Sir-Peter Vardy

Name:

Sir-Peter Vardy

Business:

The Vardy Group

Web site:

www.vardygroup.com

Years in business:

32

Number of businesses:

4

Entrepreneurs' Forum member

My father, Reg, started his business from very humble beginnings, selling fruit and vegetables from a handcart and progressing into haulage. Eventually, in 1945, he bought a tin shed, from which he began to sell cars.

I joined the business at 16 – one of my first jobs was sweeping floors and serving petrol. When my father died, he left the haulage and car retailing businesses to his three sons. We set about developing the car businesses by adding luxury cars: Rolls Royce, Aston Martin and Ferrari. In the early eighties my younger brother decided to leave so we split the company up. My older brother took the haulage business, my younger brother went off to Australia with his share, and I kept the cars. There followed a period of growth as confidence grew in managing the enlarged business. It grew from the one dealership in Houghton le Spring to 100 nationwide, from 6 people to 6000 people and a £2 billion turnover and was recognised as the best in Europe.

Along the way I experienced plenty of people who told me what I was doing wouldn’t work, that I would go out of business very quickly - but I believed in what I was doing and I trialled and proved my methods locally, on a small scale, before rolling them out nationally. My approach was an absolute focus on envisioning what ‘good’ looked like - studying the psychology of the customer, what would excite them, what would work, how we could be better than our competitors. I built a team of exceptional people and we all believed in our vision and in our strategy.

For those building companies today, there are plenty of people out there who have been there and bought the T Shirt, who are keen and ready to give advice. We want the businesses of the region to succeed and experienced entrepreneurs are genuinely there to help new entrepreneurs in this great region, to make their businesses a success and reach their full potential.

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