Running a retail business during the summer and shutting up shop to spend the winter skiing in the Alps is a pipe dream for most retailers. Yet this dream became a reality for Alastair Parker-Swift when he set up Crew Clothing.
He admits he would be hard-pressed to start a business today with the laid-back attitude he began with, but it doesn’t seem to have done him any harm. Since 1993, Parker-Swift has secured a£7.5 million investment for the business and expanded to 40 shops. Such commitment has meant he has had to get serious and, although he is at pains to admit it, even a little bit corporate.
He fondly remembers the beginning of his career in retail. While running a windsurfing school from the back of his parents’ shop in Salcombe, Devon, he was offered another space to trade in the town and saw his opportunity to start selling clothes. “A local rugby shirt supplier gave us£3,000 of stock on 30 days’ credit and they just flew out of the store,” he recalls.
He then found a shop at Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, bought£20,000 of rugby shirts, still on credit, and embroidered logos onto them. The gamble paid off. “By the end of the summer, we had made enough to buy the freehold for the shop,” Parker-Swift says. “Then I shut it for the winter season to go skiing. The following summer, I sold the shirts from a marquee at Rock, in Cornwall and I slept right there every night on the floor.”
His free-spirited attitude was curbed in 1995, when he opened a shop on London’s King’s Road. It was then that “things got serious”, he says.
The success of the coastal stores fuelled the growth of Crew, but Parker-Swift allowed growth to remain organic for another decade. “We opened stores as and when we could afford it until Isis invested last year.”
Private equity firm Isis took a 25 per cent stake in the business and gave Crew the backing to embark on an aggressive expansion drive. “We will open 12 to 15 stores next year and repeat that for the next four years to double the size of the business to 80 stores by 2010,” says Parker-Swift. “We are also expecting 50 per cent year-on-year growth with our direct channels, which are doing fantastically well.”
The business has also diversified, with the expansion of womenswear and launch of childrenswear, meaning Crew is searching for larger stores. Parker-Swift says the launch of childrenswear has “exceeded our expectations by 30 per cent” and while the last store he opened was about 1,500 sq ft, he is now looking for 2,000 sq ft spaces.
Crew has also beaten the summer washout that hurt many fashion retailers and posted strong growth. In August, sales were up 36 per cent on the previous year and like-for-likes climbed 10 per cent.
“We had a strong April and August, which made up for the months in between and although it is frustrating, I think that always blaming the weather is a very old-fashioned British excuse,” says Parker-Swift.
As the pace of growth gears up, Parker-Swift is keen to not lose sight of the retailer’s roots. “I am trying hard to keep the lines of communication open, so people at all levels of the business are kept fully aware of changes.”
To this end, all the shop managers are invited every six months to the retailer’s Devon birthplace for team building and focus groups. “We want all our staff to stay excited about the brand and keep on promoting us to a wider audience,” he says.
Team building in Devon every six months is a far cry from taking half a year off work to go skiing, but Parker-Swift certainly wouldn’t have it any other way now.
Active career
Age: 37
Lives: Married with newborn twins
Interests: Skiing, windsurfing and playing the drums
1993: Founded Crew Clothing in Salcombe, Devon. Crew Clothing now has 40 stores in the UK, as well as one franchise in Dubai and concessions in Isle of Man, York and Torquay
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