Greg Phillips, managing director of North East Bakery, has been honoured by his peers at the Entrepreneur’s Forum’s glittering annual awards ceremony.The ceremony has become a popular feature to round off the annual conference – this year entitled Inspired6 – and recognises the cream of the region’s entrepreneurial talent.
Greg took the Emerging Talent award for overseeing the expansion of a firm that has been on a roll in recent years.
Greg, who started out working for his uncle’s sandwich business in Newcastle before forming North East Bakery in 2004, has grown the company considerably after investing in a 20,000sq ft facility in Newburn and retail outlets across the region.
His hunger for success had already seen him the title of Face of Entrepreneurship 2009 as a result of winning last year’s If we can, you can Challenge for the Evening Chronicle
Greg said: “I have to thank the Entrepreneurs’ Forum because it has been absolutely brilliant for me. When I first started coming to these events I was quite nervous, but the Forum has created some brilliant opportunities for me and I have met some fantastic people.”
His new company chairman, Stephen Silvester, added: “Greg is a real home-grown talent who defines entrepreneurism. If I was advising anyone thinking of starting their own business, I would tell them to look at what Greg has done.”
Continuing his expansion of his retail bakery brand, Nichols, Greg has just opened a new flagship store in Durham city centre.
The shop is the first of two new-look Nichols stores with the second shop set to open in Eldon Square, Newcastle, in June. Together they will create 16 new jobs.
The new stores bring the company’s total number of shops across the North East to 14 and the company, founded only five years ago, now has a total workforce of more than 140 .
Catching up with Greg about the re-branding process, he said, “When we moved in to our new bakery (the former Milligans site in Newburn) we wanted to re-engineer the business in terms of product, brand, people and processes. Our objective was to create an infrastructure within the business that could sustain significant growth and to create a brand that was relevant and significantly differentiated in a competitive marketplace.
“We upgraded the IT systems, analysed the cost base and looked at every single product within the range. We put people in the right places, harnessing the wealth of knowledge and skill we had in the business and provided a strategic direction that everyone could buy into.
“The next step was to make the changes in the business customer facing and this began with the development of the Nichols brand. We conducted extensive market research so we could understand our consumer and our position in the market.
“The ‘look and feel’ of the stores was vital to us, focusing relentlessly on creating and emphasising our point of difference – our hand crafted, real food.
“In a competitive industry brand image is of huge importance and we strongly believed the Nichols brand would allow us to realise the potential of the existing sites we had and also allow us to take the business into new markets and locations.”
Speaking frankly about the impact the fast expansion of the business has had upon his lifestyle, Greg says, “I work seven days a week but I have quite a lot of energy fortunately and I really love what I do which I think is very important. I won’t say it doesn’t feel like work because obviously at times my patience is tested.
“Fundamentally though, I get up in the morning and look forward to the challenges that lay ahead of me. There are more people in the business now so I’ve been trying to empower them and delegate roles a lot more, and the only way we can take the business forward is by having good people around us.
“Fortunately I never get that Sunday afternoon feeling where I think, damn I’ve got to go to work tomorrow. Money isn’t the driver at all, it’s seeing what we can do with the business, and driving to work in the morning and seeing a car park with 50 cars parked. We employ 140 people in the North East, and that gives me a lot of pride.”
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