In this episode of Stake and Soul, Barry speaks with Alastair Sawday, founder of Sawday’s, the Bristol-based travel publisher that began in 1994 as a scruffy file of addresses from his small group tour company and grew into one of Britain’s most trusted authorities on special places to stay. In 2018, after refusing to sell to the highest bidder, Alastair pioneered a hybrid ownership model: 52 percent to employees, 24 percent to a charitable trust, and 24 percent retained by the Sawday family.
Alastair talks about being driven by a dislike of conventional tourism rather than business ambition, how the first book happened almost by accident, why he believes business itself needs to change if the world is to survive, and what he wishes he had done differently.
What’s covered in this episode:
- How a friend bursting into his office looking for a job led to the first book in 1994 that sold 12,000 copies, then another 12,000 on reprint, turning a small tour company into a publishing business almost by accident.
- Why he never saw himself as a businessman, and how a parallel life as a Soil Association trustee, Green Party parliamentary candidate, and environmentalist shaped every ownership decision.
- The Bristol lecture about a Palestinian doctor that led to a chance conversation, a recommendation to read David Erdal’s ‘Beyond the Corporation’, and the moment employee ownership clicked.
- Why he chose a hybrid 52-24-24 structure, and how the charitable trust was designed to protect the company’s values over decades, not just distribute money.
- The honest admission that he did not consult employees properly, the patriarchal habits he recognises in himself, and what he wishes he had done instead.
- The mistake of appointing the company chair as chair of the EOT Trustee board at the same time, and why he now believes the Trust needs proper independence.
- Recruiting the new chair and managing director externally after stepping back, and the reflection that he should have brought more outside voices onto the board earlier.
- How the charitable foundation has connected the business to remarkable people, including a young Bristol activist supporting burnt-out Extinction Rebellion campaigners.
- Why he believes conventional capitalism is failing, and how the Quaker tradition of business, Cadbury, Rowntree, Fry, Barclays, offers a model worth drawing from.
Moments to listen out for:
- The grand piano in the middle of the office, and why the physical quality of the workplace mattered as much as anything else.
- The honest reflection that he “dumped” employee ownership on the team rather than consulting them properly, framed as iconoclasm but acknowledged as a failure.
- The Quaker influence on his thinking, and the conviction that business logic itself is what needs to change.
Quickfire highlights
- Employee ownership is: one of the best ways of ensuring equity in its human sense among the people who’ve enabled you to work and to prosper.
- Biggest EO surprise: how extraordinarily successful it can be and has been.
- Book recommendation: ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ by Arundhati Roy, for its commitment to individuality and sticking to your values whatever the cost.
- Confessional: thirty years of working alongside Annie, his bilingual secretary who became managing editor and effectively ran the publishing company, and his belief that she deserves the vast majority of the credit for the success of Sawday’s.
Barry’s book recommendation: ‘Travelling Light’ by Alastair Sawday, a delightful travel companion.
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