Why I’m giving Boots a makeover

New beauty halls, expert makeup artists and magic mirrors . . .

Running Boots is not a job for the fainthearted. The chain of chemists is right up there with Marks & Spencer as one of the best-loved shops on the British high street, which is going through one of the toughest times in living memory.

Most of us – more than eight out of ten – dash there for everything from cold remedies to corn patches, as well as more indulgent items like lipsticks and bath potions.

its no7 anti-ageing serums, which have been advertised by 55-year-old ballerina Alessandra Ferri ( picturedbelow), have acquired cult status among British women and are catching on in the uS and China.

But not even a national institution like Boots can rest on its laurels, which is where Seb James ( pictured above) comes in. The genial 52-year-old made his name at Dixons Carphone.

‘With Boots i am in this incredibly privileged position at this extraordinary British icon with 170 years of history,’ he says, in his first major interview since taking up his new role in September.

Although Boots is a British stalwart, it is just one part of a huge £50bn international pharmacy group, Walgreens Boots Alliance. its shares are listed in the uS and its kingpin is Stefano Pessina, a septuagenarian italian billionaire, who took it over in 2006 with private equity backing, and went on to merge it with the Walgreens chain in the uS in 2014 in a £16bn deal.

‘One of the things that attracted me to this job is that i have been a Stefano groupie for about a dozen years,’ adds chief executive James, who says Boots is not one business but three.

He says there is a ‘get better’ business, in other words the pharmacy, medicines, and first aid; a ‘live better’ arm selling vitamins, supplements and holistic remedies and a ‘look better’ business – for make-up and creams.

‘goodness knows i need all the help i can get in that department,’ he jokes.

‘We have been a supermarket for all these things. So there were some quite uncomfortable juxtapositions. You might have had expensive cosmetics next to incontinence pads.’

He wants to make the three businesses work better together, and to reinvent Boots’ beauty halls. The plan is to appeal to ‘cool new brands’ by opening 31 beauty halls this spring and revamping four big stores, along with one totally new opening in London in the summer.

The new store ‘will be in a cool part of London and it will be a flagship for what we want to do in beauty,’ he says.

Rather than just ladies in white coats providing makeovers, it will have a YouTube studio so people can post videos of their makeovers on social media.

‘We will have one very beautiful central space with make-up artists to do makeovers and where people can take selfies.

‘There will be magic mirrors,’ he says, referring to digital technology that allows women to see what particular lipsticks and eyeshadows would look like on their face, so they don’t have to bother applying and wiping off several shades to discover what suits them.

He is an admirer of Sephora, the French beauty store chain owned by luxury goods company LVMH.

‘it is exciting, i am a bloke and i can’t get out of there without spending money. in the wellness business, people want it to be more holistic, to walk in and feel better already. With pharmacy, they want reassurance they are going to be fine. That’s about speed and advice. We want to make the consultation spaces more like going to the doctor.

‘We are launching a new digital pharmacy experience which will be quicker and slicker. There will be places where you pick up your prescriptions very quickly, so that will be a reason to choose us.’

James has picked a tricky time to take the helm. in the most recent full financial year to the end of August, Boots made a profit of nearly £500m before tax.

But in the quarter to the end of november, uK pharmacy sales were down 3.5pc and retail sales overall down 2.6pc. it described market conditions here as ‘weak’.

So how concerned is he about online competition from the likes of Amazon, which, quite legally, pays much lower business rates?

‘We have an effective tax rate of 55pc because of rates and corporation tax.

‘We are not on a level playing field. People have dismissed it as whining but we are seeing retailers go to the wall. i have a grudging respect for Amazon. The trick for Boots is to identify what we have got that Amazon hasn’t.

‘ We have this incredible network of 2,500 stores, so 70pc of customers are picking up their goods in shops. While they are in the shop we can talk to them about their health and their wellness.

‘ Our other big advantage we have is a very high degree of trust. Our retail brand is very powerful, particularly for women. We have a much more intimate relationship with our customers.’ He believes Boots can take pressure off the nHS. it already has done nearly 750,000 flu jabs this year and could do more on vaccinations. There will be more doctors’ surgeries. ‘in Brighton there is a surgery in a Boots branch. We will do more where we have space.’ He doesn’t want to say how much he will spend on stores, but concedes it will be ‘quite a lot. More of our capital is going to be devoted to transformation.’ James himself started out as a management consultant, before setting up a DVD company Silverscreen in 2003, but it went under three years later, due to the arrival of online streaming. He lost a chunk of his own money, and, with a young family to support – he and wife Anna have four children – it was a brutal lesson.

‘i was really very bad at it,’ he says. ‘To the extent that i am good at anything at all, it is trying to understand things that are really complicated and to see the three or four things that really matter in a business as big as Boots. ‘ Everyone should fail once, because you learn such a lot. With all leadership, whether it is in business or politics, the real hazard is vanity.’

As well as running Boots, he is on the board of insurer Direct Line and the charity Save the Children. ‘it has had a torrid year,’ he says, referring to the allegations that the charity failed to investigate sexual abuse and inappropriate behaviour by staff. Apart from that, he spends time with his children. ‘Having four kids is very full on. One has just gone to uni and is roaming Oxford like Hemingway.’

James made his name transforming Dixons, which was, when he arrived in 2008 as development director, a chain of scruffy shops. He smartened up the stores and made sure sometimes sullen staff became enthusiastic and helpful.

He segued into the top job in 2012 and oversaw a £3.2bn merger with Carphone Warehouse. Recently, his old company has been feeling chill winds, falling, after James left, to a £440m loss in the first half of its financial year.

Some might wonder why James bothers with the hard work at all. He is the third son of Lord northbourne, and a friend of David Cameron since they were at Eton and Oxford. He bats away, politely but firmly, all questions about the former prime minister and how he might feel now about the consequences of Brexit. But the two share an easy charm that doesn’t quite disguise the ambition and sharp intellect beneath.

James, a Remainer, believes there ‘probably won’t be a catastrophic exit. i can’t believe we won’t find some kind of solution.’

He sees retail as an engine for social mobility. ‘it is one of the few careers where you can start on the shop floor and end up as chief executive, as my boss Alex gourlay, co- chief operating officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance did. He started as a Saturday boy. That is an amazing benefit for society.’