St John’s Garden Centre

Video transcript

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Nick Oliver – We’re a family business. We’ve been in existence for 58 years, selling and growing plants of all sorts. We now employ about 110 people within our company and literally was working from a garden shed and have developed into this business that we have today.

Nick Oliver – We’ve worked with Simpkins Edwards for over 20 years now and we use them for our auditing, accountancy and particularly tax issues.

Nick Oliver – One of the things that sets them apart from others is just the ability to pick up the phone, ask for James, ask for John and tell them what our problem is and they come right back again and that’s important because we don’t want to know next week or two weeks’ time. We want to know today.

James Welton – The trusted advisor role is an important one. You can gain trust by offering good advice and solving a problem for them, but you can also gain trust just on a personal level.

James Welton – As one of our larger clients, we offer a full range of services to St John’s. They’re above the statutory threshold, so they need an audit. We offer full taxation advice, personal taxation advice for the directors and the owners and then we get involved as and when they need us.

Nick Oliver – Very recently, we acquired another garden centre. We thought that this was important because it’s a like produce, we will know how to handle this. But of course, it there leaves a whole raft of problems that we have not come across and that’s why we needed Simpkins Edwards to help us. And without them, I have to say, we probably would not have succeeded because there are things that we don’t know about, that they do know about. And as we grow our business, Simpkins Edwards will enjoy a bigger part of that as well for the future.

James Welton – Over the last six years that I’ve been acting for the company, they’ve gone through quite a substantial amount of growth acquiring their new sites over in Braunton.

James Welton – We sat down and had a discussion about the business plan, the aims of where they wanted to grow. Just to be part of that and to help them with that, it’s very rewarding.

Nick Oliver – We have other projects and ideas that we would very much like to bring to fruition in the future and we’re very much looking forward to working with them again.

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