LONDON — In the days before sprawling shoe and beauty halls, in-store branded extravaganzas, retail as entertainment and digital-to-doorstep service, Harvey Nichols was a player. The British retailer introduced game-changing brands like Shu Uemura and MAC to the U.K., pumped out award-winning ad campaigns and window displays, and defied convention by elevating its food-and-drink offer to the store’s top floor. In the Nineties, it was the zingy, go-to place for fashion lovers to shop or hang out; it pulled in marquee names, including Princess Diana, and was a regular fixture on the TV series “Absolutely Fabulous.”
Over the past decade, however, it has failed to keep up with its London competitors, large, small or digital. The store’s new chief executive officer Stacey Cartwright is ready to write a new chapter.
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“The thing we’re trying to do here is put Harvey Nichols back on the map. There’s a deep-rooted affection for the brand, but for whatever reason, we’ve fallen off people’s radar screens,” said Cartwright. “The vision is to make Harvey Nichols your absolute partner; to make you more stylish, head to toe; [and] to embrace food and beauty as well as fashion — and then do it on the global stage.”
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There are big plans in the works, including an expanded digital platform with a global reach; store refurbishments — Birmingham and Knightsbridge are first up; a fierce focus on customer service; a loyalty program and international expansion, with an accent on Asia and the Middle East. Cartwright, formerly chief financial officer and executive vice president at Burberry Group plc, was an architect of that brand’s success during her nine-year tenure. By the time she left in the summer of 2013, Burberry was turning over more than 2 billion pounds, or $3.14 billion, in annual revenue. The day her departure was revealed, Burberry’s shares dropped 6.5 percent. A chartered accountant who has held top jobs at Egg and Granada Group, Cartwright has succeeded Joseph Wan, Harvey Nichols’ longtime leader — and a fellow accountant.
Cartwright, who had spent most of her career juggling numbers and speaking to the financial community, was eager for change on multiple levels. “I wanted to run my own ship, and I wanted to do it in a private capacity.” Those who know Cartwright have said the transition to ceo from cfo won’t be a difficult one.
“She was definitely ceo material — it was the next logical move for her,” said Kate Calvert, retail analyst at Investec. “She knew Burberry inside out and was passionate about the company.”
Rebecca Robins, director of EMEA and Latin America at Interbrand and coauthor of “Meta-Luxury: Brands and the Culture of Excellence,” said Cartwright’s mission won’t be an easy one. “Part of the leadership challenge at Harvey Nichols will be reappraising the DNA of the brand, looking at how it remains relevant today and far beyond. Clarity of proposition is more crucial than ever before, as the space for consumer attention is at its most intensely fragmented,” she said.
In London, the competition is particularly ferocious: Harrods, Selfridges, Liberty, Matchesfashion.com and Browns have consistently upped their games over the past decade, investing in digital, service, major in-store expansion programs and marketing. Harvey Nichols, which has a turnover of about 200 million pounds, or $320 million, and profits of just under 20 million pounds, or $32 million, has not kept up with or invested like many of its competitors.
“I like the fact that there hasn’t been too much investment over the past few years because it means we’re starting with a clean sheet of paper. And it’s not like a new team is coming in and trying to unpick stuff that happened just a couple of years ago,” said Cartwright. “I’ve got a management board of 10, of which half have been here for a while.”
She said the store’s longtime owner, Hong Kong businessman Dickson Poon, wants to invest in the store, although she declined to reveal any figures or growth projections. “Clearly, the reason for me coming here is that I want to do something that transforms the business, as we did in my prior job. That was the conversation that I had with Dickson coming in. He’s a very astute individual, and he knows that, with my background, you wouldn’t expect me to be doing something that I didn’t believe was going to generate the appropriate returns. We’re having those discussions about where the investment goes, and the first stage will be men’s wear.”
The two basement floors dedicated to men’s wear in the Knightsbridge store will be refurbished and made more navigable for the consumer. Cartwright said the store will be adding a separate men’s wear-only entrance on Seville Street, so customers won’t be forced to walk through beauty to get to that department.
Cartwright has tapped Carlos Virgile, of the design practice Imagination, to spiff up the 45,000-square-foot Birmingham unit, the first of the eight Harvey Nichols stores in the U.K. and Ireland to get a full-on refurbishment, including a hospitality offer, a “Style Advisor” suite, and beauty and pampering on the mezzanine level.
The store’s new Style Advisor service for men and women is available on the Web site and allows customers to live chat, e-mail or speak directly with staff, who can pull looks for customers to try on in the new third-floor suite of the Knightsbridge flagship. There is no minimum spend, and a makeup service is available, too, while click-and-collect customers can also use the suite to try on their purchases. Other new services include bespoke Christmas hampers, which customers can have stuffed with any type of Harvey Nichols merchandise, from food to fashion to beauty.
Cartwright is also ramping up the retailer’s digital credentials. The new rewards program will be digital, and she plans to take the Web site international. “We’ll be launching with Hong Kong in the spring and then internationalizing the Web site, basically turning it multicurrency and, ultimately, multilingual,” she said.
Brick-and-mortar expansion is in the pipeline, although Cartwright said the focus will be on the Middle East and Asia; further, the store plans to continue with a franchise model. Harvey Nichols has seven international stores, and Cartwright said there is opportunity to double that number over the next 10 years — and probably in a shorter time than that.
An industry source said a store in Doha, Qatar is on the drawing board, although Cartwright declined to comment.
A Harvey Nichols will open in Baku, Azerbaijan, next month, and Cartwright said she’d also like to see the store’s new stand-alone beauty concept, Beauty Bazaar, rolled out beyond the current units in Hong Kong and Liverpool.