Old-school shoe shop bucking the retail trend by expanding
Whenever Chris Macnamara wants to see how one of his 10 stores are doing, he can look at the whiteboard in his Cardiff city-centre office.
Each shop has its own panel with the stats for each month so far this year and for last year, to show how well they are performing.
The whiteboard says a lot about Chris and how he runs his business.
It shows his old-school, methodical approach.
Rather than looking at stats on a computer screen, Chris likes to stand with a coffee or an apple and look at the board.
His daughter Stacey, who works for the company together with her two brothers, was a bit sceptical about the board, but she has since become a convert.
“Old-school” is a term that could also be used to describe the Brogue Trader stores, judging by the look, the feel and the standard of service offered to customers once they set foot inside the shop.
The Morgan Arcade site was the blueprint for the stores that have followed.
Stepping inside is like going back in time.
The wooden shelves housing the different shoes, from brands such as Loake, Oliver Sweeney and Crockett & Jones, have been made to look antique.
Even the style of the carpet – green, with a delicate pattern – evokes feelings of bygone days.
Then there are the dapper sales staff who greet you with a smile, an offer of a drink and an encyclopedic knowledge of the shoes in stock.
It is all part of the charm of the store and why Chris has been able to expand while many others on the high street have been struggling.
In 2013 Chris walked away from a 25-year career in the car sales industry and said goodbye to a sixfigure salary.
He sold his family home to fund his first store.
In an interview with WalesOnline not long after opening the Cardiff site, Chris told the reporter that in five years he would have 10 stores.
He was right. Just.
On September 21, the 10th Brogue Trader will open on King Street in Manchester.
Chris puts his expansion, while other stores are shutting, down to customer experience.
Along with utilising his car sales background.
“I started washing cars when I was 14,” he said.
“I would cycle down to City Road on my bike and earn £10 a day washing cars. I thought it was great. I was the richest kid in 1984 on my council estate.
“That was my problem. As soon as I started to earn money, I was all about that. I wanted to earn more cash. I have always liked cars, motorbikes and scooters, and that was my drive, unashamedly.”
His tough upbringing instilled a fierce work ethic in the businessman.
On a walk from the flagship Brogue Trader store in Morgan Arcade to the office on Westgate Street, Chris talks about his first home with his wife of 31 years Joanne. It had just a single bed, and he bought a kettle and toaster for a pound from a local charity shop.
Chris worked his way up in the industry.
He moved to wherever the BMW dealership sent him. In his last job, he was dealer principal at the Haverfordwest-based dealership Green Bower, a £90m business with 75 members of staff.
But he wasn’t happy at work. “I would go to a board meeting
once a quarter and my chairman would say the slightest thing to me and I would want to scratch his eyes out,” Chris said.
So he started looking at options to strike out on his own, and knew it had to be in sales.
As he rose in the business world and started mixing with more affluent people, Chris started to care more about how he was dressed. The watch on his wrist, the shoes on his feet.
He also believed there was a whole generation who hadn’t seen a shop like Brogue Trader and there were people growing out of trainers and tracksuits and looking to wear smarter clothes.
“I think it is very important that people work to their strengths. They don’t get distracted from what they can do by what they want to do when they go into business,” he said.
“I wanted to work for myself and I knew I had to go into sales. I am good at sales and my forte was obviously selling cars. So I sell shoes like we would sell cars.”
Chris said that when a shopper comes into the store, they will not just give them a pair of shoes to try, they will look to “qualify them”.
The sales staff will go through the brands, the heritage of the company and how the shoes are manufactured. They measure the feet and offer a drink.
Chris said he believes about 90% of the customers who come into the store are wearing the wrong size shoes.
Most people, he believes, haven’t had their feet measured since they were young, which means people with wider feet end up wearing shoes a size or two too big to compensate, rather than buying a wider shoe of the right length.
These shoes do come at a cost – a pair from Brogue Trader might cost in the region of £200.
However, Chris is quick to point out that once the sole has worn out, for £70 they are able to send them back to the factory where a new sole will be attached and the leather ironed out and freshened up.
So the customer will, in effect, have had two pairs of shoes for £135.
“The more they have them resoled and cleaned up, the cheaper they become,” says Chris.
It is repeat customers and word of mouth that have seen the business grow.
“What we found is that year one of a new shop does okay, but year two we see up to a 40% sales increase. People come back and tell their friends,” says Chris.
“The biggest motivator for me was being able to create a family business where I could fund my family’s lifestyle,” Chris said.
“None of my children are academics. They did their GCSEs, struggled through their A-levels and didn’t enjoy education. They enjoy sport and socialising. They are people people.
“I was worried about them and how they were going to be able to fund a good lifestyle and have all the lovely things people are going to want. And we have been able to do that, but only through hard work.”
All three of Chris’ children work for the brand. Stacey is in the head office, while Daniel and Keiron work in the stores.
He hopes the business will be a legacy and stay in the family.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a picture of Granddad on the wall and he’s the one who made the difference?”
Looking to the future, Chris has plans to go beyond the shoe stores and start making their own line of footwear.
Next year Chris and his wife are getting in their campervan, with his Lambretta on the back, and will tour Spain and Portugal, visiting shoe-making factories.
But Chris said this won’t be until “we have enjoyed the Six Nations”.