About us

Tom McDonald has been involved in selling for 50 years. Starting off his working life in 1966 at David Watt & Sons Limited; printers and stationers in Dunfermline, Scotland. He left in 1972 to work as a representative for a local Naval Tailors, Dunfermline being only three to four miles north of Rosyth Dockyard.

In 1973, he wanted a change of scenery and moved south to Portsmouth where he lived for twelve years managing electrical shops.

In 1985 he joined St Catherine’s Hospice in Crawley to work with the Bursar in setting up St Catherine’s Hospice Shops Limited and was the first retail manager for St Catherine’s. An opportunity arose for him to join the Wade Pottery Group as a representative for the point of sale division, Wade PDM. His area can be described by drawing a line from the middle of the west coast of Wales across England, just below Cambridge to the east coast. He shared the area inside the M25 with another representative. The job entailed visiting breweries, whisky companies' London offices and other organisations. His clients included Courage, Labatt’s, Brown Forman (owners of the Jack Daniels brand amongst many others), breweries in Hook Norton, Lewes, Brighton, Wiltshire, Wales, in fact too many to mention. Amongst the other clients were Stoll Moss Theatres (from July 2018 now owned by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber), owners of the London Palladium, The Garrick, Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

Another of his clients was Cornelia James Limited, glove maker to the Queen. Cornelia asked Tom for a specific item to do with displaying her gloves and when he did so was so delighted with the product that she told him he was the first person she’d managed to find that could fulfil the brief. That led to an offer of a job which, after much deliberation he decided to accept. He moved into the Head Office, then in Havelock Road, Brighton and announced to the member of staff he was then responsible for that they’d turnover at least £250,000.00 in the next 12 months; they actually managed £265,000.00.

Tom left after two years to set up his own business which was reasonably successful but came to an end when he was owed a vast sum of money by a Scottish Football Club whose Finance Director assured him that payment was imminent up to the morning of the, unbeknown to Tom, Court winding up action in the mid 1990’s.

At that point he decided to look for employment and that came from David Heppenstall at Vaughtons in Birmingham. Tom stayed there from 1998 until 2006 when he became unwell and spent thirteen months off sick. When it came time to return to work he decided not to do so and set up Spurcroft Civic and the rest, as they say, is history...