Industry news

Excecutives on Track: Chris Bryant, GM of JRT Crampton

While it may be a slight exaggeration to say that Chris Bryant could dive and fish before he could walk, it would be pretty close to the truth. Ever since he was a few bricks high, he has been diving for crayfish and casting from his dad’s fishing boat, or the rocks, during family holidays in Port St. John’s and Stilbay. Later, he added fly fishing in the ‘Berg resorts to his repertoire.

Water — especially the things you can do in it — always had a special attraction for him.

While playing the usual cricket, hockey (he was captain of the U16-team) and rugby as a boarder at St Andrews in Grahamstown, it was in water polo that he excelled. “I always loved watersport,” confirms Chris. “As a youngster I could out-dive and catch more crayfish than most of my mates.”

After doing his compulsory army training (in the late 1960s) Chris, as the middle one of three sons, was expected to join his father on their wheat farm in Riversdale. But having just been released from a lifetime in boarding school, he yearned for the parties and bright lights beckoning beyond the small Overberg town. After being groomed as a farmer for two to three years, he convinced his dad to grant him leave to go to Cape Town for a few months between the sowing and harvesting seasons.

He loved Cape Town, and after securing a job with Rex Trueform, there was no going back to the Overberg. Especially once he qualified as a scuba instructor and expert spear fisherman and bought his own ski boat to go fishing.

He took a gap year in London and travelled Europe extensively.

Back in SA, he found employment as a buyer in the men’s department of D&DH Fraser in Durban, but when Windsor Park Clothing offered him a position as their sales agent in Cape Town, he jumped at the opportunity.

Cape Town was also close to the family holiday home in Stilbay where the five Bryant siblings enjoyed wonderful holidays fishing from their father’s, and later their own, boats. He was still so keen on diving that he joined the False Bay Underwater Club where he later became vice-chairman.

During a sales meeting in Durban, mutual friends introduced him to Patsy Taylor, daughter of Vivian Taylor, owner of sporting goods distributor JRT Crampton, founded by him.

Although they were friends initially, it took an invitation from Chris to Patsy to visit him in Cape Town following her broken engagement, for their romance to blossom.

They got married in 1980, and Patsy relocated to Cape Town, where their two daughters were born.

During the mid-eighties they joined her sister in New York for a couple of years when Chris was offered a position with an international company. When the company closed it’s doors after a major stock market crash “we were very glad to come back to SA,” he says.

They returned to Durban in 1988, where Chris joined his father-in-law in his business, which in those days mainly sold Kookaburra cricket balls. JRT Crampton and Kookaburra has maintained their strong relationship throughout the years while both companies expanded.

“In those days I covered the whole of the old Transvaal, including Tzaneen, Nelspruit, White River, Klerksdorp, Rustenburg, Pietersburg and Potgietersrus for JRT Crampton... in Johannesburg there were so many stores that I used to spend a week doing the south of Johannesburg, a week doing the north, and a week covering the east,” he recalls. “Then I would fly to Cape Town and Bloemfontein. In those days the independents made up about 80% of our business — now it is just the opposite.”

Chris and Patsy took over the running of the business from Viv Taylor in 2002, and he says they strive to maintain the business morals and ethics that he lived and worked by.

Chris does, however, try to make time to go rock and surf fishing at Umngazi River Mouth, to take fly fishing trips to the Drakensberg.

Since they built their home on a golf estate, he has also taken up this game, and although he poses no threat to Ernie Els, he really enjoys playing.

And then there are the family holidays at his mom’s house, idyllically situated on the banks of the river cutting through Stilbay…