Name: Roy Morris
Was: Chairman of FishWorks
Now: Founder of MNO Gallery


Career background: Morris worked at Allied Dunbar and Zurich Financial Services for nearly 30 years, holding senior roles including area sales director and marketing director at board level. In 2000, he joined up with chef and fishmonger Mitch Tonks to launch FishWorks - an upmarket fishmonger and restaurant chain.

FishWorks: Morris took on the CEO role at FishWorks. The chain grew quickly, with sites in the South West and London. In 2005, FishWorks was named as One to Watch by The Grocer. It also bagged a deal to run the fishmongers for Harvey Nichols and floated on the Alternative Investment Market. However, the chain struggled to make a profit. Although it succeeded in doing this in 2005, it recorded a loss again in 2006. Morris resigned as chairman in December that year.

What is he doing now? After FishWorks, Morris took on the chairmanship of Urban Espresso for nearly two years. In February 2009 he founded the MNO Gallery - a fine art photography gallery in Eastbourne, East Sussex. A keen photographer himself and chairman of the Eastbourne Photographic Society, Morris says of the gallery: “I am in the privileged position of not only having an outlet for my own passion for photography, but of admiring and exhibiting the works of others, whose talent I continually find amazing and inspiring, and leaves me wishing I could have done that.”

What’s next? Back in 2005, Morris told The Grocer he had planned to retire in 2003. In his new role, retirement seems a long way off. And he hasn’t forgotten his retail background. In September, Morris and the Eastbourne Photographic Society spruced up the windows of a former furniture store in the town with a photographic display.

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