GRAHAM Parkin has spent his life in shoes. The 65-year-old managing director of Johnsons Shoes has never wanted to do anything else and has built his father’s business into what he cautiously describes as one of the largest independent footwear retailers in southern England.

Thirteen branches stretch from East Sheen to Richmond, through Surrey and Berkshire. They include the Bowleys name plus a concession in the Windsor store W J Daniel.

This year the Twickenham branch celebrated its golden jubilee with an extensive makeover, creating, one customer remarked, ‘‘a Bond Street shop in Twickenham’’.

Parkin senior started the business in 1952. An enterprising type, Percy sold everything, from ladies’ lingerie to plastic bottle tops, covering an area from Liverpool to the Wash and from Kent to Cornwall. He secured a contract to supply Coty on the Great West Road with the tops for every bottle of perfume they made.

‘‘One day he came home with a case of men’s welted lace ups by Skerry. My mother asked ‘What on earth are you going to do with those?’ and my father replied ‘I’m going to sell shoes’.” Mr Parkin set up shop in empty private library premises - a chain library - at no. 60 Broad Street in Teddington, just two doors along from a draper’s he ran called Johnsons.

The following year, an outlet in Twickenham was established at 12 Heath Road, where the Cancer Research UK shop is now. The branch moved across the road in 1961, to the present site at 37-39 King Street Parade, an empty car showroom (D A Hewitt of Sunbury).

Graham joined the company in 1956 following Cordwainer’s Shoe College and a stint with Lilley & Skinner. When Percy died suddenly in 1965, he took control and is proud to say that he hasn’t missed a day’s work in 47 years.

The strength of the business in those days lay in the Clarks and K brands for ladies and Clarks and Start-Rite for children.

It could be held that Johnsons was ahead of the game in protecting young feet when it threw out those novel measuring machines that showed your skeleton and made your feet glow green.

‘‘The NPL at Teddington put the kibosh on those. Word got round from people who worked there that the radiation was harmful to bones,’’ Graham explained, emphasising the need for proper fitting using a gauge. ‘‘There is no substitute. We only have one pair of feet.’’ In 1984 he experienced an epiphany. ‘‘I knew the business wouldn’t survive as we were. My children went to Newland House School and mothers there bought their children’s shoes at Johnsons, but they went elsewhere to buy their own shoes, to Kingston. So I made the decision to go upmarket and we never looked back.’’ Training is a huge priority, with detailed guidance contained in a 76-page staff development plan. A strict dress code operates and staff must wear the firm’s shoes, on which a discount is given.

‘‘You must be tough as an employer,’’ maintains Graham Parkin.‘‘Staff can make or break a business and I can’t accept second best’’.

In Twickenham, Johnsons joins names such as Sandys fishmongers, Len Smith the outfitters, Phelps antiques and the Humberstones of Broadway Florists, in keeping alive the tradition of enduring family businesses at the heart of the community attracting that all important return trade.

Common threads which run through conversations with the traders about the so called secrets of success are hard work and the word ‘best’, best quality, best fitted shop, the best service. Location is vital of course, but crucial is that elusive quality, a nose for change. For Graham Parkin it is having the best advisers you can get.

He is pragmatic about the decline of Britain’s shoe manufacture, leaving some men’s styles, the Van Dal brand and a venture announced this week aimed at the ‘comfort’ market.

‘‘The cost of a shoe made here accounts for one third of the price, which falls to one tenth of one third in China, but I don’t make any more profit.’’ Sales to women account for 40 per cent of sales at Twickenham, men 15 per cent. Children’s shoes remain the heart of the businesses at 45 per cent of sales.

Johnsons operates a loyalty scheme for parents and works closely with schools. ‘‘Children grow up with us,’’ Graham Parkin observed. ‘‘We are now seeing the third generation of families through our doors.’’ It hasn’t all been plain sailing - Graham’s favourite way to relax. Selling shoes is not easy and recruiting high quality staff is a challenge -but he concedes that the only hard times to date were the recession years of 1991/92 and even then no one was made redundant.

‘‘We just battened down the hatches and kept tight cost control.’’ Officially a pensioner, albeit vigorous with a firm handshake, Johnsons’ captain will ‘‘gradually divest’’ himself of the business to his three children, the eldest aged 39, who are all connected with the firm.

Meanwhile, he remains at the helm, working a ‘‘long’’ four day week and making unannounced flying visits to branches.

A widower for the past 13 years, he enjoys singing bass in a choir and working with his gardener at home in Weybridge, but really winds down at a bolt hole in Poole, ‘‘where I can relax on the water, away from everybody.’’ He believes Johnsons’ founder would be overawed at how the business has changed and draws a distinction between the two entrepreneurs: ‘‘My father was a salesman. I am a businessman. I always had forethought of quality. My forté is finance, although I am not a trained accountant.” Born and raised in Hampton, a pupil of Hampton Grammar School, his first experience of selling was during the second world war at his father’s nursery in Hampton Hill.

About the future, he is bullish. ‘‘Oh very positive,’’ he said on the day that the Bank of England put up base rates.

‘‘The UK is by far the strongest country in Europe and America and provided we don’t join Europe we will have a strong future.

‘‘I am totally against the Euro. German is the weakest. The German shoe retail business is suffering a recession.’’