The Amber Moment
The podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers.
The Amber Moment
Mark Dolder
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After a distinguished career in retail, Mark launched Bazaar Group in 2005 alongside his entrepreneur wife Jayne. Here he talks about running student discos at 15; the M&S management training scheme; a breakthrough in hypnotherapy; Jayne's first home-made beanbag; growing their business from a converted barn and working 17-hour days; how rapid expansion demanded a different structure; and professional and personal recalibration following the sale of the company.
Hello and welcome to the Embleman, a podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howard. My guest today is Mark Dolder. Together with his wife Jane, Mark founded Bazaar Group in 2005, after a homemade beanbag of Jane's in 2003 had sparked a flurry of orders. The company grew rapidly, quickly becoming a leader in the soft seating category. Following a significant private equity investment in 2021, further opportunities for expansion opened up, particularly across Europe. Mark now holds a non-exec role in the company that they founded, and I believe you're both still 40% shareholders. So, Mark, thank you for being there. How are you today, first of all?
SPEAKER_01I'm great, thank you very much. So speaking to you from um the sunny Northumberland countryside. So um we're up um up in the Wells and Woolies of the north of England.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. Well, the the little that I can see, the light looks great there, and I'm sure you've got some great views that I can't quite see, but I'm I'm sure you're surrounded by idyllic beauty.
SPEAKER_01We're lucky.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. So look, Mark, what I'm trying to do here on the amber moment, as I think you you know a little bit, is just to tell some great stories, and I think yours is a fascinating one from the little I know. But every story starts somewhere, and every leading character of every story has his or her origin story, if you like. So I would love if we could start by your telling us a little bit about your childhood, your background, your education, and any early influences that you had.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's that's that's a big question to start with, and I guess um I'll give you a couple of adjectives and maybe we can start to pick the burns out of some of those. But I think probably uh unacademic but uh academic, early influenced um my childhood. Unstructured, well travelled, bohemian, sporty, traumatic. In effect, uh a game of two halves. I uh I was brought up uh in the northeast of England, although uh lived away for 25 years as business took me to points various in the country. Um my uh father was a professor of atomic physics, my mum was a dentist. We had an ideal childhood from probably you know, sort of being born up until the age of about 11 or 12, had a sabbatical with my father over in Colorado, which uh is a place that we came to love and enjoy. Uh my mum my mum was a dentist and they met down at what was then Harwell the um atomic research center down in uh Oxfordshire. And unfortunately, my mum suffered from fairly progressive, um, or actually very progressive multiple sclerosis. Um and that meant that her health failed in my teenage years. So from living in the sort of a rural iddle that I have now returned to, my dad, I think quite wisely decided to move into Newcastle. Um, he became an academic warden of a student hall of residence, which was an unpaid position, but that gave us a house, a housekeeper, and some focus for two young and fairly unruly, well, actually very uh unruly teenage boys. Well, uh my mum uh spent her sort of last sort of four or five years uh in in a local hospital. So, from that point of view, the the ideal family scenario did pivot quite significantly at the age of 11. And I found myself living in Castle Lisa's halls of residence, which um is infamous to many that have passed through Newcastle University, and got to meet and interact and have a jolly good time with a lot of the students there. That was in parallel to my uh school career um up the road, which despite my parents' academic talents, they appeared to skip to generation, put it that way. And uh unfortunately my father didn't live long enough to see that. But uh in the 70s, it wasn't um unreasonable in the slightest to um uh employ your child to do better by telling them how thick they were. Uh and that kind of took the edge off, I guess, my motivation for academia as well as my own desire to find sort of mischief and uh uh and things to do. School-wise was memorable for for sport. But apart from that, my life from about the age of 15 was centered around Castle Liza's when I persuaded the students' uh junior common room committee to buy the best disco equipment in Newcastle, the largest record collection, and um convinced them that I was the person to run it for them, and used to run student events from about the age of 15. And I guess one of the things that I did learn quite early in my childhood is that I could get 18 and 19 and 20-year-olds to kind of do stuff that I thought would be sensible or fun to do. And also, this was a pretty good money maker. You know, if I ran the students' disco for them, it would be £10 a night and as much beer as I could drink, and if I wanted to take the disco to do 21st and 18-year-old birthday parties, then that was a 50 50 quid return in the uh in the mid to late 1970s. So um there was some early seeds, I guess, of uh business career and and commerciality that kind of came through there. Uh and and I guess that sort of pretty much takes me through to the age of 20 when I needed to think seriously about getting a proper job, as uh my father quite hopefully and sensibly told me.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Uh but before we move on to the proper job, as as we undoubtedly shall, uh I'd love to know a bit more about this uh disco business that you set up from the age of 15, you say?
SPEAKER_01Yes, my father could see that this was going well and really felt that I should have more practical skills and apply myself. So one summer he got me a job attached to the local maintenance man of Castle Leezes, who was a wonderful fellow who'd fought in, I think, seven different armies, was a master locksmith, but really spent most of his time just sort of putting the bits of um trimming back together in halls of residence that students had knocked off. So I I kind of helped him do this and told him about the disco. And he said, Well, why don't we make some lights? So I spent the whole summer making a fantastic set of lights for this uh disco. But but the other thing I did was that you know, we we'd have a hall ball, you know, once uh a year, you know, the students would come back from Christmas, the hall ball would be in the last week of the Easter term, and you know, large spaces, enough to get 400 people in, were decorated, you know, impeccably. Um, and the best bands and DJs were you know assembled. I remember, you know, again, this is uh this is one for your older listeners, uh, you know, going back to guys like Simon Bates and Paul Burnett on Radio One, who were then bigger stars than the guys that were number one in the charts, um, going down to the central station, picking them up and bringing them up to Casalezas and you know, sort of putting the records on while they did their their stuff. I remember standing very few feet away from a very striking uh young man with bleached blonde hair in a in a stripey t-shirt who went by the name of Sting at the time and a local band called Last Exit, and Paul McCartney and Wings played their second ever gig in Casaleezes because it was the only university uh venue that had a grand piano. So it was a cool place as well as uh a space of uh of learning.
SPEAKER_00With Simon Bates and the like sounds like you you've got your very own Radio One Roadshow almost there.
SPEAKER_01Well well, it it was when they were doing Radio One shows and pulling in 40,000 people at you know on in Western Supermare. It was when the guys were at the height of their form. I always remember Simon was late on about midnight, and it was getting a bit leary, and some projectiles were being thrown, and uh and which was very atypical for the venue. But he just stood there in his very calm, mellifluous voice and said, Look, guys, if you hit my head, you're gonna hit the thickest part of me. It doesn't really matter about me, but there's some young, small people down the front here, and they could get hurt. So please, can we just uh knock it off and have a really nice time together? And the way he managed the the crowd in that situation was something that stuck with me, uh a constant professional.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like being told off by a particularly benevolent geography teacher or something.
SPEAKER_01That's a good that's exactly how he looked, wasn't it? But but yes, so I had a great time, too great a time, if I'm honest. All of my friends from school went off to university. I was distinctive in that I did actually get the worst A-level results in the in the whole school, which was uh B in general studies, and I spent the next two years doing the university stuff, you know, so running the discos and playing a lot of sport. And you know, those were the days where you know, first team, local first team club rugby, uh as an 18-year-old front row forward, I'd be playing against current internationals and British Lions. So there was a real, you know, some character was formed and some brilliant friendships and some fantastic role models were were met through those sporting times. But uh again, coming back to my dad, he you know, he he he said, Look, you know, you need to get a job, son, and and I showed no sign of doing that. And and one day he came in and said, You need to get a job, or you can jolly well sling your hook. And he didn't and he didn't swear, but he did on that occasion. And I thought, right, okay, uh, this is serious. But much more practically, we had a conversation. He said, Look, you you're clearly thick, but you're gregarious, you appear to be commercial. Why don't you think about a career in retailing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that's really interesting, Dad. And then he came back with a book of all the different careers that that you could you could enter and what the qualifications were that were required. And I studied this book quite hard and and thought really that I did need some options because my friends who were of a similar age at university were then getting close, you know, uh were leaving and getting good jobs. So I applied to Marks and Spencer and and BHS. And I guess one of the things I learned fairly early on is it's important to have good relationships with people and and manage situations in in a way that shows respect uh and consideration for the the event and and those involved. And my first interview at Marks and Spencer's was with a guy who played fly half for the rugby team I played for slightly beforehand. Oh wow. So so that was a straight tick in the box and straight off to Baker Street for the main interview. And I'd only ever been interviewed once before, and it was for the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle when I was about 10 or 11. And I always remember these guys that I imagine to be well north of 100, sitting in worn-out, battered sutes with grey hair, and it appeared that their heads were emerging from their knees in terms of the height at which I was looking at them and asking me loads of difficult questions, all of which I've been prepped for, except the ones that they asked that I hadn't been prepped for. Yeah. Um, and and I found that a challenging situation, and and I wasn't looking forward to an interview, this interview at all. So I walked into the room uh and found three professional women, I guess, in their you know, sort of mid-career years who were incredibly friendly, polite, professional. And I guess I put together a story that talked about the fact I hadn't done well at school, I had a bit going on outside of school from a family point of view, and I had examples, real-world examples, of how I could make money. And I'll never forget, as I was leaving the room, I had a nice brown trench coat, as they had you had back in the 70s, and it was hung on a coat stand next to the door. And the lady, the the lead lady who was interviewing me, gave me my coat and said, Thank you very much. And and literally um I went and opened the door for her as she was going to walk me to the lift. And she said, Well, thank you very much. She said, This is the late afternoon of the third day that we've been interviewing, and you're the first person who's opened the door for me. Um so you just never know, do you? But at that time, Marks and Spencer were accepting, I think, around 1% or less of applications onto their mine, was a junior management scheme, early junior management and the graduate scheme, and uh and incredibly fortuitously was offered a place in that business at a time when I think it was hard to think of a better grounding in management than the the training scheme that MS had at the time.
SPEAKER_00Well, indeed, indeed. And and having reached the the start, I suppose, of your career proper, if we can call it that. Were you aware of having any sort of long-term plan or mission? What did you sort of set out to achieve at that point?
SPEAKER_01At that point, um, and again, this may not sound hugely aspirational or instructive to those listening, but is honest. I found working for Marks and Spencer's really got in the way of doing the discos, which I was still doing. I remember finishing late, like two in the morning in Beverly Town Hall and driving the three hours back to Sunderland, which was the first store I was in that for a Saturday morning on the sales floor and kind of thinking this thing doesn't fit too much. And then after about six weeks, the local training manager came round and put me through my paces, which you know is true to form. I I I failed spectacularly to the point where my manager came up to me and we got on quite well personally to basically say, look, if you don't pull your socks up, son, you're out. And uh yes, I'm you know, I don't think you're with the best person to train you. I'm gonna put you with the best person in the store, a fantastic lady by the name of Anne Sott, a really brilliant professional commercial manager who was the supervisor of Ladies Fashions and Marks and Spencer Sunderland. And she took one look at me and said, Right, you know, let's listen physically, let's get your sleeves rolled up, let's look at the counters, let's look at the numbers, let's understand the principles that I work to and the standards that I accept. And to cut a long story short, the training manager came back in six weeks' time, all prepared to bring down the sort of Damocles on my short-lived Mark and Spencer career, and basically said, I've never seen such a change in a person in six weeks. And you've had a very good visit. And if you carry on this way, then you'll have a very good career. And the penny dropped, the penny dropped, Paul. And from then on, I really was motivated by the values, the family feel, the commerciality, the camaraderie, and all the stuff that young people get when they go into a good, bigger business.
SPEAKER_00That sounds like a hell of a turnaround in in six weeks, which is not a lot of time, isn't it? Can you maybe talk about some specific things that where you say the penny dropped, what specific things happened in that six-week period to make the penny drop?
SPEAKER_01It was easy for me to speak to people that would be very happy to talk about the social side of life, not necessarily focus on the performance of their department or their store as a priority. And those were the kind of social conversations I was used to having to work with uh somebody of uh of Anne's stature, and really just to understand what the expectations were and what the benefits and rewards of being successful were. And a lot of that is about recognition, and I guess starting to get the sort of feedback I hadn't received from my teachers at school quite deservedly, was something that that I found really quite helpful. And I guess from a family point of view, and you know, I'm sort of making my dad out to be a bit of an ogre, you know, he he stayed, he did his best, he held down a tough job, he had to go through the situation of watching, you know, my mum and his wife, you know, quite rapidly die. And the older I got, the more I appreciated how much he gave. But at the time, I didn't appreciate it in the slightest. So maybe a bit of that, some of that love that was there in a practical sense, not so much in an emotional sense, was some of the recognition that I felt through doing a good job and being told I'd done a good job and wanting to, I guess, please, which again isn't uncommon at the early stages of one's career.
SPEAKER_00So you so you're a you're a changed young man at this point. And and and how did how did that sort of inform your career as it developed?
SPEAKER_01So from then on, I mean, there's another guy who was a trainee at the same time, chap called Roger Whiteside, who, as a great guy, went on to be the CEO at Greg's, having been a director at MS and Accardo. And Roger was on the other side of the sales floor to me, and we would socialize quite a lot. And I always remember the chairman came, it was Lord Seif at the time, one of the you know, the last of the family. And he spent some time with me, he was very polite to me. I did my numbers, and Roger he spent a long time with Roger. I always remember this. And the following week, Roger got a phone call to say you're going as deputy manager to the chairman's store in Reading. And it was kind of I realized that knowing your numbers was, you know, I guess the entry ticket to being regarded as a decent commercial operator, but there was a lot more to being a successful retailer as I saw myself then that I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn about leadership, I wanted to learn about, you know, the aspects of the business that went beyond the operational side of store management. And I guess I wanted to transfer some of the skills that I'd picked up organically and socially into something that was more constructive and and productive.
SPEAKER_00And and so where did that take you next in your career?
SPEAKER_01Well, it took me to Socky Hall. Oh, it took me to to Hartleypool. That was my first move, and you know, I was then the only trainee and had a very close relationship with the store manager who was very supportive of young people coming through the business. I then moved to Socky Hall Street, which was my first managerial appointment. And I have to say I spent three years in Glasgow and and absolutely loved it, but I was blown away by just the dynamic energy of that city and the people in the city, and learnt quite quickly that although I was young in business experience terms, I was running a food section of store number 27 out of 300 or so stores that MS had at the time. And I'd come from store number 200 and something, 280 odd, which is what Parlipool was, and it was a big step up. So I understood about the pace, I understood about the dynamics of the place, the people, the expectation, and the fun to be had. I mean, my first day, uh, MS put you in a hotel for a week and then you had to sort yourself out with accommodation, which was absolutely fine. So I booked a load of flats to go and see on my first night, and um my boss came up to me and said, Are you coming for a drink tonight, Mr. Dalder? And I said, I'd love to, Mr. Wren, because those are the way that you uh referred to people, but I've got to go and look at a few properties. I'll put it another way, Mr. Dalder. You are coming for a drink tonight. So we went to the piano bar at the back of the store, and there was he and I in there, and I thought, right, I'll buy you a drink. You know, I was quite good at that. Somebody else came in, I bought them a drink, and somebody else came in and bought them a drink. And there were 14 people. I never forget it. 14 people came in. This is a terrible story, but I was younger.
SPEAKER_00Sounds good, it sounds good so far.
SPEAKER_01You know where it's going to end, don't you? Um, because Glaswegians are incredibly generous, and everybody insisted on buying me a drink back. And then the husband and wife teams in, and the wife always brought around, and the husband brought around. So I didn't see any flats that night, that was for certain. But but but it was uh you know, a really interesting cultural initiation and and made some some good friends there. And and I guess that's when sport played a part. Yeah, I'd been in the store three months, expecting to do about 18 months there, and there was a a divisional football tournament which was taken very seriously by all the stores that participated. And the two big stores in Scotland were Argyle Street and Sockey Hall Street, and as an ex-rugby player, I could just about get by and go for the Sockey Hall Street football team against an Argyll Street football team who had a couple of ringers in there, and I think they played in a Celtic strip, which was the colour they played in, not just um on a Sunday afternoon. Anyway, it was a very good uh game of football. And and our Garle Street, which is a big store in Glasgow, had bought all their fans. And at the end, behind one goal, there were scarves, there was banners, there was chanting, there was singing, there was huge celebration when they beat Socky Hall Street 1-0. And I walked off the pitch, and this small, rotund guy turned round to me and said, Well played, laddie, well played. I said, Well, and I said, What do you mean, well played? We lost, didn't we? And ignored it until the following morning. This was on a Sunday afternoon, the following morning, Monday morning. I was, you know, in the store about seven o'clock getting ready, and and I suddenly saw this guy in a suit talking to my boss. Um, and then he came over to me and said, When I go in for a transfer, Laddie, I go in quick. You're coming with me down to our Gile Street. Um you're being promoted about a year before your time. So uh the sports stuff helps and a bit. So ended up uh spending three years in Glasgow, which which I thoroughly enjoyed, and um then you know had a mobile store-based career, which effectively was 14 stores in 14 years from Glasgow through to London.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Can I just on the did you then go and represent Argyll Street in goal as well?
SPEAKER_01Actually, I don't think I was good enough to get in the team perfectly on this, because they were very good.
SPEAKER_00You must have had a half-decent game though, Mark, for to get picked up on the basis of that.
SPEAKER_01I can always remember that I saved one side and uh down at my right hand, and I knew that the ball was going to go into the far left-hand corner. So I just got up, started running, and threw myself, and the ball actually did uh I did actually manage to make the second save. But but anyway, there's nothing worse than a fat ill man talking about his sporting achievements because as a friend of mine says, uh the older you get, the better you were.
SPEAKER_00No, I I like hearing about that stuff, so don't demure on my account. So tell me where where your career took you uh from those heady days at MS. How long how long are you there for, by the way, MS?
SPEAKER_01I was there for 14 years, and it culminated in me having operational responsibility for Manchester, which was the third largest store, and the largest, what was called a cluster of half a dozen stores at the time. And I was lucky enough to be selected for a development group with a view to accelerating people's careers who had general management potential, and uh myself and some very bright guys who went on. to you know do things like run Apple Europe and you know uh CNAs and you know at the time and some really really good retailers. We spent a year uh meeting monthly being mentored by directors going away on uh week-long personal development courses and being you know Myers Briggs at the times when you know that was pretty much new stuff. We had presentation training and it was done by video and again this is back in the in the in in the late 80s and the guys I think it was Mark Borowski who did it they'd just done Thatcher in the Christian cabinet and their next gig was a bunch of union managers at MS. So the point was it was fantastic. I learned a lot in Manchester it was a big gig learned a huge amount uh from the development group course the culmination of that was an attachment outside of the business which the business had never done before and one of my mates went into the cabinet office another went to work in a big charity and I was the only one who was seconded into another retail business. Being in Manchester the then managing director of Marks and Spencer's a guy called Peter Salisbury, later Sir Peter Salisbury was mentoring me and he was a non-exec director of the electricity company in the Northwest called Norweb who uh just after uh the electricity companies had been privatized with a rush for um non-regulated income were very keen to develop their retail business and I was seconded to the MD of that retail business to get a more holistic uh understanding of business as his PA. And I guess that was the beginning of the end of my career from Marks and Spencer's because I went there had an absolute blast learned loads and realized that I wanted more than than store management and went back into MS and it seemed you know very slow. The promise promotions were were not coming through the promise promotion wasn't coming through as as had been planned. And I got in touch with my old boss and said look you know if you're looking for anybody um I I'd be interested in you know so picking up where we left off and and his view was I need a new sales director but it's a bit tricky because obviously the uh MD of MS sat on the Norweb board which which he did and he he basically sort of said what would you like by way of sort of remuneration for if you came over and I kind of stuck a note on what I thought was reasonable kind of thing and and he said well that really does give us a problem because that is is is more than I'm authorised to um bring into the business this will have to go to the board the main plc board and he he went in and basically said in in certain situations if the right person were to come along would it be possible to extend the terms and conditions to to to accommodate said individual and of course Peter Salisbury voted yes and I went back and and resigned from the business and my boss was really pretty mean about it and Peter Salisbury rang me up and said basically said look I'm coming up to see you and you know in all fairness to him he got on a a plane and came up and the next day and we walked around the sales floor for an hour and he said look I understand your what um loyalty it you know is to your wife and your young child and we we he knew my personal circumstance as well but I need to know are you prepared to work your notice in a way that is uh you know to the best interest of the company or do I kind of need to let you go now and I said look Mark Spencer has taught me everything I know it's been a brilliant learning ground I now feel that I want to do something different and I will give my very best to the last minute that I'm in the business. And he said that's good enough for me and shook my hand and wished me all the very best and the way he handled me in that situation given you know the the circumstances of it is something that that has lived with me and I always try and treat people as equitably in their exit as I would do in their um uh you know in in their interview and coming into a business or all the time they're working with me but but that took me from 14 years in MS to a massive jump which was to the sales director of an operational business within the PLC that was charged with shutting 90 stores growing revenue from 70 to 270 million in two years back in the 90s and my job was to make this happen as sales director so that was a rude awakening in terms of my skills and ability and and and level of development.
SPEAKER_00So would you mind then giving us a a bit of a a career synopsis from from then and and through to how how you ended up working uh alongside Jane and and Bazaar Group.
SPEAKER_01Yeah yeah so um we did three years at Norweb. We became the number three player to uh the Dixon group and Comet we sold to Comet I uh left the business decided that I wanted to come back to the northeast of England and bring up my then young family um so came back with no job and no house but but a decent payoff and um found a job working for another retail business called the Edinburgh Willem Mill who were based over in the western borders of Scotland um over in Langham worked there for three years as um sales director there. That business was was then sold to a guy called Philip Day who's who's done well with it since and at that point I sort of stood back from that business and decided that kind of life had been great from a professional point of view but from a personal point of view I'd sort of hit a bit of a brick wall I guess and spent a year or so or more doing a bit of property development you know sort of making some money but realizing that my marriage was not something that you know was going to work in in the long term in in my view. And that was you know I guess if you were to call it a midlife crisis I would um I would agree with that but kind of had that midlife crisis um which was quite compounded by you know my family situation. And to cut another long story short, my brother who unfortunately had um suffered a similar type of illness to my mum but but has you know done well and recovered well had uh been seeing a hypnotherapist as part of his uh recuperation and he he knew I was unhappy and unclear and unable to you know make the right decisions and see the wood for the trees and said why don't you go and see this guy um and I did and a lot of it was counseling you know I could have you know sort of sat out of the chair any time I I really wanted to but but I engaged in the process and after a few sessions he said look we're gonna look at look at next time we meet we're gonna you know look at your situation with your your mum because I think that's probably where a lot of this stems from and you know we went through a normal process of he said you'll go through the various doors and places that you've been through before as part of the hypnosis process and you'll go into a walled garden and your mum will be standing at a gate and you won't be able to touch her but you'll be able to say anything that you want to her and I remember vividly that vision and then sort of coming round from the hypnosis and my shirt was uh you could literally have wrung it out um it was covered in tears and the guy said look something's happened you don't have to tell me uh something's happened and I said look I know I know for all these years I've been angry with my father but I'm actually really upset about my mother and it was from then on that my life literally changed in in that instance and I was able to move on speak to my then wife speak to my my son uh explain you know the situation that I wasn't able to articulate for a considerable period before that and move forward with with my life in in in the way that that I wanted to and you know that involved getting together with Jane uh my now wife who came into our relationship with a fledgling beanbag business so there you go a slightly more complex answer than you might have expected in terms of a a run through a career CV.
SPEAKER_00No I really appreciate it Mark thank you for sharing that with us it's uh it's fascinating stuff and and thank you for that uh for that synopsis so then so then yes so you you've mentioned the the B word the beanbag word and this I guess famous moment in in your both of your your business history I suppose of making a beanbag at home just talk us through those early days and and and how Bazaar Group became what it became what was that like so the most important point to make is you know our business was founded by my wife Jane.
SPEAKER_01I joined in and we always accepted agreed that we had complementary skill sets and she founded a business which I couldn't have done despite the fact that even when I was in MS in my early days I was going to start your own business night classes and clearly hankered for it but but wouldn't have started a business in the way she did but I guess my corporate experience and was was was was useful in terms of being able to scale it but but the early days were incredibly liberating. The story is that Jane wanted a bean bag she'd had as a kid uh couldn't afford to buy them buy one on a a PA's salary and and and was uh you know they were only in the small ads in the Sunday papers they were about 200 quid you know back in the day so being the practical person she is decided to make one and her brother saw it said that's amazing can you make me one great big bean bag really cool his friends saw it and they said can she make me one as well and so she started making these beanbags and her brother said have you seen this new thing called eBay um why don't you try selling them on there and I always remember I think um well when I got involved which was after the the original part of the business starting um about 30 bean bags on eBay and I checked a few years ago and they're over 30 000 now so I think we had some first mover advantage. Yeah um you know I looked at the business model and uh saw how much people were charging. I knew about sourcing from globally based on my experience with the Edinburgh woollen mill who were fantastic at global sourcing although one might assume that everything's knitted by a little old lady sitting cross legged in Kelso. That's a good story yeah well it was a great story and it's a great business and the vertical integration of that if you like margin waterfall is something that we bought into our business. So we literally looked on Alibaba back in in the day and found a company in China that said they made beanbags and we filled a large suitcase full of beanbags um jumped on a plane bought the Chinese art of war to read on the plane on the way there and and found that a an interesting informative read uh and went over to meet two great people in Nanjing and spent dawn till dusk going through our samples and you know put the first order on my credit card as I'd um decided that the right thing to do in terms of my divorce was to make sure my son and my wife were prioritized. So Jane gets together with this guy who used to be a company director and the first redirected mail she opened was a bank statement and uh she's not one to uh utter foul oaths but on that occasion I think she was quite surprised. So we put the first order on a credit card that sold really well. We were living in right up in rural Northumberland north of Anneck in a barn conversion with plenty of other people around us and we couldn't keep up with uh with demand so Jane's mum and Jane's brother came up for the weekend and stayed for another 18 months uh the dad stayed at home and looked after the dogs and became the dog father as uh as a result of his contribution to the business so four of us were living in in in this barn conversion and basically uh sending out bean bags as as quickly as as we possibly could and you know that involved you know working often 17 hours a day seven days a week for nine months of the year shopping on the yellow tickets in Morrison's you know if we're lucky going out and getting a pizza when we were just too tired to cook and you know it was a really exciting and and liberating time and I guess you know one of the stories that does bear some consideration for people thinking about startup is what we didn't get was um any financial advice. So we went along to the local business enterprise centre and they said look if you do this business plan you get a £2000 grant for a computer so I thought we'll do that. Sales estimate were 91,600 for some bizarre reason for the year. And we ended up doing a million quid turnover in the first year between sort of four of us in our barn conversion and thought we'd done quite well even though we were pretty tired and the accountant called us in took us into the boardroom and said you've done incredibly well you'd like to sign the accounts and and I said what's this at the bottom and seventeen thousand pounds they said oh yeah tax bill yeah you know hang on that's our tax bill we could have put our new enough to know we could have put it into pensions at the time and stuff like that but but anyway uh we were too busy and we weren't told but if you are making good money early on then accountants that know more than just how many beans make five are useful in terms of tax planning uh and uh uh and advice in in in the early stages but we needed a a commercial unit and we moved into a a commercial unit back close to to to where we live now just in a in a place called Morpeth and I'd done a lot of this stuff I'd you know 120 10,000 square foot stores I'd open at my time at Norway I kind of understood what space looked like and I thought well from the spare room in the garage to go to two and a half thousand square feet is quite a leap but in the first year when we physically had to use ladders to get out of the building that we'd fill products with at the weekend because we couldn't open the doors because the the bean bags are crammed from floor to ceiling against them we needed a a a bigger property yeah we we then got into a 15,000 square foot unit and uh had our first child and Jane I always remember Jane had an emergency C section on I think the Monday afternoon and after 13 hours of labor and was back sitting at a desk on the Thursday with our our new baby daughter Jasmine in a a bean bag she made especially for her with a soother in her mouth so she didn't cry because Jane had a head set on speaking to customers while typing away and doing the the the finances of the business. So you know she is the the founder and the hero in uh in an awful lot of this and of course my contribution was yes I did fill bean bags yes I was involved in in that side of things but I had this very irritating trait of coming up with ideas and in the in the early days it was absolutely fine because we just got on and did them but clearly things were changing because Jane started crying and she wasn't someone that was predisposed to crying very much and a friend of ours was very experienced and smart guy said why don't you have a a chat with this chap I know I've just um been involved in a business sale with him and he's uh he's he's come out of that and he's invite advising small family businesses after a career in commercial banking and just to show how close to the coal face or the bean face you get when when when you're working those sort of hours uh Ian came in and said well look you know clearly you need to expand the business how are you going to do it and I said well I'm not really quite sure he said well what about a management team and I said well we can't afford a management team he said well what about the 117 grand you spent on tax last year how many managers would that buy you and I thought well that's a good point and then he said how would you structure it and I'd done complex structures before with you know on one occasion two and a half thousand people reporting into me and I couldn't put a structure together for a good 10 minutes of how a small handful of managers would actually work but Ian is the best person I know for getting you to work out your own problems by asking questions as opposed to telling you how to do things and we then put a a management team in place and started the process of scaling the business.
SPEAKER_00I mean it's it's incredible and and the pace with which it grew how did you both cope with that? Did it in any way connect with the expectations that you had at the outset or that sheer pace of growth?
SPEAKER_01So our expectations were to put a roof over our head and food in our family's mouth um and to a certain degree that remained with Jane and and I guess my ambition for the business was was slightly different and at times that jarred and at other times it it worked really well but but it clearly expanded well beyond our our expectations and I guess you know I'd become quite a resilient person. Jane is a huge resilient person. And you know this was about the turn of the century where you know all of our friends were paper millionaires and having a jolly good time and you know we'd sort of get invited to you know very kindly by my brother and other family members to get togethers and parties and we were kind of like the clampets you know we're sort of turning up with bags under our eyes you know we didn't have any clothes apart from the stuff that we just worked in and and probably washed for the occasion and didn't really have anything to talk about apart from bean bags and we weren't making you know virtually everything we made we reinvested in the business you know we didn't start to to really see the benefits personally for for a good 10 years. So yeah the the the expectations were to put food on the table therefore it was easier to reinvest but resilience I think and just energy were really quite crucial to obviously Jane had an idea and it hit a spot. You know we developed technology we were fortunate so I think we were about third in the National Small Business Awards and featured in you know sort of Lloyd's banking you know sort of big advertising campaign because quite a quirky product stuff like that and we got some profile to the business which was helpful in terms of sales and um interesting in that people saw value in in what we were doing.
SPEAKER_00You've spoken about resilience and other qualities there and I want to ask you this question and perhaps you can answer for both you and and Jane on this one Mark which is and it really does require you to to park your modesty firmly at the door please because I I want you to think about the skills the knowledge the expertise character traits that you and Jane had and have that enabled you to succeed where perhaps others wouldn't have that is a hard one um I think I can I can speak for for Jane in terms of amazingly practical you know technical taught herself pretty much accounting level business management by ropes and just very determined very focused and and and very consistent in terms of the way she is with everybody all the time.
SPEAKER_01I think from my point of view probably I'd be better drawing on what people have said about me because that's what you know I guess is seen and you know there's a story born against myself but it but it's the same point. I met a guy in King's Cross many years ago who had been a junior trainee of mine in Northampton he came bounding up to me and said oh hi do you remember me Tony I said yeah I do Tony how are you doing he said well we've just been pitching for the uh national lottery um business and I'm leading that that business and clearly had done very well for himself and his parting words to me were I've never known anyone like you who can get people to do exactly what you want them to do even though what you want them to do could be a load of proverbial but there's another guy who I work with for 10 years as a non-exec and and we talk a lot about leadership and and he was important in in in in my development and we talked about leadership as being somebody who you know is prepared to pick up the staff walk up to the top of the hill plant your staff on the top of the hill turn around beckon to your team to come up and follow you without actually knowing yourself what's over the top of the hill. Particularly the high growth business and I guess there's an element of that in my personality that kind of helped and then just being able to get along with most of the people most of the time and then use that to engineer favorable business outcomes or personal outcomes I think is something I've maybe learned along the way and I I noticed you know in in recent years a lot of ads for CEOs talk about you know low ego, high EQ and I guess whatever intelligence I've got tends to be intuitive. And I think maybe I might have cottoned onto that reasonably soon in in in my business development. And I guess the other thing is that you know I don't take myself very seriously you know I take the business extremely seriously and I say that to you know all the guys that come into the business you know anyone can take the Mickey out of me as long as it's funny. If not won't be tied because uh you know uh you you'll have to be uh ready for what's coming back but you know not taking yourself too seriously but taking your business really seriously I guess and and caring I think you know the thing that Jane and I had in common is how much we cared about what we did in terms of the quality of the product the interaction with with our customers the way we treated our and our our teams I guess the caring bit's important would you say you have a a a strong set of kind of beliefs and values are there any sort of principles or behaviors that you particularly treasure? I think as a business we we would see ourselves as a values driven business. You know the beginning of our mission statement is that we're proud of the way we do business. And I think you know that stems from from trust. You know I hold myself and I genuinely do uh hold myself to because I'll be self deprecating in a number of areas but I genuinely try my very best to hold myself to the same standards that I'd expect from others. And I found that that does tend to breed you know confidence and and strong teams. I think pride is is is Is really important, as I said, you know, not in your business, in the business community that you know, of all the stakeholders. Respect respect is critical. I mean, I say to anyone who comes into the business, or you know, the early morning cleaner will be get just as much respect from me as the you know the CMO, because without you know, in a small business, if anybody's not there, the business feels the draft. Um, and it's easier in a small business for that to be the case. But I think the respect, and that's something that you know is really important for our kids as well. Uh and then I think you know, a pursuit of excellence, surround yourself with the best people, you know, treat them well, pay them well, but you know, be able to look them in the eye if you've kind of got to give them the homily, you know, to great things are given, great things are expected. You know, be able to do that with with conviction and I guess you know, belief which is reciprocated from the person that you're speaking with. Openness, I think, is really important. You know, I will talk to the team, whether it's good news or bad news, I'll share as much as possible. The guys will say they understand a lot more about you know business performance than they may have done in in other businesses. And and then I think this consistency piece I mentioned is about Jane. I'm a bit more volatile, but I do try hard. I believe that people pay great attention to the way that leaders behave and that you know the the confidence that pride and belief that people can have in an organization can emanate very much from uh a leader, and and from that perspective, we've been very fortunate to have you know low voluntary turnover and to you know build and develop people in our own little Marks and Spencer development group way, um, who stayed with the business and and contributed massively to its success.
SPEAKER_00And if you think about the kind of the story of your career and your life more broadly, maybe, you know, you're you're the hero of your own story, but every story has a has an anti-hero as well. I'm not asking you to name names unless you particularly want to, but what are some of the kind of hurdles or barriers you've had to overcome? It might be systems or structures or prevailing ideas that you've had to overcome in order to get to where you wanted to get to.
SPEAKER_01So I think a lot of those, you know, sort of barriers tended to be around, you know, sort of the self-limitations in terms of you know my own you know, ability to deliver and make things happen, to think at pace, to come up with ideas that actually worked. You know, that that's I guess been some of the biggest barriers have been, you know, self-imposed stuff. I mean, I've sat here and and talked, you know, quite happily about the stuff that we've done well. But there's plenty of learnings and there's plenty of stuff that didn't quite go to plan. And that's where you know I I would sort of see some of that stuff. And I guess wasted time is is is is something that is big to me. You know, uh, you know, I look at 14 years at Marks and Spencer's and I could probably have done seven. I look at a middle of crisis where you know I wasn't functioning particularly well for a period that that ran into years. Trying to use this stuff positively is in an open way, is is part of what you can give or I can give to to younger people and you know talk about openly and honestly about my own mental health as I as I'm doing today, expose people at a young age to you know directors, to boardroom issues, um, to you know, when I was an MS, I kind of was a dynamic complier for the first seven or eight years. I'd click my heels and do exactly what I was asked, and thought that that was what the job was, and was absolutely petrified if I had to go into a board presentation or something like that. And you know, I've now got kids in their early to mid-20s who are superb in boardroom settings. And you know, I guess those anti-hero things or those issues that have held me or held the business back, you try and find uh the the positive in and you make it work for the business and make other people or help other people learn from your mistakes rather than make them themselves.
SPEAKER_00And and can you maybe just bring us right up to date with uh everything that's happened with the business and and the the PE part in 2021 and how that changed things or gave you new opportunities?
SPEAKER_01So it it changed things dramatically. I mean it it it happened during the sale process happened during COVID. We'd always said when you know I got to 60 and I'd just turned 60 that you know we were you know we were building a business that we would sell at some point. And and that was the the time that we focused and we were engaged with corporate finance guys for a few years before that, preparing the business for sale in terms of strategy, business performance, all the stuff you'd expect. You know, I ended up pitching to 22 businesses during COVID, and and we were lucky enough to get some offers and and to have some choice. And we, you know, as it turned out, extremely smartly chose a private office of a chap called uh Neil Armstrong, who'd done exactly what we'd done, but with an order two on the end, um, you know, using his own money and his business is now United Living, which is Apollo Capital investing there, and you know, is a brilliant engineer and and business person, and uh and he was interested in the business and he'd walked in our shoes, and uh therefore we were very lucky to to get investment from from uh Neil and Craig in in the form of uh family office called Core Capital. And I guess the first thing that you learn, because I had sold to P before I'd sold the Anbouler mill to P, and I didn't have the best experience, and I had a fairly narrow view of what P were, and I guess it's the archetypal view of P, which not the most constructive and positive, but very quickly those guys came into the business, they invested their time, they broadened our network massively in terms of the quality of people that we worked with. We refinanced the business with very specific aims, like to internationalise it. And we now have a big factory out in Hamburg and take more in Europe than we do in the UK. And you know, we've brought in a strong management team, and you know, that includes you know, my successor who's who's hugely talented and and and taking the the business forward, you know, beyond you know my my tenure. Uh so it's I guess it's been a challenging time for consumer goods anyway, coming out of COVID and seeing that the cheap, flexible, functional seating that you were desperate for in the home during COVID has been replaced in in dis disposable income terms by holidays and getting away. And and then the you know, the scenario that we all understand at the minute with economic challenges, you know, nationally and globally, mean that, you know, sort of there is a a recalibration of timescale and and objectives. But um, it's been a really positive experience. It's been challenging because I've had bosses again that I didn't have for the previous sort of um 14 or 15 years. And uh, some of my previous experience has been very helpful. Other of my previous experiences probably meant I focused a little bit too much on the management of the chain above me, as opposed to just focusing on the stuff within my business that I would have done you know prior to the sale. But yeah, we're we're we're at a point now where we're growing the business and and you know looking to you know turn again before the end of this decade.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for that for bringing us up to date. What's so what's next for for you and for Jane in both uh sort of near and far future, if you can see that far ahead.
SPEAKER_01So I I guess uh in terms of where we'd want to go is you know very much focused around, you know, we've got two teenage kids. Our daughter Jasmine is off to Boston College in August to study business. Congratulations. Uh and we're we're we're really chuffed and excited for her. And as uh our mutual friend Tony says, you do realize that we're all end up gonna be working for her one day. So we'll look forward to to that. I'll be retired, but maybe some others will.
SPEAKER_00It's nice to think there might be some jobs for us to go to. That's lovely.
SPEAKER_01Well, exactly. She it's interesting the way um American unis approach business, you know, particularly when you asked them the question, how are you going to prepare me for the job that doesn't exist yet when I when I qualify? Which was one of her questions, and you know, how they're embracing uh AI as an example, and how undergraduates can get involved with the the research and development in that area was was one of the the reasons that she was keen to go. Um we've got a 14-year-old son who loves going down mountains on skis or bikes at uh horrific uh pace, and we're sort of hearts in mouth and supporting him. And I have an older son, Chris, who's uh working down in London. So family is very uh important to us, but but I guess you know, I I would see my stage now as sort of having stood back from the business a few months ago, moved to a non-exec role. I guess I was concerned for my last couple of years as the fact that I was kind of a business dude, as my daughter called me when she was much younger. That probably I probably felt a little bit that it defined me a little bit that if it was gonna go and how would life be? And I'm glad to say that you know there is life and it is healthy and it is different on the other side. I'm only a few months in and I'm gonna take a year to fully evaluate what the uh what the future holds. But but I kind of find myself reverting to my former self, hopefully with a bit of wisdom, um, and certainly not uh a lot of energy along the way, uh, and just gravitating to the people, places, and things that I would naturally have liked to do and and not had the time. I think you probably forget when you have had, as as as many of us have, a full-on business career, just what you give up by way of sacrifice to be successful by by your definition of that. And I guess it's about trying to get some of that stuff back. So yeah, I'm keen to you know work with younger people who know enough to know where they want to go in life, but need a little bit of guidance and uh and support. I'm keen to you know do what I want to do rather than you know what I need to do. Yeah, um, and you know, any other business involvement will be based on personal chemistry rather than you know, sort of pouring over the the balance sheets of business and you know, traveling, getting into much better shape than I've been for a lot of years. I've had stem cell injections in my knees, which are just starting to pay some effect, which uh some impact, which is quite exciting, and you know, ultimately very keen to become a distinctly average golfer.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, this is this is feeding my uh my next question, which is outside of business and outside of family and other loved ones, which we'll take as read are important in your life. What are some of your sort of passions and hobbies and interests? Is it golf only or do you have anything else?
SPEAKER_01Uh my diary is as busy now as it was before. I have a non-finally justifiable interest in in horse racing. I've got um uh a horse which is absolutely beautiful and equally um uh unreliable, but but there's an interest there. You know, we have season tickets at St. James's Park to Newcastle United. Fabulous. Yeah. Uh he's involved with uh Durham cricket and watch uh watch cricket. So there's a lot of sports, a lot of gigs. Jane and I have invested in the production company of uh a very exciting young up-and-coming chef, a guy called Tommy Banks, as Michelin star, twice Michelin star chef, whose restaurant was actually the best restaurant in the world by TripAdvisor. And he's a massively authentic and impressive person and has developed uh a production company with two really talented filmmakers to, I guess, do a cross between Clarkson's Farm and Gordon Ramsay. So, yeah, we're sort of spending time and really enjoying spending time with Tommy and Scott and Sid, who yeah, their first feature film was voted best British film of the year in 2019. So right young people who who we will keep out of the way of in terms of their day-to-day, but be there to support and to help in a sector that we know absolutely nothing about, but is exciting and um and fun.
SPEAKER_00Sounds really really exciting. And and I I can't let you go without asking you the name of your racehorse of you. I'm a huge uh horse racing fan. Uh, the name of your horse, please.
SPEAKER_01Uh I I can't, I can't I can't do that to you. It's actually it's a lovely horse. It's called Elemental Eye. It's well bred, uh, it's a book two horse at New Market, it's run about 27 times, it's won twice, and it's getting better as it gets older. So we'll see how we go.
SPEAKER_00Lovely, lovely. And final, final question, Mark. You've been absolutely brilliant, by the way. Thank you so much for everything. And since we're on a podcast, I don't know if you're a podcast listener, but if you are, perhaps you'd be good enough to give us all a podcast recommendation.
SPEAKER_01Well, I can't pretend to be particularly nuanced as some of you guests have been, in terms of some really cool uh uh podcasts. That tends to be fairly mainstream, but I guess one of the things that that I have started to do is is a is a bit of a legacy giving back thing. And um I I organised some lectures at my old school because I learned best in a extracurricular way. And we've had some fantastic guests from you know, Sarah Davis, Matthew Saeed, Jonathan Warburton, some really cool business people. But one of the guys that that we had was a guy called Damien Hughes, Professor Damien Hughes from a high performance podcast. And he spoke to the kids and yeah, he he was great. He pulled no punches, he'd say things like, you know, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You know, if you hang around with a load of people who take drugs, it's pretty much a nailed uncertainty that you'll end up taking drugs. And you know, my my daughter was there and her friends were there, and um, he said it in a far more compassionate way that than I've just said it, but he was direct. And they have their own code now, Damien says, Damien says, and you know, uh, he had a huge impact in the important things that affect the lives of teenage people, and I had great respect for that. And I think you know, the podcast he does with Jake Humphreys, you know, is covering a wider subset of guests now. Um, and I do feel you know, sort of vicariously emotional attached to it having spent uh some time with Damien.
SPEAKER_00I bet he's well thank you for that recommendation, but thank you even more for just sharing some fantastic stories of your life and your career, Mark Dolder. Best of luck with the next chapter. Thanks for having me on. Join me next time on the Amber Milliament when we'll be hearing another story of another remarkable career. Until then.