In this episode of Stake & Soul, Barry speaks with Gary Grant, the founder of The Entertainer, who together with his wife Catherine built one of Britain’s most values-driven retail businesses from a single toy shop in Amersham in 1981 to over 160 stores, a Tesco-wide supply contract and a business turning over hundreds of millions a year. In September 2025, Gary and his family transferred 100% of their shares into an Employee Ownership Trust, a move he describes as the biggest risk they’ve ever taken, and the one that best preserves the jobs and culture they spent 44 years building.
Gary is best known for what he wouldn’t do: closing his stores on Sundays after the Sunday Trading Act, refusing to stock products that didn’t sit right with his Christian faith, and quietly gifting 10% of EBITDA to charity for 35 years. This is the story behind those decisions and how they ultimately shaped the exit.
What’s covered in this episode:
- Gary’s route into retail through a childhood of Cubs “Bob a job”, paper rounds, milk floats and a bike shop apprenticeship, and the skateboard boom that gave him his first £20,000 of trading capital
- The January 1981 firing from the bike shop, and the toy shop in Amersham that opened on 5 May 1981 with a first year turnover of £100,000
- The pack-of-cards financing story: buying a shop, moving house and losing his job all at once and the Barclays manager’s secretary who told him “just lend him the money, he’ll be okay”
- Why Gary quietly gave away 10% of EBITDA to charity for 35 years, and the charities the family started, including Restore Hope
- The 2008 financial crisis (October turnover down 30% overnight) and the COVID lockdowns of 2020 (losing around £1M a week for 17 weeks) that ultimately drove the succession decision
- The Thursday family meeting where Gary told Catherine he thought they should sell and the Salvation Army prayer earlier that morning: “have the strength to do the right thing”
- Why VC, trade sale and float were all ruled out, and how the EOT was the only route that preserved both jobs and values
- The 13-week transaction timeline, the tax anti-avoidance scrutiny they faced, and Gary’s honest view that tax wasn’t the leading motive
- The governance structure Gary put in place: three trustees, one representing the exiting shareholders, one chairing the new Colleague Advisory Board of 10–12 people, and one independent professional trust chair
- The presentation day in Birmingham for around 350 colleagues about five weeks before completion, and the phrase that kept coming back: “you believed in me, you gave us an opportunity”
- Gary’s RIG framework, born at a Jersey prayer breakfast: Reputation, Integrity, Generosity and how he now applies it to his post-EOT life
Quickfire highlights
- Employee ownership is: empowering everybody in the business to have a voice.
- Biggest EO surprise: the speed of the transaction with a willing attitude, almost any business could do an EOT.
- Book recommendation: an honest admission that he rarely finishes books. Richard Branson, Steven Bartlett and even the Bible sit half-read on the shelf, because as a dyslexic entrepreneur, he learns by seeing and doing rather than reading.
- Confessional: a secret struggle – the weight of responsibility carried for staff, suppliers and family across 44 years, and the quiet pride of never having a supplier or staff member say they’d been paid late.
Barry and Gary also touch on the £6 million Restore Hope community hub Gary is now building in Amersham, and why he’s already convinced the EOT is the best decision the family ever made even before the first pound of deferred consideration has been paid.
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