RS Clare’s chairman, IAN MEADOWS, tells Alex Turner about his firm’s 260 years’ history – and its future

THE chairman of RS Clare was adamant. “I wanted nothing to do with the smelly business,” said Ian Meadows, talking about the firm he has worked at for 37 years, the last 30 as managing director and 13 as chairman.

But events have had a habit of causing big changes for the lubricant manufacturer which has been surviving and thriving for 261 years.

For Mr Meadows, it was the sad news of his father’s cancer which brought him into the family firm aged 26.

In doing so, he became the latest generation of his family to work in the business that William Alfred Meadows bought, in partnership with Wapping paintmaker Col Thomas Wilson, for £6,000 in 1889.

By then the company was already 141 years old. Richard Clare had set up as a druggist and manufacturing chemist in Lord Street, before moving into distilling turpentine.

In 1795, it moved to Stanhope Street, where it remains to this day, and it began distilling tar in the 1830s.

Mr Meadows said: “We have changed fundamentally 10 times in 261 years – if you don’t, you die. We have to take advantage of opportunities. My forebears have done that and we are still doing that now.”

The company has a rule that 25% of its gross profits must come from products which are less than three years old. This is achieved by spending £500,000 a year on research and development.

He is also proud of the work being done on optimising the company’s website for search engines – a small step maybe, but indicative of how a traditional manufacturer is serious about embracing the future.

RS Clare is the third oldest company, and the oldest manufacturer, in Liverpool and Mr Meadows admits the weight of history does lay heavily on his shoulders.

“It’s a ball and chain,” he said. “There’s no place for a silver spoon. I told a relative after he left university, if you can achieve and then come back and take on the ball and chain, then you can have it.

“I feel a responsibility to the generations before, but also to all the people who work here. Although I am the only family member who works here, it’s very much a family.”

The generations he speaks of have seen – and been central players – in some extraordinary events, business and personal.

William Alfred’s father, also William, died after falling off his horse after it shied, frightened by a highwayman.

The younger William, who took over his father’s tar distillery in Rainhill before buying RS Clare, himself lived into his 90s, and married twice, the second time aged 89 to Ivor Novello’s music teacher.

By then – the 1930s – Clare’s had established itself as a major player in its sector.

It won the Ballymenagh Trophy in 1907 for the most effective dust-laying compound for road surfacing. The 100oz solid silver trophy still has pride of place in the company’s boardroom today.

It went on to develop quick-drying paint for road kerbs and signposts before putting the first road markings down, in Sloane Square in London, during World War I.

In the 1920s, the company started making grease oil for Castrol, thanks to a chance meeting on board a Bibby Line ship bound for the Pyramids, and in the 1930s patented thermoplastic road markings, which were much more durable than existing techniques.

Even a 2kg phosphorus bomb that ripped the factory apart on May 7, 1941 only put a small dent in the company’s progress.

Not long after the end of World War II, Mr Meadows was born and soon became familiar with some of the more rudimentary details of the family firm.

“From the age of four, I used to smell the tar on my father’s clothes,” he said. “I avoided it like the plague.

“I joined Texaco with the intention of making a career there.

“I was the youngest sales manager that Texaco ever had, which made me feel I had made my mark if I had to go into the smelly business.

“I joined Clare’s at 26 when my father got cancer. He lived for another six years and I became managing director at 32, in 1979.

“For the first 10 years, I ran the company the way I had seen it run – it was autocratic and very hierarchical. In retrospect, I stifled initiative.”

IT WAS John Harvey-Jones, chairman of ICI and presenter of the Troubleshooter series, on BBC TV, who provided the inspiration for Mr Meadows to change how he ran his company.

“In 1989, I had my Road to Damascus moment when I was watching John Harvey-Jones on television.

“He said that, now we are in the Common Market, unless companies change the way they run the business, they won’t exist in the year 2000.

“That was a thunderbolt. It made me think. We were a closed shop, very hierarchical, and clearly we needed to change.

“I remember standing on four pallets and saying to the workers we needed to change to survive, but that I would need to change more than they would.

“I guess it has taken 20 years, but that was the start of a fund-amental change in this outfit.”

But the changes haven’t always been straightforward. He said: “We were the first manufacturing Investors in People in Mersey-side, but later I ripped the plaques off the walls because we didn’t deserve it. We weren’t delivering it.

“About five years ago, I saw the benefit of the balanced scorecard. It’s incredibly simple, keep everything in sync – the money, the production, the staff and the customers. It’s incredible how performance improved.”

And the company’s current success – last year it produced an operating margin of 10% on £18m turnover – has encouraged Mr Meadows to continue.

“I thought I was going to retire when I was 60, but I feel very much alive and there’s so much to do,” he said. “My colleagues will tell me when to go.”

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