Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - September/October 2022

SIGN OF SUPPORT When did you start up and why? Classic Canes is almost an accidental business. In 1978, my parents, Ben and Diana Porter, bought a Somerset woodland with a ruined Tudor hunting lodge at the centre. While they were rebuilding the house to live in, they were considering different business ideas and discovered that the surrounding woodland was naturally growing suitable wood for making into walking sticks. They cut some and sold them to a walking stick factory in Surrey. In 1982, my mother went to the factory, saw the finished products and bought some back to offer to the local shops. It was the depths of the early 1980s recession, but she found a ready market because other suppliers had ceased trading. She also had excellent sales skills, having previous worked in sales for Lyons and Avis. To start with, she sold her small range of wooden sticks to shopkeepers from the back of the car in between doing the school run. The stock was initially kept in the kitchen, then expanded to the rest of the house, even under our beds, until it reached the stage where a little outbuilding had to be built. We are still on the same site 40 years later, with rather more buildings. What prompted you to launch the business? My parents, like many people, had fled the high taxation Britain of the 1970s to work abroad, in their case in Singapore. When they returned with their savings in the late 1970s, they wanted to be self-employed and investigated various possibilities before the walking stick idea presented itself. My mother needed work she could fit in around looking after two children and rebuilding the house, and wanted an income with which to pay school fees, so her little business selling to the local shops was perfect for her. However, it soon grew and my father joined in, so that more customers could be visited. My brother and I as children did a lot of stock preparation and labelling; in fact my brother learned to count by sorting rubber ferrules into bags of ten. What challenges have you overcome since the company’s launch? In the 1980s, there was no internet and it was much harder to find out about potential suppliers, competitors and find customers. It was also before digital printing, so it was much more expensive and difficult them to product small runs of catalogues, business cards and so on. When we started exporting, it could take weeks to finalise an order because there was no email, just air mail letters and later faxes back and forth. Trade Having launched in 1982, Classic Canes is celebrating its fortieth year in business. Here, Charlotte Gillan, Managing Director, tells us more about about the company’s journey over the last four decades 80

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