How Con Donovan went from East End lad to Choice’s king

Six decades later, that ambitious teenager, Con Donovan, has sold his way to control of a retail empire with 22 shops and 510 staff.

Choice stores pepper landscapes across the east of England from Bluewater and Romford to Colchester and Norwich. The first outlet opened in Benfleet in 1966. Since then, our papers have regularly carried shots of queues stretching round the block, and traffic diverted to avoid the crush. Such photos have become something of an institution, and barely need a caption. They simply indicate a newChoice store is opening.

The Choice retail empire is still run from its original headquarters site in Church Road, Hadleigh. Con recalls: “When we set up, it was an unmade road.”

Times and fortunes have changed almost beyond recognition, yet part of Choice’s distinctive character as a business goes back even further than that first store in Benfleet – back to the streets of Stepney, where the teenage Con Donovan first made his far-reaching decision to become a retail salesman.

Con says of himself and his wife Kath: “We come from the East End. We’ve gone on carrying on the values we learnt, down the years, in everything we’ve done.”

Con was born in Stepney on April 15, 1934, the son of a stevedore, a job that almost defined the old world of the London docklands.

Con was a child during the London Blitz, which he remembers from a surprisingly positive angle. His recollection is less of the destruction that rained down on the East End streets than of how it drew the community together. “Everyone was in it together, Jewish, Catholic...everyone. If someone was in trouble, everyone helped,” he says.

Family business – the Donovan family at home in the late Eighties, celebrating another success. Con and Kath Donovan with son David, daughter Frances, son Mark, son-in-law Bob Watkins, son Neil and family friend Harry Penfold

Kath Donovan (nee Marriott) in particular was in the thick of it.

In 1945, a V2 rocket fell at the top of the road where she lived, Havering Street. It killed 38 people in or around numbers 1 to 5. Kath’s home, number 11, was just a few yards further down the street.

Con’s management style still bears the imprint of those Blitz years. “We look after our people,”

he says. For instance, staff who suffer a family bereavement receive instant cash support, in excess of £10,000, from the company. And a daily bingo number is sent out to every member of the Choice team.

Those who score a full house are rewarded with a luxury trip anywhere in the world. “Las Vegas, Greece, you name it,” says Con’s son Mark, one of the new generation of the family now managing Choice.

Family, as it happens, is another core ingredient of Choice’s DNA. Con says a strong sense of family life was “absolutely basic” in the world where he and Kath were raised.

Both came from large Catholic families. Theymet at a dance organised by the Catholic church.

Three of their five children are now directly involved in running Choice. “We’re a family-run company and family values are what we’re all about,” says Con.

A contrast to the corporate world of somuch modern business, Choice remains probably the largest family-run firm still operating in Essex. “It makes it much more personal,” says Con. “We’re all on first name terms. Members of the family are around all the time. It’s not like some firms, where you just never get to set eyes on the top people. It gives it a warmth, which customers sense and like.”

A new Choice store opens – customers queue outside the Wickford shop in 1989

Con and Kath’s background shaped the nature of Choice in one other way. The Fifties East End was the home of the rag trade, its streets scattered with workshops and wholesalers.

There were few families that did not have some connection with the garment industry.

“Coming from the East End, Kath and I had a deep knowledge of fashion,” says Con. “We put our heads down and put it to good use.”

Con flourished as a salesman, concentrating on smaller businesses in London, and increasingly, Essex, which he found a happy hunting ground.

Southend proved particularly productive. “It was a salesman’s paradise,” says Con.

He liked Essex somuch that he set up home here. Con and Kath moved to Benfleet in 1961, part of the great postwar migration from East London to Essex. Their first business was a factory, making and selling value for money women’s clothing. Then as now, they worked to a formula, quality plus value, that has stood them well in good times and bad. “It’s all about value,” Con says. “We keep prices down because we knowmoney is tight out there, but we keep value and quality up.”

In 1980, cheap foreign competition persuaded the Donovans to shift gear, and concentrate on retailing. Choice in its now familiar guise was born at this stage. It was forged on the back of a formidable deal made with the legendary retailer David (now Sir David) Jones, then at the Grattan catalogue firm, and involved stocking Con’s stores with surplus high-quality stock from Grattan.

The Hadleigh store in 1989

The strong working relationship between the twomen continued, and Sir David pays warm tribute to Con in his autobiography. “We continue to benefit from our links with a major national company,” says Con.

The Donovan family’s work for charity and the local community has marched alongside the growth of Choice. It included helping to fund the launch of Crimestoppers. Con knew a thing or two about criminals from his days in the old East End. He recalls: “I was asked to go and have dinner with the Chief Constable. Afterwards they showedme round the Black Museum. We saw the torture equipment used by the Kray Brothers.

“It was horrible what those men got up to. They left a long trail of dead people behind them.

We used to see them around the place, but you could avoid them and being drawn into their influence.”

The East End had its dark side, but the Donovans themselves are a reminder of its strengths – the work ethic, the humour, the family values, the community spirit, and the talent for dealmaking, honed on the streets. All of these have shaped the Choice empire and kept it buoyant, whatever the economic weather outside. “Our customers have been loyal, and we owe everything to them,” says Con. Mark points out: “Word of mouth is a big thing. We are now seeing the grandchildren of people who shopped at the first branches of Choice.”

At 81, and on the eve of the business’s 50th anniversary, Con is finally, slowly, pulling back from the business he founded.

Day-to-day running is increasingly in the hands of Phillip, Mark and Neil Donovan.

As he looks back across a lifetime of business life, Con is self-effacing about his own achievements, and continually anxious to pay tribute to Choice’s customers. “They brought us to where we are today,” he insists.

Perhaps his most appropriate epitaph, however, is something that he said in an earlier interview back in 1998. As so often, he made reference to his roots.

“I come from the East End. I couldn’t lie in bed thinking to myself, I’ve been selfish. You have to give something back.”