A man with a mission

From the Coldstream Guards via hammocks to homeware is an unusual career trajectory but the skills collected along the way have proved immensely valuable for John Sims-Hilditch.

The discipline and precision he learned as an army officer, together with his natural entrepreneurial spirit, have helped make his company, Neptune, one of the fastest-growing retailers in Britain. The secret of its success is that it doesn’t just sell furniture and accessories. It sells a lifestyle that has proved irresistible.

The most oft quoted comment from customers who visit its stores, including the latest near York, is “I want to move in”. They are laid out in room sets that make them look and feel like an ideal home. Everything you see is for sale from the furniture and dried flowers to the cutlery and the paint on the walls. It’s Ikea for the middle classes who want investment pieces.

The style direction is provided by John’s wife, Emma, a top interior designer. “Our designs reflect her signature style and we show them in ‘real world’ displays,” says John, who launched Neptune with his friend, Giles Redman, in 1996. It was named after their mutual love of the sea and started as a hammock manufacturer before moving into garden furniture and becoming one of the UK’s largest makers.

“That was very seasonal and we wanted to diversify. That’s how the interiors range was born and Emma got involved from a creative perspective,” says John, who is based in Wiltshire.

Wholesaling proved unsatisfactory thanks to the way retailers displayed their products and so Neptune decided to launch online and with stand-alone stores. All this was backed by a mission statement to deliver “design, quality, value and service.” Now, almost four years on, Neptune has 13 stores in the UK and 10 in Europe with more planned this year.

There are elements of the classic English country home in the designs but they also incorporate Scandinavian and Italian design and the international flavour has helped its expansion abroad. Costs and a lack of skilled craftsmen and women in Britain mean that the range is manufactured in Chinese factories, which have been built and are owned by Neptune.

“China has amazing artisans but there are very few Western-owned manufacturing plants. We went in with our usual ‘how hard can it be?’ approach and built our own,” says John, whose ambition is to open 50 stores in Britain so that everyone is within half an hour’s drive of a Neptune.

*Neptune York is on Malton Road, www.neptune.com