This is the story of how as a family we made the enormous change from being dairy farmers in Lancashire - born and bred - to SPAR retailers in Devon and Cornwall with 58 stores and an annual turnover in excess of 60 million pounds.

We come from a family of farmers, our Dad, Granddad & Great Granddad before him ran our dairy farm in Lancashire, and we all fully expected this would be something we would take over one day. We had always regarded farming as my destiny. In fact we’d only ever pictured ourselves going to work in wellington boots and John Deere overalls.
However in 1983, with the introduction of milk quotas, & family influences things became very tough indeed. After long discussions between family members, mum and dad decided we either continue the struggle onwards on our farm or we could look for pastures new. 

In January 1984 after looking at farms the length and breath of the country, our dad stumbled on a SPAR store for sale in Dalton's Weekly.
For as long as we can remember our Mum and Dad had been friends with Peter Sykes, the owner of our local SPAR in Lancashire. Peter had always appeared to be successful in his business and had suggested we could make the change from farmers to retailers on a number of occasions. Although we have to be honest we don’t believe he ever thought we’d take up the challenge – ironically it was Peter who sold us the Dalton’s Weekly, triggering the move.

On the farm we had just one full time farm labourer & one customer the Milk Marketing Board things were about to change.
Week one in Cornwall & things perhaps weren’t so bad after all! The store was only open 50 hours a week Wednesday was half day closing & Sundays were free! it seemed like a holiday compared to what we were used to.
At Callington we were fortunate to inherit some very good staff & a superb store manager, most of whom are still with us today.
In our first week we managed sales of £10,100.00 & sales gradually began to grow.

Within 4 weeks of arriving we were opening during the lunch hours, and there was no more half day closing. In September we started to open on Sundays. This was a fairly radical move at the time believe it or not & we were one of only two people to ever be prosecuted in Cornwall for breaking the Sunday trading laws. It was ironic that 2 of the 3 magistrates on the bench regularly shopped with us on a Sunday & handed out the minimum £50.00 fine available.

In early 1985 we refitted the store; the refit saw turnover climb to £26k a week. In August of the same year we introduced ‘Eight Till Late’ opening hours, we were now starting to get back to the hours we were used to!! The combined refit & extend hours saw the turnover reach £40k per week.

The success of the Callington store gave us the confidence & provided the foundations for the growth we then embarked upon.
In 1986 we bought our second store just 7 miles from Callington. The store was averaging £8k & within a year was averaging £19k a week after a refit & extending the hours to ‘Eight Till Late’.
Without it being a conscious thing we began to identify opportunities in smaller towns & villages with the emphasis on ‘rural’ locations. We think this stems from our farming back ground, along with a bad experience we had had with a store in the centre of Torquay, which we bought & sold in 1994.
In fact it would be fair to say that we now actively avoided large towns & cities.

Over the following years we added store’s at a steady rate right up to our current level of 40, with the last store being in Wool in Dorset, which has represented a big move for Gilletts Callington Ltd and now means we will be looking for stores in a wider area.

Since our move over to the new territory in the east back in 2006 we have added more stores to the portfolio including, both Blandford and Upton in Dorset and the last store to join Salisbury in yet another county, Wiltshire.

As of November 2007 store numbers are now up to 44 and with purchases already planned for early 2008 we should soon reach our next milestone of 50 stores. This combined with our continuing refit program should make 2008 a very exciting year and one that may see the introduction of a very exciting new store, watch this space.

August 2008 saw the company reach its next milestone in the growth of the business when we opened our 50th store at Williton in Somerset. 2008 has been the busiest in the companies history, seeing 6 stores added to the chain in a little over 10 months. It also saw the company relocate the head office operation to new premises in the town where we opened our first store 23 years ago (see below).

The old granary building in Callington now converted in GCL Head Office.

2008 has been one of the busiest on record with the company increasing store numbers by 9 making it a total of  52 stores in the company, the last one being the SPAR in Silverton, a small town, just north west of Exeter. 

The Silverton store offers all the usual quality items found in a modern convenience store along with a large butchery department, similar to the one purchased with the first store in Callington 24 years ago, which also supplies meat into trade outlets in Exeter. 

The addition of this store has brought the total number of butchery outlets within Gilletts Callington Ltd up to 4 and they are hoping to add more in the future as the directors see this as a great point of difference to the competition in the high street.

2009 saw Gilletts Callington Ltd take a period of consolidation as far as adding stores to the group and instead invested heavily in their existing stores completing a number of major refits and a good number of smaller ones. The company also rolled out its well tried and tested self service Food To Go offering to a further 12 stores, which has had significant impact on sales within those stores.

2010 has seen the company add a further 5 stores to its portfolio, bringing it up to its current level of 57. The latest store to join the group was purchased in early September over in the East of their territory at Wimborne in Dorset. The store is currently undergoing major refurbishment works and is due to re-open to the public on the 24th of September. Other stores purchased this year include two stores in the Cornish fishing town of Looe and another one close to the surf capital of Cornwall near Newquay in a village called Quintrell Downs, which is due to open to the public around November time after comprehensive building and refit works are completed.

2011 saw the company consolidate its store numbers at 57 so that it could concentrate getting the 5 stores it added to the portfolio during 2010. As well as getting those stores all trading well the company embarked on numerous store refits including comprehensive works at its stores in Par, Liskeard (see separate article "Gilletts Go Green"), Bovey Tracey,  Drew Street and Sidford as well as lots of minor improvements across the remaining stores.

2012 has seen the company get back on the acquisition trail which has seen them open the first new store of 2012 in early February. The existing SPAR store has been added to the group bringing the total number of stores to 58 and with another planned for late Feb early March making it 59, it has been a very busy start to the year. Will store number 60 be purchased during 2012?