LONDON — The British brand Grenson is one of the few traditional shoemakers left in the U.K. and it has survived the stormy weathers of an industry that’s become perpetually saturated.

As the brand prepares to celebrate its 160th anniversary next year, chief executive officer and creative director Tim Little has been oiling the machines, from a rigorous retail strategy to concise wholesale model. Since joining the business in 2005, Grenson has sold more than a million shoes and projected approximately 10 million pounds in revenue with a 15 percent growth year-on-year.

Wholesale makes up 20 percent of the business, while retail accounts for 20 percent and e-commerce trumps both, at 60 percent. A large number of Grenson’s business comes from the U.K., in cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.

North America is the brand’s second largest market, followed by Europe and Japan. “One thing that I’m disappointed in since I took over the business is that I haven’t been able to do more in Japan, maybe because we haven’t focused enough on it,” Little said. “But America has become a big and very important market for us.”

Little started pulling back Grenson’s distribution after the complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic. The brand now works with a handful of stockists including Harrods, Selfridges, Liberty and Mr Porter.

Despite Grenson’s rich history, its core demographic of 35- to 50-year-olds is still fairly young and hasn’t been afraid to experiment with new ideas — the brand introduced a women’s collection in 2011 and collaborated with fashion companies ranging from Craig Green, Emilia Wickstead and Belstaff to YMC.

Here, Little talks about keeping a heritage brand alive, why retail is gold for Grenson and his decision to finally take calls from potential investors.

WWD: What made you join Grenson in 2005?

Tim Little: I had my own brand called Tim Little and we had a shop on the King’s Road. I used to sell to Harrods and Selfridges. When the son of the previous owner of Grenson took over the business from his father, the business was struggling really badly. He asked me if I’d come in and get involved to try and turn it around.

WWD: What role did you take on at the brand?

T.L.: I came on as CEO from Day One and the really big dilemma for me was leaving my own brand behind — but I didn’t. I ran the two side by side. My brand was fairly small and easy to manage, but I cut it right back and I stopped doing wholesale. I fell in love with Grenson as soon as I got there.

WWD: When did you close your brand? 

T.L.: It wasn’t until COVID-19 because the Grenson showroom was above my store, where I had a manager and would see customers. Once the pandemic hit, it made it impossible and I thought it was the right time to call it quits. It felt absolutely right to focus on Grenson and maybe come back to do shoes with my name on them some other time. It was a big decision and I should have made it quite a few years before, to be honest.

WWD: You purchased Grenson in 2010, what did you see in the brand to take this big step?

T.L.: All of the stuff that was already there when I joined in 2005: the heritage, the people, the history and products. Over my [first] five-year period, we put in products that made the brand more contemporary. By 2010, the brand’s owner wanted to sell the brand. We had redone the tone of voice for Grenson and changed the collections completely. I just thought, I’ve done five years of hard work here to get it to a position where we married this lovely heritage with a modern attitude and business principles — I don’t want to walk away from that now. I would have had to prepare the business for a sale and in a way, he had left me alone to run the business. So I asked him if he would sell it to me if I could afford it. It wasn’t easy, but we worked out a way of doing it, which was based on him helping me to buy the business. And it meant he didn’t have to go into a big process because I knew the business really well.

WWD: What were the big changes that you made in the first five years as CEO?

T.L.: The most important thing was overriding the culture, which was just about manufacturing shoes and not connecting with the rest of the world. I wanted the culture to become: What do people want? What are people wearing? What are they looking for? What do they want the brand to be? How do you tell the story? Within the collections, it was about revamping everything and keeping probably five or six styles that were traditional. We created collections that looked at different shapes, patterns and materials, which made it relevant to buyers from department stores. After getting the shoes right, we thought about how to tell the story of the brand. We’re not a museum of footwear and we’re not going to have hundreds of pictures of old men with little half moon glasses knocking nails into the shoe all the time.

WWD: Were you prepared for the role of a CEO? And what’s your leadership style?

T.L.: At Grenson, we do manufacturing, marketing and sourcing, whereas my own business was much simpler. I had to deal with the sales and marketing teams in London, but at the same time, I had to work with people on the other end of the scale in the factory with completely different types of attitudes and outlooks. Managing all these different types of personalities was an enormous challenge for me at the beginning. I believe in a big way in delegating, but before you can delegate properly, you’ve got to have the right people in the right jobs and you’ve got to always play to people’s strengths. In a lot of businesses, they tend to force people to do things that they’re not particularly good at or don’t enjoy. But with that comes a responsibility of listening to people and looking out for what their issues are.

WWD: What are the pros and cons of owning a brand?

T.L.: The pros are control over the vision of what you want to do without having to explain it because it’s not until you actually do it and get it out there that you can see what you had in your mind. Being the brand owner, you can just go straight to that point and if it’s wrong, we tried it anyway as opposed to having to always persuade a committee of people before you can do anything. Everything’s much quicker when you don’t have to report upward. A brand like us has to be fast moving because it’s the only chance we’ve got against the big brands. The downside is the level of responsibility that you feel toward people because they’ve got families and mortgages. They’ve got a whole life that relies on this business to a certain extent and they rely on me running the business properly so it doesn’t go bust. There’s also all the classic stuff about money. You have to deal with the bank manager and all the stress of cash flow and people’s salaries.

WWD: Have you ever considered partnering with external investors to scale the business?

T.L.: We have always been 100 percent independent but often get approached by potential investors. This year for the first time I have decided to start talking to people in case there is a perfect partner to help us fulfill our true potential. I’ve always wondered how much more we could achieve if we were part of something bigger and had more support.

WWD: The shoemaking and footwear market has become so saturated, how do you maintain your position without straying away from the heritage? 

T.L.: It is much more difficult than when I first started in shoes when a lot of the big brands didn’t really have big shoe collections. They’d have a few here and there that just complemented the clothing collections. Now couture houses are recognized for their shoes more than anything else. The whole market is completely saturated and to stay ahead all the time, you have to constantly be relevant, make noise and create a story. At Grenson, we’re not just selling a pair of shoes to somebody, we’re creating and selling stories about the type of shoe, the leather and where that came from our archive.

WWD: How much of your time is spent designing shoes and being creative versus running a business and dealing with numbers?

T.L.: Not enough, and that’s my big bugbear. Although I love business and I read a lot of articles about businesses and how they’re run, I would like more time on the creative side. I spend 15 to 20 percent of the time working on the collections and the rest of the time on the business side, but I’ve got a very good team that I’ve worked together with for a long time now. When I have a thought or an idea, they’re very good at interpreting that.

WWD: Do you enjoy making traditional shoes or trainers more?

T.L.: I love all of them, but I absolutely love trainers. In my previous life before shoes, I was in advertising and I ran Adidas advertising for four or five years. The Gazelle is one of my favorite shoes of all time.

WWD: How do you maintain creativity without getting in over your head, and how do you stay disciplined?

T.L.: Every business is the same, where the designer has an idea for something that they think is the most incredible thing in the world, but it has to be commercial and it has to sell, otherwise the business won’t survive. As I run the business, I have the commercial side in my head more than most designers would. The deciding factor is about what’s right for the brand and if a shoe feels like Grenson. The discipline comes back to the responsibility that if it doesn’t work — and there’s all this competition out there that’s hard to keep up with — then it’s a disaster. It comes from looking at the numbers all the time and seeing what’s selling, but also pushing against the business because I know what happens if you stall the creativity in any way — the business becomes very boring very quickly in a way that it didn’t used to in the old days because of social media and all this communication.

WWD: How did you propel Grenson into wholesale and what approach did you take?

T.L.: When I got to the brand, I asked the sales director at the time to give me a list of all the stockists. I went through it and said, “This isn’t complete, there is nothing in London.” He told me our only stockist in the city was a shoe repair shop. The first thing we did was to sell to Selfridges, Harrods and Liberty. I felt it’s really important to have a physical presence in London to have real credibility, and London does drive the market.

WWD: How has your own retail presence expanded since then?

T.L.: We had a store in Soho and another on Liverpool Street, Hanbury Street in Spitalfields and Lamb’s Conduit Street. We closed the stores in Soho and Liverpool Street during COVID-19, but we opened a Soho store on the same street — Meard Street — last year. I’m looking for more stores because retail really bounced back for us in a big way. Over the last 18 months, retail has been really, really strong and it’s growing.

WWD: What’s a key factor in the Grenson retail experience?

T.L.: There needs to be an atmosphere in the store so people are happy to stay and spend time because it’s one thing you can do in store that you can’t do online: sit down, try things on and ask questions. What I don’t like is when you go into a store and they want to sell you something and get you out. The people in the store need to be knowledgeable. It’s a product you’re spending a lot of money on so you need to feel comfortable that that money is well spent. 

WWD: Who are your mentors in business?

T.L.: Paul Smith [is one of them] because he comes from a village about two miles from where I come from in Nottingham. He’s always been really good to me and really supportive. Outside of fashion, I’m obsessed with Steve Jobs and his creativity and drive.

WWD: Do you have any business mantras?

T.L.: I have a life and business mantra, which is just keep going. If you’ve got the right principles and you’re on the right track, just keep getting up every Monday morning, come into work and get on with it. Do it again and again — it works and it’s hard, but it’s the only way you know.

WWD: What do you do during your spare time?

T.L.: I love London because of all the shows and galleries. My wife and I are constantly trawling through the papers for what’s on. We’ve also got a place in the countryside and that’s a completely different thing — [sometimes we sit by] a fire or walk by the river. I’m also a big football fan. I support a team called Derby County, which is a bit embarrassing, but my son and I are season ticket holders, so we get the train to Derby every two weeks. 

WWD: Does he work in the family business?

T.L.: He does at the moment because he wants to be an actor and a writer. He’s working in the Hanbury Street store. I’ve told his boss to treat him like anybody else, or even be harder on him. Outside of work, he’s a normal 24-year-old in many ways, but at work he feels quite invested because it’s important to him because it’s a family [business] and he’s grown up with it. He tells customers about the behind-the-scenes story of the shoes. He will say stuff like, “This shoe came about because Tim Little was on holiday and he saw this old Spanish shoe on a beach and he picked it up.” He tells those stories because he feels quite engaged [with the brand and business].