He’s got one of the biggest names in the industry to live up to, but Peter Vardy isn’t fazed, he tells JAMES BATCHELOR

MY dad tried to put me off being a car dealer,’ says Peter Vardy, the 32-year old son of Sir Peter Vardy, and CEO of Peter Vardy Ltd. ‘He tried to put me, my older brother and younger sister off from joining the family business so that we didn’t feel obliged to come into it,’ he says.

‘When I was 16 and I left school, dad said that he didn’t have a job for me so I had to do my A-levels. When I’d done my A-levels, he said there was still no job and I had to go to university for three years. When I’d finished there he said that he wanted someone with an honours degree, so I got an honours degree and he eventually made me a salesman.’

That moment was the beginning of a career that has led to Vardy beginning his own company which now has seven dealerships to its name and has been in the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For three times in a row.

It all began in 2006 when Vardy’s father stepped down as chairman of Reg Vardy plc and sold the business to Pendragon for £506m. May of that year saw Vardy set up Peter Vardy Ltd, and by June he had opened his first dealership in Perth.

Impressive, you would have to admit. But that was always the idea, according to Vardy jnr. ‘I had a five year plan – most of which we have completed – and we’ve done some great things and some things that, perhaps, were not so good. It was always my mission to get the best workforce I could find, make sure they enjoy themselves and then we would have a good business. We are not trying to be the largest motor group, we’re quite happy to be slightly smaller and to punch above our weight.’

Enjoying themselves is a bit of an understatement. Putting the Sunday Times accolade aside, Vardy has built a motor business that was always going to be different for its employees.

‘One thing that has always stuck in my mind was making sure that your leadership philosophy is the same as your company’s – it’s called optimal flow; not trying to be somebody at work you’re not at home,’ says Vardy. ‘Some of this was borrowed from the Vardy values we had as a bigger group – it’s about making good-natured, family-orientated values that your employees want to aspire to.’

But being a businessman, the size and growth of his business must be the main driving force of Vardy’s business, surely? ‘No, that does not interest me one iota,’ Vardy replies. What does interest him is seeing his business doing things of value; one example of that is his business supporting Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children.

‘We do reviews of all of our senior managers regularly, and one guy said he hadn’t had the performance he would have liked. I replied that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you supported Edinburgh’s sick kids with £20k, and that you actually went out the day before Christmas Eve and made sure that 50 families in your retail area had a Christmas present and a meal. You tell me which of those you will talk about when you’re 65 and in the pub – it won’t be the 105 per cent plan.’

‘Talking to Vardy, you quickly get the sense that he is an organised man with a sharp mind and even sharper plans for the future.’

That Christmas project was just one of many that the Peter Vardy Charity Fund undertakes. Every year the company donates 10 per cent of its annual profits to charities and organisations, allowing its dealerships to put something back into their local communities. Talking to Vardy, you quickly get the sense that he is an organised man with a sharp mind and even sharper plans for the future.

‘I’ve done my first five year plan, now I’m working on my second one,’ Vardy says quite casually. ‘By 2015 it is my aim to make our group a virtual motor company. Rather than get caught up in social media which has been done, this plan is in line with the way consumers are changing and how they will be buying in 2015.

‘Tesco, for instance, is doing some very clever things at the moment in integrating their stores with an online platform. We are of a similar philosophy in that you cannot keep on opening new stores or dealerships until you are doing it in correlation with where the consumer is going. That is why we’re introducing three divisions to our business – the franchise network, an online business (going live in 2012), and a car supermarket (opening in 2013).

‘This will balance us with what the consumer is doing; it is a concierge service, if you will,’ Vardy adds.

Isn’t that going to be a challenge? ‘Well, yes, it will be,’ says Vardy. ‘But I suppose it’s the same as having three divisions like Reg Vardy had. As long as you have a plan, you research it and you have the right guys to do it, you will be fine.’

Explaining full-on business plans like that would make any normal person feel quite exhausted. But not Vardy. ‘Our house was on the same forecourt as the first dealership, and living in an environment that was so close to work was intense. My dad worked many long hours and days, but it was exciting – it’s actually the same kind of excitement I get now,’ he says.

One of the advantages of working for his father was that he had the opportunity to experience a multitude of different jobs. When Vardy was 14 years old, for instance, his father put him to work at a petrol station. Aware that he wasn’t being paid much, young Vardy hatched a plan to make some extra dosh and decided to sell oil too.

‘Whenever I had to fill someone’s car with petrol, I would refill their oil too and then cheekily say to the customer, “Oh, but you want the rest of the bottle, don’t you?” Looking back, the reason why my dad told me to do it was that it meant I would talk to lots of different types of people to help me in a sales environment,’ he recalls.

The love of selling is at the heart of Peter Vardy jnr. He might be a car lover and get interested by ‘a facelifted Corsa right up to a top of the range BMW’, and he might say that he ‘tries the latest cars to experience them for the customer, but really I do it for myself’, but it is the game of selling that motivates him.

‘I was so pleased with the deal I leant back in my chair and it snapped right in front of the customer.’

‘Some really great people taught me how to sell when I was working for my dad,’ he says. ‘They showed me the process of selling, closing questions, and building a relationship with the customer. It’s a game of chess, and that is the really energising bit for me.’

So Vardy would easily remember the first car he sold then? ‘Of course, it was a Mazda 323,’ he blurts out almost before the question is posed. ‘The problem was that when I sold it, I was so pleased with the deal I leant back in my chair and it snapped right in front of the customer.’ However, that is not the astonishing part of the story. The fact that Vardy was just 15 years old at the time makes it even more remarkable.

The thing is, he has a whole armoury of stories like that. Another tale that he looks back fondly on was an incident in the late 80s when a customer was going to arrive at the dealership in a helicopter. ‘It meant my brother running out into the garden with a pot of paint and painting a big H on the grass,’ Vardy laughs. ‘Actually, I remember now it wasn’t even our garden; ours wasn’t big enough so he had to paint it on the council’s land!’

Although not the same company as the 1923-established Reg Vardy, having the same name over the door must bring with it a sense of family responsibility? ‘No, I don’t think so,’ replies Vardy. ‘Though, having said that, I did feel a terrible sense of responsibility the night before opening my first dealership in Perth to the point where I couldn’t sleep.

‘The little voice in my head kept saying all night “What on Earth are you doing? You’re the third generation Vardy, what happens if you can’t do it?”. That spurred me on the next day to hug every single customer who walked through the door!

‘However, running a family business is different these days,’ adds Vardy. ‘There are more regulations, industry standards and margins to take into account. My dad would say that there is much more complexity to it, but that is the way business changes, isn’t it?’

But the big question is, would Vardy like to see his children move into the business of selling cars? ‘Well, would I like to have children? Yes, but I haven’t had time to do so! But on the question of would I push them into the family business? No, not at all… I wouldn’t let them.’ Like father, like son then…