Gary Grant, founder and CEO of the UK’s largest independent toy retailer, The Entertainer Toy Company, will be joining this year's ELO Oxford Leadership Program (August 10-16) to share his faith and entrepreneurial journey. Gary has an inspiring story of living Christian faith in the marketplace from exceptional generosity, to treating people well and Sunday store closings.

Gary will be hosting a site visit by the ELO Oxford cohort to the company headquarters in Amersham, along with a Q & A session and a visit to one of the company’s stores.

Gary founded a chain of toy stores in 1981 with his wife Catherine Grant. Today, it continues to be a privately-owned company and has over 160 stores in the UK, international franchises, and innovative partnerships with retail giants like Tesco and Marks & Spencer.

Gary runs a highly successful business, where both values & ethics always come first. The Entertainer stores have a Sunday closing policy, meaning staff always have this day to spend with family and friends. Gary believes business can be a force for good and looks at ways to inspire generosity. The Entertainer tithes 10% of its net annual profit to charity each year; in addition, The Entertainer is an active member of the “Pennies scheme," the digital upgrade of the traditional charity box which enables customers to donate a few pence to charity at the point of sale when paying by card. On average, this generates £5,000 of customer donations to children’s hospitals each week.  Over 50% of The Entertainer staff are engaged in the company’s Payroll Giving.

Here are some extracts from a recent interview with Gary by Buckinghamshire Business First (January 13, 2025):

The Need for Innovation: "Our business is evolving and changing all the time. We're definitely not the business of five years ago and we're not the business of 25 years ago. We're still 100% owned by the family, our oldest two children are both involved in the business, but the family's total involvement has been changing over the last five years. We're entrepreneurs, we know how to do deals, we know how to buy things, but as your business gets bigger and more complex, it's really important that you put people around you that have either been where you're going or who have the skillsets to take you on that journey."

The Need for Values: "I think when you are actively in the middle of the business, it's infectious. We're very much a values driven business, it's really important to us that we know the direction we're going in and have guidelines put in place for how we behave as a business, how we behave as individuals.

Sunday Closings: "The Entertainer is probably most known for the fact that we don't work on Sundays. Our staff have Sundays off to be with their families. There are certain product categories that we choose not to stock - if I wouldn't buy them for my grandchildren, I really don't feel comfortable stocking them in our own shops. You're living and breathing those values every day, so by natural osmosis, those values are embedded in our business."

Treating People Well: "We've got over 250 staff that have worked for us for more than 10 years, probably got 30-plus staff that have worked for more than 25 years, and one doing over 40. So these are people that have stuck with us, they've seen me on a good day, they've seen me on a bad day, but they stuck with us. And most of those people wouldn't necessarily have joined with a bag full of qualifications, they just joined with a bag full of enthusiasm and commitment and they developed their career."

Business as a Force for Good: "I really believe that business can be a force for good. Generosity comes in many forms. Our local communities and local society wouldn't operate if it wasn't for generosity largely coming from businesses that work in and have their head office within the area. I think many, many businesses within Buckinghamshire are big contributors back into our local community in many, many different ways. Whatever you do, just be generous with your business because you can make a difference to so many people in our local community.

Being Generous with Time: "A second way of being generous is generous with our time. I go into schools half a dozen times a year and speak to young people and encourage them to dream big. If you don't aim high, you won't hit high. If you aim at the middle, you're going to hit low, because none of us ever quite hit the spot. When I say dream big dreams, if you want to be an astronaut you can be an astronaut, so just dream those dreams, but what you need to do is make sure you work hard, because the world owes us nothing. So if you don't work hard, nobody's going to give it to you on a plate."

Interested in attending the Program?