A Tribute to Gareth, our General Manager

To tell the story of Gareth’s time at TFP, we must first start with another key figure in our business: Mark.
In 2008, TFP was a fledgling business – a business born from frustration. The other companies within The Spray People Group could not find anyone to provide the high‑care fulfilment services we required, and we were forced to bring our warehousing and logistics in‑house. We reasoned that others would be experiencing similar frustrations and decided to offer high‑care 3PL services as a separate business, and so TFP was born. Mark Sumner was the man in charge of the newly formed company.

In 2007, Mark, at the tender age of 43, came out as gay. The reason Mark decided to finally come out was that he had met Gareth. Unlike Mark, Gareth had been out his whole adult life and had no intention of hiding their relationship. So, given the very best of incentives, Mark decided no longer to hide this part of himself, allowing him to finally be his true self.

By a happy coincidence, prior to their meeting, Gareth had been working his way up the corporate ladder at UPS for several years.

At the time, Gareth was living in Suffolk and Mark was in Cambridgeshire. They quickly decided they wanted to move in together, but felt that this new phase of their lives would be best realised in a new town. Most people in the area knew Mark as a straight man, and so one of the problems they faced was having to continually explain their relationship to people they met in and around Cambridge. This is one of the perils of “late bloomers”.

Mark’s best friend Jon, who is another director in The Spray People Group (the group that owns TFP), engineered the relocation of TFP and arranged to offer Gareth employment with us. The reasons behind this were two‑fold. Firstly, it would help his best friend of 30 years build a new life with his partner, and secondly, Newark was a far better location for the warehouse. The business would also benefit from the considerable skill and experience Gareth had gained during his time with UPS. This is a good example of where the business and the personal can blend to deliver great results.

So Gareth and Mark decided to move to Newark, and we relocated the TFP business that Mark was running to the town as well. This marked a new phase for the business and a new phase in both Gareth’s and Mark’s lives. Gareth initially worked alongside Mark, bringing all his UPS experience to TFP.

It quickly became obvious that Gareth was the right person to run TFP, and Mark moved into the position of Group Operations Director, leaving Gareth in overall charge of the company. This meant they were no longer spending every working day together… and that was definitely a good thing! Few relationships, no matter how strong, can withstand genuine 24/7 contact.

So, in many respects, the story of the early days of TFP is intertwined with Gareth and Mark’s story. The company helped two soulmates begin a new life together. Mark was finally able to be his true self, and Gareth had found true love.

Gareth and Mark’s relationship grew and strengthened, as did the TFP business.
When Gareth joined us, TFP was still very small. We operated from a small unit on Marles Close on the Brunel Drive industrial estate. Gareth quickly brought his experience from UPS to bear on TFP and helped us sort out our processes and ways of working.

This allowed us to take on new customers and expand. In 2012, we took on the unit next door to accommodate these new customers. The expanded space allowed the business to grow by 50% within two years. Shortly afterwards, we took on a third unit in the same block on Marles Close. By 2017, we had trebled our turnover since the time Gareth joined us.

The next major phase of our expansion happened the following year, when we consolidated all three smaller units into one large warehouse on Brunel Drive (TFP House). This doubled our available space. In the first year after our move to TFP House, we had nearly filled the new warehouse and were starting to regret not being bolder in our expansion plans.

Mirroring the success of TFP, Gareth and Mark’s relationship strengthened, and in 2018 they officially tied the knot, becoming Gareth and Mark Sumner‑Jones, in a beautiful service held at Newark Castle.
Over the next two years, Gareth continued to grow the business, and by the time Covid hit in 2020, we had grown by another 50% and were bursting at the seams at TFP House. By this point, he had achieved a remarkable five‑fold growth since the time he started.

The pandemic gave a boost to the whole 3PL sector, as everyone retreated into their locked‑down homes and comforted themselves by buying items online. So, over the following couple of pandemic years, we continued to acquire new customers, despite the chaos and the difficult economic conditions facing many sectors.

This continual growth brought its own problems, and we had to take on a couple of smaller “overspill” sites on the industrial estate to cope with demand. It was not ideal splitting the team across three sites, so in 2024 we took on another large site, Whittle Close. We retired one of the smaller units and kept the other as an unmanned site for palletised storage. This gave us the much‑needed space we had been lacking.

Up until the acquisition of Whittle Close, we had grown almost entirely by word of mouth. We had done very little marketing – but now we had a lot of space to fill! So, we brought the well‑oiled marketing machine that had served our other businesses so well to bear on TFP. After a few hiccups, we found our marketing‑mix formula, and the new enquiries started to flood in. The new Whittle Close site quickly began to fill with new customers.

By the end of the financial year ending March 2025, we had grown to a point where the business was ten times larger than when Gareth first joined us. In the 17 years Gareth had been at TFP, we had achieved nearly ten‑fold growth.

By September 2025, we had already begun planning our next phase of expansion. Gareth was excited about the prospect of building a large single site to bring everything under one roof. We had reviewed the numbers and were starting to work out which option would give us the space needed to meet our growth targets. With the marketing performing well, we believed the only thing that could hold us back would be running out of physical space, so we were beginning to think that the next move needed to be big and bold.

This was the future we were planning when Gareth went on holiday with Mark in September 2026. They were taking a couple of weeks of well‑deserved rest in Greece. It had been a tough year – growing a business is never stress‑free – so they were both recharging their batteries in preparation for the three months of chaos that the Christmas period always brings to 3PL businesses.

Sadly, Gareth never returned from his holiday. He died on 14th September 2025 while in Crete with Mark.

When Gareth joined the company, TFP was very small, operating out of a single unit on Marles Close with only one employee. We were just at the start of our story. Similarly, back then, the story of Gareth and Mark had only just begun. Over the next fifteen or so years, both these stories unfolded and became deep, meaningful tales that touched the lives of all who were lucky enough to be part of them.

Sadly, on 14th September 2025, one story ended abruptly, unexpectedly, and unfairly. What was supposed to be a long novel was cut short in chapter five. It turned an unfolding love story into a tragedy. The other tale – the story of TFP, in which Gareth was the main protagonist – will continue, though. The death of a much‑beloved main character is always sad, but it does not mean the end of the book. Gareth’s legacy is that he has created a stable business, one that is well positioned to continue its expansion. The story will grow, the tale will continue, and this is how we will honour Gareth’s memory.