READER PROFILE: TONY BROWN
Reader profile: Tony Brown
Helen Linford speaks to the CEO of Beales PLC about his career in retail and the dramatic expansion of the company
Tony Brown never planned a career in retail: “I started out as a motor mechanic then fell into retail through my father by going to work in ASDA and spent 19 years there, my first high street job was with BHS.”
N
ow the head of a PLC which has more than doubled in size in the last
year alone, he talks us through what brought him to Beales and how the company has developed since he joined in 2008. Tony says that his first 2 years
at British Home Stores were the most challenging of his career as he and Sir Phillip Green were essentially turning around a broken business. Although some elements were nightmarish, Tony felt privileged to be a part of such a steep learning curve with such a masterful associate. He attributes the turnaround of BHS chiefly to Phillip’s focus on product, visual
merchandising and margin. Although the decision to leave BHS was a tough one, Tony was keen to take on the new challenge of running his own business. “Having spent 8 years with Philip Green running BHS, I wanted to run a PLC and Beales came up out of the blue… Beales had struggled with its lack of scale and I had a plan and vision for the business.” When he first moved to Beales
the company was in deep trouble, lacking the scale to survive. Tony had to make the decision of whether to reduce the scale of the operation or to grow the business. He says: “I have never been one for going backwards,” and so the business pushed forward and after a year had stabilised. Beales had been stuck in the past and needed a complete overhaul to bring it up to date. Everything from systems, corporate structure, visual execution and margin management had to be re-
evaluated. “The prospect was quite daunting,” admits Tony. However, since taking over,
Tony has seen the company grow from 11 stores to 32 with 21 stores being added over a 12- month period. Among others, Beales have taken over 19 stores from the Anglia Regional Co- operative Society, all of which have now been fully rebranded as Beales stores. Tony suggests that part of being a mid-range company is about being able to connect with the communities they work in. He explains how for each new store, the company examines the demographic of the locale to establish what will be best for that market: “We are a market town department store group, we work in space that our competitors won’t go into, we serve smaller markets and stay close to our customers to make sure we deliver range, value and service for the towns in which
we trade.” He also says that store directors are given a certain degree of autonomy so that they are able to effectively manage this strategy as consumers and markets change. “The whole strategy is about localness,” he explains. A big part of this is about being able to give back to the community. Beales run a scheme through which each store is allowed to donate one day per member of staff to charity. Tony explains that the scheme is run on a fairly unofficial basis but allows members of staff to give something back to the community if they want to. In total the company donates approximately 2,500 days per year to this scheme. The expansion of the group
has given Beales increased buying power, which has enabled them to buy more volume lines as well as allowing them to bring in more
26 | Department Store News |
DepartmentRetailer.co.uk
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