When Hutchinson’s purchased stand 46 in New Spitalfields from Five Towers 13 years ago, Chris Hutchinson had no hesitation putting Cliff Hart in at the deep end and allowing him to run the company single-handedly from day one. Just 24 at the time, Hart had already been working for Hutchinson’s for eight years, after being snapped up in his days as an Evening Standard salesman outside the family’s Chingford greengrocery store.
Hart was joined within a year by Jonathan Labrum, who had built his vegetable knowledge base and customer network during eight years in Spitalfields - old and New - with WH Bailey, having followed his grandfather and uncle into the wholesale trade.
Between them, and with help from a long-standing sales and administration team, they have built Montgomery into a three-division, £6 million plus business. Having reached a time when it became obvious that their careers needed some extra impetus, Hart and Labrum reached an agreement with Chris Hutchinson on a management buyout (MBO) of the company.
“It is a natural progression,” says Labrum. “Neither of us are getting any younger, although we are both still relatively young in this market. And we had reached a level whereby we were running the company and widely recognised as being in charge, but we were not our own bosses. We needed something more.”
Hart agrees: “Everyone needs an incentive to jump out of bed when the alarm goes off at 11.30pm and, while we still had that, we wanted to move on to another stage sooner rather than later. This is it.”
Hutchinson says that the decision to sell Montgomery was not made overnight, but he is sure that it will be the right move for all involved. “Both Cliff and Jonathan are in their 30s and by the time they are in their mid-40s, like me, I hope they can be in a similar situation of deciding for themselves what they want to be doing with their business. I have got more than enough on my plate with Arthur Hutchinson Ltd and it is no more or less than they deserve as they have both worked tirelessly for Montgomery. We have always had an excellent relationship.”
Despite its location within 30 seconds walk of Hutchinson’s, the two companies have been run entirely separately from each other. “You can’t have it any other way in a market environment,” says Hutchinson. “We have always competed with each other - although there have times when I wished we hadn’t been. You just cannot collude on a market, people find you out very quickly.”
Hart says: “Chris has always given us a free rein and to be honest, it isn’t going to change that much. We aren’t going to have a big fanfare.” Labrum adds: “I think most of the customers probably think we own the business anyway, so nothing will be any different for them - it will be a seamless transition. The people we have told have been extremely positive about it though.”
While Labrum runs the veg side of the business, Hart has moved from being a self-confessed “jack-of-all-trades” when he initially took on the Montgomery role to specialising in salad lines. “I can admit now that it was very difficult in the beginning. At 24, being in charge of a business worried the life out of me and I was feeling my way through for the first few months. It was understandably a bit hit and miss at first, but Jon joined me after nine months and he was a fantastic fella to get hold of.
“I had been trying a bit of everything to establish myself, but with Jon, we put more structure into what we were doing and he brought the veg side into its own very quickly. I took the salad side of the business on in a more focused way and that made an immediate difference.”
Peter McIntyre was brought in to set up a fruit side to the company when another unit was purchased from EW Webb in 1997 and by that time David Jeans had been working in the office for three years already. Both are still employees and integral to the future plans of Montgomery as is Elaine Burke, who transferred from Hutchinson’s temporarily but has since become a permanent member of the team.
Turnover has grown every year in the last decade, as the range of produce and customer profile expanded. Hart says: “We have built up the business in a number of ways, but primarily we have never been afraid to take a chance. We are always looking for new lines, products and suppliers that will differentiate us and we have a well-established network of direct suppliers that have come by word of mouth, direct contact from us or have visited us in the market. We have always made a point of keeping the stand tidy and I think that has helped us flourish.”
Labrum adds: “Buying habits have changed significantly in the last few years and more of our customers are content to buy everything from us. Retail customers’ days are long too and they just don’t have the time to go round 10 different stands and pick and choose like they used to. That’s why we work the way we do; providing the opportunity to one-stop-shop for the basic lines and a good range of everything else.”
Taking on the ownership of a wholesale business in the UK would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Montgomery is operating in a market where demand for space still outstrips capacity. “This is a full market, you can see how busy we get just by standing on our stand for a few minutes. There is a terrific atmosphere here and we fully enjoy our jobs,” says Hart. “We’d both like to take the opportunity to say thank you to Chris for firstly giving us the chance to work at Montgomery, and now for allowing us to take things forward in our own way.”
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