Toy shop boss who puts God before big profits

Industry experts say shutting down on Christmas Eve could cost him £2 million in sales but the born-again Christian is adamant. “I’m accountable to God, not shareholders,” he tells me. “Some people will say I am a fruitcake because Christmas Eve is the second busiest day of the year but Christmas is not about money.”

Gary, 59, founder of The Entertainer, Britain’s largest independent toy store chain, will spend Christmas Eve at his church before helping his wife prepare for a family Christmas Day. His 1,700 staff will be with their families too instead of working on a day when it is predicted shoppers will spend up to £1billion.

“I value families,” he says. “I have four children and six grandchildren. I employ a lot of parents, grandparents, uncles and aunties. It is convenient that everybody has the same day off, that parents can be off at the same time as their children.

“I have the best staff in the high street. If there is a substantial cost to thanking them for a hard season’s work so be it. I want to be an employer who without pressure will give them a day off to spend with their friends and family every Sunday and I am not making an exception just because it’s Christmas Eve.”

Other retailers have questioned the wisdom of his policy. “The toy industry is so reliant on Christmas,” he admits. “So there is a fine line between running a viable business that gets caught up in the commerciality of the season but on the other hand not losing the real meaning of Christmas.

“I know that if I do what I do with the right motive I can rely on the fact that God will honour that. Keeping the Sabbath holy is one of the Ten Commandments so I feel I should not be opening the doors.”

GARY, who suffered from dyslexia and left school with very poor marks, began his business in 1981 at the age of 23 after taking over a local shop in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. He became a Christian a decade later and his faith was so strong he almost quit to become a missionary.

“I didn’t come from a religious family but I had a ‘road to Damascus’ conversion one weekend that made me look at everything differently,” he says.

“I was happy to give up everything I had because I really believed I could change the world. I sat down with a fellow Christian who was an accountant and talked it through because I thought being a Christian and being in business were not compatible.

“He said: ‘Gary, I’m not sure God’s saying to you that you need to give up your day job but I do think you are being challenged about the way you are running your business.’

“So I tidied up my act by no longer selling Halloween goods or toy guns. I don’t stock Harry Potter-related merchandise because of its link to witchcraft and magic but I certainly don’t campaign for other stores to ban anything. We also give a tenth of our profits to charity.”

He adds: “In a funny sort of way I guess I really have changed the world for many tens of thousands of young people. Our stores offer a fun environment for many children who are living in difficult situations and through a number of initiatives our business is giving so much back to society.

“Over the past six years we have raised more than £2million through the Pennies Scheme whereby customers can round up their purchase to the nearest pound and the extra pennies go to children’s hospitals around the UK. Last week alone we raised £38,000 so business can be a force for good.

“Life is also about linking arms and helping each other along. What we have done in trying to become a 24/7 society is change the pace of life because by voting for seven-day trading we were voting for seven-day traffic, seven-day noise and seven-day constant activity. With the internet and smartphones that deliver email there is no time off. Were our bodies ever meant to operate 24/7?

“When a life gets changed so dramatically as mine did when I discovered my faith then life becomes very different. My beliefs are not because I am mad or I can’t think clearly. Faith is believing in what you cannot see. When God invaded my life then everything was up for challenge.”

So what does he think about the commercialisation of Christmas?

“If children’s expectations of the amount of love that parents have for them this Christmas is the size of the box then we have got a huge amount of work to do on parenting,” he says. “The best gift from a parent to a child is quality time.”

Gary is adamant about one thing: “Life is about choice and we can all make decisions about how we live our lives, what we believe. I am not trying to say I have got the right way, it is just my way. I am not in any way trying to preach to people.”