Footwear group Jones Bootmaker sold again
27/02/2018
Shoe group Pavers is the new owner, having bought 42 of the 47 Jones Bootmaker stores from Leeds-based investment group Endless. Pavers said it had been unable to reach agreement over the other five stores and that the deal also excludes Jones Bootmaker’s head office. However, it said its move had safeguarded the jobs of 389 employees.
Jones started out in 1857 and was famous in nineteenth-century London for being the first shop in the city to instal electric lighting, a phenomenon that brought crowds to the store. It was also the first to stock ready-made shoes in different widths as well as different sizes.
After expanding to most UK cities in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the company was hit hard by the economic downturn that began in 2007. In 2008, entrepreneurs Peter Phillips and Ken Bartle became majority shareholders and sought to steady the business. They sold in early 2011 to Dutch retail group Macintosh.
Unable to secure the returns it had aimed for, Macintosh put Jones Bootmaker into administration and it was from the administrators that Endless bought the company in March 2017, selling to Pavers less than a year later.
Endless described Jones Bootmaker as a well-established retailer with a strong heritage and brand.
For his part, Pavers managing director, Stuart Paver, said: “The Jones stores and people are a huge asset and we look forward to developing the business, and the people, over the decades to come. Pavers is an independent family business, as Jones used to be, and we want to re-establish these traditional family values, returning the focus at Jones to exceptional product and friendly customer service, hallmarks of what we try so hard to achieve at Pavers.”
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