The family affair that grew from tiny ironmonger to one of our biggest firms
What has now become Leekes started out as a business run out of the front room of a terraced home. Now the £70m firm has stores, a castle and a renowned resort – but it’s still a family affair, as Laura Clements reports
FOR a business which started out in the front room of a terraced house in Tonypandy, the Leekes tagline of “You’re Home” is strangely apt.
Today that tiny Valleys shop, started at the turn of the 20th century with a meagre sum saved from the Boer War, is now one of Wales’ longest-running family firms and worth more than £70m.
Founder James Henry Leeke would be unlikely to recognise his simple ironmongers from 120 years ago. It is now a burgeoning retail and leisure business that includes a luxury hotel resort and a 17th-century castle complete with gin distillery in the basement.
The people at the helm of Leekes, however, would be more familiar –for they are James’ great-grandson Gerald Leeke and four great-great-grandchildren.
When I meet two of those greatgreat-grandchildren, Emma and Stephen, at the Leekes-owned Vale Resort in the Vale of Glamorgan, it’s soon clear family is paramount and central to the success of the brand.
Emma Leeke, 51, is the managing director of Leekes Retail, while Stephen Leeke, 49, is managing director of the Vale Resort. Growing up they might not have realised it, but they were already being trained in the Leekes school of business.
By then Gerald was in charge. Every Sunday lunchtime, before the Leeke family sat down for Sunday lunch, Emma’s job was to count all the money taken in the shop that morning.
“Dad would come home with the money and it was my job to put all the Queen’s heads in the right place so we had bundles of money,” she said. “Then I would have to tell him how much the store had taken.”
Her brother Stephen wasn’t even 10 years old when he can remember sweeping up the floor of the old Staedtler pencil factory in Llantrisant to make way for the first “out of town” store in 1977.
“I can just remember lots of lead dust everywhere, on the floor,” he said.
More than 40 years later, Emma and Stephen have slightly conflicting memories.
Emma is convinced her father used to open frequently on Sunday, despite the fact Sunday trading was banned back then, and was regularly fined for doing so.
Stephen can’t remember that. But both recall there was always a handy supply of batteries at Christmas as they would simply nip over to the shop to get some.
Four decades on, brother and sister are still working side by side. These days they have people to count the money and staff to sweep the floors.
It’s not just them, though – there are 12 members of the family still employed in the Leekes Group, including their parents Gerald and Sue, sister Joanna Littlejohn and brother Chris Leeke.
The Leekes story is one that began during the prosperous age when the coal of the Rhondda Valley fuelled a nation.
James Leeke returned to the Welsh Valleys in 1902 after serving in the Boer War and married Mary Gwendoline David six years later.
The couple set up home at 178 Court Street in Tonypandy, which is where James, an apprentice blacksmith, opened his small ironmongery business.
James’ son Llewellyn took over the business from his father in 1933 at the age of 22, expanding it to include the ironmonger and a builders merchant at a larger shop in Dunraven Street. JH Leeke & Sons was born.
The Valleys were an industrial powerhouse, the railways made it accessible, and affordable housing became more widely available.
In the late 1960s Llewellyn’s son Gerald joined the business full-time and extended the range at Dunraven Street. He added kitchen and bathrooms displays, taking over the shop next door for an additional showroom.
By 1965 the company turnover had reached £38,000, which grew to half a million pounds by 1975. The business had firmly established itself as one of the first DIY outlets, leading the way for national chains such as B&Q. Leekes bought another Rhondda site in Talbot Green, near Llantrisant, and opened a “DIY superstore” there in 1977.
By the early 1980s annual profit had reach £4m.
These days it’s not just Leekes, but Leekes Retail & Leisure Group.
There’s definitely no apostrophe, laughs Emma, and retail comes with a capital R. Stephen jokes it’s something his sister has deliberated over many times.
After the Llantrisant store, Leekes added one in Cross Hands and one in Melksham just the other side of the Severn Bridge. Park Furnishers in Bristol was added to the portfolio in 2016. There’s also the Vale Resort at Hensol as well as the Leekes property development company.
In the year to March 31, 2019 the business made a pre-tax profit of £2.9m and the Leekes Group is worth some £70m. While most of the turnover comes from the retail business, the assets are mostly tied up in the Vale resort, adds Stephen.
Gerald, now 79, was the man with the vision – he was the one who worked out how far people would travel to buy from Leekes, Emma explained.
“It was his view that people would travel for about 45 minutes, so he worked out that by placing stores about an hour or 80 minutes apart would be able to attract people all the way along the M4 corridor,” said Emma.
“Dad was the entrepreneur guy, the one who saw an opportunity. He would say, ‘We can do that, let’s try that’.”
While Gerald was the ideas man, it would fall to his offspring to work out the how.
Like the decision to buy Hensol Castle, a former mental health hospital, for a cool £35m, which has since been turned into a plush wedding venue and lavish apartments.
Or the Hensol golf course, which has grown from a cabin in a field to become a luxury resort, home to the biggest spa in Wales and the official
home of the Welsh rugby and football teams.
The family has since brought people into the management team to help steady the ship. “You have to supplement the skills when you have something this big,” says Emma.
It’s been hard graft, but even so Stephen admits he still pinches himself sometimes as he walks around the resort, which is very much his baby.
He is a quietly-spoken man with a steady gaze and speaks in a deliberate way.
He joined the business straight from university in 1994 and, looking back at everything, he is most proud of the “technical side of what we’ve achieved here”.
He starts explaining how they renovated parts of Hensol Castle in intricate detail and it’s clear he’s a details kind of man.
It was as much his idea to buy the golf course in the early 1990s, which at the time was “just a cabin in a field”. Together father and son developed the two championship golf courses and a four-star luxury hotel to create The Vale Hotel, Golf and Spa Resort.
Gerald still heads on to the golf course from time to time despite his advancing years. But before he steps out on to the carefully-mowed fairway, he will sweep round the restaurant and clear any tables himself, Emma adds.
The success of the group does allow them to indulge in ideas and projects that are as interesting as much as money-generating. Like the gin distillery under construction in the castle basement. Stephen’s face lights up as he explains the next stage of their expansion plans – the Hensol Castle Distillery.
The ability to spot an opportunity is what sets Leekes apart. Driven by Gerald’s “can-do” attitude where “no challenge is too small”, it’s the reason why the group continues to grow.
“There is an inherent self-belief and he doesn’t like to be beaten,” says Emma, describing her father.
“He thinks everything is possible. “He is decisive. He will spot the idea and the opportunity and then make it happen.” Like when Gerald heard Welsh rugby coach Graham Henry complain about the Welsh weather and how it hampered training. Gerald couldn’t understand why there were no facilities.
In New Zealand the national team used to train in an equestrian centre, which was quite literally an empty barn. So when Henry, a New Zealander, asked Gerald if he could build them a barn, he replied “Absolutely”.
Not just that, he said: “We could build a barn, but why not build something better?”
He looked into indoor pitches and now the Hensol facility is used as a blueprint around the world for indoor training, says Emma.
It’s an understatement. That barn is now a 40-acre sports and training facility which provides world-class facilities for the national rugby and football teams as well as the Cardiff Blues and Cardiff City.
“What did Steve and dad know about putting down pitches? Absolutely nothing,” laughs Emma. “That’s pretty much the mentality of the family.”
The training facility has since become the Centre of Excellence but it still can’t shift its original name, Stephen laughs.
“It’s still called the Barn.” Emma didn’t follow her brother straight into the family business. She knew she would always come back but spent a decade living in London “enjoying the London life” as a buyer and manager for Marks & Spencer.
“I really enjoy developing people and building a team,” she said.
“It’s recognising we don’t have the skills and bringing these skills into the team.”
Her own two children, who are 21 and 19, are both “fascinated” by the family business and may or may not choose to join as they complete their respective degree studies.
It seems inevitable, however, as Emma shrugs and says: “It’s in our blood.”
The company reinvests nearly all profits back into capital expenditure projects aimed at providing new revenue streams further down the line.
The family have never taken any money out of the business, Stephen says, adding none of the family are driven by having millions in the bank.
But the success of the brand can’t be denied and Emma admits it does afford them a “certain type of lifestyle”.
Hensol isn’t very big – perhaps 30 houses at the most.
A good many of them belong to one of the Leekes clan, with Gerald and Sue living on the Hensol estate, Emma living in the former family home, and both Stephen and Chris living in the village.
Christmas is usually a raucous affair, with the whole family descending on the family home to celebrate.
“It can get quite boozy,” says Emma, giving Stephen a sideways look. “We do spend a lot of time together – we all go on holiday together, we ski together once a year.”
During the Covid crisis the family thought carefully about forming their bubbles to ensure they could still work the business with the close contact they had come to rely on.
One of the benefits of all mucking in together as a family is that they all have an “inherent level of trust” in each other and accept that each one is doing their best not just for the business but the family too.
Even so, there must be times when everything gets, well, just too close, I suggest.
Emma screws up her face to think but can’t come up with anything. She looks over to Stephen to help her out, but he has nothing to offer either.
“To be honest, I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he says quietly.