George Davies and fashion retailing Part 4

George Davies specialises in breaking new ground in the fashion business. In the 1980’s he set up Next, and made a huge success of a new concept in fashion retailing with coordinated ranges for young professional women who wanted smart clothes with a bit of fashion edge to wear for work. In the 1990’s he moved to Asda, and introduced the George fast-fashion range of great value clothing which followed the cat walk styles and were written up in Vogue and the other fashion bibles – and remains cutting-edge with the introduction of a specialist range of Asian fashion clothing reported on the blog here last week. In the 2000’s he moved on again to bring Per Una to Marks and Spencer, which was the first time M&S sold any goods under a different brand name and rejuvenated the store’s reputation for fashion clothing.

The FT estimates that Davies has been responsible for over £54 billion worth of clothing sales since he founded Next, but he hasn’t finished yet. On Wednesday 30th the first branch of his new venture GIVe will open on Regent Street, London, with another 24 stores to follow. He says that GIVe stands for George IV – as his fourth venture – but surely it is also intended to convey the ‘giving’ corporate social responsibility theme as he will donate between 5% and 10% of the profits to charity. Apart from this, GIVe has a clear USP for in-store service – Davies says that in the last few years “everyone has run after very low prices and in doing so has removed the service element of shopping. GIVe stores are going to have style advisers and free in-house alteration services.” But more than that, and perhaps drawing on the expertise built up with the Next Directory service, it will focus on multichannel retailing, with a website featuring catwalk videos and previews of the next season’s collection and with kiosks in store to allow customers access to those same facilities. GIVe has selected an integrated multichannel IT system that will manage all sales channels and inventory and integrate with a warehouse management system Will that be enough to help a new fashion retail business born in the midst of a recession? He has a big advantage as he uses his own £20mn capital to launch the business, rather than relying on bankers who charge interest or other backers who will take a proportion of the profits. And he has a lot of belief in his product – “It just so happens that I’m launching when times are not good but if your concept is strong you will do well. We’re hoping for sales of £50m to £60m in the first year.” Because of his name the stores will receive a lot of public relations exposure and free publicity – will that prove enough in the current climate?

Featured in the Sunday Times ‘Fame and Fortune’ interview this week, George Davies says that the most important lesson that he has learnt about money is this: “You should respect money, but not covet it — never let it be your god.”