The back seat man with the Midas touch

Mar 13 2007 By James Barton, The Journal

Philip Lewis has established a family dynasty by installing his son as the managing director of a business which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. James Barton talks to the man who turned a borrowed £100 into a £12m retail empire employing 250 people.

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Collectables is very much a family business. Shop keeping goes back generations on Philip Lewis's mother's side and he derives great pleasure from working with staff and customers.

Philip's wife Barbara has only recently retired as company secretary, although she remains a director, and son David has worked in the business since he was 16.

Philip says: "If you were to cut David in half you would see the business running right through him like a stick of Blackpool rock."

In this, Collectables' 20th anniversary year, Philip has decided to take more of a back seat as chairman and David has taken over the role of managing director.

Philip claims not to have had any big ideas behind his various retail businesses over the years, yet all of them - including growing lettuce and selling salad to greengrocers when he was 13 - display a knack for exploiting gaps in the market.

He grew a chain of 80 off-licences just when people were beginning to drink at home. He built a chain of newsagents and general dealers where there had been none. And in Collectables, he has given people things they like to collect - which is why they keep coming back.

Now Philip is adding trendy designer fashion accessories to his core giftware and cookware lines to cater for a younger market.

New ranges by designers such as Radley, Tula, DKNY and Storm, plus jewellery by Pilgrim and Ri2K, appeal to a younger market. Now, sunglasses and handbags, sit alongside crystal by Swarovski and Rockingham and beautiful gifts by Border Fine Arts, Lladro and Coalport.

The move reflects the changing market and Philip's instinct for retail which was first shown 50 years ago when he grew lettuces on an allotment in Preston.

"What I didn't realise when I bought the packet of seeds was that you got absolutely thousands of seedlings from it," he says.

"There was no big idea there - I just didn't realise how many came up.

"When they all grew, I went round door to door selling them and, as luck would have it, we had three hot weeks of sun and everyone in Preston had run out of lettuce."

His taste for growing a business was born.

As Philip would be the first to tell you the initial business idea was simple.

In 1987 he had just lost his chain of 80 off-licences due to the miners' strike and he borrowed £100 to invest in a barrow at the MetroCentre in Gateshead.

He says: "I believe you really need the hard times in business, you learn more about how to really sharpen up your operation than you ever do when the going is good."

Someone suggested he sell things people would collect, he introduced glass and china and, as people requested certain brands, built the most popular into the range.

There are now three stores in the MetroCentre, one each in Alnwick, Harrogate, Sunderland, Newcastle and Stockton.

In-store restaurants are highly successful also, the one in the newly refurbished Newcastle store serving up to 6,500 people per week.

The company has bought the Portrack Lane site that houses the Stockton store and is growing a wholesale business with the purchase of, among other things, the famous PenDelfin stoneware rabbit range and Enchantica's wizards and dragons.

In May, the day after Philip was given an honorary lifetime achievement award at the Progressive Gifts & Home awards, Collectables took the stock and intellectual property rights from the recently bankrupted giftware supplier Collectible World Studios to become a significant player on the international wholesale market.