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Vance Miller | |
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| Born | 1965 (age 58–59) Rochdale, Lancashire, England |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
Vance Miller (born 1965) is an entrepreneur from Rochdale, Lancashire, in England. [1] [2] Miller, whose business practices have attracted controversy, [3] has been referred to in the media as "The Kitchen Gangster" after being featured the 2004 BBC series "Saturday Kitchen Gangster". [4]
In 1977, Vance Miller got his first job at age 11, earning £200 per week for cleaning cars. By 1981, he was dealing in antiques and vintage cars from a shop in Butter Lane Market in Manchester. [5] He also spent two years 1982–83 in San Diego, California and imported some cars to sell there.
Miller is the former executive director of Maple Industries which operate from Maple Mill in the Hathershaw area of Oldham. On 21 April 2009, Maple Mill was partially destroyed in a fire. [3]
Vance Miller featured in the documentary aired on Channel 4 called Brits Get Rich in China. [6] Miller is the subject of a book entitled: Kitchen Gangster? The Story of a Serial Entrepreneur. [5]
Miller is currently the chief executive officer of Maple Industries China [7]
In November 1995, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment on counts of kidnapping and affray, following an incident in which he was ruled to have kidnapped two people he caught breaking into his mother's home and detained them against their will. [8] In February 1999, he was detained over an altercation over a minor pollution complaint near his Birtle Mill, Bury business premises. In related incidents, his company was fined £28,500 for health and safety breaches and he was convicted for damaging the car of a journalist. [9] [10]
In 2006 Miller's home in Ramsbottom was attacked twice by arsonists. [11]
In July 2007, the magazine Real Business printed an article and interview with Vance Miller written by Charles Orton-Jones, covering his business history and current activities in some depth. [7] Orton-Jones describes his business achievements as staggering and states his attention to detail is inconsistent with his reputation as a shyster. [7]
In 2002 the Office of Fair Trading instigated the "Stop Now" order and he became the first person in Britain to be handed one after supplying a kitchen which was not sold as advertised. [12]
In June 2003, defending himself without lawyers, he was called "intelligent, cunning, manipulative but above all arrogant" by a Manchester judge who jailed him for nine months for contempt of court when he failed to improve operations at his Oldham-based company, Maple Industries. He was released 2 weeks later on the undertaking to employ business efficiency consultants. [13]
In 2006 the Greater Manchester Police and Trading Standards raided two residential properties, one belonging to Miller, as well as the company's Maple Mill offices and factory. As a result of the raids four people, including Miller, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud in what was one of Tradings Standards' biggest ever operations. [14] The company was able to continue trading despite Trading Standards seizing property in a bid to pursue its case against the company.
On 21 February 2007, under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005, Trading Standards Officers in Oldham ordered Vance Miller, again trading from Maple Mill, to immediately withdraw four types of minibikes from sale. The products failed national safety provisions. [15]
On 28 May 2008, Vance Miller was issued a six-month suspended sentence and a £90,000 fine by the Manchester Crown Court in relation to an alleged breach of the Stop Now legislation brought against him in 2003. The judge presiding over the case, however, has noted that "there was evidence of a significant and continuing reduction in complaints against Miller's business since the summer of 2007." The judge noted that since the Office of Fair Trading was unable to provide any evidence of breaches since early 2006 then Miller was to be sentenced on the assumption that no breaches had taken place since then. [16]
In January 2010 Miller was cleared of all charges put forward by Oldham Trading Standards Department, following a decision that there was insufficient evidence. The trading standards claims and trial were reported as a £4m vendetta against Miller. [17]
In September 2016, prosecutors began moves to seize Miller's assets - which include a house in Ramsbottom, Lancashire - under the Proceeds of Crime Act. The act allows for confiscation hearings to proceed against people who have absconded after being summonsed to appear on charges. [18]
In November 2017 a confiscation order for £2.3 million was made against his assets in the UK. [19]
On 24 May 2007 the Manchester Evening News reported that Vance Miller was on the run in China after evading police officers who had called at his Oldham Mill to arrest him over an alleged kidnap involving two men breaking into his mother's house. [20] Coincidentally, a few days later, on 28 May 2007, Channel 4 screened a documentary that followed Miller and two other British entrepreneurs doing business in China. [21]
On 21 April 2009 Miller's main kitchen factory and base of operations in Oldham caught fire, severely damaging the six-storey Maple Mill. The fire is thought to have started near the diesel generator of the factory and ignited the contents of propane cylinders and pallets. [22] Sixty firefighters used ten fire engines and "a number of specialist appliances, including two aerial appliances, to contain the fire." [22] Fire Service spokesman Paul Duggan said: "The fire is thought to have started in a diesel generator then spread to some wooden pallets and propane cylinders nearby, some of which exploded as a result. There were people inside at the time but there were no reported injuries or any reports of anyone missing." Local townspeople near the area had been left without water or very little. [3]
On 15 December 2016 the mill was again on fire, with parts of it collapsing. [23] [24]
Oldham is a town in Greater Manchester, England, it lies amongst the Pennines on elevated ground between the rivers Irk and Medlock, 5 miles (8.0 km) southeast of Rochdale, and 7 miles (11.3 km) northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, which had a population of 237,110 in 2019.
Anthony Howard Wilson was a British record label owner, radio and television presenter, nightclub manager and impresario, and a journalist for Granada Television, the BBC and Channel 4.
Failsworth is a town in Greater Manchester, England, 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east of Manchester and 3 miles (4.8 km) south-west of Oldham. The orbital M60 motorway skirts it to the east. The population at the 2011 census was 20,680. Historically in Lancashire, Failsworth until the 19th century was a farming township linked ecclesiastically with Manchester. Inhabitants supplemented their farming income with domestic hand-loom weaving. The humid climate and abundant labour and coal led to weaving of textiles as a Lancashire Mill Town with redbrick cotton mills. A current landmark is the Failsworth Pole. Daisy Nook is a country park on the southern edge.
Milnrow is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the River Beal at the foothills of the South Pennines, and forms a continuous urban area with Rochdale. It is 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Rochdale town centre, 10 miles (16.1 km) north-northeast of Manchester, and spans from Windy Hill in the east to the Rochdale Canal in the west. Milnrow is adjacent to junction 21 of the M62 motorway, and includes the village of Newhey, and hamlets at Tunshill and Ogden.
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Royton is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 21,284 in 2011. Close to the source of the River Irk, near undulating land at the foothills of the South Pennines, it is 1.7 miles (2.7 km) northwest of Oldham, 3.2 miles (5.1 km) southeast of Rochdale and 7.6 miles (12.2 km) northeast of Manchester.
Watchdog is a British consumer investigative journalism programme that was broadcast on BBC One from 14 July 1985 to 17 October 2019. The programme focused on investigating complaints and concerns made by viewers and consumers over problematic experiences with traders, retailers and other companies around the UK, over customer services, products, security, and possible fraudulent/criminal behaviour. Since it first began, the programme had achieved great success in changing the awareness consumers have of their purchasing rights, as well as pushing forward for changes in company policies and consumer laws, and in some cases helping to close down businesses whose practices have left many people dissatisfied and out of pocket. The show's longstanding slogan was "the programme you cannot afford to miss".
Ancoats is an area of Manchester, England, next to the Northern Quarter, the northern part of Manchester city centre.
Afflecks is an indoor market in Manchester, England, in the city's Northern Quarter on the junction of Church Street/Tib Street and Dale Street with Oldham Street. Dozens of independent stalls, small shops and boutiques operate in the one building. The building was once home to Affleck & Brown, one of the city's principal department stores. A bar on the original site opened in 2015, under the Affleck & Brown name.
Ishmael Anthony Miller is an English former professional footballer who played as a striker.
Shaw and Crompton is a civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, and lies on the River Beal at the foothills of the South Pennines. It is located 2.3 miles (3.7 km) north of Oldham, 3.6 miles (5.8 km) south-east of Rochdale and 8.7 miles (14 km) north-east of Manchester. Its largest settlement is Shaw.
John Fielden was a British industrialist and Radical Member of Parliament for Oldham (1832–1847).
Iqbal Ahmed is a Bangladesh-born British entrepreneur. Based in Manchester, he made his fortune importing shrimp. His two companies, Seamark and Ibco, have extensive interests in shipping, hotel and real estate development, hospitality, and food. Their success turned him into one of the United Kingdom's richest men. He is also the highest ranked British Bangladeshi to be featured on the Sunday Times Rich List.
Cottonopolis was a 19th-century nickname for Manchester, as it was a metropolis and the centre of the cotton industry.
The Manchester warehouse which we lately visited, was a building fit for the Town Hall of any respectable municipality; a stately, spacious, and tasteful edifice; rich and substantial as its respectable proprietors, the well-known firm of Banneret and Co. There are nearly a hundred such buildings in Manchester; –not so large, perhaps, for this is the largest; but all in their degree worthy of Cottonopolis.
The Stotts were a family of architects from Oldham, North West England, of Scottish descent who specialised in the design of cotton mills. James Stott was the father, Joseph and his elder brother Abraham Stott had rival practices, and in later years did not communicate. Their children continue their practices.
Kelvin Lomax, or Kelvin Trippier, is an English footballer. He plays as a defender.
Derker is an area of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies in north-central Oldham, close to the boundary with Royton.
Bagley & Wright was a spinning, doubling and weaving company based in Oldham, Lancashire, England. The business, which was active from 1867 until 1924, 'caught the wave' of the cotton-boom that existed following the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and experienced rapid growth in the United Kingdom and abroad.
The Maple Mill was a cotton spinning mill in Hathershaw, Oldham, Greater Manchester, England. It was designed as a double mill by the architect Sydney Stott. The first mill was built in 1904 and the second mill in 1915. In 1968, it was equipped with the first open-end spinning machines in England. When spinning ceased in the 1990s, it was bought by Vance Miller. Trading Standards raided the mill in 2006, and ordered Mr Miller stop selling products that failed national safety provisions. Maple Mill No. 2 was the first mill to be partially destroyed by a fire on April 21, 2009. The fire brigade was in attendance for two weeks and deployed 34 appliances. Later on in 2016, Maple Mill No. 1 was damaged by fire on September 30. On 15 December 2016 a major incident was declared when the same mill became fully ablaze. The land of the two mills has now been cleared fully since 2021, including its chimney, and the site is now going to be housing.
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