CM October 2021

INTERVIEW
AUTHOR – Sean Feast FCICM
more aligned to my actual role, I swapped
over to the ICM and have never looked back.”
Nigel became a member of the CICM in
1991 and an active member of the Kent and
London branches. He is also a very active
member of the CICM Think Tank, and a
regular contributor to Credit Management
magazine as a panel expert. Community,
and both learning and sharing experiences
with his peers, is what Nigel particularly
enjoys from his membership: “It has always
been important to me to be a member
of a professional body and to have that
professionalism recognised inside and outside
of a business. There is no doubt that being a
member of the CICM has helped advance my
career, while being qualified means I have
also always felt I was giving something back
to my employer in terms of the skills I could
bring to the company.”
Within five years of starting out at AEI,
Nigel had become Head of Credit Operations
before joining Hornby, the world-famous
model railway business, in Margate: “I felt I
needed to expand my experience by working
in a different business and industry sector,
and it was especially interesting dealing with
small retailers rather than wholesalers. What
I quickly learned was the model-shop owners
knew a great deal about models, but not so
much about running a business!”
Nigel also learned to work in a very
different culture to one that he had been used
to: “You’d think being a toy manufacturer that
they might be more fun, but in many ways,
they were more corporate than a bank. They
were a great bunch of people, but we all had
to wear a suit and tie!”
BEST PRACTICE GROUP
At Hornby, Nigel became involved with
setting up and later chairing a Credit Best
Practice Group discussing best practice
credit management in the toy industry. Toy
manufacturers shared similar challenges:
most of the toys were sold in the period
between September and Christmas, but in the
New Year they had to deal with the returns.
To that end, he innovated several ideas to
encourage retailers to extend their buying
cycle, by effectively offering an extended
credit facility and better pricing for buying
outside of peak periods. He was not averse
to some tough talking when it was required:
“You had to be strong when dealing with
model retailers,” he laughs, “but I found that
if you threatened to take their train set away,
they usually paid up quite quickly!”
Through the Credit Best Practice Group,
Nigel extended his network, and through
one of his contacts applied for a role at
20th Century Fox, working for its Theatrical
Business. This was the beginning of more
than two decades in the business, and
“You’d think being
a toy manufacturer
that they might be
more fun, but in many
ways, they were more
corporate than a bank.
They were a great
bunch of people, but
we all had to wear a
suit and tie!”
Advancing the credit profession / www.cicm.com / October 2021 / PAGE 22