At 150, Blundstone’s still going boots ’n’ all

The Tasmanian boot maker is not only surviving, but thriving, 150 years since inception.

Blundstone CEO Steve Gunn and board member Damien Bugg. at Blundstone's head office in Hobart. Picture: Peter Mathew

Damien Bugg has always cherished his Tasmanian heritage.

The former chancellor of the University of Tasmania had the honour of being appointed the state’s first director of public prosecutions, and he successfully prosecuted Martin Bryant in 1996 for the horrors he committed at Port Arthur.

But Bugg is best known on the national stage for his eight-year stint as the commonwealth director of public prosecutions, where between 1999 and 2007 he locked horns with the likes of Steve Vizard, Schapelle Corby and Dr Mohamed Haneef.

These days Bugg is chan­nelling his energies into the state he loves, recently taking up a directorship of a true Tasmanian icon, The Blundstone company, which sells more than 2.7 million boots a year in 70 countries. More than 75 per cent of its staff still reside in Hobart.

“As a proud Tasmanian, I’m honoured to be a member of the Blundstone board, which is now steering the business in its next growth phase. The brand is part of the cultural fabric of the island, and it’s very humbling to be a part of a business that is driven by the passion of its people, both in Hobart and around the world,’’ he tells The Weekend Australian.

“Blundstone is not only surviving, but thriving, 150 years since inception, and this milestone is a testament to the brand and its products continuing to stand the test of time.” The appointment of Bugg as a director in the company’s 150th year is more than symbolic. He is one of two external directors to have joined the board as the group overhauls its governance practices after decades of ownership by the private Cuthbertson family.

The Blundstone family started making boots in Hobart in 1870 after John and Eliza Blundstone emigrated from Derbyshire in England 15 years earlier.

After striking financial difficulty at the turn of the century they sold out to the Cain family, who ran the business in the depths of Great Depression.

In 1932 they too sold to the Cuthbertsons, who have now been making boots for about as long as the Blundstones.

The late Harold Cuthbertson took over as managing director in 1953 and ran the business successfully for 51 years.

Blundstone is now 100 per cent owned by his two daughters, who are so private even a 25-year veteran of the business, long-serving chief executive Steve Gunn, will not divulge their identities.

Filings for the company lodged with the corporate regulator reveal them as Helen Dickinson and Anne Routley.

While Gunn may not be prepared to name them, he is more than happy to talk about the profound influence Harold Cuthbertson’s daughters, now both in their 70s, continue to have on the business their father made an Australian legend. “We are very close to what they want to do with the business. They are the ones that set the culture and the risk profile,’’ he says.

“There is a lot of passion, support and interest. Before them their father had guided the business for 50 years from being a very small, Hobart-centric business to the initial push into the world.”

He says the pros of having members of the family on the board outweighs the cons.

“The main pro is the long-term view. There is a degree of patience around giving things a chance to work. In a public company that is not as prevalent and getting worse.

“The second one is the culture and values are very clear. There are no contradictory forces at play. There is a lot of clarity with regards to parameters,’’ he says.

“It is a strange word to use in business but loyalty is something that means a lot to our business and I am not sure you would get that in something that is not a family concern. It has been a great opportunity for me at a personal level to get my teeth into something and not feel I had to do handstands and get results overnight.”

Gunn has been CEO of Blundstone for almost two decades and claims he has never had a major disagreement with Dickinson and Routley.

“We have had robust discussions; you would hope you would. But we have never had a disagreement with regard to direction. I have taken into account what the comfort zone is for the owners and that may have tempered what I have come forward with at times,’’ he says.

“It hasn’t resulted in us being meek and mild. We have made some big decisions along the way. If I had interfering owners and people with opinions where only their opinion counts, I could get a sense my world would have been different. That has not been my experience.”

Until Bugg joined the board this year, Blundstone had only four directors for 18 years.

Now in addition to Bugg, Tasmanian berry farmer Richard Clark — a former Reserve Bank staffer whose family has run the Westerway Raspberry farm in the Derwent Valley for generations — also recently joined the board.

“We have put some independence into the board in recent times,’’ Gunn says.

“That will provide more continuity and normalise the governance a bit. It wasn’t desperately needed but we recognise the business is getting bigger, more complex and more global.”

Change is also extending into Blundstone’s management ranks.

Gunn himself will retire from the CEO role at the end of October and become chairman, allowing him to concentrate more closely on strategy. He will be replaced by a duo — Darryl Wilkes, Blundstone’s head of operations, and Adam Blake, head of brands and design.

“At the start of COVID-19 we were looking at a full external process and they declared their interest. The board deemed that stability and continuity was more important than running an external exercise while we were looking at helping the business survive the event,’’ Gunn says.

“They were right in the mix anyway. Given what is now in front of the business, we see it as a very positive result to have them as joint CEOs and it has been accepted extremely well within the organisation.”

But Blundstone has done more than just survive the pandemic, aided by its decision five years ago to introduce a female-focused brand.

“We are actually doing very well in our domestic markets. Australia has been almost contraindicating in terms of performance. The lifestyle and leisure range, which is predominantly online, has sold very well. We think young females have been turning to our products after their traditional shopping places were denied to them,’’ Gunn says.

While Blundstone retains its strong market position as a supplier of safety boots to workers in heavy industries, more than 50 per cent of purchases of its products are now being made by women, especially in the group’s biggest offshore growth market, America.

Gunn expects that in five years America — where Blundstone does its own distribution — will generate more than $300m or 30 per cent of the group’s revenues, up from the current 20 per cent.

“It is a completely different brand to the one that has the persona in Australia, albeit the core values are still there,” he says.

The company’s other international growth markets include Canada, Japan and Israel.

Australia represents 20 per cent of sales and New Zealand 10 per cent. Both represented 85 per cent when Gunn joined.

“We have held on to our staff through the pandemic, we are making some adjustments in the supply chain but we are not ready to make wholesale changes yet. We were probably lucky we weren’t heavily in China from the outset,’’ he says.

While the company was forced to move its production offshore many years ago, its boots are still designed in Hobart.

Gunn says Blundstone is living proof that high value-add, advanced manufacturing cannot only survive but thrive in a post-COVID world.

As it celebrates a milestone in is history, the heritage and legacy of the Blundstone brand continues to resonate with consumers across the globe. “It is family-owned, been around for 150 years, had small beginnings and built up steadily. It is a story people like to hear. And it complements what the product does,’’ Gunn says.