Hands that built an empire

By PAUL PANCKHURST

At age 70, Tony Timpson has a fortune in his pocket, a pacemaker in his chest, and a cold beer in his hand.

"Ah," he says, taking a sip.

"Nectarrrrrrr."

Quick, someone get this man in a beer commercial - preferably one with a wry Southern Man sense of humour.

There is a dash of larrikin and, at a guess, a temper that has softened with age.

Timpson is a founder, former managing director and, for the past 10 years, non-executive chairman of Cavalier Corporation, the wool carpet maker with a market value of $315 million.

As he prepares to stand aside as chairman, it is time for a look back.

The Timpson that the Business Herald encounters looks like this: white hair, ruffled; shirt collar, open; tie, a little skewiff - someone who looks perpetually in the middle of getting things done.

The designer home at Westmere he shares with partner Sherrill Sibun - his wife, Julie, died seven years ago - is at the water's edge with a view of oystercatchers and herons, kingfishers and swans, terns and gulls.

Timpson's creation, Cavalier, is a proud company, a creature born in the economic fortress of the early 1970s that survived and prospered as the economy opened up.

Proud?

The managing director, Alan James, says he believes Cavalier is - unknown niche players excluded - "the most successful and the most profitable carpet company on earth".

Ask Timpson to rate Cavalier's performance and he says: "It's hard to answer that question modestly."

Cavalier's present return on funds employed: 21 per cent.

Crucial to the company's fortunes, says James, was Timpson's hand at the helm during the 1980s.

The company listed on the stock exchange (1984) and took over the Bremworth carpet operations of UEB Industries (1988) but never lost the plot in the market madness of the era.

"Under Tony Timpson, Cavalier was always a 'keep it simple' business. He never allowed it to get complicated or lose focus."

Timpson is due to step aside as chairman in April next year.

Interviewed, he notes that he is not as sharp as he once was, the "total recall" of his photographic memory has slipped with age.

Typically, he goes for the gag: the upside to memory loss is that you never have to buy a new book again.

(In fact, when the Business Herald later encounters him on High Street, he is lugging home a chunky new title - Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker.)

The Timpson body has been in the wars: a coronary bypass in 1996, late-onset diabetes and, last year, the insertion in his chest of the generator, leads and electrodes of a biventricular device he describes as "like a pacemaker" (you can feel the bump on his chest).

Not that you would, if you were Tony Timpson, make a drama of these things.

Play it low-key. No fuss.

His early childhood was in the rugged rural Otago and Canterbury of the depression years, where everyone moved regularly, going where the work was.

He lived at Mt Peel Station, Sutton, Lower Shotover, Cheviot and Peel Forest before at age 12 going to Timaru Boys' High as a boarder.

One of five children, Timpson had a family link to the world of wool: the time his parents spent working on the spectacular Mt Peel high country station, his mother as a housekeeper, his father as a musterer, drover and gardener.

An old newspaper clipping is said to prove the locally famous story of how his father was saved by his dogs after falling over a bluff while he was out clearing snow.

The story goes that the animals lay on him to keep him warm until help came days later.

Another link to wool: the high school holidays spent shearing sheep.

After school, a stint as a Timaru court clerk and compulsory military training, he ventured into accountancy and started his 14 years of part-time study at Canterbury University for a qualification.

"I majored," he likes to say, "in cricket and rugby. In other words, I was a bum."

Sport - serious and social, as player and spectator - is a joy of his life, from senior cricket (he was a left-arm spinner) to the decades-long run of his Timpson's Tigers rugby team, to a "Dad's Army" social cricket team at Cornwall Park in Auckland.

A favoured family anecdote tells of a protest demonstration outside a Timpson residence over one of his men-only overseas sports tours.

"No wives, no tour," the placards reportedly said.

In 1957, he joined Bremner & Norrie, which imported mainly linoleum but also some carpet, in an accountancy role.

He moved up through management roles, and the company evolved into Bremworth before being taken over by UEB in 1968.

In 1972 Timpson and UEB plant manager Grant Biel went out on their own, setting up a carpet factory in the middle of a big green paddock in Orb Avenue, Wiri.

A third partner, Leon O'Shea, later dropped out.

"He wanted to go and fitch farm," says Timpson.

Fitch farm?

"Fitch farm. Crazy bugger. Never mind."

The Timpson and Biel partnership would turn out to be one of the dream teams of New Zealand business.

Asked about his success, Timpson highlights "luck" but also says: "That's one thing I'm very good at - picking partners."

Biel - a pilot with a Lear jet and helicopters - was the mechanical and engineering brain. Timpson was savvy to marketing, sales and accounting.

Timpson: "He provided the brainpower, I provided the bullshit. How does that sound?"

Talking to the Business Herald about how to depict Timpson, Biel says, "absolutely straightforward and honest" and "put a halo around him".

Outside of Cavalier, Timpson's roles have included adversary to and then director of the Wool Board, chairman of meat company Richmond, and funder of the Independent, the aggressive and sometimes eccentric business weekly of veteran journalists Warren Berryman and Jenni McManus.

"Bloody hard to deal with at the best of times," he says of the duo, wryly noting: "Pretty good journalists - piss poor business people."

The paper's freemarket outlook is broadly in line with Timpson's politics as a Roger Douglas fan and a past donor to Act.

His motive, however, is more philanthropic than political.

"It is a public service more than a rewarding economic unit," he laughs. "But it's making money at the moment - in spite of Warren."

Timpson's story is that he was appalled by the business journalism of the 1980s and bothered by the business sector's lack of credibility.

"Mums and dads and grannies fronted with their bloody dough on the basis of what they had read in the newspaper. We knighted all the burglars. We worshipped all the wrong people - as a nation."

It's possible to push another Timpson button by asking about one of today's vogues - "triple bottom-line" accounting, or viewing company performance by environmental, social and financial measures.

It is "crap".

The idea is to focus on staff, shareholders and suppliers, not some nebulous "social responsibility".

"If everyone got on and did what they had to do - that would look after itself, surely to Christ."

Timpson's private investments include Astrograss (a manufacturer of synthetic playing surfaces), Radford Yarn Technologies, a farm in North Canterbury, and a venture capital start-up called Flexidrill.

His stake in Cavalier is worth more than $45 million at yesterday's share price.

One of his daughters, Suzanne, says: "He's very low-key about his success - I don't think he's ever been very interested in the money."

Her sister, Brigit, says: "I don't think he's ever cared what people think."

Timpson does not go quite that far - it is more, he says, that he never learned that authority was supposed to be respected.

No, never did get that one.