Popular general manager Melvin Le Feuvre has seen great change in his four decades with the JFTU but, as he steps away from the business, he remains confident that customer service and expertise remain key to its success. Emily Moore reports…
WHEN customers arriving at JFTU’s Les Ruettes showroom some years ago saw the general manager sitting in the car park, taped to his chair, there were a few raised eyebrows and much laughter.
To Melvin Le Feuvre, though, it was just another day in – and outside – the office.
‘It wasn’t unknown for me to spend several hours on the phone, directing engineers and managing workloads and sometimes my colleagues could get quite impatient as I couldn’t drop the call and deal with their query,’ chuckled Melvin, who retired as the store’s general manager at the end of last year.
‘On this particular Friday afternoon, a couple of the staff picked up a reel of parcel tape and started taping me to my chair and to the phone. They then disconnected the telephone, picked up the chair and sat me in the middle of the car park.’
‘Mission accomplished, we were then slightly nervous about what to do next,’ laughed one of the culprits, John Renouf, who is now general manager. ‘In the end, we decided to untie him and run.’
The story, and its accompanying laughter, go a long way to explaining Melvin’s four-decade career with the store – and yet it was a career which, but for a chance conversation, could have taken a very different turn.
‘I wanted to leave school at 15 but the careers teacher said that I wasn’t allowed to leave unless I had a job,’ he recalled. ‘The only job in the book was at Le Poidevin’s Gentlemen’s Outfitters, so that was where I went.’
While that job was relatively short-lived, it did equip Melvin with one very useful skill.
‘Even today, I am very good at folding shirts,’ he smiled.
Thereafter followed stints chipping potatoes and delivering them to takeaway outlets, a role at BG Romeril’s, where he spent time in the tools and ironmongery department, and a position as a builder for Dennis Troy.
‘We had the contracts for a number of the big estates, such as Maufant Village and Patier Road, so I was running some major sites and also doing drylining, something which was new to the Island at that time,’ Melvin added.
After leaving the Island for a year ‘to hone his skills in the building trade’, Melvin’s next position was with Ronez Quarry.
‘I was one of the first people to lay block paving in the Island,’ he explained. ‘We laid the paving in King Street and Queen Street when the town centre was pedestrianised. It was while I was working for Ronez, though, that I suffered an injury, when a lump of granite landed on, and broke, my foot. While I was off sick, I decided that it was time to look at other options and an advert which caught my eye was for an Audi agency manager at Jacksons.
‘I ran the idea past Alan Le Feuvre, who was then chairman of the JFTU board, and who also owned an Audi, and he quickly turned the idea on its head, suggesting that I might prefer to work for JFTU. And there started the next 42 and a half years of my life.’
When Melvin joined JFTU in 1980, the company was trading from Commercial Buildings, a site which reflected the company’s beginnings as a trade and export centre for the farming industry.
‘JFTU was originally founded in 1927 by a group of like-minded farmers as the trading arm of the Jersey Farmers’ Union,’ explained Melvin. ‘Those farmers wanted an entity which enabled them to market and sell their products, while also purchasing the items they needed to produce their goods.
‘In the early days, they were packing local produce for export, with potatoes being the main crop. The stories go that farmers could drive into town in a horse and cart and, after completing the sale of their potatoes, they could buy a lorry for the drive home, such were the profits available.
‘The JFTU would buy from traders on the roadside between Bel Royal and The Weighbridge. The idea was that each farmer was both a purchaser and seller so some would be buying fertilisers and also selling their produce to JFTU so that one could be offset against the other over the season. It was a real trading situation.’
When the marketing and export side of the business was taken on by the Jersey Farmers’ Co-operative – which also belonged to JFTU – it was decided that JFTU needed to branch out.
‘The managing director of the time, Denis Michel – who had taken me on – decided to extend the product range to provide items such as waterproofs, boots and tools which were needed by the members for their trade,’ explained Melvin. ‘This ensured that the farming industry continued to shop with us. We also sold tractors and related machinery as well as water pumps and irrigation systems.’
As the business diversified, further sections were developed, with engineering and retail arms sitting alongside the traditional trading division.
‘With the business evolving, I was tasked with taking JFTU back into the country,’ said Melvin. ‘At that time, John Le Sueur was building up the site in Les Ruettes, where B&Q was based. He was adamant that he wanted a soap factory on the land but, after several failed attempts to establish one, he decided to rent out the premises and that became our base.’
Owned by Tom and Rose Binet, of Fairview Farms, JFTU traded from Les Ruettes for many years, before moving to Sion and then to its current home, at Maufant, in 2020.
‘That was an interesting time as we moved to the site in the same week that all businesses were forced to close as Covid restrictions came into place,’ Melvin recalled.
‘In a way, the closure did us a favour because it gave us time to get organised,’ said John.
However, it was perhaps because of the move that there was some confusion over the trading restrictions.
‘The night that the Island locked down, we spoke to all the staff and explained that we were unable to trade because of the new rules,’ said Melvin. ‘However, when we scrolled down to the second page, we discovered that because of our water-treatment services and equestrian supplies, we were actually exempt from a lot of the restrictions and qualified to trade as an essential business. Unfortunately, having told the engineers that they could stand down, when we then tried to contact them again, they had turned off their mobile phones. That taught me to keep reading to the end of documents.’
And while Covid brought many businesses to a stop, it generated new business for JFTU.
‘Because people were spending more time at home, they focused on home and garden projects, which meant the years were kind to our business,’ said John. ‘The fencing and shed department was particularly successful, as people decided to do up their gardens, while sales of lawnmowers boomed.’
Such sales also indicate the way in which the company has evolved from its initial closed-membership trading roots to a general retail business.
‘JFTU crosses the paths of a lot of people,’ John reflected. ‘The farming community remains a core part of our customer base but the industry is far more independent now than it used to be and the landscape has changed so much, comprising a few larger farms instead of the many smaller operations there used to be.
‘Our clothing, tools and water-treatment services are still highly sought after by farmers and owners of larger properties. We can take water from boreholes and wells, which isn’t suitable for drinking, and treat it to give owners of such facilities their own water supply.’
As well as the plumbing and water treatment side of the business, JFTU supplies equestrian, safety foot- and workwear, household and pest control products, fencing, sheds, gardening and horticultural machinery, refuse bins and equipment for maintaining golf courses.
‘Critically, we also have a service department, with seven engineers, which means that we are able to service and repair any of the water-treatment, plumbing, agricultural and horticultural equipment we supply,’ John added.
‘And if that sounds diverse then you only have to visit the retail showroom to see just how extensive our product range is. In fact, you will find anything in there from a clothes peg or pair of waterproof trousers to a top-of-the-range barbecue or table-tennis table.’
Such diversity, says Melvin – whose buying duties will be taken on by showroom manager and sales and purchasing manager Lucyna Rzeznik – is both a strength and vulnerability for the business.
‘Because we sell such a broad range, we have a lot of competitors,’ he said. ‘Having said that, we have built a strong business and do not rely solely on any one area. We are very conscious, though, that our good idea today can be someone else’s good idea tomorrow and therefore, underpinning all of our product ranges, is our customer service and expertise. A lot of customers come to us because, while they could order a similar product online, they can get advice and personal service here.’
Joining John and Lucyna in the firm’s new leadership team are service and engineering manager Nick Le Masurier and finance and HR manager Carole McMullen. Together, the team are committed to a year of ‘continuity and learning’ as they work to make the management transition ‘as seamless as possible for both customers and staff’.
‘We’ve decided to restructure the business with a new leadership team as, while looking out for new opportunities, we also want to keep things on an even keel,’ said Carole. ‘The priority is to continue on the same trajectory and make sure that our staff and customers are happy – and are not missing Melvin too much.’
While stepping back from the day-to-day operations of the business, Melvin will still be supporting that transition, remaining on board in an advisory and consultancy capacity until his 65th birthday in May.
And, while many people might be looking forward to putting their feet up after 50 years in the workplace, Melvin has no intention of taking it easy just yet.
‘I’m certainly not retiring, just taking a change of direction,’ he explained. ‘My daughter and son-in-law run Ashbe Construction so I will be going back to my early career in the building industry and becoming the oldest apprentice they’ve ever employed.
‘In doing so, not only will I be taking on a new challenge but I will also be giving the team who are taking JFTU forward, the space to breathe and make their own decisions. I’ve been handing over gradually for the past 18 months so the time is now right to make that handover more official.
‘It has been a very relaxed transition, as we’ve been able to call for Mel whenever we have an issue that we are unsure about,’ said John. ‘Mind you, that won’t change. We know where he lives so he can’t escape.’
