Timpson boss James Timpson on Doc Martens, high street success and how work can turn lives around
Just like Big Issue vendors across the country, Timpson is a high street survivor, bucking the downward trend of many city and town centre retailers. CEO James Timpson says kindness is key
James Timpson wears Doc Martens all the time, he says – although not right now. Neither am I. The sole of my well-worn pair has split. After hearing stories of similar woes from friends, it felt silly not to ask the man in charge of the country’s most famous shoe repair chain whether the brand is all it once was.
“We do repair them. It’s expensive because we have to buy the soles from them and it’s difficult to get right,” Timpson says. Every pair of the yellow-stitched shoes which get brought to Timpson shops for repair are sent to a prison in Warrington. There, the soles are removed with a hot knife and a new sole attached.
“Then you’ve got to get the stitching right. It’s difficult. The cost of doing it – I mean, we don’t make any money on it,” he admits. “It’s Premier League repair stuff.”
Timpson is the CEO of his family business, founded in 1865, and now spanning more than 2,000 shops where shoes are fixed, keys are cut and watches are repaired. Timpson is an unusual kind of boss. He talks about the value of kindness in running a firm, doesn’t look at CVs and campaigns for prison reform. In fact, more 10% of Timpson’s employees are ex-offenders. He believes work can turn lives around.
We speak near the very top of The News Building, Rupert Murdoch’s 17-storey UK base of operations, known as The Baby Shard. It’s like Succession in here. So how accurate is that portrayal of a family firm?
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“I think some family businesses are the worst place for a family to be in. And I’ve got friends who work in family businesses, and it can be quite toxic,” Timpson says. “I’d have loved it in some ways, if one of my siblings had joined the business as well, because I’ve got quite a few friends in family businesses, or they started it. And it’s brothers working together, brothers and sisters.”
Other members of the family have taken different paths, however. Brother Edward has been a Conservative MP since 2008 (with a two-year break between 2017 and 2019), making it as far as the cabinet. He’s standing down at the next election. James has no plans to pick up the rope.
“I would say I’m a bit of a Blairite, probably,” he says. “I think that most sensible politicians are a force for good. But what they have is often an inability to understand how to get things done.”
A happy Timpson employee in Dedworth, Windsor. Their CEO is keen for them to have a
positive outlook. Image: Maureen McLean/Shutterstock
Contrast this with business. This is how Timpson runs his ship: Rather than reams of data, he simply looks at cash takings at the end of each day. The company provides holiday homes for employees to stay in. He’s known to film a three-minute WhatsApp video for his staff, highlighting something happening in the business, or just something he finds interesting. ‘Random acts of kindness’ rule the day, with staff in shops given licence to dispense gifts or free services as they see fit.
If you were to apply to work for him, there would be no agonising CV formatting – because there would be no CV. The recruitment process at Timpson is all about identifying bright and perky candidates.
“We’re looking for people who aren’t shy or nervous, because we’re serving the public. And that’s, to me, the key,” he says.
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“I could teach you to repair a watch within a week. But I can’t train you to be a person you’re not, if you’re not that person. We know our customers want people to serve them who are fun, interesting, engaging, sparky, a bit eccentric. You may be the world’s best shoe repairer but if you’re miserable, lazy, unreliable and dishonest, it’s not going to work.”
The prison population is set to exceed 100,000 by 2027. Early releases of prisoners, designed to reduce overcrowding, provoke controversy. Away from, or perhaps as an extension of, his day job, Timpson is chair of the Prison Reform Trust.
“We’ve become addicted to punishment, this country,” he says. “I believe people are sent to prison for, generally, far too long. There’s no evidence that suggests that we should send people away for as long as we do.”
There are too many people in prison, far too many people sharing cells, and not enough officers, Timpson believes. But there is also vast potential inside the cell blocks.
“Just because someone’s in prison doesn’t mean that they have less of a right to an opportunity,” he says. “I think we’ve got to the stage now where most employers recognise that if you don’t recruit people with criminal convictions, you’re not a diverse employer.”
Timpson spends a lot of time visiting prisons, talking to prisoners, and feels safe doing so. How does he think he’d do inside?
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“I often think about that,” he says. “I think I’d be OK. Partly because I’ve been to boarding school, I know how it works. A lot of similarities. I’d find the lack of freedom really difficult. And what’s the hardest one is that you get punished by having a lack of liberty, but your family gets punished as well. Because you’re not bringing the money in, you’re not at home to read the kids bedtime stories and stuff.”
During his work trying to reform prisons, Timpson has come into contact with a host of politicians. His experience of former prisons minister Rory Stewart stands as a demonstration of why politicians can struggle to achieve change.
“I spent quite a lot of time with Rory while he was prison minister and he did make an impact. And he didn’t worry too much about appealing to every person there. So that’s probably why he got things done. But he pissed people off as well,” says Timpson.
When things are difficult, you need to do more things that are kind
James Timpson
There’s also a third job now: author. Timpson has written a book, The Happy Index, subtitled Lessons in Upside-Down Management.
Happiness is at the heart of his management ethos: keep people happy, trust them, and business will more or less take care of itself. It being a Monday morning, and me slightly shocked at the idea of a modern business strategy without KPIs and lingering mistrust, I suggest this might be a luxury.
“I would strongly argue that when things are difficult, you need to do more things that are kind, you need to give more dreams come true,” he says. “That’s what gets you out of trouble – good people who are motivated and happy.
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“As soon as you start pulling that back, as soon as you start cutting costs, you lose the culture. So I would strongly argue that kindness is the most profitable tool that you can have in a business.”
As part of this pragmatic utopia, staff have licence to dispense “random acts of kindness” as they see fit. Timpson’s favourite one is a policy at Snappy Snaps. When somebody comes in to get a photo printed of a person who has died for a funeral, “we always do it for free. We’re not doing it because we know they’re going to come back. We do it because people just need someone to be kind to them.”
The human factor is a good way to think about the much-discussed “death of the high street”. Without any of this, it’s hardly a mystery why nobody wants to get in a car to go and buy jeans from a self-checkout machine.
“We do have a responsibility to offer service to the public,” says Timpson. “You know, a lot of our shops, we have people coming in every day or every week just for a chat. Never spend any money. But it serves a purpose to be part of a community.”
This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!
