Jim Walker, who has died on the age of 80, was one of many UK’s grasp exporters, turning a easy product into a world model. The ubiquity of Walker’s Shortbread on the planet’s airports and delis has made it a number one model of the food and drinks trade and an exemplar as to how a household enterprise can broaden and nonetheless retain its independence.
Jim himself was an understated and charming man who led the agency’s progress from its fatherland – the village of Aberlour, Moray, with a inhabitants of barely 1,000, tucked away on Speyside within the north-east of Scotland. Between its websites in Aberlour and Elgin, 12 miles away, it grew underneath his management to make use of 1,500 folks, with a turnover in 2023 of £184m.
In 1898, Jim’s grandfather, Joseph, an Aberdeenshire farmer, moved to Aberlour, took over the village bakery and developed the unique shortbread recipe from which the corporate has by no means deviated. Jim and his siblings grew up above the store within the village’s essential avenue.
To at the present time, each new Walker’s product is market-tested by way of the unique store earlier than being supplied to customers worldwide.
Within the Nineteen Sixties, the Walker’s enterprise started to unfold its wings, having acquired the fame of creating the best shortbread in Scotland. Jim’s elder brother Joe turned the grasp baker, and their sister, Marjorie, taken care of the business facet as firm secretary, whereas Jim labored to push the model into large-scale shops at house and overseas, now promoting in additional than 100 international locations.
When Walker’s turned a restricted firm in 1980, the siblings had been the three founding administrators. Joe died in 2021 and Marjorie in 2023. For a few years, Jim and Joe had been the joint managing administrators, with the youthful brother’s focus firmly on model promotion and market enlargement. Whereas the vary of merchandise expanded, shortbread continued to be the staple with which the Walker’s model was most strongly recognized.
Jim instructed me a number of years in the past: “It’s right down to integrity and doing a easy factor properly.” Shortbread, he identified, accommodates solely 4 elements – flour, butter, salt and sugar.
Perfection lay in sustaining the product’s consistency on an industrial scale, because the enterprise expanded and enormous bakeries had been inbuilt Aberlour and Elgin.
Happy with his model’s distinctive tartan packaging, Jim additionally warned: “You’ll be able to’t slap a little bit of tartan on it and anticipate it to promote, as some folks assume. It’s the standard of what’s inside that issues.” Whereas large firms produce shortbread as a part of big product ranges, he insisted: “We take into consideration shortbread seven days per week.” Innumerable approaches from the trade’s giants had been quietly rebuffed and Walker’s stay the UK’s greatest impartial biscuit maker.
The important thing to their exporting success, he believed, lay find a great distributor, normally on an unique foundation, in every territory. Jim relied closely on trust-based private relationships that usually lasted for many years. Till just lately, when he stepped again from the entrance line to tackle an ambassadorial and advisory function, Jim travelled extensively to commerce exhibits and had “not missed a day” on the large ISM sweets and confectionery commerce truthful in Cologne since 1978.
Educated at Aberlour main college and Robert Gordon’s school in Aberdeen, he joined his mother and father, Williamina and James, within the enterprise straight from college, when it had a workforce of 16 and turnover of £40,000. In 1962, he turned an government director and by no means labored for anybody aside from the household enterprise. In 2004, Aberlour Home, previously a prep college for Gordonstoun, was taken over and renovated to turn into Jim’s workplace and host worldwide clients in suitably A-listed headquarters.
Jim was massively revered in his house area of Speyside, not solely as an inter-generational employer on an unlimited scale for a rural group, but in addition as an envoy for its wider fame as an centre of high quality Scottish merchandise – meals, whisky and textiles.
He served as deputy lord lieutenant of Banffshire (1998-2019) and in 1999 was appointed CBE.
Revered by successive governments as a champion of export promotion and prepared adviser to different companies taking place the identical route, he was knighted in Queen Elizabeth II’s final birthday honours checklist, in 2022.
Walker’s had been granted royal warrants for the availability of oatcakes to the Queen in 2001 and shortbread in 2017.
The enterprise has now handed into the fingers of the fourth Walker era with Nicky, son of Joe and nephew of Jim, as managing director, and different members of the family on the board.
In 1979 Jim married Jennifer Poushinsky. She survives him, together with 4 kids, Jacqui, Jamie, Bryony, and Alastair, and 6 grandchildren.
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