NRI among Britain's top 10 retailers

Two retail empires built by an Indian and a Pakistani from humble beginnings have been named in a list of Britain's top 10 privately-owned retail companies published on Monday.

Tom Singh's New Look fashion chain and Anwar Pervez's Bestway cash-and-carry grocery outlets figure in a Daily Telegraph list of Britain's top 100 private companies to run over the coming weeks.

Urging its readers to "salute a nation of shopkeepers", the paper said Tom Singh is "a trail-blazer in inventing the cheap, 'fast' fashion that now dominates the UK high street".

Born in Thakarki, near Phagwara in Punjab, Singh came to Britain in 1950 at the age of one. His family went door-to-door selling from a suitcase and opened their first shop later in the 1950s.

Singh started his first shop with his wife in 1969, and in 1982 merged his stores with those of his parents to form New Look Retailers, a group of around 20 stores.

Entering the 1990s with some 40 shops in southwest England, the family became a strong regional retailer. It then began a period of rapid national expansion, growing to 200 stores by 1994.

Annual sales now are in the region of 1.2 billion pounds a year, and the company is now expanding overseas, particularly in France, where it has an established chain.


Courtesy:timesofindia.com
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