How Debenhams has reinvented the department store
New chief throws out all the clutter ...and plans smaller sites
DEBENHAMS chief executive Sergio Bucher has embarked on a major overhaul of the company’s strategy to bring more ‘excitement’ into its stores up and down the country.
The former Amazon fashion executive plans to reduce clutter by cutting the amount of stock on the shop floor.
He has also begun a review of the company’s store estate to adapt to the era of the internet shopper.
‘ Right- sizing’ stores – finding ways to reduce the size of the bigger ones as the company sells more online – is a key part of his strategy.
Debenhams is also seen as too reliant on long-serving designer ranges such as John Rocha, Jasper Conran and Ben de Lisi.
Bucher, who took over at Debenhams exactly one year ago, says the store in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, which opened in August, is the test bed for his ideas.
It is bursting with colour, has wide walkways and dozens of staff have been dispatched from the back rooms to the shopfloor with a mission to help customers.
Stock on the floor has been cut by more than 20 per cent and replenishment systems reworked to cope with faster demands.
Its food outlets, Patisserie Valerie, Nando’s and Costa, are easily visible from its entrances and account for 20 per cent of revenue – many times that of a standard store. This concept store has also become one of t he t op t hree Debenhams branches by womenswear sales.
He has met the managers of 40 outlets and asked them to take lessons from Stevenage back to their shops to help lift sales.
The Swiss- Spanish 53- year- old pulls no punches when he describes his reaction on his first day last October. ‘Where do I start?’ he says in his first major interview ahead of his maiden annual results on Thursday.
Stores were stuffed with stock to the point that shoppers told him they could not find what they were looking for. They were also painfully formulaic, ignoring local differences in age or affluence.
Worse, they were saving all the most fashionable and exciting products for the biggest stores, so the smaller ones were left with more basic ranges.
His visits to new stores did not impress him. ‘ It was basically “same old” with a fresh layer of paint,’ he says, looking aghast. He immediately called a halt to all development work. Then, just before Christmas, he called in the team working on the new store in Stevenage and told them to tear up plans and start again. ‘I said: “Hey guys, we’re redesigning the store.” The initial reaction was, “We can’t, because we’re already building it.” I said, “Ok, read my lips: we’re redesigning it.” ’
Many of the shops – sources cite locations Nottingham and Coventry – are long overdue an overhaul.
But retail analysts say Debenhams’ stint under private equity ownership has left it perennially short of the big money it would need to fund a full makeover.
But Bucher insists all 165 stores at the £ 2.3 billion chain remain profitable and that finances are ‘solid’. He adds: ‘One of the things I learned at Amazon is that it’s not just about making things pretty.
‘It’s about making the company operate in a very reliable way. It is not necessarily about being groundbreaking.’