David Quayle


David Andrew Quayle was a British businessman best known as co-founder of the UK-based DIY chain B&Q.

Biography

Quayle was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire and went to school at Brighton College in 1950. He returned to the school to be a governor in the 1990s.
Quayle worked in the Marley Tile company in the 1960s and together with his brother-in-law Richard Block started the B&Q retail chain in 1969 in Southampton. Their idea of large warehouse-style DIY stores copied the style already successfully operating in other European countries, but was unknown in the UK and B&Q soon became the largest retail suppliers of DIY products in the UK.
He left B&Q in 1982 and moved on to other companies, working in Television South, City Vision, Ritz Video, Granada Group and founded the Beatrice Royal Contemporary Art and Craft Gallery in Eastleigh in 1999.
Quayle died unexpectedly on 6 April 2010 on a cruise with his second wife Chrissie.