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Hard work - and an early start on the milk round ; WomenRower and businesswoman Kate Giles has been on the go since an early age - and she's always... [Western Daily Press (UK)]
(Western Daily Press (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Hard work - and an early start on the milk round ; WomenRower and businesswoman Kate Giles has been on the go since an early age - and she's always kept her eye on the future, as she tells Simon Copp
They say that milk is good for you, especially if you want to be an athlete. But for Kate Giles, it wasn't just the health benefits.
Growing up in Devizes, Kate was out and about on the early morning delivery rounds for her father John, who owned Hawk Street Dairy, known locally as the Pie Shop, and it's this ethic of hard work that has led her to be leading Crewroom, an international supplier of sports equipment.
She really got into sport while at John Bentley School in Calne and she took up rowing when she went to study economics at Kingston University, as "it was the only sport that you could do when getting up at 6am" - a relic of early mornings on the milk and bread delivery rounds.
But the early mornings and hectic training schedule of rowing was to prove a pivotal moment in her life. When training with the GB squad after leaving university, Kate contracted pneumonia while training, something which she puts down the clothing she wore at the time.
But this experience, like many others in her life has shaped what she now does. "It's important to me that anyone rowing is in the right clothing.
We are perfectly placed to understand exactly what rowers want from their kit."
This understanding has led to her business, Crewroom, landing contracts to supply kit to Team GB, the Boat Race teams and to university clubs at Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Cardiff. But it wasn't an easy start, with Kate criss-crossing the country at weekends to sell the kit the company was importing.
Not that hard work was any problem, nor was the prospect of starting on her own daunting.
"I firmly believe you are in control of your own destiny," she explains. "I've never been afraid of doing things on my own, so, yes, it was a big step but I wasn't scared."
Kate's entrepreneurial spirit started early. While she was at university, she began baking cakes and selling them through the rowing club, giving both the club and herself an income stream. "Lots of people talk about it," explains Kate, "but few people actually get up and do it. You have to go out there and graft. Added to which, I've never been very good at being told what to do," she laughs.
Upon completing her degree in economics, Kate went to work for a business-to-business electronics firm. "It was a company that offered the chance to travel to Canada," she explains.
"I went there when I was 15 or 16 - it was petrifying but I loved it. Dad had worked there as a logger in the 1950s so it seemed a natural place to go."
She was still training full time, before and after work every day, getting up in the cold, grabbing food where she could and returning to train in the evening, putting on the same damp kit she had worn that morning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the hectic lifestyle caught up with her.
"I contracted pneumonia during this time, which I am convinced was down to the kit I was wearing. I even broke three ribs with all the coughing."
Forced to slow down during recuperation, Kate took a long look at her lifestyle and decided to take a brave step in setting up the business. "There was clearly a gap in the market for rowers needing somewhere to get changed, relax, and eat something. We rented an unusual looking building and, with the help of friends and family and a very small budget we converted the top floor into a juice bar/ hang-out for rowers and called it 'The Crew Room'. The basement was converted into a shop and office, ready to sell rowing kit."
Shortly afterwards, Kate was on a flight to the US, returning days later with a deal to become the UK distributor for sports brand JL. Then it was legwork.
"Me and Jason took on the brand and set about winning team contracts, initially within the London area. During the week we were office based, calling anyone and everyone we knew in the rowing world to try and generate sales. At weekends we drove up and down the country to attend regattas and to build up awareness of our company."
A few years later, after tripling sales of the JL kit, they sold the juice bar to concentrate on the technical clothing. It was around this time that they also started to source their own fabrics, bringing research and development in house, and branch into the cycling and running markets, which has led them to where they are today.
"All that hard work's paying off, as it's now the most exciting time of the company's life," she says. "We're starting to see people coming through the system who we've been supplying kit to all the time."
The company's base in southern China, where the fabrics and equipment are made after design by the team in Putney, means Kate spends a lot of time travelling, building markets in Europe, America, Australia and, most recently, China, which she says has really taken the Olympics to heart and is excited about the London games next year - proof of the positive effect of the Olympic legacy. And there's a legacy of hard work endemic to the West Country that she believes has helped her get where she is, something she still recognises on her frequent trips to the West Country to see her mum Janet, who served on Kennet District Council for 25 years and still lives in the area.
"Hard work pervades the region. Most of my friends have worked on the land and that industrial agriculture means you have to go out there and graft. You shouldn't be afraid of hard work."
'Lots of people talk about it but few of them actually get up and do it' Kate Giles
(c) 2012 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved.
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