Best Companies to Work For<\/a><\/strong><\/span> surveys, and one of the areas we need to improve on is in wellbeing. This does not just come down to me as a paternalist telling people how to improve their general wellbeing, Anna encourages people to think about how they can improve themselves and we can then facilitate that. Individuals have to take ownership and responsibility for their own wellbeing.<\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> Culturally, one of the best things we have done as a company was to build on Mark\u2019s paternalistic outlook, which made us a great employer because we would give and give and give. What we then recognised was that our role is not to just be a great employer, but also to create a great workplace. We have 71 stores, and we need to make sure that each one of those stores as well as our head office are great places to work that improve people\u2019s wellbeing.
\nThe retail environment can be seven days a week, 15 hours a day. That is not an easy place to take care of yourself, so we need to redefine what wellbeing means within Beaverbrooks.<\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> It is too easy for people to just grab a McDonalds or a Kentucky.<\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> Wellbeing is about physical, mental and emotional health, and we want to do something at conference that helps our managers to be strong for their teams, but not to become so maternalistic or paternalistic that their teams become reliant on them to solve all their problems.<\/p>\nIndividual resilience is something we talk about. Wellbeing is a shared responsibility. We can do so much but there has to be a balance.<\/p>\n
WatchPro: You mention eating fast food in the context of improving the workplace. If that came across to your staff as you caring about their waistlines or judging them on their waistlines, are you comfortable with that?<\/strong><\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> There is a difference between caring and judging.<\/p>\nWatchPro: Absolutely, but how do you ensure it comes across to your teams the right way?<\/strong><\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> We have the right culture. People know in essence that we genuinely care about our people. It isn\u2019t about flagging somebody as obese and asking them what they are doing about it. It is about educating people.<\/p>\nThe gym I go to has two posters on the wall that I like. One says that you can\u2019t out-exercise a bad diet. The other one is that your workout is only 4% of your day, so there is no excuse not to find that time to exercise. We need to help educate people about that sort of thing.<\/p>\n
WatchPro: The UK watch market has been operating at two different speeds. There has been a slow lane with struggling sales of less expensive watches, particularly on the high street, and a fast lane of soaring luxury watch sales, especially in London. Where do you see Beaverbrooks now, and where would you like to go in the future?<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> Where we are strong, albeit without Rolex or Patek Philippe, is with Swiss watches. We do well with that. We are also strong with diamonds and our own jewellery has been performing well.<\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> We have started to see some signs of fashion watches coming back \u2014 nowhere to the extent that it was \u2014 but certainly some of the newer fashion brands are doing better. Olivia Burton, Armani, Vivianne Westwood, Hugo Boss are all doing well. Even Michael Kors has now found its level and is still a good earner.<\/p>\nWatchPro: How much has that business moved online? Are rising online sales compensating for continuing falls in your physical stores?<\/strong><\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> No, it has levelled off across the board. It was dropping off a cliff for quite a while and now it has found a nice level. We have pulled back from a number of fashion brands, and have kept the strongest performers. We don\u2019t want to collect brands, they have to provide a return on investment.<\/p>\nWatchPro: Securing agencies for the best-selling Swiss watches is not just a national battle between multiples, it is a city-by-city fight for every shop to secure the most desirable brands.<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> Very much so, and that will inform our strategy going forward.<\/p>\nWatchPro: How do you approach that. If I am the general manager for the Beaverbrooks store in Canterbury and I am desperate to sell Omega, is there anything I can do?<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> There is nothing they can do. They would all love to have Omega and Breitling; in some cases they would love to have TAG because we do not have TAG in every store. But, interestingly, we still have good businesses where we don\u2019t have those brands. We would always prefer to have them, but we can do good business without them.<\/p>\nWatchPro: Perhaps I attach too much importance to securing the biggest Swiss brands. There have always been thousands of successful jewellers up and down the country that do not have Rolex. Operating profit for Beaverbrooks is three times higher than Fraser Hart, which does have Rolex. Ernest Jones stores look fantastic without Rolex.<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> I agree, Ernest Jones has done an excellent job since they lost Rolex.<\/p>\nWatchPro: Cartier looks excellent in some Ernest Jones stores. Is that a brand that you would consider?<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> It has very limited distribution and is a super brand.<\/p>\nWatchPro: I would love to see Cartier with wider distribution. It is the perfect brand for a shop-in-shop or franchised monobrand boutique because it has jewellery as well as watches. <\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> You are spot on.<\/p>\nWatchPro: Do you workshop scenarios over a ten year plan where you might work with a brand like Cartier? Do you assume that you will not get Rolex and come up with alternative growth scenarios?<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> We might not get Rolex in Beaverbrooks, but who knows where our Whittles-type business will go [Whittles, a Rolex agent in Preston, is 49% owned by Beaverbrooks].<\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> We need to put our best foot forward with Whittles as it is, and then look at how we might expand that in the future. We are in this for the long haul, so it is not about short term gain.<\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> We are happy with the business as it is now, but we also understand that a business must not stand still and must move forward. We are acutely aware of that.<\/p>\nWatchPro: What sort of challenges does a business face when growth stalls and profits dip, as they did in 2016-17 for Beaverbrooks, in terms of morale, recruitment, momentum, coming up with new ideas?<\/strong><\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> If you look back to how the business was performing when I took over as CEO and imagined that it might generate profit of \u00a350 million over the next four years, anybody would have snapped their hand off for that. What I wanted to do when I took over was deliver a consistent level of much higher profit and I think we have done that.
\nNext year, the 100th anniversary is a springboard to take us to the next level, and we will be looking to do more.<\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> One of the things I would like to draw attention to is the share buybacks we have been managing over recent years. All of that has been done within cashflow of the business, we have not borrowed. I quite like that as a concept. We have no debt, and I would like to keep it that way.<\/p>\nWatchPro: You have been doing around \u00a312 million per year in operating profits in recent years. How much of that drops through to the bottom line in retained profits that can be invested in the future growth of the business?<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> After operating profit you have distribution to directors, dividends, profit share to senior managers and managers, charitable contributions and tax. You are probably talking about around \u00a34 million of retained profit after that.<\/p>\nWatchPro: That sort of money, particularly accumulating over four years, gives you a healthy war chest as you prepare for your 100th anniversary year in 2019. <\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> Yes, but don\u2019t forget there is still the process of clearing up the shareholding, we are pretty close now but it is still ongoing.<\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> We have a very unique and special story, and we need to be clear on how that translates for our customers, and how we use it to grow our competitive advantages.<\/p>\nWatchPro: I would have thought it is easier to tell a unique Beaverbrooks story through jewellery than it is through Swiss watches.<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> That is a big strength of ours and gives us our own identity. It is also a great profit centre for us. However, we do need the Swiss watches to complete the story. We believe that the quality of our jewellery matches the Swiss watches that we sell, which is not necessarily always the case with others.<\/p>\nWatchPro: The jewellery market has also been performing in starkly different ways this decade, with Pandora franchisees growing far faster than any other businesses. Why did you choose not to get involved with that?<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> It wasn\u2019t a choice. We misjudged it; we did not push hard enough; and they did not want us because we were a big bad multiple. It is a fascinating story, probably the<\/em> story of the past decade, and we have not been part of it. So you have Pandora, Rolex and Patek, and we have not been part of any of them. And, you know what? We have still been going OK.<\/p>\nWatchPro: Being a traditional family jeweller, as you describe Beaverbrooks, has been extremely difficult over the past decade, starting with the financial crash and the spike in the gold price to almost $2000, and the way that opened the door to the silver brands.<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> It has been tough, but where we have continued to do well is in bridal, throughout all that, and we have adapted our jewellery.<\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> At the lower end our silver has done very well. There is a balance about knowing your customer and knowing your market. If you look at Mappin & Webb, because they have Rolex, because they have the higher end brands, some of their jewellery will be a step above. For us, we have worked with brands, and pulled back from them when they have not performed. We have improved our own jewellery. It is all about agility at that end of the jewellery market.<\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> We recognise that, in order to protect the Beaverbrooks brand, it is really important with the Swiss watches and with our own jewellery that we do not over-index in Swiss to the detriment of our own business.<\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> Quality across the portfolio is vitally important. Even at the fashion end of the watch market, we stock high quality brands that appeal to our customers. Jewellery is the same, whether we are talking about bridal or silver and CZ, it has to be quality.<\/p>\nWatchPro: What do you focus on to pull people into your shops? Is it bridal, Swiss watches?<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> First is location. We have to be in the heart of things. Then it is the brand name of Beaverbrooks. It is the layout of the store.<\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> The brands position your stores in the consumers\u2019 eyes. So if you have got Rolex, it positions you as a certain type of jeweller. If you have TAG Heuer, it appeals to a wider market and people immediately know they are looking at a quality establishment.<\/p>\nWatchPro: Speaking of location, we spoke a year ago about under-indexing in the red hot central London market.<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> Yes, and since then you have told us about retail developments at Kings Cross and Battersea, and we are looking at those. Where we are even more focused is the Brent Cross regeneration and extension in 2022; plus Westfield Croydon of course. They are the big ones. We are not sure about Battersea and Kings Cross; we are not saying no, we are just not sure.<\/p>\nWe are not overly fixated on this central London thing. We are a national company that appeals to the aspirational and affordable luxury customer. Our core market is never going to be in central London.<\/p>\n
WatchPro: Would you say Beaverbrooks is more focused on domestic customers than some of your competitors?<\/strong><\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> The tourist market has never been that big for us.<\/p>\nWatchPro: Which might explain your stability over recent years?<\/strong><\/p>\nMA:<\/strong> We do well in the provinces. We are Mr and Mrs Middle England.<\/p>\nWatchPro: You mentioned before we started recording that you are opening an Omega monobrand store. Can you tell me about that?<\/strong><\/p>\nAB:<\/strong> We opened in Westfield Stratford [East London] in December 2016 and we are now going to be taking a unit next door to that store, which is currently Neal\u2019s Yard.<\/p>\nWe will be reconfiguring the whole space to give us an Omega boutique. There is a lot of work to do. First we will move Beaverbrooks next door into the new unit, then we will reconfigure the original space, move back into it and then turn the Neal\u2019s Yard space into an Omega boutique. We will even be nicking a bit of the original space to make the Omega boutique bigger and adding a mezzanine floor.<\/p>\n
It will be a real destination and we are very excited about it.<\/p>\n
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Anna Blackburn worked her way up from shop floor trainee in 1997 to become chief executive of Beaverbrooks four years ago. This year, she has earned a seat on the board, only the second person from outside the founding families to have done so. It is a massive vote of confidence from chairman Mark Adlestone, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false},"categories":[7039,13,7024],"tags":[3490,165,10244,9340],"newspack_lstngs_evt":[],"newspack_lstngs_gen":[],"newspack_lstngs_mkt":[],"newspack_lstngs_plc":[],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"WATCHPRO","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39905"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_evt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_evt?post=39905"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_gen","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_gen?post=39905"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_mkt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_mkt?post=39905"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_plc","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_plc?post=39905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}