#21 Kurt Geiger CEO: Education System Isn't Fit For Purpose

0:12Welcome to Big Boss Interview. I'm Fliss Hanna and Will Bain is here with me and he's been delving into fashion retail through the business of Kurt Geiger. What did he have to say? Yes, that's right, Fliss. We've got Neil Clifford, the chief exec of Kurt Geiger with us today. Now, a lot of our listeners might think of Kurt Geiger as a shoe retailer, high street retailer. But in recent years, as you'll hear, the handbag has taken over, brightly coloured ones in particular, and selling like crazy in Mexico and South America. That was a really interesting element of something we chatted about, their international expansion that came from a chance hiring an an American employee and Neil Clifford's own story really interesting for this as well 30 years he's been with Kurt Geiger working his way right through the company so as a result he's super passionate about opportunities for people to get started in retail to have long careers to have varied careers in retail and he says that starts with education something he didn't have much of he left school with just one O level in art but they've launched their own academy within the Kurt Geiger HQ in central London as well.

1:17So really interesting on creating those opportunities for younger workers to have a great career. Well, let's give it a listen then. Here is Will with Neil Clifford, the CEO of Kurt Geiger.

1:30Neil Clifford, thanks so much for being with us on the Big Boss interview. Oh, I'm pleased to be here, although slightly nervous. Wow, no need to be nervous. You're a regular listener, right? Wake up to Money in today? Absolutely. Every morning, 5 till 6, Radio 5, and then bang on the dot, switch over to Radio 4. Well, I'm glad. I think you're the first declared listener that we've done so far, so thank you for that. A man of routine. And thank you, too, for breaking your routine, because you were telling us you're a little jet-lagged. You've been travelling around the world recently. I am, yeah.

1:59I've done it twice, actually, in the last two months. I was in India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, four days in Saudi and back on Friday night. So, yeah, out looking for growth. And have you been finding it? Yes, we have. Yeah, yeah. That's been a big part of the Kurt Geiger story, hasn't it? It's why we survived, is probably the reality. You know, we were 50 years an amazing British shoe company. and the last eight years we've developed through our hard work, creativity, bit of luck into a handbag company more than shoes and much bigger outside of the UK than we are in the UK. So it's been a bit of a miracle, frankly.

2:45Well, take us right back then because it's 30 years this year that you've been. Embarrassingly. Is it? It is 30 years that I joined Kurt Geiger, yes. What makes that embarrassing? Well, it's a slight lack of imagination, isn't it? But I love my job. I've loved all jobs. Yeah, I found my home and sort of stayed and now just, you know, hopefully I can stay for a bit longer. How much has it changed in those 30 years? Well, my interview in 1996 was above the shop. Our head office was above the shop in Bond Street, and there were 11 people working in the head office. And we were a company doing about 40 million of sales, losing two or three million.

3:30And now we're almost 500 million and we're making 40 or 50. So it has changed a bit, thank God. And with fashion changing so much as well, what were the core products in the 80s there? Well, I joined in 96, so I was more of a 90s boy. I think footwear was then was more formalized. You know, the sneaker hadn't really arrived to every brand. And now we're almost 40 % of our shoe business is sneakers. So, yeah, I can rattle off changes of footwear depending on mood and depending on economic status and the post-COVID boom of high heels and the slipper sales of 2020. You know, shoes is quite a funny little category, actually, and really quite a difficult category.

4:19Hence why one of the reasons why we've not just survived but flourished is our move into many other categories, sunglasses, jewellery, handbags. You know, we've done a bit to change. Just come to that in just a sec. But what shoe moment are we in at the moment then in 2026? Oh, that's a good question. Well, in men's shoes, we're going back to formal. We're going back to loafers, as you can see. Loafers. Very smart pair of black loafers on your feet. loafers are the thing so even though sneakers is still i'm gonna say so i'm extremely out of date well you're out of date it's still 70 of what men buy but actually two years ago it was 90 so definitely there's a 1990s moment probably led a little bit by oasis maybe but there's a 1990s look back to the loafer that's quite a nice kind of circular way around isn't it as well is fashion as circular as that are you thinking about kind of things you were thinking about perhaps at the very start of your career right now?

5:18I think it's a mix of circular and new. I think that's the wonderful thing about fashion. It's always changing. And someone like me that's got a lovely mix of ADHD and dyslexia, I'm not particularly good at doing the same thing brilliantly often. I like to do lots and lots of different things often. And I think it's a wonderful balance of science and art. Has that been the kind of secret to your success then moving through the company? I think so. I think, I mean, I joined, I was 10 years in the Burton Group. So I started as a very lowly store manager in 1985 in a place called Woolwich. And I left school actually with no qualifications.

6:06So I was, you know, if anything, the story of social mobility is a wonderful place for retail because it's a place where you go when you don't know what to do and you just need some money. But working in a shop gives you lots of skills, which I think we underestimate. And you're doing lots of interesting things around that that we want to talk about this morning as well. Interested in that moment, though, that you talked about, where was it by accident? Was it by choice? Was it a group of you that were conscious where you said, actually, we can't be just a shoe business anymore. We need to be more of a fashion business, a premium luxury fashion business?

6:44Yeah, I think we saw the success of other brands. We saw the fact that shoes in itself is quite a difficult category because half of your, well, let's say 30 % of your store has to be a stockroom, which you pay rent for. That's why shoe shops really struggle to survive. You pay a lot of rent for space you don't use, and you need a lot of staff because every single customer needs to be served and served wonderfully. and I think having a shop with just one category was always and is always difficult you know and therefore we knew we had a lot of brand equity in the Kurt Geiger brand we knew that we had an opportunity to grow and develop and I think it's part of our creativity where we come up with new ideas and new things to flourish and survive and we had two goes actually at handbags and failed in 2008-9 and then also 2013-14.

7:44So this was third time lucky in 2015-16. And also the internationalization of the company. We went to America in 2011 and failed. So I think the recognizing that maybe failure isn't the end, but it's a part of learning, I think, was also a good part of the company culture. And you made this interesting point just before we got going, But to a lot of our listeners of A Certain Vintage, you are a British shoe company. And yet now, as you've just been explaining, you're kind of a certainly international, perhaps even American focused handbag first company that does other things, right? Yeah, in America, we're 70 % handbags.

8:24You know, we have an amazing distribution of all the best department stores in America, over 400 points of sale. We've now opened stores, which are thankfully very successfully twice the profits per square foot of the UK. We have six of those, and we're growing another four or five this year. And also our e-com business in America is four times the size of the UK. So, yeah, America in handbags has been the reason why we've survived. You can tell I'm British. I always like to talk about bad news or anxiety and worries and flourished. It's those those two things really have been the big changing dynamic of the company in the last five, six, seven years.

9:11And actually, even though COVID, which maybe we talk about, was such a dreadful time for us all. I spent a year sleeping on the sofa. You know, it was awful. It sped up our strategy. You know, we probably did five years worth of work in 18 months to survive. It's amazing what you do with a rope around your neck, to be honest. Sleeping on the sofa in the office? No, I was at home because, of course, we weren't supposed to be in the office, were we? So, yeah, it was an awful time for us all. And I think that it sped us up. It made us faster. It made us less scared of making riskier decisions. and we became more creative fundamentally.

9:53I think creativity, which I know is a very broad word, is the reason why the company has made it through and has now continued to grow. And I don't just mean designing amazing handbags. I just mean creativity of thought and ideas and strategies. So COVID gave everybody kind of a time to, maybe not a wanted one to start with, but a time to sort of breathe and think and be creative again. I think that's right. The little history of the company when I joined was a£2 million loss, and we went from break-even in 1997 to 1 million profit in 1998, and then 3, 5, 10. This is EBITDA, this is profitability.

10:3410, 12, 14, 18, 20. We had one year where we went 20, 20, which is not good. That was 2012. Then 23, 25, 28, 30, 33, 35, 38. 41 was 2019 this is profits and then we went to six no so it was snakes and ladders you know it was a really you know much less fun version and we you know we were feeling so confident we'd had another record year it was also amazing the press releases were all so easy to write it was all wonderful this was in private equity so we've had four private equity owners through that period and then suddenly you go from you go back to zero you go back to basically technically bankrupt in six or eight weeks and then we've spent the last five years going six twenty thirty forty forty eight well you've touched on america a couple of times we're obviously talking on a very interesting day we're speaking on the on the monday right after president trump has talked about potentially lots more tariffs here on exports into the united states how much of your work is through export how much of it are you actually manufacturing in the u.s already no we manufacture about 70 of our product in china so actually my tariff drama was was it was a year ago or last april um and that's we've you know we've we've that's calmed down we've dealt with that and our business continues to grow in america our margins are slightly lower but not a great deal prices went up slightly we've resourced some of our supply chain out of China to Cambodia and Vietnam so the current tariff drama is not one for a it's above my pay grade really I'm a shoe and handbag guy to be honest I'm a shop guy but but there's no doubt there's always there's always a bit of drama you know I remember being sat in my Renault 5 Turbo in 1992 listening to John Major coming out of the ERM thinking, oh, my God, I'm going to lose my job here.

12:36You know, this is what's going to happen. So I think retailers are – we're used to managing through drama. But I suppose the impact the landscape could have on particularly that American consumer, that presumably is something you as the chief exec do have to think about and have eyes on. But the American consumer in a tighter place perhaps than it has been across the board. and perhaps if that backdrop changed again, it would get tighter too. We see that as an opportunity, actually. I know that's, wouldn't he say that, wouldn't he? But I think where we are positioned, which is at the beginning of premium luxury, we're very conscious and focus a lot of our effort around not just our creativity and what we design, but also our pricing and our value.

13:24And we sit below in handbags and shoes, all of our major competitors by 5%, 10%, 15%. So the interesting thing for me is that true luxury, let's say, has really doubled in price. If you look at a shoe of 2018 or 2017 versus now or a handbag, prices have really rocketed. So I think there's a white space. I know I'm ever the retailer, so ever the optimist or ever the sort of opportunist to find a market for what we design and what we sell. But we do think that, you know, everyone wants to look wonderful, but not everyone can afford a£4 ,000 handbag, right? And not everyone earns that salary. But most, there's a lot more people that can afford a£200 handbag, which is what we sell.

14:12I find that pricing area really interesting, though, isn't it? Because we, as you all know, as a regular listener to our programmes, hear lots of people talk about the kind of economy end of all sorts of different businesses, whether they be gyms, retail, travel, hospitality, whatever, doing very well. And the really premium end also doing really well. And that the middle is the kind of place where everybody's feeling squeezed. Are you seeing that here in the UK? Well, we're in the middle. So I think... That's sort of why I meant... Yeah, I know. I know you did. I think any place can be difficult, I suppose, is the reality.

14:46If you don't offer the consumer, our customers, an amazing value, amazing service, great quality, unique design that they can't buy anywhere else much cheaper. I think that's the constant battle. That's what keeps retailers up at night, really, to ensure that you're working hard enough on all of those things because there's no free past you know Kurt Geiger as a company doesn't have a past to survive and there's you know when I joined in 96 and look at the landscape of the brands that were around me not just footwear but also women's wear say not a lot of them are still around that growth predominantly is internationally right it's rather than here in the UK I know last time when you were on with Sean you were talking about really no kind of plans to expand certainly physical footprints here in the UK I think that's right we you know we have we have 40 odd stores in the uk we'd like to remodel some of them we probably think we could have two or three more stores in london to be a little bit specific but in general our expansion strategy is is international yes so we you know we're as i said we're we're much bigger in the us than we are here in the uk but we've you know europe now is growing very fast we're going to be opening stores in europe in 26 and 27 i've just you know I have just been in Mexico, a week in China, four days in Saudi, five days in India, four days in Australia, talking to partners, working with our new owners, Steve Madden, who have those relationships already.

16:29So we've got a sort of jump start on some of those things. So I think it's amazing to travel the world. You know, I love travel. it's maybe a sort of little dyslexia point that you just love movement you know you love you love newness you love seeing new things you like the freedom of travel but also learning and um all those countries i've just visited you know they're growing fast they're not they're not hanging around waiting for kurt geiger you know we've got to we've got to go to them and present our brand and our story and why we're different and why we can be successful in those markets and i enjoy that two interesting things in there like the sort of the options i suppose the options that you've got against a tariffed american world kind of thing but also the options you've got compared to what's going on in the uk and the landscape on the high street too that you don't have to sort of i don't know is this the wrong phrase perhaps worry perhaps in the same way that some of our other guests have about what's going on on the uk high street or do you still care personally oh 100 i I worry about everything, to be honest.

17:37I've always worried. It's my – I keep it hidden like most of us. We're all worriers a bit, aren't we? And I think the Brits are probably quite – we're quite good at it. But I always – yeah, I'm always thinking someone's going to tap me on the shoulder and say, come on, mate. You can get back to your job in the hardware shop in Portsmouth in 1984. for. That anxiety of failure, fear of failure has always been my energy, to be honest, and my lack of contentment of not really knowing when to stop. Well, if you were putting that to work then on the high street, what, give us a trend about what, I don't know, James Daunt used this lovely phrase with Felicity on this podcast about having great neighbours.

18:20What do great neighbours on a high street look like for Kurt Geiger? What are you looking for in a place where one of your stores are? Well, the James Dawn interview was brilliant. I listened to it again last night just to remind myself, you know, listen to a very smart man and his view on retail. I mean, we like traffic, we like consumers, we like busy shopping centres. And that may well be the Trafford Centre or may well be Westfield, Stratford. Something's got a buzz and I think there's plenty of place in the UK for that. I think we may have one or two unprofitable stores in the UK. One of the benefits of private equity is – I always remember the first private equity 2005, Barclays said, don't ever come and present that you're going to build a fountain.

19:14don't build anything too grand always keep your feet on the ground Neil and private equity for me was my university I didn't go to uni, didn't get A levels I didn't get A levels I started brilliantly working in a hardware shop and cleaning toilets being surrounded by clever people was really good for me the private equity thing was my university You know, the interesting thing about the UK is all negative maybe. I don't need to be negative. I don't like moaning or bad news. Our conversion in America in our stores is 50 % higher. So, you know, we have stores of very similar traffic in America, but we convert at 15%, 16%.

20:0116 % of people buy something. So that's a confidence thing, right? That's a consumer confidence thing. I think it's many things. You know, the GDP per capita in the US is much bigger, right? So they've got more money to spend maybe. Maybe our product has really resonated with the consumer in the U.S. We got very lucky with our love of color and our creative designs that are different and disruptive and distinctive and not the same as every other handbag or every other shoe. And that has resonated with American consumers, particularly where the sky is blue. You know, we're great in the south. We're great in California.

20:38We're fabulous in Texas. We're great in Florida. You know, we're not so good in Boston. We're not so good in Seattle. So we definitely know our market. Probably not so good, like, in Manchester or Birmingham or either. Well, only enough. So what do you do? What makes it good? What makes a good shopping experience? Our third biggest store in the UK is the Trafford Centre. So we, you know, we're a very well-known, established, trusted brand here in the UK. so the analogy of blue sky and weather doesn't really translate back to the UK but this is where we started. I think what it does give for us is the Brits are really good at creativity.

21:20We're a little bit mad. Our handbags are a wonderful mix of colour and design and uniqueness and a bit of Monty Python thrown in sometimes, A bit of joy, a bit of humor, not taking ourselves too seriously. I think that's quite a good British trait, right? And I think showing up in America with something that looks different. I mean, Mexico, we're a phenomenon in Mexico. We've opened eight stores in the last 18 months. We've got another four opening in 2026. It's with a number one handbag brand in the best department store in Mexico. Is that perhaps a bit of a lesson to, not a lesson maybe, is maybe too pompous a way of putting it, an idea for others to take if you want to set up your own shop and grow rapidly or if you're wanting to grow or regenerate a business a brand here in the uk yes that there is more to being a retailer than just necessarily having to sell just on our just on our high street i think it's a massive lesson i'm frustrated that i didn't spot it earlier i was joined in 96 not as a ceo but i was ceo from 2003 and it took me till 2015 16 to realize how big we could be and how how much and actually to be very honest people like the Britishness of it I think so yeah I think so and I think it took it took me recruiting an American to give us the confidence I recruited an amazing guy called Stephen who joined us in 2017 American New York based handbag and shoe guy from the beginning he came and said you know what you've got something here this guy things amazing You know, you should have a bit more confidence and a bit more ambition to it, which was a bit embarrassing for me at the time because I thought I was this sort of wonderful, strategic, clever CEO, but actually had not done anything internationally, which is, you know.

23:11Well, actually, we did in 2011 and failed because we were really only a shoe brand. We opened three stores in America in 2011 and it didn't work. So we were a bit scarred by that. Just one more on the high street before we move on, because one of those sorts of great British companies, I suppose you talk about, I guess would have been a competitor to you guys at one point, Russell and Bromley, up for sale. Any interest in kind of teaming up with, acquiring other companies? No, no. I hope what happens to Russell and Bromley ends up being wonderful, because it's a brand that I was always, am always very admiring of and know the business very well.

23:48So I hope that change of strategy and where that brand ends up ends up somewhere good because it's a wonderful brand. And, you know, we're saddened a little bit maybe that trading hasn't been so strong for them, but I'm sure they'll come back stronger. Let's move to education. You've touched on it a couple of times that, you know, you don't have, you know, a formal like a university. I have an O level in art, grade C. and the joke of it is, which is sort of almost ridiculous, I drew a shoe, a Dunlop green flash, and I have it in my office. And school was very difficult for me because dyslexia didn't exist, did it really?

24:32Or certainly, well, obviously it did, but it didn't really in Portsmouth. And also, it's sort of ridiculously bad, difficult word to spell. It feels almost deliberate. It's a bit deliberate. It's a bit nasty on the dyslexic, isn't it? Yeah, you know, I was good at school. I wasn't I wasn't I was in the top classes. I had those reports that said could do so much better. If you just concentrate, if you just concentrated and I was the dreamer looking out the window. You know, I had a lot of energy and ambition and I didn't know what that was going to manifest itself in at all. I knew I wanted to be something or do something useful, but I didn't know what that was.

25:14I didn't really know about retail. It was me and my mum. My father died when I was young. It was me and my mum. And I opened that little envelope with your name on the cork board outside the headmaster's office in whatever, June 83. And all my mates got four or five O-levels and went on to their apprenticeships or jobs in the dockyard or the RAF or whatever. And I opened mine and it sort of said E-F-U. there's a few U's I can't remember what they were for but C art and I thought oh that's a challenge that's I need a plan B here and I sort of chucked a bit of paper away because what had been plan A what did you want my mum wanted me to be in the gas company as a fitter unfortunately because that's what my dad was unfortunately I failed the entrance exam so that was really good I wanted to be a tornado pilot but I had asthma so in hindsight flying over Iraq in 1991 in a tornado looking for your puffer wasn't probably ideal was it so I you know there was there was 11 % or 12 % unemployment 83 was a sort of the worst bit of the 80s before it got a bit better and therefore there were no jobs at the job center I remember going down there with my mate Simon and you know looking for actual real jobs as opposed to the YTS scheme.

26:43There was loads of this, you know, the youth training scheme. And he wanted to be a mechanic. And I'm like, well, I'll come with you. There's a job in a Fiat garage working in the parts department, 25 quid a week. And off we went together on our little Yamaha fizzies. And we both got jobs at this place called Fiat Cannons on 200 yards from my house. It was brilliant. I love that job, you know. selling oil filters and rusty you know rusty fiats needing new wings and i think work is a wonderful thing you know i love i love that job the human engagement and you know meeting people i've always been a quite people person and you know as you can tell i'm not bad at talking is that why you've opened this academy then as well to kind of open up that opportunity 100 the story of the academy really came out of covid and we were like what we've done an amazing load of good things for people but how can we crystallize that how can we bring it into the company first the first thing we did we started a charity so the kirk geiger foundation and we we said we'll we'll link that to our loyalty scheme and if you shop with us will we the company will put a pound into our charity and we raise about two million pounds a year now And we started giving that money away to other brilliant organizations that help young people and particularly focused around creativity.

28:08Because I think, you know, even though I know in its simple sense, Rishi was not wrong talking about mathematics, right? But you can't really out mathematics India or China. You know, we've got other really great skills too as a country. and if you think about film or music or fashion or architecture we're world champions or we'd be in the final probably if there was a world championship in creativity and linking that to the fact that young people are really up against it whatever the stats you know over a million young people not in work or unemployment at the moment and if you've unless you've got a My kids are going to be fine, right, because I've dragged myself up the pole and I've got a few bob and they've gone to posh universities if they wanted to do that.

29:01And I can ring someone and get them a work experience because you've got the contacts. It's all very easy, isn't it, for me and my kids. But most kids haven't got that. They live anywhere in the UK. They want to be a photographer. They want to work in film. They want to work in design. and they want to work in an area where the country is really good at, but they don't have access. And I think that's what we're basically providing. I think the education system, if I was going to be, and I don't like being critical or negative, but our education system is not really fit for purpose now. It's not really helping young people train and develop themselves.

29:44Is it adding to that problem then, do you think, that sort of crunch on young people getting into... Well, I think in the area where we're focused around creativity, and I don't mean just how to design a wonderful handbag, the retail industry is the number one employer, private sector employer, let's say. Three million young people, three million people. It's an amazing vehicle for social mobility. Okay, universities are too. I'm not anti-universities, but it's also a bit of a challenge now coming out of university and finding a job, isn't it? unless you've got PPE from Oxford or whatever it is.

30:22There's hundreds of thousands of very brilliantly educated young people looking for work. So I think we wanted to try to, one at a time, we're now, we've written the curriculum, we've recruited an amazing group of teachers, we built a school actually in our office. Not many people wanted to come to the office in 2021, 22. We had a load of free space. We've doubled the size of it since we've done that. We've written the curriculum. It's registered and recognized by the government as a formal education. You've got a county status, haven't you? Yes, we have. And we think about a company like ours where we've got this amazing amount of 300 people in the building, not alone the 1800 staff in our stores we've we're specialists in sales finance IT marketing digital store design merchandising buying negotiation HR we've got an amazing set of skillful people and all of our senior managers now do that education part of you know there's an extra part of their job to help us you know I was a store manager in Bromley age 21 and found my skills and mathematics suddenly made sense when it came to budgets and money and even though I was no good algebra or fractions and all of that stuff or you know how many wives Edward the eight had I mean how important is that anymore I'm not sure it is unless you want to be a history teacher right so i think we have to we should we should control alt delete the whole thing and and try to create an education system that prepares our young people for work maybe more than it does currently and we're trying to do that in our own little way and you know we're we're taking it from just a london-based education school to nationwide we're digitalized digitizing it we're spending 250 000 doing doing that we're going to be able to talk to 5 000 young people from april i just think you know it's it's uh when we studied it and we spent six months talking to young people young creatives we had a youth council and we just sat and listened for six months the one word that came up was there was always one person actually i've brought you a cap which I'm going to give you afterwards with that written on.

32:58Be the one person because even though there was whatever pressure there was to not go into the creative arts or creative world or, you know, be a photographer or a cameraman or a designer or an architect, there was always one person that helped them. There's always someone that lent them the digital camera or lent them the pencils or gave them space in their office. And we, it sounds a little bit grandiose, I don't mean it to be, we want to be the one person because all young people need is a bit of confidence, a bit of, you know, we all start in the same place, right? You know, we've all got the same brains at the beginning.

33:41But it's people willing to take a chance, isn't it, as well? Yeah. And it's hard in the economic backdrop out there, particularly for retailers, isn't it, to take a chance, to take a risk? It is. Or isn't it? Well, I think, you know, we recruit all 300 people a year. We're now educating 60. We're endeavouring to take as many of those young people even into our next phase, which are apprenticeship programme, or into full employment in the business. So I think actually it will make our company better. What would make it easier for you as a leader to employ more people? Well, we have to grow, I suppose.

34:30We're always constantly, and I think that's one good thing about, I'm a very positive advocate for the world of private equity. Sometimes it doesn't get its fair rap, I think. But being in a business for 20 years, surrounded by clever people, where there was no politics, there was no agenda apart from growth, and how do you make the company bigger and better, I think our daily conversations are about how do we grow. But you'll know this. We've had this conversation endlessly here. Lots of people we've spoken to, haven't they, have said that basically policy is the speed bump to that, to growth.

35:11Do you think you can get around it? Do you think businesses can take control of it themselves within the policy framework that we have here? Well, look, I'm not a politician. I'm a handbag and shoe guy. You know, economically, the UK hasn't grown much for 10 years, has it really? And we won't mention the Brexit word. Well, no, but I think, you know, look, there's lots of good arguments for it, negative and positive. You know, I'm certainly on the why did we go and do that to ourselves a little bit? We wasted 10 years, didn't we, really, talking about Europe and where we should have been focused on growing the economy.

35:55Because growing the economy is how you look after people that need help, how you can give opportunities for young people, how you can reinvest in the country and its infrastructure or whatever it may be. We've got to do a bit better, probably, whatever those policies may be. And so how do you grow going forward? Here in the UK then? In the UK? Well, generally actually. Well, I think, you know, we grew last year in the UK. So we didn't go backwards. I'm always of the belief you can sort of always do better, frankly. I know that sounds a little bit naive, but, you know, 9 % of the people that walk into our stores buy something.