About Kenny's Carpets
Few home furnishing innovations have done more to transform our lives than the humble carpet. What began as a practical solution to cold, uneven floors quickly became a symbol of comfort, pride, and one-upmanship. From mud-huts to the moon landings, it is no exaggeration to say that cosy and colourful textile-based floor coverings have shaped the way we work, rest, and play for thousands of years - laying the foundations, quite literally, for our tech-savvy modern world.
Our current executive team is very proud to lead the latest incarnation of a Great British brand that has played a small part in this remarkable journey. As we face the future with cautious optimism and boundless ambition, we look forward to welcoming you onto Kenny's red carpet of VIP customer service and satisfaction*.
PLEASE NOTE : KC Global Logistics (the new owners of the Kenny's Carpets brand name) has NO legal connection whatsoever to the previous management of Kenny's Carpets, KC Air, KC Global Enterprises or any other subsidiary. If you are still affected by historic financial irregularities, we urge you to consult this helpful support site (opens in a new tab).
The Story of Kenny's Carpets
The tale of a British backwater carpet shop might not sound like the stuff of legend. However, what began as a small family business, over the course of five tumultuous decades, spiralled into one of the most controversial sagas in corporate history. It's a compelling tale of ambition, greed, criminality, and reinvention - charting the rise, fall, and recent glorious resurrection of a now world-famous British super-brand, and symbolises both the pitfalls and the promise of free enterprise.
For better or for worse, Kenny’s Carpets has left its mark on the modern world. And for many whose lives it touched, we recognise that those marks won't heal anytime soon. However, as we turn our back firmly on the past and look to the future with hope and optimism, we remain confident that the best days of Kenny’s Carpets are still to come!
From the Smallest Acorns . . .
Kenny's Carpets was founded by former Express Dairies' milkman - and part-time entrepreneur - Kenny Bellis, in 1972. Having spent three years selling off-cuts, remnants and bin ends from the back of his milk float, alongside his silver tops and dairy produce, he finally took the plunge - opening his first dedicated carpet shop near Basildon, Essex.
In 1975, a lucky win on Spot the Ball gave Kenny the means to take over the adjoining shop, Pat's Pets. Following twelve months of havoc and heartache, he launched the SaniPet Pro range of animal-waste-repellent sprays. A big hit with seaside landladies, the brand is best-remembered for its popular cinema adverts, featuring Jon Pertwee and Una Stubbs as a pair of "mischievous punk-rocker pussycats" (the hilariously risqué outtakes became a staple of ITV's It'll Be Alright on the Night into the late 1990s).
After a hard slog, Kenny opened his 100th shop in Prestatyn, North Wales, during the long, hot summer of ’83. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was attended by Princess Michael of Kent, TV stars Rod Hull and Emu, and Professor Heinz Wolff - with an energetic performance from flamboyant seventies chart-toppers Slade (minus drummer Don Powell, whose autobiography later recounted that he was stuck in traffic).
Tragedy struck in October 1987, when a violent storm turned the annual sales conference in Bracknell - jointly compered by TV's Frank Bough, cheeky comedian Freddie Starr, and Coronation Street legend Lynne Perrie - into what the tabloids called "a boozy and debauched 72 hour lock-in." In the chaotic aftermath - amid reports of shocking details being “swept under the carpet” - Kenny Bellis left the company he founded under a cloud. At an emergency board meeting (later referred to in his divorce papers as the “Bonfire Night Betrayal”), his estranged wife, Pat, and her 21-year old twins, Terry and Eamonn Ozbek, took control of the company - vowing to “keep the name, turn the page and press on.”
Boom to Busted!
Despite a series of initial setbacks, the brothers proved themselves to be shrewd operators. By 1990, Kenny's Carpets had expanded into used cars, puppy farms, saucy kiss-o-grams, and a growing number of premium-rate adult chatlines - with each new offshoot designed to support - or ruthlessly exploit - other areas of the business.
The chatlines - backed by extensive TV and press advertising, including the boundary-pushing "0898-Get-Laid!" campaign (investigated by the ITC, ASA and Oftel) - were run from the company's new format 24-hour carpet superstores and manned by shop staff during slow retail periods. Similarly, when the key ingredients in SaniPet Pro were found to be "dangerously carcinogenic", they tweaked the production line to launch an extremely popular squirty dessert cream (memorably fronted by Frankie Howerd and Linda Lusardi). And in 1991, faced with spiralling costs shuttling staff and stock between stores, they acquired the Northamptonshire-based budget coach tour firm, Bensons. This first foray into the world of transport was not their last.
The 1994 surprise takeover of struggling livestock-transportation service, British West Midlands Airlines - along with its five-strong fleet of farm-animal-adapted planes - led, after a quick refit, to the birth of KC Airways (later, KC Air), with the press release proclaiming "a bold new era in regional hub-to-hub short-haul executive travel". Dubbed the "Flying Carpets" by the News of the World - during a notorious sting that saw 26 air stewards sacked and long-necked bottles banned from all future flights - KC Air was the first airline in the world to offer Plush Class seating and earthenware goblets as standard. In reality, it proved a huge drain on the rest of the business but - as a vital perk for Kenny's Carpets' burgeoning executive team - the board were happy to slash staff benefits and sacrifice stores to keep it in the air.
Fast forward a couple of years and, during yet another period of wildcat industrial action - this time, triggered by "a re-routing mix-up" between the airline's customer call centre and the group's X-rated chatlines - KC Air became an early pioneer of internet flight booking. Originally intended purely to break the strikers' will, this chance move proved unexpectedly successful - thanks in no small part to blanket media coverage of a string of scandals involving Kenny's Carpets' top-brass (most notably the triumphant IT Director’s randy trysts with a trio of highly-seasoned female workers from the staff canteen) - accidentally propelling the company into the forefront of the late-90s' Dotcom Boom!
Easy Come, Easy Go
Flush with offers of "no-strings silly money" from venture capitalists the world over, the newly established KC Global Enterprises (at one time boasting an on-paper valuation of more than £2 billion) was considered a backroom titan of the Dotcom Era. And the Ozbek twins - suddenly feted by politicians and the media as "dotcom whizz-kids" - became informal advisers to countless start-ups that all vanished without trace. Their supremely-confident "spend your way to the top" advice for Boo.com's exec team proved instrumental in its £125 million implosion. And, in a nod to their late mother, they persuaded the board of American dotcom giant, Pets.com to let them handle their UK and European mega-launch. Aborted at the last minute due to eye-popping excess, the campaign included a four minute Titanic-inspired advert (with the ship reimagined as an ark - carrying 6,000 live animals, 40 supermodels, and Celine Dion) which reportedly cost as much as the blockbuster itself. This epoch-defining episode hammered the final nail in Pets.com's coffin - triggering a domino-effect collapse in confidence that wiped hundreds of billions off global stock markets. Financial historian, Emily Goodchild, later cited Kenny's Carpets' contribution to the Dotcom Crash as "instrumental" - describing their influence as "disproportionate and utterly delusional", and their advice as "the kiss of death".
While the Ozbek brothers wisely avoided raiding their own coffers during the dotcom years, the 2001 collapse of KC Global Airways - in the wake of 9/11 - saw them change tack. Over the next 5 years, they leveraged Kenny's Carpets' rock-solid reputation, their media profiles as "working class millionaires with hearts of gold", and the company's pension-pot to launch a range of "easy-to-understand financial services" and "low-risk investment products" - to put money back in the pockets of honest, hard-working people.
Their joint venture - with retail giant Woolworths and Newcastle-based bank Northern Rock - promised "jackpot returns" for the millions of small, risk-averse investors clamouring to pour their life savings into the scheme. This influx of cash funded a wide range of “easy-access” financial products, mostly aimed at needy ("financially strained") borrowers, including: 12,000 local Hamper Bonanza Christmas clubs; the multi award-winning Good As You payday loans (targeted at OAPs, carers, and disabled people with Motability grants); the Live a Little credit cards (for key-workers, students and job seekers); and not forgetting their market-leading One-click Mortgages, aimed squarely at "working people who hate paperwork!" Administered through Kenny's Carpets' 260 shops, they were heavily-promoted in Woolworths' 800+ stores, and sold in Northern Rock's 70+ branches (alongside a small range of cut-price carpets, stationery and CDs). A separate hushed-up deal also ensured their financial products were "pushed aggressively" in thousands of nursing homes and hospices around the country. The twins were knighted in 2006 for "revolutionising financial services for the poor and the vulnerable".
A Fall From Grace
Unfortunately, once the employee pension scheme had dried up, the twins were forced to secure massive borrowing against the stores, while strongly encouraging all 4,000 employees to "Back Kenny's!" - by cashing in their savings, borrowing heavily from family and friends or re-mortgaging their homes. Sadly, the good times ended abruptly in early 2008, when Northern Rock unexpectedly shut its doors - causing mass hysteria on British high streets as hundreds of thousands of pre-paid carpet orders remained locked inside its branches. Woolworths clung on for another year but the damage was done - boycotted by disgusted customers, their all-or-nothing deal with Kenny's Carpets made their senior management a laughing stock in the City, and left a £385 million black hole in their finances.
Out of options, the Osbek twins salvaged what they could and fled to Northern Cyprus - leaving their bewildered shop staff to deal with the intense public anger. After the Huddersfield and Bury branches were torched, the banks quickly shuttered the rest "to preserve assets" - leaving unpaid former staff (including hundreds who'd been using the stores as makeshift accommodation for themselves and their families) out on the street. Crushed by the debt they'd been urged to take on, and unable to find other work - having been ostracised by their communities - many were left destitute. While others, isolated and despairing, saw no way out. The fallout was ugly, brutal and swift. Indeed, within weeks - once the last shop signs had been torn down or hastily painted over - the Kenny's Carpets brand quietly disappeared from the UK high street, after 35 momentous years.
Finally intercepted at Dubai Airport in 2010, the Ozbek brothers - along with forty-one other KC executives - were returned to the UK "to assist police with their investigations". Charges included fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, money laundering and corporate manslaughter. Separate investigations uncovered the Ozbeks' parallel network of backstreet loan sharks, flick-knife bailiffs and "body brokers" (mainly dealing in human organs and babies). As disturbing as the case undoubtedly was, there's no denying that the intense media interest turned, what was once, a humble Essex-based carpet shop into a world-famous brand.
Finally, a Phoenix rises from the Ashes!
In 2013, following the 18-month trial and life-imprisonment of the Ozbek brothers - along with the company's entire former Executive Team going all the way back to the mid-90s - KC Global Enterprises' frozen assets were put up for sale by the administrators, Morton & Macklemore. It was during this time - amid a tidal wave of seething rage from former investors (pitchforks at the ready!) - that the Kenny's Carpets brand returned, at long last, to an offshoot of the Bellis family. And, in the process, it rediscovered its wholesome, family-oriented, honest-to-goodness roots*.
Welcome home, Kenny!
UPDATE [11 January 2018]: Since the second fire - and while criminal investigations continue - the company headquarters have been moved to an undisclosed location in the Northeast of England. Please bear with us while we sort it out. Thank you, KC Global Logistics (aka Pete and Sue Bilton).
* Please note: A critical condition of the brand-name-only purchase of Kenny's Carpets dictates that we are no longer permitted to sell CARPETS or RUGS. Sorry for any inconvenience.