PHOTOS: MANU PALOMEQUE
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Lenleys’ Canterbury store
Family matters Lavinia Watts, Lenleys partner on generational moves, brand values and accelerating change It is the final day at work for Lavinia Watts, Lenleys partner before she starts maternity leave. ‘I will still very much be in touch in the background, I’ll just allow myself a bit of time to step away and adjust to a new home life. That’ll probably be quite difficult,’ she laughs. ‘I’m a control freak in what I think is a good way: I like to be involved and have my finger on lots of different things, in my life as well as business. Adjusting to that, not being involved in every single element might take a while, but hopefully with a newborn baby I won’t have time to worry about it.’ Watts, 32, is the third generation of the Watts family to run the Canterbury furniture and flooring store and its Clarkes store in Maidstone. Combined they have sales of about £8m and employ 50 staff. Her grandfather Leonard Watts founded the company with Stanley Adsett in 1936, with the two men tossing a coin to decide which
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Interiors Monthly December 2021
blend of their names – Lenleys or Stannards – they would give to the store. Len won. ‘It’s probably rare these days as we are a partnership and all the partners are members of the family: my father Jonathan, me and my aunt Janine, who has never been involved in the day-today running of the business. Alan Smart is the equivalent of our ceo – we aren’t a limited company, but he has the authority to make decisions on our behalf. I work closely with him; we run the business together. My cousin Oliver Greenfield joined us about 18 months ago and will become a partner, and that will mean we remain a family partnership. He and I are a similar age and are looking to take the business forward.’ A blog by Watts on the company’s website tells of her playing with computers on display as a child. ‘I was involved from the very beginning so I’ve always been here. I used to work in the cafe when I was still at school, helping
with the dishwasher and taking food to tables. I remember way, way back when home office equipment and desktop computers were much more substantial than they are now. We had one on display and I used to run around
Lavinia Watts
