When Neil Dixon joined then-budding retailer Julian Graves as a one-man property department, he found the challenge he wanted. He tells Ben Cooper why now’s no time to slow down

When Neil Dixon joined the property department at Julian Graves, he was the property department at Julian Graves.

The health food retailer, which started as a market stall in the Cotswolds, had grown into a mini-empire of 60 stores and was crying out for a man of Dixon’s experience to take it to the next level. Thanks to his help, there are now more than 350 Julian Graves stores and, unlike many in today’s climate, the Baugur-owned retailer is pressing on with an aggressive roll-out schedule of 45 stores a year, despite the difficult climate.

A chance letter to Julian Graves founder Nick Shutts was a piece of perfect timing that Dixon has never regretted. He was getting itchy feet in his role at fashion retailer Alexon and looking for a new challenge at a smaller company that was primed for big expansion. Expansion was the very thing on Shutts’ mind and he was looking for a man to turn his ideas into reality. Dixon was taken on as property manager in 2001 and swiftly promoted to property director in 2002.

“I had become a bit disillusioned working at Alexon,” says Dixon. “I wanted to work for a smaller retailer in the early days of its expansion and Julian Graves was a company like that. Nick had all these ideas when I first met him and he said: ‘This is where we are and this is where we’re going and you’re the kind of man I need’.”

Seven years on, Dixon and Shutts are still in the heat of the battle to build Julian Graves into a retail chain with 700 stores in the UK and abroad.

Dixon says that although the market is tough at the moment, this leaves the door open for a stronger hand in lease negotiations and, ultimately, growth.

“In the next 12 months things will be tough, but that’s an opportunity for us,” he explains. “Already, we’ve had deals offered to us that are a sign of the times. A number of the larger landlords are approaching us with good deals and I think that will continue over the next 12 months. Lots of landlords want our brand now, but we have to be careful to make sure we sign for places because of the right property reasons, rather than because it’s a good deal financially.”

The fact that Dixon is unperturbed by today’s stormy climate is reflected in the way that he is still driving Julian Graves’ expansion forward. The retailer wants to expand its Irish and European presence, hoping to increase its number of stores in Ireland from four to 10 by the end of the financial year and roll out a possible three in Holland.

Before Julian Graves was Julian Graves, it was a single market stall at Moreton-in-Marsh, which Shutts opened in 1984 with the help of a£500 loan from his father. It sold baking ingredients such as sultanas, currants and raisins, which Shutts would weigh out on the stall. However, as time went by, he realised that there was more to be made by selling his produce pre-packed.

This decision and the growing popularity of the stall meant that Shutts could start thinking bigger. He began opening in other market locations and opened his first two shopping centre stores, at Crowngate Shopping Centre in Worcester and Merry Hill in Dudley. These were followed in 1987 by the opening of Shutts’ first high street store at Brierley Hill in the West Midlands, trading under the name Food For Thought.

One of the biggest turning points came when long-term business partner Nigel Morris came on board in 1993, not least because it brought about the birth of the brand name. On their way to the bank to secure a loan, Morris and Shutts were poring over names to call their business. As a temporary solution, they decided to use their middle names Julian (Shutts’s) and Graves (Morris’s). After they had gotten the loan, it stuck.

A star is born

From these humble beginnings, the first high street Julian Graves store opened at High Wycombe. Several years of rapid expansion followed, with 60 stores open by 2001, when the pair scooped Retail Week’s Rising Star Award.

“We had just 60 shops when Julian Graves won the Retail Week Rising Star of the Year award in 2001,” explains Dixon. “The mission was expansion. Nick Shutts had a target of 200 stores as the first part of his three-year masterplan.”

And this is where Dixon came in. With a career in property that spans 24 years, Dixon was ideally placed to turn the pair’s dream into a reality at a time when the brand’s potential for expansion was becoming clear.

This was no mean feat considering that Dixon was the only person in the department, but it was the challenge that he had been looking for. He says: “I was the first in-house property person – there was no property department. There were 60 shops and we’d just reached the point where it was starting to get too much for one person to manage.”

An old-fashioned story of entrepreneurial success, the future seemed bright for Julian Graves.

Seven years later and although the performance of the business has stuttered, it still has plans to possibly double its property presence and move into more diverse locations. Dixon explains: “600 stores was our original plan, but since then we’ve looked at other markets as well, like department stores, garden centres, tourist locations, hospitals, railways and airports. There will possibly be 700 UK stores.”

A crucial landmark on the road to growth for Julian Graves was private equity firm Baugur’s acquisition of 80 per cent of the business in 2003. The considerable investment that came with this buy-out has allowed the retailer to contemplate a new level of expansion and increase the profile of the brand. But this has not been to the detriment of the core ethos of the company, according to Dixon.

“The Baugur investment has allowed us to push on in a big way into the next step,” says Dixon. “It was buying into the potential. We had 180 stores when Baugur bought 80 per cent of Julian Graves and had plans to open into 600. Since then, there’s been rapid expansion in terms of property and brand awareness.”

With Baugur’s investment and its emphasis on raising the retailer’s profile, it has been a valuable ally to Julian Graves. The extra clout that having private equity on its side has brought has allowed Julian Graves to publicise in more innovative ways, including its sponsorship of Channel 4’s You Are What You Eat show in 2006.

For Dixon, it is vital that he bears in mind the market that Julian Graves appeals to and the best locations for new stores. The retailer benefits greatly from the increasingly important “grey pound”. The concept of selling baking supplies, which has remained at the core of the brand, has always been a hit with the older customer. And, with treatments for cholesterol, diabetes and weight loss included in its range of more than 1,300 products, this same age bracket has become a staple of the retailer’s customer base.

This fact plays a big part in Dixon’s strategy when it comes to choosing locations for store openings. Dixon says that the original market stall business sold baking goods targeted at home bakers, which tended to be older people. “We are in a lot of retirement and seaside locations like Weston-super-Mare and Eastbourne – coastal locations and factory outlets,” he says.

The type of towns that Dixon has in his sights are the ones with a more affluent, slightly older population. “A typical Julian Graves is on a high street in a market town with a slightly older population of about 10,000-plus, with a good level of disposable income, like Stamford [in Lincolnshire],” he says.

Nick Shutts has taken Julian Graves full circle. Having been on a rags-to-riches journey, spanning 24 years, he has now opened a store in the very place where it all began – Moreton-in-Marsh; a stone’s throw from the spot where he first set out his stall.

The fact that Shutts has been so far with his company and appears set to go even further is owed in no small part to its aggressive acquisition strategy. And while the going may be getting choppy, Dixon remains committed to growing through the downturn.

Hot property

Born: Morpeth, Northumberland
Lives: Chippenham, Wiltshire
Family: married, with two daughters

CAREER HISTORY
2002-present: property director, Julian Graves
2001-02: property manager, Julian Graves
1997-2001: property manager, Alexon Group
1991-97: property manager, Courtlands Textiles
1987-91: estate assistant, Edinburgh Woollen Mill
1984-87: estate assistant, Smiths Gore