Stewart Golf meets Gymshark. What is going on?
Few stories lift the spirits like those about innovative British manufacturing and sport competing at the very highest level and winning. Stewart Golf has all that and more. Just what is its secret?
Dear readers,
Welcome to Monday’s edition of The Raikes Journal. Last week was one of our best in a while on Raikes in terms of visitor numbers, which was curious as our social media profile was minimal.
Hopefully that says something about our growing audience and ongoing organic growth.
Today we take a look at a business whose story this journalist has enjoyed following for a number of years now. Curious just how his company continues to deliver growth and success as both a British manufacturer and exporter (mainly to the USA, no less), we were lucky enough to chat to Mark Stewart, of Stewart Golf.
Just what is going right?
He talked about a focus on developing his own leadership skills as a key factor in the firm’s ongoing success and who has helped him achieve that (step forward QuoLux™ - B Corp Certified), and why it continues to pay dividends for his business. And then there’s the rather exciting partnership he struck up with the team that’s driven growth at multi-million pound British sportswear brand Gymshark!
It means exciting times ahead for Stewart and his team. You can read about that below.
Have a great week.
Best regards,
Andrew Merrell (editor).
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Your briefing notes...
🏗️ The team behind plans to open a new McDonald’s restaurant on Gloucester Road in Cheltenham to replace TGI Friday’s looks like it faces a rough ride, with opposition mounting to the scheme. If approved it would be the third McDonald’s in the town. It also hopes to stay open until midnight. But the plans have sparked dozens of objections amid fears it will lead to increased “traffic, loitering and crime”. More here in our news channel.
🎤 Invest in Gloucestershire, the body dedicated to promoting the county to potential inward investors, is due to do just that at the UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum from Tuesday (20 May) through to Thursday (22 May). The organisation, which is part of Gloucestershire County Council, will be part of the delegation from the Western Gateway heading to the event in Leeds. Ben Watts, the council’s economy and spatial planning manager, is due to speak.
🏗️ Gloucester-headquartered Newland Homes has named the site manager who will head up its project in Tetbury to build 32 zero carbon homes. Simon Blackburn is the man who will take charge of the scheme the business is calling The Limes. Blackburn has previously worked for firms including David Wilson Homes, Barratt Developments and Bellway, and won the sites he’s worked on leading industry awards. More here in our PR Wire channel.
Charity of the week: It takes Allsorts to make the world a better place
The appointment of Clare Cannock as its new chief executive officer gives us a chance to introduce those of you who don’t know it to the Gloucestershire-headquartered charity Allsorts. Jess Waterman, chair of trustees for Allsorts, said Cannock brought a wealth of experience and passion for inclusion to her new role. Her role will be to work closely with the team, members and the community to build on the strong foundations already in place as well as keep the charity on track to achieving its ambitious strategic goals. Allsorts describes itself as “dedicated to supporting families with disabled children and young people by creating inclusive, fun, and active spaces where children can thrive. It provides a welcoming environment where children can be themselves, free from judgement, while families access vital resources to build confidence and resilience”. More here.
Diary dates…
Tuesday 20 May
📈 What’s holding your business back from hitting its growth goals? Gloucester Growth Hub’s banking and finance group is staging a special clinic to help you achieve your goals. From 1pm to 3.30pm. More here.
🥐☕ Networking group Cheltenham - People, Planet, Pastry is due to stage this event at Ritual Coffee Roasters, Cheltenham, from 8.30am to 10.30am. Your chance to meet like-minded business owners who are taking action on sustainability. More here.
Wednesday
🧑💻 Cheltenham's Growth Hub is due to stage a special seminar focusing on how you can get the most out of Linkedin to build your personal and professional brand. Led by Zac Radbone of Rad-Digital. From 10am to 11am. More here.
Thursday
🏦 Forest of Dean Bank of England Breakfast Briefing, sponsored by Thrings. Join chamber of Commerce members and Bank of England for Business West’s South West Monetary Policy Report Briefing event from 8am to 10am at The Speech House, near Coleford. More here.
Friday
📈 Want to know how to master email marketing? Growth marketeer Henny Maltby is due to stage this free seminar at The Growth Hub, at SGS College, Stroud, from 9.30am to 12.30pm. More here.
* The Raikes Journal is a digital magazine and community interest company whose supporters believe, like us, that journalism about Gloucestershire is worth keeping alive. Everything you read here - original stories about our county - is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne; our sponsors, growing list of Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you upgrade to paid you’ll be part of this CIC too. We’re dedicated to championing the county, its businesses, charities, education and training providers, and to creating an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you’ll be able to see past the paywalls often put on our 2cnd and 3rd email editions of the week, that lock our archive after two weeks and our Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series. You’ll be able to comment on our stories too.
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Stewart Golf meets Gymshark. What is going on?
Few stories lift the spirits like those about innovative British manufacturing and sport competing at the very highest level and winning. Stewart Golf has all that and more. Just what is its secret?
Some businesses have an incredible knack of being able to deliver despite the current climate blowing everyone else off course, like golfers who still manage to card a good round even when the winds blow.
For a British manufacturing business exporting a significant part of its product to a United States of America intent on trade tariffs, you might have thought the game plan for Stewart Golf currently would be decidedly conservative.
And with its chief executive officer, Mark Stewart, stepping down in February as one of the Government’s “export champions”, not best pleased with Labour’s attitude to businesses like his, you may also have assumed the mood music hasn’t been great for a while.
But you would be wrong.
Like that canny golfer we spoke about, Stewart has come to see all these factors as out of his control, believing instead that if he plays to his strengths, concentrates on a game plan, on leadership especially - expects to have to adapt always - then the business wins are there to be had.
In short, 2025 and the next few years actually look very exciting indeed for the niche British manufacturer. And then there’s a recent partnership with the team that grew sportswear brand Gymshark into a multi-million pound brand!
“I think we can double the business within the next three years,” said Stewart, when Raikes asked him what he thought the potential really was.
That would take the business, headquartered just off the M5 in Quedgeley, south of Gloucester, to a £13 million turnover.
It all sounds somewhat counterintuitive, given the climate we mentioned, but the chief executive officer and entrepreneur has form for proving the general consensus wrong.
Twenty years ago, when the now father-of-two first pitched his idea of a remote-control golf trolley that could follow up along the fairways under its own steam - people said ‘wow, it’s great’, before adding ‘but it will never sell’.
It was ‘too expensive, too new, too...’ whatever.
Stewart’s instinct told him differently and he carried on developing, researching and investing in the idea.
Those golf trollies have since become increasingly desirable items. The firm’s flagship ‘Q Follow’ (of which there is a top-of-the-range carbon model too) was described by Golfer’s Today as ‘the Bentley’ of golf trollies.
Not surprisingly having his products described in the same sentence as such an iconic luxury car marque, British made to boot, puts a smile on his face.
“That’s the sort of comparison we love to see,” he said.
There’s been some good fortune too. When the Covid-19 pandemic put some sectors on ice it saw a rise in the popularity of golf. But what’s stood out is Stewart Golf’s ability to see opportunity and capitalise.
“We grew through Covid - from a £2 million and a bit turnover to £6.5 million. Okay, we’re still small, but that’s proportionately big growth,” said Stewart.
“Since then we have consolidated. We’ve held onto that growth, but we are confident we can now push on.”
Where does that belief and will to push on come from? Stewart side steps the question to talk about the team at Stewart Golf and how proud he is of the culture they embody.
Try and escape the credit he might, but you could say that culture is the result of a journey he began some years ago, deciding early on that if he was to grow the business he needed to look at himself with the same eye for detail he’d used for his products.
It’s a decision that saw him sign up for the programme of leadership development delivered delivered by Gloucestershire-headquartered, QuoLux, a relationship that continues to this day.
Since then Stewart has completed the LEAD, GOLD and GAIN programmes, with their focus on leadership development, strategic growth and innovation and designed for chief executive officers, managing directors, directors and senior managers of small-medium sized businesses.
As a result he’s become part of a growing cohort of graduates of QuoLux, a family of businesses that provide a powerful network of support, and it’s a journey that has instilled in Stewart a belief in the benefits of continual learning and development.
It’s that attitude that recently led to a rather exciting development, a partnership with the team that helped grow one of the UK’s best-known and fastest growing sportswear brands, Gymshark.
At last count the Worcestershire-based clothing business has grown for 12 years straight and now turns over in excess of £600 million annually.
“That relationship came about after I went to an event where Steve Hewett, former ceo of Gymshark, was talking. He had recently stepped down to let Ben Francis take the reins.
“He talked about what Gymshark did right. There were so many similarities with what we are doing.
“I approached him afterwards and we started work with them in October last year.
“We have learnt a huge amount.”
Stewart is talking to Raikes from the firm’s boardroom.
On its walls hang some of his favourite pearls of wisdom from his time with QuoLux, and suggestive of just how much that learning is embedded within the DNA of Stewart Golf.
“What QuoLux has allowed me to do is look at what we do differently, to develop myself personally, but also develop a culture that allows us to challenge one another, to look at the business differently, to be more resilient.
“The team at QuoLux tell you it can take about seven years to establish a culture within a business.
“We’ve been working with them now for 10 years. It feels like we’ve established something pretty special here as a result,” he said.
A key part of that culture is the can-do attitude and the trust within the team. It allows them to turn what many might see as unsurmountable obstacles into what some business people view instead as ‘challenges and opportunities’.
“You say that Covid and talk of tariffs (in the USA) don’t come about very often, but before that was the financial crisis too.
“These things do seem to come about every couple of years. You have to become conditioned to that.
“We have to look at what we can control and do that well.
“If we focus on running a good business - keep an eye on the fixed costs - the boring stuff - and really concentrate on making good products, we have a reasonably good chance of success,” he said.
“People see all the talk about tariffs in the US, and know it’s a major part of our business. They are bound to be concerned.
“But our attitude is that we are established in the US for a decade now, we’ve been steadily building our brand, and we have a good level of stock there.
“We really don’t know what will happen, but what we do know is that the United States is still the United States.
“It’s 300 million people and remains the biggest market in the world for golf. There is a lot of opportunity there.”
Recent figures (for 2023) show that an estimated 26.6 million people in the USA played golf, an increase of around four per cent on the previous year and the highest participation figure sence 2009.
“We know electric trolleys are still in a minority on US golf courses and we expect that to grow,” added Stewart.
“We have a good product and we know that all our competitors are in the same boat (as regards issues around exports), except their products are made in China.
“We are British-made and most of our components are British-made too.
“If we can continue to educate the American golfers about the benefits of walking the course, and make sure they know they can do it with even more ease with our products, we’re in a good place.”
Will that growth bring jobs here in the UK too?
“While we hope to double turnover we don’t expect to double staff at the same time,” he said, explaining that capacity in the UK operation and clever use of AI to free up staff from more menial tasks will lead to efficiencies and productivity.
“But we also expect to create more jobs. We currently have about 35 staff and that might rise to 40 to 45.”