What’s helped me to drive myself...

In 1966 I had five premises for my first business, Tyre Accessory Supplies when the MD of another tyre company said, “You’re doing quite well, what would you like to do? What’s your dream? What’s your target?”

I just thought I could buy a new suit whenever I felt like it, but that made me think. At that time the motor show was at Earl’s Court and upstairs, they used to display all the car accessories. There they had a row of tyre manufacturers – Dunlop, Goodyear etc. It was called ‘Tyre Ally’.

I said, “I’ll tell you what I really want to do. I want to walk down Tyre Ally and people will say, ‘There’s Tom Farmer’.”

That may sound as though I’m bigging myself up but it’s not true. One of the things I’ve recognised, is that you need recognition. What’s helped me to drive myself, and build up Kwik Fit (or any other business for that matter) is that I want to be recognised as the best in the business, and I’m always trying to do my very, very best.

So whilst I never expected to reach 2,300 Kwik Fit centres, and I never expected the business to grow to the level that it did, I knew at the end of the day that we’d build a sizeable business.

Another thing I planned for was that whatever we were going to be, we were going to be dominant. So if we were only going to be in one town, we had to be dominant in that town. If we were going for Glasgow as well as Edinburgh, we had to be as dominant in both. That way, we’d never just open a place and allow ourselves to just coast along. We had to take an aggressive approach.