Dare @
St Stephens High School
Enterprise Centre

St Stephens High School

Sir Tom Farmer CBE

Director, President, Chairman – yup, entrepreneur Tom Farmer is not just a pretty face! Scotland’s best known business man has done it all over the 50 years he’s been in business!

He owns his home football team Hibernian (how amazing would that be, to own your own football team!). Not only that, he's the Chairman of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme, the honorary president of Young Enterprise Scotland and he's received loads of awards, including Scottish Businessman of the Year - and he's even been awarded a Knighthood! And on top of this, he’s a big softie as well, doing loads of work for charity.

Before I carry on, can I repeat myself by saying he's Chairman of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme which means he's the man who has the money to make your career happen. That means that, if there's something you desperately need to help you - no matter how small, just let us know and together we can ask him.. I've put his number on fastdial!

So what inspired him to get into business? Well, you'll just have to click on the links below to find out the answers!

Sir Tom Farmer Questions

Well, he left school at 15 to work for a local tyre firm in Edinburgh and was already showing signs of being a sharp young businessman - as a young boy he would buy bikes, repair them and sell them on at a profit! Pretty switched on for someone so young!

When the company he worked for didn't pay him the commission he was owed, he vowed never to work for anyone else again and he’s never looked back!
He set up his own tyre and car accessories firm, built it up into a chain, sold it to a rival company four years later and retired at the age of 30. Phew! What a story! Is this how it ends? Well, not quite…

Just a few months later, Sir Tom was back in the world of work, setting up the company that would become Kwit Fit. It was an inspired idea - the company would specialise in fitting tyres, brakes and exhausts, training staff well and giving the customer great service, and thanks to a clever marketing campaign, it became just as famous for its cheesy television adverts featuring staff dancing while they changed tyres!

But, unlike his dancing tyre fitters, Sir Tom always kept his feet on the ground. He made it a company rule that ALL staff would have to spend one week every year fitting tyres and exhausts at a Kwik Fit branch, and he took his turn along with everyone else ! He even filled in for someone who phoned in sick! I’d pay good money to see big bosses of other companies doing this!

Sir Tom sold Kwik-Fit to car-maker Ford in 1999, but still has a wide range of business and charity interests, including the Farmer Foundation, an organisation founded by him and which provides meals for over 300,000 school children in Malawi every day.