Steve Parkin

After starting out as a chemical engineer at Exxon, Steve worked for Mars in a variety of strategic roles in Europe and the UK, and joined the FA, serving four years on their Board running all football below The Football League.  His next step was to work for 3i, turning around one of their childcare businesses after they suffered significant losses. It was during his time at 3i that Steve recognised how much he enjoyed helping distressed businesses, so he sought further work with companies like Technogym UK and St Ives plc, helping them to return to profitability.        

In April 2015, Steve became CEO at Moores, a Yorkshire based kitchen manufacturer that had been operating since 1947.  Since 1996 Moores had been part of MASCO Inc (a major NYSE company which operated in Home Improvement) but in 2008, trading had fallen from £115m to £60m and the company hadn’t made a profit since.   After two years with Moores, Steve led an MBO backed by Hilco Capital that was completed in November 2017.  Two years later the business had grown by 65%.  Moores recently won a TRI Award for Turnaround of the year in 2019.  Today, Moores employs 500 people directly and over 200 indirectly. They continue to recruit locally in Yorkshire and long serving employees are the core to their business.    

Moores used to be the kitchen industry’s ‘early adopter’, introducing new colours, shapes, materials, foils & internals to the marketplace, but during their period of financial difficulty they had lost this approach. Steve recognised that with the right overall end to end product proposition the business could recover in a marketplace where there was only one other major UK wide player.   He helped them to revisit their core product offering and distribution.   

Today Moores hand makes all of its kitchens in the UK and has evolved not only its hardware products but also its installation & customer service capabilities. They use iPads in the field to track and speed up kitchen completions, have developed 3D software for clients to use to demonstrate the end kitchen look and have invested in a leading-edge customer service, account management and installer network.