NICK
WHITWORTH
Nick
Whitworth Cornwall is home to some leading clothing brands – Seasalt, Frugi, Finsterre to name a few, and Celtic & Co. We meet Nick Whitworth, who along with his wife Kath, founded the Newquay-based business 31 years ago as a manufacturer of sheepskin boots and since grown it into a £15 million business, exporting across the world.
How has business been. Has the pandemic affected things? We had that initial, panic is the wrong word, but that “oh my God what’s happening” feeling for the first two weeks, when business sort of fell off a cliff. But after those first couple of weeks it was almost back to normal, and from week four and five onwards, it just has not stopped. That whole online shopping trend, just has not stopped. It will be interesting to see how it comes back again. Nearly all of our orders are online or on the phone. Our own shop out front had to close, so that had a small impact, but as a percentage of our whole turnover it
10 | BUSINESS CORNWALL
was not significant enough to worry us. So everyone went online. Can’t go on holiday, can’t go out to eat or a drink, but they’ve got money. If you look at the stats, the amount of money that has been saved in the UK by people is in the billions. I read somewhere, £134 billion waiting to be spent. You’re at the luxury end of the market, so do you think people have been spending more on luxury items? Definitely. The amount of money being spent has gone up significantly, in the UK especially. So, we’re picking up a lot of new customers. We can’t say 100% of them will come back and buy again, but a lot of them will. They were looking for the type of stuff we sell, homewares, slippers, lovely comfy jogging bottoms and jumpers. And made in Britain as much as possible, and all sustainable. That’s ticking a lot of peoples boxes. I’m not saying that’s a reason why everyone would then buy, it just builds up. And, of course, we have the stock, which so many people with their stuff coming in
from China, stopped. We were much more in stock and were restocking as our sales kept going forward. How much of your things are made in Britain? About 70% at the moment. And the rest is in Europe which is only a lead time of 4-6 weeks. It’s not much longer getting things from Europe than a UK factory. It’s a bit quicker in the UK because you haven’t got all the carriage times and hassles we now have with Brexit for instance, but from places like China you could wait 3-6 months from putting in an order. Do you hold much stock? Yes, we try not to run out stock. In this past year, when business has been 60, 70% up, you can’t have everything in stock all the time. But we can reorder, it’s not a case of we’ve run out and will have to wait six months. We say to customers you can order now and have it six weeks’ time.
