Gardiners Bros was established in 1860 with Footsure, the safety footwear specialist business, launching in 1980. From its headquarters in the Gloucester area, Gardiners Group remains a family-owned footwear distribution partner within the UK and increasingly Europe.
While traditional wholesale is still the cornerstone of their business, managing distribution rights for leading global brands in the UK market, virtual distribution services, and a rapidly growing B2C operation are all driving rapid growth and cementing Gardiners’ position as a trusted partner for many of the most recognisable retailers and brands.
Gardiners’ growth has in part been enabled by innovative use of technology, winning ‘Best Use of Technology’ from Footwear Today three years running, 2018-2020. This growth and innovation had also led to an increasingly complex IT environment, and this complexity was starting to become challenging to manage and scale.
Gardiners CIO, Mark Holloway said:
‘We are a fast-moving, nimble and flexible business, and within technology, we’ve achieved great things. However, our IT teams were increasingly spending too much time keeping current systems running and not enough supporting new demands from the business and providing innovative solutions to meet our customers’ varied needs. We started looking at how we could do things differently, and Freeman Clarke Principal Julian Starling helped us realise that change had to be more profound than we thought. As a result, I moved from Operations Director to become CIO to drive this change agenda.’
Julian’s initial focus was on understanding the legacy IT environment and understanding how the IT team were working to support the business. This allowed a high-level IT strategy to be defined as work started to nail down the company’s business system requirements. Adding structure and insight has allowed for progress in a fast-moving and complex environment.
Managing a combination of in-house developed solutions as well as more modern third-party business systems will require different roles, responsibilities, and skillsets within the IT team, as well as a close partnership with third parties for the support of critical systems. Julian has worked with the new CIO to shape the new IT function but also identify trusted partners for a range of requirements.
Gardiners are now forging ahead with replacing their WMS and ERP systems, while taking on a new warehouse and continuing to grow.
‘Julian has pushed and challenged us over how we currently work and how we need to change to adopt new systems and ways of working. It’s often only when someone from outside brings in new concepts or ideas that get to the heart of your issues that rapid progress can be made.’
Plain English board-level briefings focused on technology strategies to deliver competitive advantage and business success.
You can unsubscribe at any time.
Thank you.
You’ll now receive regular expert business insights.
Call us on 0203 020 1864 with any questions.
Graeme Freeman Co-Founder and Director
Subscribe to our Business Insights
Plain English board-level briefings focused on technology strategies to deliver competitive advantage and business success.
You can unsubscribe at any time.
Thank you.
You’ll now receive regular expert business insights.
Call us on 0203 020 1864 with any questions.
Popular content for CEOs
Latest briefings written by IT experts
I would like to receive:
Popular content for CEOs
Latest briefings written by IT experts
I would like to receive:
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. SettingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.