Filshill chief on building a faster decision culture

Filshill, which operates across Scotland and northern England is the owner and operator of the KeyStore symbol group,

Retailers trade under the KeyStore brand while Filshill provides supply, logistics, data, marketing and operational support.

Filshill turnover was £214m for the year ending January 2025 and employs 245 people at its base next to Glasgow Airport.

Wholesale is often seen as an industry not at the cutting edge of technology.

Simon’s argument is the opposite: thin margins force constant improvement, fast decisions and disciplined use of data, particularly for a company that ships one million cases of stock a month.

That push for speed is rooted in a mistake he says he made when he first took over as CEO.

“I thought, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to help everybody,” he said.

“And that was a problem because I ultimately created this culture of upward delegation very quickly, where no decisions were being made in the business. Every decision was getting funnelled to me and I was absolutely drowning.”

A conversation with the firm’s banking relationship director led to structured coaching, focused on helping him move “from being a manager to a leader”.

The practical outcome was a redesign of how the business runs day-to-day.

Filshill created what it calls an accountability chart, mapping “every single bit of functionality” across the organisation and assigning each area to an individual or department.

“Those individuals and departments are completely empowered to make decisions on behalf of the business within their accountabilities aligned to the budgets that we’d set.

“That got rid of this upward delegation that I personally created and allowed decisions to be made every minute of every day.”

Simon frames his own role in three buckets, today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, with most of his attention on the latter two.

“If 70 per cent of our time, effort and resources are spent in today, 20 per cent in tomorrow and 10 per cent the day after tomorrow, we’re always going to be ahead of our competitive set,” he said.

Filshill uses weekly KPIs as a “temperature check”, reviewed every Tuesday at 3pm with the management team.

Safety is the top metric, tracked through accidents, near misses and safety non-conformance reporting.

Operational measures include on-time delivery, availability and complaints, plus labour cost-per-case.

“If a number goes from green to red, that instantly goes to our issues list,” Simon said.

“We discuss why it happened, what we’re going to do to fix it, and who is accountable for the fix.”

Filshill has also embedded sustainability into daily operations, cutting carbon intensity from 146 grams of CO₂ per box delivered to 46 grams after moving to its purpose-built site.

Solar investment is expanding to 453 kilowatts, supplying 38 per cent of electricity, while the delivery fleet now runs on hydro-treated vegetable oil fuel.

AI has also become part of the company’s daily operating rhythm.

Simon said he knew “nothing” about AI in October 2024, and needed to get the business and himself from AI curious to AI serious.

He subsequently went to Dubai three times in the preceding 12 months to do intensive AI training, including becoming an AI trainer and attending agentic AI courses.

But concluded it could not sit as a standalone initiative.

“AI implementation is a culture shift towards a digitised world,” he said. “And if culture is one of my accountabilities as the leader of the business, AI had to become one of my accountabilities.”

Filshill trained about 70 colleagues through a 10-week programme and has used AI for practical tools, including a customer-facing bot built to answer retailer questions around vape compliance as regulation tightened.

“Our phones were ringing off the hook from customers seeking advice,” Simon said. “So we took all the legislation and advice from our suppliers and created a bot called Vapora.”

The economics of the distribution business are unforgiving.

“There’s not a lot of things that have to go wrong for a business like this to make no money,” Simon said.

He pointed to employer national insurance and minimum wage increases worth “hundreds of thousands of pounds”.

“If you’re making a net of sub two per cent margin, you’ve got to sell a hell of a lot more product to stand still,” he said.

Simon’s argument is that longevity is not about moving slowly. It is about staying market-relevant while building systems that keep decisions fast.

“Whilst we’re 150 years old and the perception of wholesale sector is that we are slow and sluggish,” he said, “this business is very dynamic, very tech-literate, and very focused on improvement and efficiency.”

Planning the next generation without pressure

For a 150-year-old business, succession planning is not a distant theory. At JW Filshill, it is part of everyday thinking.

Chief executive Simon Hannah is the fifth generation of his family to run the Scottish wholesaler.

The question of who leads it next is already being considered, but deliberately without urgency.

“The big mistake would be to put the kids under pressure to take on the running of the family business,” he said.

“First, they have to be interested. Second, they have to be capable. If either is missing, you’re setting everyone up to fail.”

Simon has three children. His eldest son finishes university this year and has completed a six-month placement within the company.

His son is also attending the IMD high performance leadership programme in Switzerland for 18 to 30 year olds through YPO, a global community for CEOs.

His daughter is studying marketing, while his youngest daughter is still at school. Simon’s brother Nick also works in the business.

“We don’t need to decide anything now,” Simon added. “I’m only 48. We’ve got time.”

He believes there are two valid paths: next-generation ownership and management together, or ownership with professional management.

“Both models can work,” he added. “But it has to be their choice ,not an expectation.”

Six key lessons

1 - Helping everyone slows everything. Simon learned that trying to solve every problem created upward delegation and paralysis. Leaders must design systems where decisions happen without them through empowerment.

2 - Accountability beats personality. Map responsibilities clearly and empower departments to act within budgets. Structure matters more than heroics.

3 - Strategy needs 90-day execution. Big ambitions only work when broken into quarterly objectives with named owners and measurable outcomes.

4 - Low margins demand discipline. In sub-two per cent businesses, efficiency, availability, cost-per-case and service KPIs decide profitability. Weekly data reviews are survival tools.

5 - AI is a leadership responsibility. Digital change succeeds when the chief executive owns culture and capability, trains people and insists on practical projects.

6 – Succession planning in a generational family business depends very much on preparation, not pressure.