Interview with Alan Giles, Fat Face

What's the most valuable lesson you've picked up in your 30-year retailing career?
Reinvent your business before a competitor does it first.

What's the biggest challenge facing the retailing industry today?
Embedded inflation in the cost structure, which cannot easily be passed on to customers.

What's the biggest mistake you've made in your career and what did you learn from it?
Hiring the wrong person (now and again), and overlooking someone who went on to be a star retailer. But fortunately I have hired a lot of great people too!

Is the internet a threat or an opportunity for established retailers?
It’s clearly both. It’s an ever-changing set of tools to reinvent your business; if you don’t use those tools, someone else will.
The internet dramatically changed the music retailing landscape when you led HMV. I'm presuming it hasn't had the same impact on a clothing retailer like Fat Face, but will it in the future? 
You’re right – it’s still quite hard to do justice to the look, feel and fit of a clothing online. But the tools are getting better, and customers are becoming more confident at taking a bit more risk (at Fat Face we try to reduce that for them by offering free delivery on returns). Fat Face has been a multi-channel retailer for most of its life – the catalogue was launched just a year after the first store opened in Fulham in 1993 and we went online four years later. As for most retailers, online is still a minor but rapidly growing component of our business.

What did selling records and books teach you about selling clothes?
Retailing principles are still the same – an authoritative, differentiated store format in a relevant yet affordable location, serving great value merchandise by enthusiastic, knowledgeable employees who are, like the customers, devotees of the brand.

I read that Fat Face is expanding into Asia. Are there any retail and marketing lessons we can learn from the region?
Asian entrepreneurs are breathtakingly quick at reinventing what they are doing, and they don’t give up; despite a tough experience first time around Uniqlo is back investing heavily in the UK, for example.

As a former CEO and current chairman, what advice can you offer to marketing directors keen to improve their credibility within the retail industry? 
Demonstrate that stewardship of the brand and understanding customers should be at the heart of everything your company does, and that that mindset delivers superior financial performance in the long run.


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