Obituary: Richard Block

Richard Block, co-founder of B&Q, died on February 19 2023. He was 80.

His involvement in the DIY trade came about in the late 1960s, because he was unhappy working in market research for the pharmaceuticals company Warner Lambert. “Every year they seemed to make 10% of the staff redundant,” he recalled years later. “I was 27, and I thought I needed something else to do.”

His brother-in-law David Quayle was also restless in his job with Marley Tiles, which owned a chain of traditional town-centre DIY shops. He had seen the new out-of-town self-service DIY stores which had opened on the continent, and he was keen to try the concept in Britain. He asked Richard to join him in the new venture; “and I didn’t need much persuading.”

The first Block & Quayle store opened in a former cinema in Southampton in March 1969, and was an instant success; over the first Easter period sales were more than £1,000 a day. Some products ran out of stock, and Richard, who was in charge of buying, was busy chasing suppliers for immediate replenishment. “They couldn’t understand that we could sell goods that fast, and that they had to get more stock to us quickly,” he said. Although the initial trading style was Block & Quayle, the business quickly became known solely by the initials.

B&Q also pioneered seven-day trading, despite the Sunday trading law. “The council threatened us with a £25 fine every Sunday,” said Richard. “We thought that sounded reasonable.”

Two more stores opened very soon, and by 1971, B&Q’s total sales were nearly £124,000 (about £1.7m in 2023 money). Richard remembered the time as “immense fun”; but five years later, he decided he had had enough, and he left in 1976: “It became less enjoyable with the pressure of growth,” he said in 1999. “But I still have pride – and wonder – at what B&Q is today. I still feel it is based on the same principles: looking after staff, advanced training. There’s almost a family atmosphere in the stores.”

Former B&Q chairman and CEO Jim Hodkinson, who joined the business as a store manager in 1972, remembered Richard Block as “a lovely guy – very supportive. He listened to people, didn’t try to push his own ideas. He always made time for you, and was very happy to help others.”

After B&Q, his next step was something completely different: he moved to Guernsey, and bought a house with a glasshouse complex which was used by a tenant grower. The tenant gave up the lease at the start of 1977, and Richard took over, growing tomatoes for the commercial market. After a few years, however, tomato production became less profitable in the face of competition from Dutch and Spanish growers, and like many Guernsey growers, he switched to growing flowers; mainly freesias, carnations and irises. He became a fairly large-scale grower by Guernsey standards, replaced most of the wood-framed glasshouses with steel-framed buildings, invested in a second horticultural business, and employed a couple of dozen staff.

Behind the scenes, he was developing an interest in complementary therapies, and after 10 years as a grower, he sold the business, and re-trained – first as a hypnotherapist, then in remedial massage, and then in nutrition. His aim was to offer a holistic approach to therapy, and he continued to do so over the following 20 years or so.

In 1999, family connections prompted a move to Middleton in Derbyshire, and in 2008 he moved for the last time, to nearby Wirksworth. Here he became involved with Aquabox, a Wirksworth-based charity which assembles hand-pumped water filters and sends them to disaster areas and conflict zones around the world so that people living in extreme deprivation can have access to clean, safe drinking water. Right up to his death he remained a regular member of the Aquabox filter assembly team.

He is survived by a daughter and two sons.

Author: Colin Petty