Gordon Brown

And that was absolutely critical because he wanted that relationship with the suppliers.

look like back then?

What did it feel like back then?

The team members were the key.

They were fantastic even then.

They were well trained, great attitude, particularly friendly towards customers and they worked really hard.

Absolutely.

It was a real family culture.

I mean, even members of the same family in the store as well.

And I think the key was that the people were able to move up through the company.

And a lot of the senior management had started as Saturday jobs and they trained and developed and even board members ended up in that situation as well.

In terms of volume, it was dog chews.

That's not S-H-O-E, but C-H-E-W.

Chews, little penny chews, penny a time.

We sold them individually, and we sold about 10 million of those a year.

The other thing we'd sell would be a roll of eight black bin bags.

And we sold about 5 million of those a year and used to put those in a basket at the front of the shop.

And by 10 o'clock in the morning, they were almost all sold.

You had to fill up another box, another box.

They were 39 pence.