyardremedies.com
www.dorsettea.com
www.clipper-teas.com
www.dorsetcereals.co.uk
www.dorsetblue.com
www.fordfarm.com
Different approach to
continue life saving
“When an organisation is the best
part of 190 years old, it’s very easy to
look backwards, but regardless of its
heritage, the RNLI has to know where
it is going and to look forward.”
Which is why Paul Boissier, chief
executive, has introduced continuous
improvement methods to the Royal
National Lifeboat Institution in what
is called its LEAN Programme.
By the end of 2014 the RNLI will have
taken 15% out of its operating costs
in three years, which will go to front-
line services. “We have asked people
in the RNLI to see what we can do
differently,” explains Boissier. “So, for
example, with our largest lifeboat, the
Severn class, maintenance was at fixed-
time schedules. We’ve gone through it
component-by-component to see when
servicing and replacement is necessary,
which has saved £800,000 a year.
“It means we can consider
new initiatives without having to
ask more from the public.
“Volunteers have made up our crews
and fund-raisers, but we could bring
in people with particular skills, such
as solicitors, to do some work with our
legal department. We’ve got sixty-five
non-traditional volunteers working with
us. I’m not making a political point
here, but this is a big society initiative.
We’re getting new DNA in and at the
same time giving people a powerful
reference point, an opportunity.”
All of which, says Boissier, will enable
the RNLI to fulfil its role, which is
to save lives, over 400 a year as well
as assisting 25,000 others in distress,
covering 19,000 miles of the coastline
of the UK and Ireland. There are
235 lifeboat stations plus 170 beaches
patrolled by RNLI lifeguards: local
authorities and land-owners contribute
to the lifeguards’ wages, and the RNLI
funds the training and equipment.
Of our crews, only one in ten had
experience of the sea before going out,
so there is the huge business of training.
“We’re not only asking them to go out
and rescue people in waters which are
some of the most dangerous on the
planet, but to give them first aid when
hands and faculties are numb with cold,”
says Boissier. “Another strand is that at
six hours’ notice we can be deployed for
flood rescue. At Cockermouth, in 2009,
when water cascaded down the high street
at twenty knots, we were the organisation
which was best placed to rescue the 200
people there. One of our helmsmen
said he had never been in water like
that before, despite being at sea.”
Perhaps surprisingly there are
four lifeboat stations on the River
Thames, the busiest, located just beside
Waterloo Bridge, is usually called
on at least four times a day, often
dealing with people in the river and
those taken ill on the tourist boats.
For any murmuring in the third sector
about the financial clout of the RNLI -
it’s the second largest charity by income
stream after Cancer Research UK - the
organisation only has an eight-month cash
contingency in the bank. “”The generosity
of the public enables us to find the
£140million a year it costs to provide the
service; that equates to a requirement of
£400,000 every day of the year,” explains
Boissier. “Of any charity, our capital
expenditure is considerable. A lifeboat
station exposed to the elements will cost
£7million to build; a new lifeboat is in the
order of £3million. On land at our Poole
headquarters we will be constructing
a £11.2million facility to build and
maintain all-weather lifeboats in house,
which will save us £3.7million a year.”
It won’t be the only RNLI production
facility. When the company which
made composite hulls decided to sell,
the charity acquired the facility at
Lymington, fearing that otherwise it might
have to source them from overseas.
Fundraising is rather more
sophisticated than tin rattling - legacies

12. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
provide sustainability - but the
commercial arm of the RNLI has a
£40million turnover, including the sale
of 7.5million Christmas cards a year.
And there is a uniqueness to the
British way. In the USA, for example, sea
rescue is bound in with the coastguard;
in France there is part state-funding.
“We do not seek any government
funding,” says Boissier, “so there is no
political interference. It means we are
answerable to the public, and there is
a local pride, a sense of ownership in
a community of its lifeboat station.”
www.rnli.org
Teachers open to
help the county
One of the problems with career
development is that managers and
directors finally get enough stripes so they
don’t have to deal with customers direct.
James Bawa, chief executive of Teachers
Building Society, has found a way of
squaring that particular circle. If he or
a senior colleague is in the office either
side of nine-to-five and the phone rings,
they answer it. “If everyone is compelled
to speak to the customer, even if it means
saying at the end of the conversation that
we’ll get someone to back to them, then
we’ll all be engaged with the customer
and the delivery of customer service in
practice not just theory,” he suggests.
The society was set up in 1966
with lump sum deposits from mature
teachers to fund young colleagues at
the start of their careers who were
finding it difficult to get a mortgage.
Today its services are available to
anyone working in education, and
Teachers has taken on the mantle of
being Dorset’s building society (with
the Portman now consumed by the
Nationwide) by opening its doors to
the county’s population irrespective of
occupation. Investments have never been
constrained by profession or geography.
‘Locals’ now account for 25% of the
society’s roll. “We have got the funds
to make that extension, and it means
we are taking our role as a corporate
citizen seriously.” explains Bawa.
The turning point came when a
young couple, who weren’t teachers
James Bawa

13. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
but lived locally came in to see if they
could talk about a mortgage - their
parents were teachers and had been with
the society for more than twenty-five
years. Bawa saw they left disappointed
because they didn’t meet the ‘education’
criterion, and on impulse, ran out and
brought them back to the office.
The result. “With the opposite of a
heavy heart, we now lend to BH and DT
postcodes regardless of job description,”
he smiles. Including commercial; 2%
of the society’s portfolio is business
property. Domestic mortgages with an
educational link account for 90%.
There was a commercial imperative for
broadening the boundaries. “We didn’t
want to die in a ditch because there was
only one audience we could only take
in money from and lend to,” says Bawa
candidly. “But our underwriters are very
good at getting the risk right. Last year
we handled over 2500 mortgages but
there was only one re-possession which
was to do with a bankruptcy. The year
before there were no re-possessions.
A chartered insurer by profession,
Bawa has been with mutuals for thirty
of his thirty-one-year career. The
Teachers appointment was strategic
in that regulations imposed on life
assurance companies were being applied
to the lending sector, and the ‘been
there, done that’ element of his CV - he
was previously CEO at Scottish Legal
Life - was of value. He now serves as a
council member of the Council of the
Building Societies Association, and
sits on the Finance Service Authority’s
smaller businesses practitioner panel.
The Teachers appointment was rather
appropriate. His mother was a teacher
(father was a private detective, and Bawa
was born in what was then Bombay).
Not surprisingly, he has a passion for
mutuality. “We’re the counter-balance
to the banks,” he says. “We hold their
feet to the fire. If building societies
hadn’t dug their heels in, then banks
would be charging for use of the hole-
in-the-wall cash dispensers now.
“De-mutualisation has proven to
be a busted flush - either the building
society in question has been consumed
by a bank, such as the Woolwich by
Barclays, or it has floated and got
into trouble, and I don’t think I need
to give you any examples of that.
“But we’re not seduced by mutuality
for the sake of it. Teachers is run with
the discipline of a plc but in order to
get the best possible return for our
members rather than shareholders.”
Nor is Teachers the usual call-
centre style of operation. For a start,
underwriters and mortgage advisers sit
side-by-side which, according to Bawa,
means there is more dialogue and a
better flow of information. “From the
moment someone gets in touch to the
day their mortgage completes, they stay
with the same person from Teachers,”
he explains. “That’s the same with
investments. And typically our staff
are with us for more than ten years.
The management style inculcated by
Bawa is inclusive. “Every member of
staff has the right to know not just how
they are performing but to understand
how the organisation is doing,” he says.
“Every couple of months we go through
all the figures, including our margin, with
the team.” The meetings take place over
a couple of days, and Bawa points to a
definite commercial benefit. “It means
if someone says on the phone that they
can get a better interest elsewhere, our
staff can articulate our position better
and with more confidence,” he explains.
That was evident when Bawa got
everyone together one Monday
morning at the height of the banking
crisis to explain to the staff that a letter
would be going out to emphasise the
society’s strong liquidity in relation to
lending and its reserves, in order to put
members’ minds at rest. Their reaction
was that it was too technical and they
re-wrote the text. “After it was sent out,
we had just three calls,” says Bawa.
“They were all from our non-execs;
not a single one from a customer.”
“Customer feedback is the breakfast
of champions,” Bawa avers. “When
the forms come back we’re looking for
where someone has any dissatisfaction.
That information and how it is being
addressed is distilled into a monthly
report. The trouble is, with the way
feedback is sought and managed,
most companies prefer to be ruined
by praise than saved by criticism.
And he’s not afraid to cite an
example of why others might consider
the Teachers’ approach to be self-
flagalistic. “One of the feedback forms
mentioned that the customer’s call had
been dealt with in a ‘brusque’ manner,”
recalls Bawa. “That broke my heart, so
I went down to listen to the recording
of the call. We re-visited our training
in telephone manner, and I phoned the
customer the next morning to apologise
and to explain what we were going to do
about it as a result of them bringing it to
our attention. Of course the customer
was surprised that the chief executive
had phoned her personally, but I
would like to think they have become
a great advocate for the society.”
Today, Teachers are thirty-fifth
out of forty-seven building societies,
with £240million of assets.
www.teachersbs.co.uk

14. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
Philosophy preferred
to formal procedures
“Working to a philosophy is better than
strictly adhering to formal procedures,
because they lead to people, both staff
and customers, being taken for granted. I
say this without being glib - what we sell is
potentially identical to what you will find
in other garden centres; the difference is
culture and the customer experience.”
Martin Stewart is managing director of
D Stewart & Son, arguably the pioneers
of garden centres in the country.
Charles Stewart, the great, great,
great grandfather of the current MD
was a Scottish plantsman in the 18th
century, whose son traded under the
name John Stewart of Dundee in
the 1830s. One of his sons, David,
came south to open a nursery in
Dorset to grow less hardy stock.
During the 1950s, D Stewart & Son,
as the business was known, became the
first to introduce container grown plants
into the UK, and with the opening of the
first purpose-built garden centre in the
country, GardenLands at Christchurch, in
1961 could also lay claim to have invented
out-of-town retailing. Ironically, today
what is unusual about this garden centre
business is that it still grows its own plants,
an operation which is soon to include a
5000sqft totally automated greenhouse.
“GardenLands also opened with
a coffee shop - how long did it take
for the national retailers to look
into it,” smiles Martin Stewart.
“My father tried to persuade me to
join the business by reverse psychology,”
recalls Martin. “ He encouraged me to
join the Royal Navy to fly helicopters,
but then I was drawn to the retail side of
the business on my own accord. A few
months later, we were driving to work
on a Saturday morning, stopped at some
traffic lights, I turned to dad, and said ‘I’m
loving this’. He died on the Monday.”
Aged twenty-three, Martin Stewart
found himself with responsibility for
running the business. “Formal training
and I don’t get on terribly well,” he
admits. “I know the need for it, but I’m
worried about formalising everything.
Having an experienced member of staff
coaching a new employee is a form
of training. I want people here to be
enthusiasts. Someone said to me I’m
lucky to have such good staff, but it’s not
luck. My job is to make sure we don’t
employ people who don’t really want
to be here, otherwise they just become
unhappy, which has a negative influence
on other staff and the customer.
“When I talk to our staff in the garden
centre, the kitchens, the workshops, I
remind them that they know best what
their job entails so it’s their responsibility
to tell me what is needed for them
to do it better. I think any managing
director has to look - and talk - well
beyond the management team.”
In the early 1900s, D Stewart & Son
were dispatching plants all over the
world, although the two world wars
took the wind out of that part of their
business. The company also did landscape
gardening, even turning its hand to golf
course construction. Chelsea Flower
Show? “Dad said forget about that,”
smiles Martin Stewart. “He said we’ve
got 365,000 potential customers in our
catchment area; let’s focus on them.”
In the seventies a second garden centre
was opened fifteen miles away. At both
garden centres on Thursday late evening
opening there is a programme of jazz and
folk musicians to serenade customers
as they look at the plants or take an
early supper. The Santa’s grotto has real
reindeer, and when Foot and Mouth
threatened both trade and tourism,
D Stewart & Son responded by building
the world’s biggest maze with nine-and-
a-half miles of pathways. It drew visitors
for three years until the local authority
decided it would charge business rates.
But these are enhancements, not
diversification. Some 70% of sales
come from plants, garden furniture
and equipment; the balance from gifts,
catering, and Christmas. Then there’s the
interior landscaping side, covering some
500 commercial premises in the south.
“I want to build a business of local
significance,” says Martin Stewart,
“which isn’t the same thing as setting
out to conquer the world.”
www.stewarts.co.uk

15. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
Virtuous circle way to
build relationships
For twenty years Nick Dunkerton was
a structural and highways engineer
before being persuaded to join
Glossbrook Builders by its founder
Terry Fox, becoming a shareholder and
managing director a decade later.
A turning point for the contractors
came four years after the business was
established in 1985, when the company
had a site with planning permission for
fourteen houses but little prospect of
finding first-time buyers (“any buyers,”
Dunkerton interjects). He decided to
offer the site to a housing association as a
package, which included the construction
contract. On the back of that, Glossbrook
started to take options on other sites,
selling them on for social housing once
planning permission had been gained.
The company had also completed
its first office building. “It was at
Bournemouth International Airport, and
although we hadn’t built a commercial
property before, we knew the father of
the owner of the business, and he had
faith in us,” explains Dunkerton. “But
while we are on site, a dapper chap in
a Mercedes sports car pulled up and
came over to talk to me. He owned the
surrounding land and wanted to work
with one construction company. We
went on to build five of the seven office
buildings here, including the headquarters
for Meggitt plc and Hobbycraft.”
The proliferation of hordings
meant that the area became known as
Glossbrook Corner. Today, Glossbrook
are purely contractors, with 90% of
their work represented by housebuilding
(mainly private residences). The
company has an £11million turnover,
with a margin of about 7%.
“We don’t have a claims culture
because we tend to work on a fixed price
basis,” explains Dunkerton. “Basically,
Nick Dunkerton

16. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
the price is the price. If the client wants
to make a change, then we’ll ‘open book’
it in advance so they can see what the
additional cost is up-front. That means
that we are building a relationship with
the client. If they are happy with the
quality of the work, that the building has
been completed on time, and there are
no areas of conflict, then we have the
opportunity to build for them again.”
A simple enough maxim, and one which
is reflected in the company’s approach to
drawing up contracts. “Here’s one for a
£650,000 job,” says Dunkerton, tapping
a folder on his desk. “All the client has to
do is confirm in writing they accept the
price and then we just get on with it.”
It’s part of a virtuous circle. “If
a sub-contractor invoices us on the
twentieth of the month, they are paid
on the thirtieth,” says Dunkerton. “We
don’t hold back retention money. It
means that sub-contractors will give
us their keenest price because they
know they will be paid and on time.
“I like to be involved, so when we
are about to hand over a property
to a clientage and someone needs to
run the Hoover over the carpet, I’m
happy to do it,” says Dunkerton.
But don’t mistake that for homespun.
When Dunkerton received a text
one Monday morning from a firm of
groundwork contractors saying they
were no longer able to continue in
business (and thus wouldn’t be on
one of his sites), by the Wednesday he
had taken on fifteen of their staff.
www.glossbrook.co.uk
Mind-set delivers what
the customer wants
While they haven’t the iconic status
of an Eddie Stobart, arguably Wyvern
Cargo trucks are just as distinctive in
their orange livery with a motif which is
the half-dragon, half-serpent emblem
from King Alfred’s battle standard. And
the strap line ‘Another Load off your
Mind’ demonstrates marketing savvy.
It was in 1975 that chairman John
Probert started the business as Dorset
Star Warehouse, moving to a 20,000sqft
warehouse a year later. In 1981 an ANC
Express (now FedEx) franchise was
secured, but by the early nineties, with the
company name changed to Wyvern Cargo,
50% of the work was independently
sourced and related to haulage rather
than parcel delivery. Then the company
had six vehicles. Today the fleet extends
to sixty trucks and forty vans. “The
franchise got us out into the market,”
explains Probert, “but we wanted to
develop as an independent business as
well. The parcel business gave us the
financial platform to build haulage.”
As well as a competitive edge. “When a
customer phones for a parcel collection,
they expect to be told exactly when it will
be delivered,” says managing director
Evan Sparrowhawk. “We applied that
same discipline to haulage, giving the
customer not just the day but a time.
“It’s all down to mind-set. If a
customer wants something, then our
default position has to be wanting
to find a way of meeting it. Their
requirement might change at very
short notice, and our people see
that as an opportunity to rise to the
challenge rather than as a problem.”
And there’s empirical evidence that
he’s describing a culture rather than
indulging in MD-speak. The company
employs 140 people and has always
had less than 1% staff turnover.
In 2003, Wyvern Cargo opened
a 35,000sqft purpose-built facility
on a 3.5acre site in Poole (there’s a
second facility on a smaller scale in
Northamptonshire). That enabled the
launch of a brand extension, Wyvern
Easyfast, a document storage service.
In addition, the company is part of
the Fortec pallet network, with fellow
hauliers delivering to a central hub in the
midlands, and then taking back a load to
their particular neck of the woods. “If a
customer say in Southampton wants us
to deliver to Aberystwyth for example,
we can decide whether it’s more efficient
to send our own lorry up there or go
through the hub,” explains Sparrowhawk.
It’s an evaluation worth making as
the company’s annual derv spend tops
£2.5million. The company is upfront
about fuel surcharges, posting the fuel
cost figures each month on their website.
According to Sparrowhawk, the biggest
threat to the business is not so much
competing hauliers and carriers but the
risk of manufacturing business relocating
elsewhere. “I am concerned that there’s
a shortage of land and buildings for
modern industry,” he explains. “It isn’t
in anyone’s interests if Dorset becomes
just a tourist paradise because that
isn’t a sustainable economic model.”
What would help is what he describes
as “an adequate highway” linking Dorset
with the national motorway network -
apart from Cornwall, the county is the
only one in the south-east and south-west
not to have a road with an M prefix.
“In the Department for Transport
Modern Ports policy document, it
states that the port customers use may
depend not only on ease of access to
consignments and the speed with which
these pass through the ports, but also on
the quality of transport links to inland
destinations,” says Sparrowhawk.
Not encouraging then for a former
MD of Brittany Ferries (which reduced
its sailings from Poole to Cherbourg
despite it being the shortest crossing
in the western Channel) to declare:”
“Poole, along with Weymouth, has
the most archaic access that I am
familiar with in all Europe.”
“We should see this as an urgent call
to action,” suggests Sparrowhawk.
www.wyverncargo.com
Harbouring best
intentions for port
Jim Stewart was a shipbroker at the Baltic
Exchange for twenty years before setting
up his own business, selling it, doing an
MBA, becoming managing director of a
ship-operating company for three years -
before being appointed chief executive of
Poole Harbour Commissioners in 2002.
PHC are responsible for the largest

17. DORSET ECONOMY Report & Accounts presented by
natural harbour in Europe (10,000acres)
and a sixty-acre unionised port
(although the last industrial action
was in 1992). “Our role is to maintain
an appropriate balance between
commercial, leisure and environmental
considerations,” says Stewart.
“It’s probably fair to say PHC
hadn’t changed much over the years.
At the time I joined for example,
Brittany Ferries accounted for 55-
60% of our business; now it’s 20%.
“There has been a 30% drop in cross-
channel passenger numbers through
the port, which is mainly the ripple
effect of the Channel Tunnel. Ferry
operators no longer have duty free
sales and are now having to compete
with allow-cost tunnel which has had
debt written off,” muses Stewart.
“The days of ferry companies signing
fifteen-year contracts are over; today
they are looking for one-year rolling
contracts. Cargo (bulk products such
as Purbeck Clay, and timber from
the Baltic up 50%) and cruise ships
(Hebridean Island and Saga are two
of the lines which call at Poole) make
up the difference, and Stewart says
PHC are “more savvy” in utilising their
portfolio, converting an old cargo berth
to a 90-vessel marina for example.
The development of a marine-based
business park is another consideration.
And there was a significant £2million
project in 2006 to dredge the main six-
metre channel to seven-and-a-half metres,
based on the need to accommodate
bigger ships. “The nature of ports is
that customers come and go,” says
Stewart. “We used to handle steel for the
automotive industry, but a rail-head was
established at the Swindon factory and the
steel comes through the Channel Tunnel.”
Poole is a trust port, which has lots of
stakeholders but no shareholders, and
without funding from government (local
or national) or an ultimate owner, it has
to generate its own revenue to fund the
management and development of the port
and harbour. The port pays corporation
tax on profit and has to fulfil a statutory
duty to provide pilotage services and
to manage the harbour; on a summer’s
day with 2000 boats on the water, and
a narrow harbour entrance, that can
require five patrol craft. There’s a board
of twelve commissioners, made up of two
directors, a union rep and nine appointed
interested parties in the community (the
latter appointed on three-year terms).
There is a rail link right onto the
quay but it hasn’t been used for years.
“Conventional wisdom says that rail
is only a consideration for moving
cargo in excess of 150miles,” says
Stewart. “Rail has been surprisingly
expensive compared to lorry. But if
we attract more small container ships,
and fuel prices continue to rise, we
might soon see a tipping point.”
Which could be just as well as
although the new £37million Twin Sails
bridge will ease traffic into the port
- it’s wide enough to simultaneously
accommodate lorries in both directions
- the roads north are distinctly rural.
“There is no point wasting time in
lobbying for a motorway from Poole to
Bristol and the M4, because in terms
of cost and the environmental lobby
it’s not going to happen,” says Stewart.
“But it means that nearly all of our
traffic goes east to the M27 and then
up to the midlands on the A34.”
Stewart calculates that the port
generates £50million a year for the local
economy. And PHC are prepared to
speculate to accumulate more tourist
revenue. They’ve reduced short-term
harbour dues by some 45% for 2013.
Meanwhile, a new business
development manager has been
appointed (especially to look at expanding
dry cargo activities) and a master plan,
following an eighteen-month consultation
process will include a number of capital
projects such as a new deep water quay,
a new marina, and a Poole Harbour
Awareness Centre, which should increase
visitor numbers to Poole Quay.
www.phc.co.uk
Report written and compiled by
DECISION magazine
www.decisionmagazine.co.uk
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