‘I ONLY TAKE ON THINGS ILIKE TO DO’
NISHA JAGTIANI, GROUP DIRECTOR, LANDMARK
Getting into business... was not a priority for me, while growing up. But I remember going on a buying trip at 15 with my mother and Raza Beig, the CEO of Splash. That was when I realised, how much I love fashion and the business of it. Just after I graduated in business from King’s College in London, Landmark was setting up the franchise business with Reiss, Koton and others, and I started working on that. The learning experience in fashion was great.
My parents raised us... to be independent individuals. None of us could enter management positions without first understanding the business from the bottom up. We worked in the warehouse, stores, in buying, and planning; I’ve worked in nearly every core area of the business before I came into management. I worked for about a year at New Look in London too, before returning to our Group. I felt it was important to have exposure outside the family business. I am glad I did that because you get to see things in a different light when you work in someone else’s business as opposed to working in your family business.
I picked up... several lessons there. I worked in buying, learnt how New Look plans options and considers different store bases, researched different customer segments, how they clustered each of their areas, and how they bought differently for each category. They had 570 stores then. So yes, I learnt how to scale a business and those lessons help me to date.
I joined Splash in 2007... and spent two years with Raza. I call it my MBA. I was trained on how to run a fashion business; from buying to visual merchandising to marketing and everything in between.
There are three qualities, I inculcated from
my father... It’s quite amazing to see how all the Group companies were created with his vision. He travelled around the world,
discovered concepts, then built entire projects in his mind. He would write down his ideas and concepts in a yellow note pad that he carried around. He could talk to you in detail about the concepts even before it came to fruition. That’s one quality I learnt from him. I am a very visual person and have a clear idea of a plan in my mind before it is realised. Even with Iconic, I could ‘see’ the store before it even happened. I had visualised it entirely.
The second learning from him, was how to ‘walk’ retail – something he did exceptionally well and a lot of us in Landmark have learnt the ropes walking stores with him. A lot of people go into a shop and start nit-picking; he would take a step back and see the nonobvious. He had the knack of looking at it from a bird’s eye view. When I opened Iconic, he did the store walk with me and I remember him giving me feedback about things I didn’t see at that time. He taught me how important it is to step back and look at stores in a very different way.
Thirdly, I love how amazing he is with people and feel I have learnt a lot from him. Every person who meets him, falls in love with him and wants to work with him. That, I think, in business, is an amazing quality.
I trust my instincts... while predicting trends One of the first things I do is visit all the big players in the market. Second, I meet partners and suppliers. And lastly, I do a lot of research, mapping out every single store, every single place.
I always follow... my gut. Whilst research is important, it can only tell you so much. For the rest, I rely on my gut and my learning from my experience in the region.
Today, because of e-commerce... and the easy availability of products, things are trending much faster. The need now is to understand what’s happening on social media regarding beauty and fashion trends and move as fast to stay relevant to your customer.
One of the biggest changes... we have brought about at Landmark Group is in recruitment. I started looking at HR in 2017 and realised that if we can get recruitment right then everything else will fall into place. Because retail is ever-changing, the skill sets you need are rapidly changing too. So, the first thing I look for in a person I’m interviewing for a position is their hunger for success. Second, is their value system, third is their expertise and fourth, their ability to think. However, hunger to achieve is a nonnegotiable quality for me.
The future looks bright... I’ve been working with Centrepoint to build a Store of the Future. With technology and customer convenience taking centerstage in the retail industry, we believe building a smart store would be a huge step towards further enhancing the shopping experience. We also plan to introduce several new features like taking better care of mothers visiting our stores to offering styling tips to customers. Yet another important aspect we are working on is HR. We are currently working on a technological transformation, which will take our current systems to the next level.
In the past two years... one of my main focus in the business has been the people within our organisation. I am proud of all the work my team has put into ensuring people are happy and are contributing productively to the business. We have developed and launched the Landmark Happiness Movement in May 2017, bringing over 55,000 employees together as one. This made a huge difference to the lives of our people and the community.
Over the last two years, our teams have taken ownership to build a culture at Landmark Group where Happiness is an integral part of our workplace and processes. It connected employees across the office, retail, and the warehouse across countries, creating a sense of oneness among all.
I remember my discussions with Ohoud Bint Khalfan Al Roumi, Minister of State for Happiness and Well-being in the UAE. We discussed the UAE leaders’ vision to make the nation a happy place. Our organisation shares the same viewpoint, and my team has worked hard in making our best people-centric ideas come to life. Over the last two years, our teams have taken ownership to build a culture at Landmark Group where Happiness is an integral part of our workplace and processes. It connected employees across the office, retail, and the warehouse across countries, creating a sense of oneness among all.
This journey has just begun.
The two life lessons.. I’ve learnt is to be able to forgive, and to be responsible for my own happiness. As you grow older, you realise that you trap yourself in situations, if you don’t know how to forgive. Learning to forgive is something that has given me a lot of peace.
What makes me happy.. is my family, friends,
and the work I do. My strength is... that I only take on things that I like to do. I like to drive it in a way that comes from my heart. My weakness is... that I can get impatient easily. One trait I dislike... in people are those who complain all the time.
With technology and customer convenience taking centerstage in retail, we believe building a smart store would be a huge step towards further enhancing the shopping experience