Oliver Bonas, one of the UK’s leading independent retailers, is the latest fantastic employer to join the Skills Builder Partnership to champion essential skills. They’re supporting five schools across the country to build the essential skills of their students, as well as using the Skills Builder approach in their business too.
With nearly 30 years of experience of running the company, Olly Tress has taken the business from a small store in west London to an expanding multinational company with 84 stores across the United Kingdom and Ireland. We explored how the business has evolved and the role of essential skills along the way.
Tell us about how you founded Oliver Bonas?
Whilst at university, my parents lived in Hong Kong. I’d bring back gifts for friends like handbags and watches. In time, I began bringing more back and selling them to a wider group and it turned into a very small business. Once university ended, everyone looked for graduate jobs at well-respected companies but I’d always had that feeling of wanting to do my own thing. I took this small business and grew it slowly over a couple of years, selling products at markets and fairs but I wanted to do something exciting and ambitious. Starting a shop was the next step, so I opened one. On the first Saturday, I took a thousand pounds and distinctly remember the euphoria of feeling: this is going to work. I probably haven’t had a moment in my career that has matched that sense of possibility and excitement.
What were some of the essential skills that you drew on early in your entrepreneurial journey?
In terms of essential skills, I was a generalist, I wasn't particularly good at finance but I understood numbers. I had an aesthetic style that made the store interesting. I was ambitious and I wanted to grow. I was just good enough at everything with a bit of ambition and naivety that made me believe that I could keep going.
When you start a business, you find out the skills you have because you're going to have to adapt, modify and adjust to what you originally planned. You are going to have to stay positive and deal with the challenges in front of you.
You need to formalise the process and say right we've got this problem: what are the potential upsides here? If you're only panicking about how it's affecting you today, you won't be able to raise your eyes above the horizon and see that for every action there's a reaction.
What were some of the biggest lessons you learnt about working with other people?
The first one was that people can't read your mind so if I had an idea in my head, it’s only obvious to me. Communicating your ideas effectively is vital as well as being very explicit and detailed about what you're expecting from people. Managing people is a great skill and it's about supporting people by giving clear guidance for what is needed and giving them the tools to do it.
What are you excited about next?
Challenges. We have to constantly evolve in a way that the customer feels is relevant to them, so there's that daily creative challenge of keeping the business fresh and exciting. I love what I see as the closest thing to magic, which is taking a blank piece of paper and turning it into a product and the customer then buying it. I don't like having ceilings, I want infinite possibilities and having that feeling of possibility excites me. I genuinely believe that we are able to achieve what we set our minds to at Oliver Bonas.
As Oliver Bonas looks to the next phase of its development, we are delighted to be partnering with them to realise the potential of these vital essential skills across the whole business.
Find out more about how we work with employer partners at www.skillsbuilder.org/employers
