Tiso completes 'missing link' as £1m Perth store opens

CHRIS Tiso, the chief executive of the eponymous outdoor clothing and equipment retailer, will this week open his £1 million Perth store on a site he has "coveted for 20 years".

The Tiso outdoor experience store - which includes a 30-foot indoor climbing wall, a 15-foot soft play area and a cafe - will be located on the former Caithness Glass site.

A mixture of 35 full- and part-time jobs have been created at the store, the 14th in a chain spread across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England.

Tiso - who took over the family-run business in 1992 following the death of his father, Graham, who founded the chain in 1962 - told Scotland on Sunday: "Perthshire has been the missing link for us and part of that absence has been down to never finding the right location.

"Every time I've driven past this site, I've thought it would be the perfect location for our business - and then finally it became available."

As well as its Tiso stores, the group owns four Alpine Bike shops and George Fisher, an outdoors store at Keswick, in the Lake District, which it acquired in 2007.

The Perth store, which will include an Alpine Bikes concession, is the fourth of the chain's larger-format "outdoor experience" outlets, which display a broader range than its traditional high street units.

Thursday's opening comes ten years after the first outdoor experience store, in Glasgow, was launched. The firm is also expected to move to larger premises in Aberdeen in the spring.

In July, the firm revealed it had climbed back into the black in the year to 31 January, posting a 1.2m profit compared with a 100,000 loss in 2008-9. Turnover was flat at 27m but the firm drove down expenses and improved the efficiency of its supply chain.