ONCE a month, Alannah Weston, the creative director of Selfridges and heiress to the Weston family fortune, does a stint behind the information desk of the iconic Oxford Street department store.
Alannah, like her father Galen, the Irish-Canadian billionaire, thinks the best way to understand a business is to spend time on the shop floor.
It is exactly three years since Galen added Selfridges to his $8.4 billion (£4.5 billion) business empire. The department store had been a quoted company, and the Weston family took it private after an auction in which they trumped bids from property magnate Robert Tchenguiz and Sir Tom Hunter, the retail entrepreneur.
Retailing is in the Weston family blood. One of Alannah’s first memories is of getting lost in the china department of Holt Renfrew, the family’s Canadian department-store chain.
The Westons also own Brown Thomas, a Dublin department store, and a Canadian supermarket chain.
As a teenager she worked in Holt Renfrew during her school holidays; at Christmas she would parade the Holt Renfrew dog round the store — with the pooch and Alannah wearing matching sweaters.
“I am Irish. I am up for anything,” Alannah told The Sunday Times.
While many retailers have struggled over the past three years, Selfridges has blossomed. Accounts to be filed at Companies House in the coming months are expected to show that the retailer delivered record profits and sales in 2005 — defying critics and former staff who, following the Weston takeover, claimed Selfridges had lost the “edginess” that had put it back on the retail map.
And for the first time since they bought the retailer, the Weston family has spoken publicly about their plans for one of the UK’s best-known stores.
“Last year was about building foundations. This year was about transition. Now it is about moving forward,” said Paul Kelly, Selfridges’ urbane chief executive and a long standing Weston family lieutenant.
Kelly and Alannah work as a team; while she focuses on developing the brand, Kelly, a lifelong retailer, concentrates on the basics and the detail.
Deputy chairman Allan Leighton believes it is one of the most professional teams in retailing. “Alannah has known Paul all her life. There is great respect between the two of them. They have completely different skills so they are a very good unit,” said Leighton.
“I need to understand the commercial objectives. He needs to understand the creative vision. We have a healthy respect and interest in what each other is doing,” said Alannah.
Kelly has worked for the Weston family for 22 years, running Brown Thomas for more than a decade before he joined Selfridges. His office on the fourth floor looks unused. There is no computer, although Kelly is finally about to enter the 21st century: “I’m getting one of those greenberry, blueberry or blackberry things next week,” he said.
Every Tuesday he walks through the store, talking to individual staff about the previous week’s sales figures. At 650,000 sq ft, Selfridges is the largest retailer on Oxford Street and it can take Kelly up to three hours to do the tour. “That is when you get the feel of the business,” he said. “When we arrived, Selfridges looked like this beautiful wedding cake — but when you cut into it there was nothing much inside.
“One of the things that surprised me was that I had always worked with people who cared about their business. Everyone who worked here should have been proud to work for Selfridges — but I didn’t see that in people’s eyes.
The heart of a retail business is the day-to-day stuff that goes on. “Customers have to see good product and good service on a day-to-day basis. You need to treat every day as a Saturday, he added. “The most important thing is the customer. It is not glib. It is not a marketing slogan. It is part of our culture.”
Those who have worked with Kelly describe him as tough but fair. “He focuses on the details and speaks his mind,” said one.
The focus on detail means he personally reads every letter of complaint — or praise — that he receives from a customer.
Like a number of other retailers, he believes that retailing is over-complicated by many managers. “Retailing is a very simple science, but people try to make it complicated,” he said.
“You buy it for £1 and you sell it for £1 plus something.”
One of Kelly’s biggest challenges has been tackling the poor performance of Selfridges’ regional stores — Birmingham, Manchester and Trafford.
Birmingham, which opened shortly before the Weston family bought Selfridges, has proved a particular problem.
“When I arrived I asked: ‘what’s wrong with Birmingham?’ I was told: ‘the people of Birmingham didn’t get it’.
“The problem was we didn’t get it,” he said.
Two-and-a-half years later, Birmingham is performing in line with expectations. “We can do an awful lot more. No-one has said that Selfridges is limited to three stores plus Oxford Street,” added Kelly.
Plans to build a store in Glasgow were put on hold following the sale of Selfridges to the Weston family, although the retailer still owns the site. Selfridges has also been long tipped to open a store in Newcastle.
The Weston family is also expected to resurrect long-running plans to redevelop the Selfridges Hotel at the back of the Oxford Street store.
Alannah’s creative-director role includes responsibility for the architecture and design as well as the internal shopfit. “The first thing I did was to try and really understand the Oxford Street building,” she said.
Within weeks, Selfridges will open a new designer “room” at Oxford Street. Almost half an entire floor has been refurbished to accommodate it. The windows have been opened up and the original ceiling height restored — showing off the best of the listed art-deco building.
The redevelopment of the Selfridges Hotel will have to be as sympathetic if Alannah and Kelly are to win over Westminster city council’s planners.
But the pair will also have to sell the plan to Galen. Both know that having already spent more than £600m buying Selfridges, he will have to be persuaded of the merits of investing further. “The business has got to stand on its own two feet. This is not some owner who will throw tens of millions of pounds at the business,” Kelly said.
Galen is heavily involved in the business and Kelly talks to him on a regular basis. “The great thing about the relationship with the Weston family is their passion for the business,” he said. “They bought Selfridges as a long-term investment.”
The rapport between Galen and Kelly is obvious, say those who have seen them together. But Kelly is reticent when it comes to talking about the family he has worked with for more than two decades. “I couldn’t work for someone I didn’t like,” said Kelly. “The longer you work with people, the better you get to know them.”
The pair are visibly riled by the suggestion that Selfridges has lost its edge. “Selfridges is the only place in London you can get your teeth whitened, buy a Lanvin dress and a piece of parmesan all under one roof,” said Alannah.
“I want people to say: ‘Only at Selfridges. Only Selfridges would do that’,” she added.
Before joining the business, Alannah tried journalism — writing about art for The Daily Telegraph — before a stint in public relations at Burberry, the luxury-goods firm. “I worked closely with Rose Marie Bravo and the rest of her team. It was wonderful. I just listened and I learnt so much,” she said.
Yet despite her love of shopping — and London — Alannah was not a Selfridges regular. “I did most of my shopping at Brown Thomas and Holt Renfrew. You used to see a spike in sales when there was a board meeting in Dublin,” she said.
Her role is wide ranging: shopfit, brand and design — but Alannah’s first love is the Selfridges windows. “They are my baby. They are the thing I love the most. They reflect the rhythm of the store,” she said.
As well as drawing on her love of contemporary art for inspiration, Alannah has also delved into Selfridges’ history.
She quotes founder Gordon Selfridge, who opened the Oxford Street store in 1909. “Develop imagination, throw away routine,” is among her favourite sayings.
So what is it like being the owner’s daughter? “I have not got anything to compare it to. But I don’t think it is that hard. I’m very hands-on with my team. I think they forget pretty quickly,” she said.
“Working for Paul and Alan has been wonderful, you cannot go to a better school. I have learnt a tremendous amount from both. Alan once said: ‘if you focus on the big picture and the tiny detail, the middle will take care of itself,” she added.
So could she ever imagine herself running the entire group? Alannah, sidesteps the question: “I’ve still got a lot to learn,” she said.
