THE TIMING of Gordon Montgomery’s decision to go it alone was effectively made for him.

He was an area manager for Virgin record stores in Glasgow when he decided to set up a market stall of his own to sell discounted records. In preparation, he started secretly buying records from wholesalers and storing them at home.

But before he could start running the stall, his employers at Virgin found out about his plans and gave him an ultimatum: forget about the stall and keep your job — or leave with 12 weeks’ pay.

Montgomery decided to take the money, and Fopp was born. He said: “It’s a great feeling when you walk away from a job. You feel completely free. It’s a euphoric feeling.”

Brought up in Coventry in a working-class family, Montgomery was the seventh of eight children. He got eight O-levels at school but halfway through his A-levels abandoned them to take a job in the local music shop. When his father walked out of the family home, Montgomery left a week later to live in a bedsit.

He said: “I couldn’t take it any more. There were four of us in one bedroom in two sets of bunk beds.”

Constantly broke, Montgomery decided that the only way to get more money was to be promoted at work. He applied for every job that came up and when both the manager and assistant manager of the store left unexpectedly, he was appointed temporary manager at the age of 17.

When a new permanent manager was appointed, however, Montgomery left to work at the local Virgin music store, where he quickly rose through the ranks until he left to set up on his own.

His joy on giving it all up to run the market stall was short-lived, however.

Montgomery said: “The first day I took £13 and felt depressed. I had been taking home £200 a week at Virgin but I was making £75 a week from the stall. It was not enough to feed myself and my partner, who found out she was pregnant just after I left my job. It was a real struggle and I really regretted leaving my job.”

In an effort to boost sales, Montgomery started selling new releases alongside discounted records and took on a second stall. After two years, however, he decided he might make more money with a proper shop and so took a lease on a place below a Chinese restaurant, selling mostly punk, soul and jazz records.

The shop, in Glasgow, was a success, immediately selling three times the amount of records the stalls had.

Montgomery said: “We aimed at those people who go into record shops week in week out.”