Celebration for George

Sep 26 2007 By Jane Hall, The Journal

As George Davies’s special anniversary fashion collection is launched in Newcastle’s Marks & Spencer, Vicky Pepys speaks to the man himself about his 25 years as king of the high street.

ALTHOUGH the Marks & Spencer fashion brand Per Una now has its own fragrance to capture its ‘one woman’ essence, perfumers would never be able to create a cologne to personify the man behind the label, George Davies.

There would be certain base notes you’d expect to find, like warm amber to portray some of the loyalty he receives and readily acknowledges as he moves from empire to empire.

And perhaps a spice or two to capture some of his mischievousness. The top notes would certainly be hot and peppery and would fight to get out of the bottle, irritated at being contained and stifled.

By his own admission, George is as impatient, competitive, questioning and challenging as he was 25 years ago when he introduced the world to the Next fashion name. He wanted “revolution not evolution,” and wasn’t averse to “slaughtering sacred cows”. Nothing’s changed. “I’m always looking for what’s missing,” he says.

George is speaking at a “strictly 15 minutes” interview before a special party in his honour in London’s Soho. He is showing little tiredness after back-to-back interviews and filming. On this occasion he’s celebrating his own 25 years on the high street, and ever mindful of opportunities to sell, he’s created a celebratory GD25 collection.

It’s a cute concept. GD25 is a medley of 25 silver, gunmetal grey and sophisticated black garments, available at only 25 M&S stores, launched on the 25th of this month and available for just 25 days. It will certainly create a fashion flurry. The 25 M&S sites have all been chosen by George, who wanted to make this anniversary collection available in the “cities where I first started,” by which he means where his first Next stores opened.

Remembering that Next performed particularly well in this region, he says: “I wanted to bring it to Newcastle because when Next opened in a 1,500sqft site, the street was blocked outside with about 500 people waiting for us to open, and the police couldn’t do a single thing about it.”

The GD25 launch creates another sure-to-be-successful concept, but uncovers something deeper to be celebrated in the 66-year-old’s life. Twenty five years on the high street is how it’s being billed, but dare it be suggested, it’s more of a 45-year celebration as a retail fashion innovator? George has been a pioneer and championed the cause of stock controllers, buyers and systems, since his early days with Littlewoods.

He went over the heads of buyers as a young stock controller to seal better deals in off-shore factories, and took it upon himself to observe regional spending patterns. All these years later he still recalls ponchos selling particularly well in Middlesbrough. “They knew their fashion!” he says with a smile.

This is the man who created the matching shirt and tie for Hepworths. It’s all been about keeping one step ahead.

People have always presented him with enormous challenges, perhaps because they know he can pull them off. He had six weeks to turn around Pippa Dee – a party-plan company, which had moved into mail order; nine months to create the Next concept for Hepworths and seven months to develop Per Una for M&S. “We signed the deal in the February. I was building my own design centre in the Cotswolds so we worked in Portakabin’s, but we had the first collection ready for M&S by September 28,” he says.

Now no longer shouldering every chief executive burden – but still in charge of creating this highly individual, quality-led Per Una brand – and having perfected all his ‘systems’, it seems that George finally has the time to become involved in design, with his right-hand girl, second daughter Emma Miskin, by his side.

“I’m far more confident in my own design direction coming to Per Una,” he says, and explains how his sketches are interpreted by his design team in the UK and perfected in Italy, where much of the fabric is produced. There is tight control on what’s collectively known as garment ‘furniture’. “We create a ‘chocolate box’ for our manufacturers, full of labels and studs and buttons for each garment. They get it right first time, no mistakes.

“We manage to get 400 new styles into store every month – it was my time at Asda that gave me the idea, and there are similarities with food shopping. Like food, there is a shelf life for every garment type.”

He picks up an embroidered and embellished short sleeve T-shirt . “This is £29.50 with a shelf life of, say, four weeks. A jacket is plainer, is a bigger purchase and so would have a shelf life of say eight weeks.” That’s availability in store, not in your wardrobe! By creating so many new styles there’s the opportunity to constantly refresh and update, and as everything is limited availability, there’s less chance of wearing the same as everyone else.

George has had an extraordinary career. He’s always been light years ahead of the average retailer and one, if not two steps, ahead of the nearest entrepreneur. His favourite mantra was once “life goes in circles, never in straight lines”. When reminded of this he realises how true it could still be. “I've started to think about ‘service’ again and how much it’s lacking.”

This from the man who perfected the self-service ‘design’ collection to buy with the weekly shop at Asda. It still pains him to remember that in the beginning his Asda collections were delivered in the same lorries as the food.

“The most important thing I’ve learned is never assume. Never assume someone got the message or the email; never assume something will sell. Even best sellers won’t sell in two or three stores. It could be because of laziness of getting stock out at the right time or being displayed properly, or just that it doesn’t appeal to that region.

“But you must never get too negative. Negativity destroys creativity,” he maintains.

Partying until well after midnight, next morning George appeared bright as a button at M&S’s Marble Arch branch in London, hosting a fashion event for the new autumn Per Una collection. Women were grasping vast quantities of garments, ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ over the quality of fabric and the glorious colours.

Surrounded as usual by ‘suits’ (retail or financial analysts or the higher echelons of M&S?) there was one very important person present. George wasted no time in directing all his attention onto her, a woman clutching her proposed Per Una purchase who was desperate to have a word with him, the rock and roll man of retail who just keeps having hit after hit. No wonder he keeps getting signed up.

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Timeline of a man who helped turn M&S around

1941: George Davies born October 29.

1962: Leaves dentistry degree at Birmingham University to start with Littlewoods.

1972: Launches Schoolcare.

1975: Product and design director of Pippa Dee.

1982: Launches Next.

1990: Launches George at Asda.

2001: Launches Per Una exclusive to Marks & Spencer.

2005: Awarded Doctorate in Civil Law from Newcastle’s Northumbria University and launches post graduate course in Retail in Marketing at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.