He may have once come close to bankruptcy, but Nick Wheeler, founder of shirt business Charles Tyrwhitt, tells Charlotte Dennis-Jones why he loves being his own boss

When his fellow students had little more to occupy their minds than their next pint or perhaps attending the odd lecture, Nick Wheeler was busy setting up his mail-order shirt business. Charles Tyrwhitt, his two middle names, began in the bedroom of his university digs.

But the Old Etonian had already proved his entrepreneurial spirit with three other business ventures: selling Christmas trees, bespoke shoes and photographs of school-leavers.

Aside from the obvious financial incentives, Wheeler says these enterprises were sparked by a hunch that they might help pave the way for a place at Cambridge University. As it turned out, he “completely and utterly” failed to make the cut, he laughs, and had to settle for Bristol.

Nearly 30 years later, his multichannel Charles Tyrwhitt menswear business, which now includes suits, shoes and accessories, employs up to 400 people and has annual sales of about£50 million. It also has nine stores and four more planned to open this year.

After spending two years at Bain as a management consultant – “people advised me to get some business experience as they obviously thought I was a complete idiot,” he jokes – Wheeler began working full-time on Charles Tyrwhitt in November 1989. Sales grew quickly, despite a fairly insalubrious stint in an asbestos-ridden basement office. After three years, sales had risen to£1.2 million.

Wheeler says the job of running his business comes with both benefits and challenges. One advantage is the fact that English-styled shirts sell well across the world – particularly in the US. Another is the low number of returns involved in online shirt and tie sales. But less easy to manage are the numerous different size specifications. “You can have 12,000 shirts available and, sod’s law, someone always wants the one you don’t have in stock,” he says.

He has also experienced issues with suppliers. Interestingly, he found dealing with some of those closest to home particularly problematic. While the shoes and many of the cuff-links are produced in the UK, he finds it “almost impossible” to get shirts made here. Aside from the fact there are very few factories left, many of the artisans have gone and the quality “usually just isn’t very good”.

He adds: “Reliability was also appalling. They’d say it will be here on March 1 and it would be weeks late.”

But Charles Tyrwhitt’s stickiest patch came in 1994 when the business nearly went bankrupt. Wheeler had signed a debenture with a major shirt supplier that claimed it would help with finance. “Two weeks later, they walked into our office with a receiver because we had failed to pay for a delivery of shirts. We offered to pay, but it was turned down. It was all a scam to try to get the business on the cheap,” he says.

The business was put into receivership, but Wheeler persuaded the bank to throw its receiver out – a move that allowed him to eventually buy the business back. “A good lesson is don’t trust your suppliers to act in your best interests,” he says.

Wheeler admits to getting things wrong a couple of years ago too, when the business branched out into womens- and childrenswear. “It’s easy to get sidetracked,” he says. “Buying teams always want to do more and controlling that can be difficult.”

But overcoming the lows might have much to do with Wheeler’s positive nature – he certainly has the requisite entrepreneurial self-belief. “It’s not that difficult, you just need to apply your mind,” he says.

He recalls seeing a Thomas Pink store in Fulham before he set the business up. “I remember thinking: ‘I can do that’,” he says. “I didn’t have a background in textiles, but it was common sense. You need fabric and someone to make the shirts.”

He particularly wants to encourage other young entrepreneurs and is one of the judges in the 2008 Entrepreneur Challenge – a competition with a top prize of a£5 million interest-free investment loan.

“I was never good at history, but I do know that in the 19th century, the UK was a great entrepreneurial society, and a lot of that has been lost,” he says. “I love running my own business. It’s a great way of life.”

Wheeler is not the kind of man who likes to switch off from the day job. In fact, he’s even more immersed in retail than most – his wife Chris Rucker is founder of The White Company and they confess to talking shop a lot. But that, it would seem, is the way he likes it.

Buttoned up
Age: 43
Lives: Thame, Oxfordshire
Family: married to The White Company founder Chris Rucker, with four children
Interests: tennis, skiing, photography

Career history
1989-present: sets up and runs Charles Tyrwhitt
1987-89: Bain, management consultant
Pre-1987: own photography businesses, Christmas tree and shoe sales