The COVID-19 pandemic has hastened several things over the last year-and-a-half, from the way – and where – we work, to how we enjoy leisure and culture experiences. It has also accelerated the demise of retailers, with many disappearing from our high streets following the twin effects of enforced closures and weakening consumer confidence. One operator to have faced the headwinds caused by coronavirus is Newcastle-based Fenwick. However, with its flagship department store now open again, and its chief executive John Edgar – who joined just days after the first national lockdown had begun last year – rolling out improvements to its physical and online offering, the firm is taking steps to recover lost ground.

Steven Hugill finds out more:

John Edgar has viewed the retail sector from numerous angles – which is pretty reassuring given its current outlook. Scroll down the Fenwick chief executive’s CV and the list of companies is as illuminating as the Newcastle department store’s annual festive window displays.

From blue-ribbon names such as Harrods and Selfridges Group, to 172-year-old high street operator House of Fraser and the now departed Woolworths, he knows only too well the sector’s capricious nature.

And in a world where success in the ‘bricks and mortar’ landscape is no longer as simple as black and white, John’s technicolour experience has perhaps never been more important.

With the high street’s very identity under increasing pressure – caused in no small part by the continued rise of online shopping, a factor exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic – its future will only be secured by watershed change.

To remain relevant in today’s convenience culture, high streets must offer fresh experiences that go beyond simple rows of chain stores and create places of convergence, where leisure and entertainment melds seamlessly with new residential space and shops that present the unique over the homogenous.

“Retail has never been easy and now, more than ever, we need to change and adapt faster,” says John, who grew up in the village of Hurworth, just outside Darlington.

“The high street will continue to exist, but there will be more polarisation between the good and the bad.

“I’ve been saying for the last 15 years that there have been too many shops,” continues John, whose career began at the former Burton Group, which later became Sir Philip Green’s now collapsed Arcadia Group.

“For me, less is more, and we are in a strong position with our nine stores here at Fenwick, but the property market must change, and the Government must still do something about business rates too.

“I think what we will see are more discerning high streets, rather than the bland multiples of the 1990s where, for example, you sometimes didn’t know the difference between a utilities shop, a bank and a retail outlet.

“Personality is going to be more and more important going forward, and we will be perfectly placed for that.

“We need to keep doing the right things – some of our ideas will work, and some won’t.

“Ultimately it will all be about reinvention and reinvigoration.”

The change to which John refers is already being played out within Fenwick’s sprawling store on Newcastle’s Northumberland Street. Work carried out during the shop’s enforced COVID-19 closures has added new dimensions to the 139-year-old family owned business’ offer.

Led by the introduction of a rooftop restaurant, known as Roof Thirty Nine, the operator has also opened up windows, re-laid floors and revamped its menswear department to include a ‘sneaker wall’ that features myriad footwear brands and colours.

Elsewhere, it has strengthened its food hall, with greater amounts of produce sourced from local suppliers, and it is continuing to introduce new brands across all departments, which, in some cases, are exclusive to the city centre site.

What it all represents, says John, is the evolution of an esteemed name that is putting itself in the strongest possible position as the financial, social, physical and emotional implications of the COVID-19 pandemic begin to slowly abate.

“What we could have done is shut the doors at Christmas time, unlocked them again after the last lockdown and said, ‘it’s the same stuff, come in and buy it’,” says John.

“But that would have been a disaster. Instead, what we have chosen to do is invest for the longevity of the business.

“To make that happen, though, we have to provide a point of difference for customers and that means being innovative and ensuring quality around products and services, as well as the hospitality we provide.

“We are majoring on the hospitality element – it’s all about going the extra mile and welcoming someone into the store just like you would to your home,” continues John, who attended what is now Darlington’s Carmel College as a youngster.

“Not many are doing that, certainly not to the same scale we are.” While making strides in transforming the physical and social aspects of the business, John – who spent five and- a-half years as Harrods’ chief financial officer – is making equally rapid progress with Fenwick’s online presence.

When he officially took over at the start of the pandemic on April 1 last year, the retailer’s digital offering lagged somewhat behind its contemporaries, to the point that its previous hierarchy was strongly considering its permanent closure. John, however, was quick to see the opportunity.

“Everything was closed when I joined – including online,” he says. “Someone actually said to me, ‘forget online, it’s not worth it’ – it took me a week-and-a-half to change the situation and that part of the business is now growing at an incredible rate.

“Before I joined, it was taking very little money and was primarily a beauty site,” says John, who worked as chief financial officer at Woolworths, where he fought valiantly with colleagues to save the ultimately-fated business.

“It did bits very well, but it wasn’t what it could be – we only had a tiny percentage of our product catalogue on there, for example.

“We have done an awful lot to improve the website, but there remains an awful lot more to do. Pandemic or not, it is something we need to be doing to be credible in the marketplace and extend our reach.”

With enforced COVID-19 closures having only further heightened the importance of retailers’ digital proposition, John says the online improvements mean Fenwick now has much greater sinuosity to meet shoppers’ fluctuating buying habits and counter any further turns in the economic landscape – all while acting as a crucial, supportive ally to its traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ offering.

He says: “It remains to be seen how many people have said, ‘I’m only ever going to shop online from now on’ following the pandemic, but there is a palpable feeling of positivity among customers shopping physically, which I think is being helped by the vaccine rollout.

“To an extent, it depends what people want. If I want to buy a lot of detergent, for example, I don’t need to go into a shop and experience that.

“But if I want to buy some children’s shoes for school, because their feet have grown over lockdown, I’d do that in store.

“We can cater for whatever people choose,” adds John, who helped create the Selfridges Group during his time with the operator.

He continues: “The website is a major part of our plans to transform the business and we will drive our online offer further, but it won’t be to the exclusion of our stores – the two of them sit side-by-side very well.

“Online will never make up for the gap in most retailers – there is a role for both; it is a symbiotic relationship.”

The progress of the business’ physical offer and its online services that John alludes to is made even more remarkable when viewed through the prism of COVID-19.

Having prevented him from embarking on physical store visits and team introductions on his arrival, John’s picture of Fenwick was instead painted through countless online video calls and meetings.

“Nothing focuses the mind like a common enemy,” says John of Fenwick, which complements in-store and online trading with concierge and call-and collect services.

“As an organisation, we all saw that, and it was quite easy to get everyone to pull together.

“We had to keep going as best we could, and the trader mentality really came out.”

And he says such resilience, coupled with an ever-growing understanding of coronavirus and its repercussions on the retail sector and society as a whole, means Fenwick has been able to successfully begin plotting the first steps to recovery. It will, however, be a measured journey.

“Recovery is going to be quite slow for everyone,” adds John. “I think it is going to be a number of years before we get back to a level where we are really comfortable; the reality is that we just don’t know what is going to happen over the next 12
months.

“We are, however, in a better place than we were.”