Gary Grant, co-founder of toys and games giant The Entertainer and winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award (alongside his wife, Catherine), believes that businesses ‘can be a force for good’.
Grant started his toy shop empire in Amersham in 1981. The business has since expanded to 160 stores nationwide, stocks in other leading retailers such as Matalan, Tesco, Moonpig and Marks & Spencer, and reported pre-tax profits of £6.7 million in January 2024. It has also snapped up other toy chains such as the Early Learning Centre, which was bought in 2019 for up to £13.5 million.
‘If you asked the question, “What got me up in the morning?” it’s just seeing children running around with smiles on their faces,’ Grant tells Spear’s at Raffles London. It is this passion which has consistently driven him forward, despite challenging market conditions.
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In the weeks leading up to the London 2012 Olympic Games, he recounted ‘awful’ toy sales, yet he still agreed a deal of ‘a million pieces’ of soft toy mascots.
‘It turned out to be a deal and a half,’ he says. ‘We were selling an artic of stock a day, and many people looked at me and said, “You were mad, buying those.” But an entrepreneur has a hunch. If you could bottle it, it would be really valuable. But you just know, you know.’
For more than 30 years, The Entertainer has given away 10 per cent of its profits to charity, supporting young people and families. Grant encouraged customers to be generous through ‘pennies’ giving, a method of donating to charity through rounding up their bills, and over the past 12 years they have raised ‘between £6 million and £7 million in amounts of money always less than 99p’ thanks to customer support.
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Last August The Entertainer announced that ownership of the company would be transferred to an employee ownership trust as the Grant family exited the business. The roots of this decision can be traced back to the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘When we considered how near we were to not being in existence, we asked, “What does the future look like?”’ said Grant. The family considered a trade exit, passing the baton to the next generation, selling to a venture capital fund or floating the business, but eventually settled on transferring ownership to employees as the best way of preserving the right legacy.
Since completion of the transition, none of the Grant family have any involvement in the business, ‘but there’s still something in me that wants to do something, to leave a legacy and make a difference’.
This feature first appeared in Spear’s Magazine issue 98. Click here to subscribe
