Giving Compass' Take:
- Zoe Williams spotlights a popular U.K. toy store's transfer to employee ownership, demonstrating that the narrative of greedy ruthlessness in business is not set in stone.
- What are the takeaways for other business owners from the Grants's decision to transfer The Entertainer to an employee trust, ensuring that it will be fully owned by its workers in the near future?
- Learn more about key topics and trends related to quality employment.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on quality employment in your area.
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At the risk of sounding melodramatic, all toy shops give me a cold sweat and none make me feel remotely nostalgic. Toys R Us takes me to Christmas Eve circa 1985, trying to find the last brunette doll for my younger sister, who was implacably opposed to dolls that were blond, even while she herself was. John Lewis, 2009, eyeball to eyeball with a foe for the last 50% marked-down Buzz Lightyear; she was the very devil, wild-eyed and determined, but I could have been looking in a mirror. Hamleys, Christmas Eve again, 2015, trying to fabricate new interests for my six-year-old daughter, because I was against gendered playthings and we already had all the Nerf guns it was possible to have.
I was anti-consumerist while consuming quite a lot, against plastic while simultaneously grossed out by other anti‑plastic parents, and didn’t want to raise spoilt little Fauntleroys yet at the same time hated saying “no”. It’s not easy holding on to that many contradictions or, if you prefer, being that dumb.
One shop, The Entertainer, the toy store embracing employee ownership, was an oasis by comparison, because it seemed angled towards the small and the cheap. Loom bands, Lol dolls, single-unit Lego men, mechanical puppies that could backflip – which can still make me stop and marvel (so agile and for only £9.99!) even now the kids are 17 and 15. The font on the shopfront looked cheap, too, and I mean that in the best possible way.
It doesn’t surprise me to learn that the founders, Gary and Catherine Grant, built that up from a single unit, which they bought on loan in 1981, to a 160-store, multimillion-pound empire in the UK. They didn’t know anything about toys when they started, but they knew what parents wanted, which was not to have a nervous breakdown. But I was still amazed when they announced this morning that they would be transferring the toy store to employee ownership, so that it will soon be 100% owned by its workforce of nearly 2,000 people.
Read the full article about The Entertainer's employee ownership by Zoe Williams at The Guardian.