12 Business DECEMBER 2018
The first betting
shop owned by
the Done brothersProud of
Salford
“I AM proud to come from
working class roots and Fred
and myself have never moved
away from the area,” says
Peter Done.
“We live 500 yards apart
and we are still very proud
Salfordians.
“It instilled a good work
ethic in us because when
you’re not handed success,
you work harder for it.
“I actually think it is an
advantage, but just being a
hard worker isn’t enough, you
have to have talent as well.
“I have seen such a big
change take place in Salford.
“When we were at school
our classroom looked right
over the docks which is now
Salford Quays.
“In those days, there were
ships from all over the world
coming in - from China and
Japan.
“After the docks were
deserted and I heard that they
were going to put a hotel on
there I thought they must be
crazy. A hotel near Ordsall?
“Now you look at
MediaCityUK and it is just
amazing what they have
done.”FROM PAGE 10
Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and
Canada. The Group is best known for
serving small businesses, but it also
provides specialised services to many
large international clients.
In truth, the scale is a long way from
Done’s modest Salford upbringing.
Opening up about the early days, he
explains: “Looking back it was very
tough but you didn’t feel like it at the
time because it was all you knew.”
Along with Fred, the brothers went to
Trafford Road School which he
describes as ‘really hard’ and recalls
only hearing of one person ever making
it to university.
Instead, he took up a position with
the local bookmaker after leaving
education at 15 with ‘absolutely no
qualifications.’
Done was tasked with adding up the
ledgers in the credit office because he
was too young to go into the shop,
“I had to work out how much they
had staked and how much they had
won in pounds, shillings and pence
without a calculator.
“It was bang on every time,” he adds
with genuine pride.
This natural gift for maths stood him
in good stead throughout his career,
especially as head of a high growth
business like Peninsula.
In the UK, Peninsula has more than
30,000 clients and 2,700 staff around
the world - facts he reels off with ease.
Group revenue was up to £223.6m for
the year ending March 2018 and is
expected to jump another £50m by
- Again these figures materialise
unprompted from the numbers man.
“It’s like riding a bike, after 35 years
I’ve still not lost it,” he smiles
unassumingly. “That’s why if I ask any
of my guys to come into a meeting with
me they have got to know their
numbers.”
After joining as teenagers, the
siblings rose up the ranks of Ernie
Peters bookmakers until they were
both managing different stores.
When Done was 21, an opportunity
came up to buy their own shop in
Pendleton which was under-
performing. Like so many pivotal
moments in their intertwined story it
sounds like a calculated risk which
paid off.
The natural opportunist said: “In
those days you never got any kind of
service at a betting shop.
“If you won, the bookmaker would
have a face on him and would literally
throw the money at you.
“We thought, this is crazy because
they are not going to come back, so we
started to call them sir.”
Linking that customer-first mentality
to his business today, he adds: “It is
exactly the same in Peninsula.
“We bend over backwards to make
sure that the small businesses are given
the best possible service they can get
and are able to grow.”
This is a canny move as Peninsula’s
pricing is based on the number of
employees at a firm, so it is in their
interest to encourage growth.
Their core client base is
almost entirely made up of
businesses with
between five and 200
staff.
And securing a
renewal is the
main aim, with
87% of customers
currently signing
up again.
“Small
businesses are very
savvy and they know
how to spend their
money, so if you aren’t
giving them value for money
they won’t renew.”
Another way they have built in value
is to diversify services, including a
wellbeing product Health Assured and
digital offering BrightHR, which sits on
the ninth floor and is beanbag heaven.
The HR software enables SMEs to
monitor staff numbers, time-keeping,holidays and rotas with access via an
app so the manager can see exactly
what is happening.
Describing it as the most exciting
part of the business Done enthuses: “It
is brilliant. We didn’t think we
would sell it as a stand alone
product at first so it started
as an extra service for
clients. We changed
the name three years
ago and have a
great chief
technology officer
in Alastair Brown
and chief
executive officer in
Alan Price.”
Peninsula now has
more than 22,
businesses subscribed
to BrightHR and around
120,000 employees use it on a
daily basis.
Looking at the broader history of the
firm, even the way Peninsula was
founded seems borderline accidental.
It came on the back of an
employment tribunal at The Done
Brothers bookmakers where they were
let down by bad advice from a lawyer.At the door of the tribunal they were
told to settle and were landed with a
£9,000 bill - half of which was to cover
legal costs.
“We thought there has got to be a
better way to do this,” says Peter.
In 1984, they found a small business
with the same concept, called
Professional Personnel and
Management Services Limited, which
went on to become Peninsula, and
decided to invest £450,000.
However, after a slow three years, the
brothers had to decide which of them
was going to move into the business to
try and keep it afloat. In typical Done
fashion they flipped a coin.
Laughing jovially, the younger sibling
remembers: “I won and he said you go.”
Once he got there, he recognised the
potential in the business and hit the
road for six months selling Peninsula’s
services.
“I had my reservations going in but
after two months Fred rang me up and
asked, ‘have we got a business?’ And I
said, ‘no Fred, we have a fantastic
business.’
“We have just grown and grown
organically and it’s been a great ride.”
Compared to today’s model, thethe big interview
‘Small businesses are
very savvy and they
know how to spend
their money’Peter Done