The Story So Far...

For as long as I can remember, The Sheds have been a part of our lives. As a little girl with my brothers and sister, we were always there. Stealing biscuits from the piece hut, making bows and arrows out of scrap timber and generally getting under everyone's feet.?

My Dad (John) and Grant had ventured into the landscaping business in the early 80’s - laying slabs, building fences and planting trees, with 14-year-old Gordon Sinclair as their first worker. It wasn’t long before they realised the garden world was missing a decent Shed.?

And that’s where the dream began. Dad was a horticulturist who studied the origins and behaviours of specimens of wood. Grant was a lumberjack who built Canadian logcabins. They joined their incredible minds and named their grassroots enterprise Gillies and Mackay.?

Dad carefully inspected and selected their materials and Grant engineered the perfect pitch and structural design. And so the G&M Shed was born.

The 90s

As the country dreamed of better days - surviving the 80’s recession only to be met by the early 90’s recession - manufacturing in Scotland continued to decline, with little support for those who needed it. They had ￡1000 of savings, a saw and a ‘promise to pay’ cheque in the drawer for Bell and Sime, their very first timber merchant. They would make a Shed one day and deliver it the next. Hand-nailed, handcrafted, with no machinery to help them. They took on casual workers, friends and family would help where they could and Mum would run the books.?

The family farm had given up its livestock and so the old cattle styes became their workshop. Grant’s brother and his wife also worked on the farm, making Cairn O’Mohr wine.

The team was small and so were the profits. Building sheds is a seasonal business within a harsh market. The competition were using cheap homegrown timber for their makeshift sheds and customers had very little education on what a Scottish Shed needed to be to survive.?

Reputation was what Dad and Grant built over the first few years. Word of mouth kept them going, and Mum’s impeccable customer service ensured that everyone was well looked after.?

The 00s?

This decade crept around allowing real momentum to build - full-time employees, a working team of Bench Joiners, Parts Makers, Wood Cutters and Onsite Deliverers. As we earned we invested in our humble beginnings, buying machines second-hand from a coffin factory and creating our Show Area for customers to enjoy. Gillies and Mackay became a Limited company in 2002 earning enough money to validate Corporation Tax and Vat liabilities - yippee!?

Standards were set, rules were made. Designs were named!?

Rannoch, Laggan, Deuchny, Corsie, Dunsinane - the first of our Summer Houses were officially given titles. Our projects got bigger and Building Control became a common theme, gaining warrants and creating a compliant design for what we now know as Garden Rooms. Back then they were simply lined and Insulated Sheds.?

The Cattle Styes had served us well but now we needed more space. It was time to move to our very own Big Green Workshop down the way.

10s?

Before we crashed, we didn’t see it coming. 2013 was when it hit us, later than most. Prior to that we’d just hit our first million-pound turnover.? But it took until 2017 to recover, dipping to half that in 2015.?

I went to uni to study business management. As Woodcutter turned Office Manager, I needed to know what to do to save our Sheds. There was so much turmoil within those years; imminent layoffs and short working hours for some of us who’d been there since the beginning. The redundancy process started and stopped. From a team of 12, we were reduced to 6. The strain and ache had gotten to us all. These were our darkest of days.

20s?

NattyShedGirl aka Cara Mackay at your service, Gillies and Mackay Ltd is a 2nd Generation family business that has bestowed its trust in me to lead the way, carrying the legacy of Dad and Grant. We pulled through the 10’s with sheer grit and determination to make it here, now we're a strong team of 21.?

We are Workshop, Onsite, Sales and Marketing. We train and school our young ones who learn from our legacy staff - Gordon Sinclair, Operations Director, at the helm.?

The Gillies and Mackay Standard is set and our dedication to Design Engineering lives on within a thriving R&D team tasked with 3rd Generation goals. The culture and belief in Shedonism is an identity living in each of us, passed on to our customers as we say,?

“Let’s make the best Sheds in the world”??