The revival of Debenhams

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0:41We look forward to seeing you there. This Christmas at Debenhams, you'll find gifts in silver and gold. Glass and brass. Taffeta and lace. porcelain and paper family gifts at affordable prices at christmas the difference is debonahms a debonahms flagship store in london this morning they were preparing for the end of lockdown new recruits were being ushered in for the big reopening as word was spreading that the company is set to close down i've been on fellow for like nine months and today's my first day after nine months. I really have to go because they're calling me. Debenhams has been in administration since April and up for sale since July, but there are no takers and the company will now enter liquidation.

1:41That was two very different sides of Debenhams history. Firstly, a Christmas advert from the 1990s. And then the news from 2020 that Debenhams had collapsed. This led to the closure of more than 100 department stores and 12 ,000 job losses. For a business founded in 1778, this looked like the end of the story. But it hasn't been. Debenhams has come back from the dead. This is the story of its turnaround.

2:14I'm Graeme Ruddock and this is the Business Leader Podcast, where we explore the stories and strategies behind modern businesses. In this episode we speak to Dan Finlay, the chief executive of Debenhams Group. In early 2021, after that news story we heard at the start of this episode, Boohoo, the online fashion retailer, bought the Debenhams brand. It then brought in Dan Finlay to revive Debenhams. This has gone well. Towards the end of 2024, Boohoo promoted Dan Finlay to the role of chief executive of the whole group and then the name of the business was changed from Boohoo to Debenhams. Let's start this story though by understanding how Dan Finlay has approached the turnaround.

2:55He has spent his whole career in retail but initially he wanted to be a professional footballer until his dream collapsed.

3:08Yeah so if I wind back to how I started in retail I remember growing up in Preston just starting at sixth form college and wanting to get a job in order to you know earn some money to supplement the interest that I had and the first job that I got happened on by chance really rather than by design was working at WH Smiths in Preston on the shop floor as a I guess retailer for the first time and stacking shelves and working the tills and getting people to sign up for what was at the time the w8 smith's club card and i'm pretty sure it was on three pound ten an hour or something but that was what seemed like all the money in the world to me because i remember working 30 or 40 hours a week alongside my sixth form college studying and it was just a great opportunity It was great to interact with people.

4:08It felt like a really sociable job. He came into contact with all sorts of people, which was great. I remember at Christmas, the sort of how thriving the stores were and the sort of pride and joy that you got from, you know, people coming into the store asking for some help on, you know, what do I get for, you know, my mum for Christmas or I'm thinking of a gift for somebody and helping them find what they wanted. And there was just a real buzz and a camaraderie about it. And all of these people, there must have been dozens of people working in the store, coming together to help the store deliver its daily sales targets, its weekly sales targets, its Christmas sales targets.

4:44So I fell into retail, really, by chance, and I enjoyed it. And I worked, you know, part-time through my time at college and university in that retail space. And it was good for me, and it was grounding, and it was a great experience, and I loved it. so you went to university in Yorkshire right was the plan to go back into retail after that was always what you were thinking at that point no I wasn't really thinking that far ahead I am a failed professional footballer so my dream growing up was to be a pro footballer and you know when I was young I'd been signed with Blackburn Rovers School of Excellence at the time Kenny Dalgleish was a first team manager they were Premier League champions and I was sort of 10 11 years old just getting started in that in that footballing world and I guess like a great many other people it didn't work out and you get cut and you sort of wonder what you're going to do with the rest of your life because the only thing that you'd ever wanted to be was a professional footballer and to captain Liverpool and play for England and that you know hopes and dreams were dashed and how old were you when that happened it must have been 12 or 13 something like that so a real opportunity opened up for me in terms of going to Oxford University.

6:03I worked hard at school, it came naturally to me, you know, I fell out of love with football after getting sort of cut from from the academies and I really sort of threw myself into academia and had an amazing sixth form tutor at college who really inspired me about what was possible, about the opportunities that were available and how amazing it would be to go to a university like Oxford and I went down for a taster event and I absolutely loved it and just the the conversation the people the buzz the atmosphere again the camaraderie was was great and I wanted to apply there I was fortunate to get in there and I went there with no expectations of what that was going to lead to or what I was going to become thereafter or was I going to be a retailer or what I did it I didn't really know but the next thing that I wanted to do was to go to Oxford and studied economics and history and I guess I was a great training ground as an economist and I discovered lots of interesting things at university from sports to you know the student union and the JCR and being involved in putting on club nights and running a bar.

7:13And I just loved the sort of variety of experiences that I had there. But again, as I went through that, I wasn't thinking, right, when I come out of this, I want to go into retail necessarily. And I extended my time at university because I had such a great time there, spending a year there after working with the student union. And then as the sort of university days were coming to an end and I needed to give some thought to getting a proper job and what did life look like as a professional rather dishevelled student. I sort of started on the milk round, so to speak, in London, different jobs, different opportunities, and a sort of natural step coming out of Oxford was to go into investment banking or management consultancy and those sorts of things.

7:58So I was having conversations about what to do and what that would look like. And I remember being introduced by a friend of mine to a company, a management consultancy called Javelin Group that specialise in retail and digital and direct to consumer. I remember the founder of it, Tony Stockhill, saying to me, I think it's really great to work in retail because just imagine the dinner party conversations that you can have. So if you're at a dinner party, you're keeping company with people and people ask, you know, what do you do or what's the world that you live in? Do you really want to say that you in oil and gas or petrochemicals you know how's that for a sort of conversation starter and actually said if you work in retail it's a great conversation starter because everybody knows retail everybody loves retail everybody's a consumer and in fact you're not starting in retail with zero experience you've been a consumer your whole life you know you've been buying things since you were seven or eight years old when you got your first pocket money so if you work in retail if you work in consumer you start with a real opportunity and that you're a consumer yourself You've got years of experience.

9:03You've got views. You've got opinions. And so this was a boutique consultancy at the time. A few of my friends worked there. They tended to hire ex-Oxbury students. And it really attracted to me because I could relate to it. There's people that I knew and liked there. And I thought of it as a sort of vocational MBA. It happened to be focused on retail and consumer. But I thought of it as a great opportunity to learn and know and understand on the job, so to speak. And so that attracted to me. So again, didn't deliberately decide to go into retail. Opportunity arose and I took it and found myself operating in the retail and consumer space.

9:42How much were you able to learn about retail and business there? Because this is the mid 2000s, right? So it's the online retail world is changing quickly. You were working with businesses who were having to adapt to this new world and you were working with lots of different ones, I guess, seeing lots of different strategies and approaches. How much were you able to take away from that? Look, I think that was amazing because the whole ethos at that point is how did physical retailers evolve into being omni-channel retailers, multi-channel retailers? How did they embrace digital to transform their proposition and business model?

10:16And how could online and store work together? And the work that Javelin Group did at the time, now part of Accenture, was pretty pioneering in that space. And it was great to work with, you know, well-known high street retailers, helping them solve those conundrums and helping them make their businesses better and tackle some of those challenges that they had. And ironically, I remember going into what is now the old Debenhams office off Oxford Street and meeting the then chief executive of Debenhams, Rob Templeman. And it's strange how things go sort of full circle. And, you know, sort of 15, 20 years on, I'm now the custodian of the brand that he was the guardian of at the time when I last met him.

11:00But I loved the time at Javelin Group and I loved the consultancy. consultancy and I love seeing so many different businesses and seeing what they did well and what they did wrong and where the opportunities were and again there was a great collegiate team working together three four five people working on consultancy engagements high intensity eight to ten weeks at a time really sort of trying to help them solve some of the challenges at the time and I loved it and it was great experience and it took me you know all over the world and I remember spending time in Australia with it and across Europe.

11:32And it was a really great stage in my career because I was learning so much. And it gave me exposure to different cultures and different business models, different types of retail, whether it was B2B retail or direct-to-consumer retail, whether it was catalog-based retailing, TV shopping-based retailing. And then helped me sort of form a broad review about retail and consumer. It's not just the shops that you think of, but how bingo is a consumer retail business and gambling is a consumer retail business. And that was great experience. And I think I did that for six, seven, eight years and thoroughly enjoyed it.

12:13But I had a bit of an itch to scratch there, really, in that it was great advising. And I remember we spent so much time obsessing about PowerPoint presentations and how we were going to present to the board. but ultimately I began to feel that the strategy was the easier part you know writing out what people should do advising what people should do recommending what people should do was I thought increasingly the easier part of it because the strategies that people needed to follow to embrace digital and to brace omni-channel and multi-channel were broadly similar they had the differences obviously and I really wanted to be on the other side of it you know how easy or difficult was it going to be to you know implement and execute the strategy you know the three bullet points that you wrote on the slide you know how long was that going to take to do how easy was it to realize it so I had a real temptation to move from the professional services and consulting space into retail itself and to be a retail practitioner and to get my hands dirty so to speak and and that was exciting that sort of gave you know born the next sort of phase in my career.

13:23In 2012, Dan Finlay joined JD Sports. He would spend a decade there as group multi-channel director. During this time, JD went from a challenger and an upstart to one of the world's leading sports retailers. This means it was something of a surprise when in 2022, Dan Finlay left to join Debenhams. Again, when I'd worked at Javelin Group, we'd worked on JD Sports, on what was the opportunity for multi-channel, how could it embrace digital, how could it capitalise upon that. We'd done a lot of work for Peter Cowgill, the chairman, and Brian Small, the CFO there. And this was a real opportunity for me in that I'd written the strategy.

14:05I'd written the multi-channel strategy. So how it was going to embrace digital excellence, how it was going to leverage its stores to provide a better experience to the customer. and you know in consultancy you deliver your strategy it's well we see thanks very much either go on and do a bit more work with them or you move on to the next project and the sort of strategy booked in in the drawer and you don't think of it too often until they bring up and ask for some help and support with with the next strategy but now for the first time I'd written this 250 page strategy and you know now the challenge that was being posed to me is okay you told us what the strategy should be for digital excellence and multi-channel excellence you know implement it for us so that's what I relished really that was the opportunity that was looking for to put the theory into practice to execute the strategy to see you know what it was like on the other side rather than advising advising and then subsequently doing so that was an amazing opportunity that was back in you know early 2012 probably you know and JD Sports today is recognized as this global retail phenomenon it wasn't in 2012 you know it was on its way it was at the early stage of that journey and the transformation that that business underwent under the leadership of Peter Calga was extraordinary what was the what was the key to it because you say the brand that that when you joined it was an upstart it was a challenger to some degree um it's now very much not it is the big name in the sector what was the key to that success look i think it first and foremost was leadership and it was people you know there should be no ambiguity you know peter cowgirl as executive chairman that over the course of his 20 years did one of the most outstanding jobs in retail anywhere in the world.

15:57To take that business from what it was in the late 90s to a£10 billion plus market capitalisation in the early 2020s coming out of COVID was phenomenal. It was about leadership, it was about people, and it was about a relentless ambition to be the best and a recognition that you're only ever as good as yesterday's results. And no matter what, success was enjoyed you could always do better always on to the next thing and it was a real sort of lesson in life and a lesson in in business you know that was privileged to to to learn from a sort of great of global retail in peter that drove a phenomenal success there and you know it was a privilege to be a part of it it was great to play you know a part in it and it was a phenomenal ride which brings us on to Debenhams given what you'd enjoyed JD and the success what what on earth attracted you to the Debenhams role in that challenge I think the analogy that I use is that I always like climbing the mountain rather than being at the top of the mountain so I think of the 10 years that I spent at JD I always felt that the best years were the first five years when we were a challenger brand when we hadn't had the success that we subsequently later had when we didn't have the budgets of money to spend when we had to hustle hard when we had to to innovate, when we had to be different, when we had to be creative, we didn't have the resources that others had and the competitors had.

17:30So we had to hustle hard, ingenuity, creativity, imagination was absolutely critical to us there. And I loved being that challenger brand. I loved being on the rise and surprising people by, you know, how we developed, how strong that we became and what we were able to deliver. And I found actually when we'd had, the business had enormous success and had grown to a sort of massive scale and we had so much resources available to us, it wasn't as enjoyable because we weren't that same challenger brand. And it's ironic that when we had plenty of money to invest, most of our partners and suppliers wanted to help us.

18:14Often for three people come to us and say, can we do this to help you? you know, no investment for you, just say a few good words about us, let us use your logo. But if I rewired it to the start of the time, then when we didn't have the money to invest, and we didn't have the resources available to us, nobody wanted to do anything for us. Or if they did, they wanted to charge us a lot of money. So I love that hustle. I love that challenger status. I love the imagination that it forced, the creativity that it forced, because you didn't have an alternative, you know, to win, to progress, to grow.

18:45You had to do something different, because the money wasn't there to do it. And I think that brought out the best in people. It brought out the best in teams. And as you get bigger and as you get more corporate and as you have more resources available, I think that innovation begins to be throttled and that imagination begins to be curtailed and that hustle begins to diminish a little bit in those organisations. So I enjoyed climbing the mountain more than being at the top of the mountain. After an enormous, brilliant 10 years, you know taking you know digital at JD from doing a few million to doing billions I'd loved it and so I was ready for another challenge and I wanted to start again at the bottom of the mountain I didn't know where that was going to be and I didn't know what that looked like but I wanted to summit another mountain I wanted that next challenge and what was interesting about the Debenhams opportunity is that um I didn't fully appreciated what an at the time what an iconic British retailer it was, how storied its history and heritage was.

19:51And so I'd had a few phone calls and was like, Bob, this is a great opportunity. I think it'd be amazing now there. So much opportunity in this Debenhams business. And ironically, it's a sort of matter of public record. JD would want to be interested parties in Debenhams at the time, before it went through its restructuring administration. So my interest would be Pete then, well, what could we do with it what would that look like and clearly the JD strategy was or the strategy that JD was going to pursue for it is quite different to the strategy that we're pursuing now but ultimately it didn't go forward with that it wasn't and something that it that it did and and Boohoo group at the time bought it out of administration and so getting contacted about it um it's strange how people can play such an influence in you so the person that commissioned the work that I did at JD esports through javelin group was Brian Small who was the then CFO of JD who subsequently became my boss before Peter Cowgill and then Brian was the vice chairman of Boohoo group when they bought Debenhams and he was a sort of big advocate for come on down you you know there's a big opportunity here you know what does this look like what what might that be once it been clear that I was moving on from JD but I wasn't sure about it but this is interesting story where I'm in the car my mum's in the car with me I don't usually take unknown calls but I took I took the phone call for some reason and somebody saying come on Debenhams it's a big opportunity what's it going to take to you know pique your interest in this and sort of get you involved I said oh now's not a good time and put the phone down and my mum's like Debenhams I love Debenhams you know and my family had grown up with Debenhams you know we went to Debenhams every Saturday afternoon it's where we went to buy, you know, things for special occasions.

21:33I got my first shirt and tie, you know, a Jeff Banks Advent Purple number from Debenhams, a Fishergate in Preston that I wore for my first interview at Oxford University. You know, my mum had bought, you know, the dress that she wore at the Christian of her first grandchild there. It was a sort of staple part of many people's lives, including ours. And my mum was telling me about all the opportunities and ideas. And over the course of the next 72 hours, I had hundreds. maybe not if not thousands of messages about what could you do with Debenhams bring it back it'd be amazing you could do this I love designers at Debenhams I sort of experienced firsthand how much love there was for the brand that was just in a small ecosystem around my friends and family so I then spent a little bit more time you know went down to the British Library wrote wrote you know read more about the history of it understood how rich it was you know one of the oldest retailers in the world um 247 years old you know 250th anniversary coming up really storied history in that it essentially was one of the founders and pioneers of the department store concept you know it created physical retailers it's known in the uk today you know created what oxford street has become the first physical retailer in the world to put two different brands together you know alongside each other in a store which became a multi-branded store It became the department store concept.

22:56There's real richness to that history and heritage that, you know, I felt was an untapped opportunity to tell that story. And the more I looked into it, the more I saw the opportunity for it. The more I saw the history and heritage, the love and the brand, all of which presented an opportunity and a potential comeback. So I got really excited about the opportunity. You know, what must have been in early 2022, I arrived, you know, having left JD. plenty of people say what on earth are you doing here you know you're going for one of the best performing retailers in the world to you know a business being bought out of bankruptcy you know has it got a future you know Debenhams is dead the skepticism and cynicism that I encountered there was like nothing I'd ever seen before really and that fueled the fire that motivated me more everybody was telling me that you know Debenhams was dead you know it can't be turned around what what are you doing?

23:50You're crazy. But that fuelled the fire. I had a conviction that we could build something back and I was determined to do it. Now let's get into the details of the Debenhams turnaround. How has this brand become relevant again? And what was Dan Finlay's strategy? I thought, you know, again, back to my retail experience and a lot of the work that I'd done, you know, in consulting, it was all about the digitisation of retail and how, you know, much online was a real opportunity. And I felt that there was a real opportunity to re-imagine a retail grade as a digital online department store that subsequently became Britain's online department store.

24:32So I saw a digital future for it. And when you look at some of the challenges that the old Debenhams was facing, it wasn't that tens of millions of consumers wasn't shopping with it. It wasn't that there wasn't huge demand for what it was selling. There was huge demand. it was that the economics were wrong. You know, whether it was the stores, the rent and rates, whether it was a working capital model, a forward ordering product, nine months in advance, 12 months in advance. I remember, you know, people saying to me, you know, before, you know, a Christmas had already passed or the current Christmas had already passed, we need to start ordering for next Christmas.

25:07I'm like, hold on a minute here. You know, we haven't even got this Christmas out of the way. How do we know what we want to buy for consumers in 13, 14 months time? So for me, it was that the model was wrong and the economics was wrong. And therein presented a real opportunity because there was so much love for the brand. There's so many consumers shopping the brand. That wasn't the challenge. The challenge was the economics. And so, you know, we came up with a new business model and a different business model that fixed those challenges. So one, we went online only, digital pure play. That addressed the, you know, long-term leases, the upward only rent reviews, high rates.

25:43you know digital only didn't have those challenges then the working capital and stock model we decided to be i decided to make us a digital marketplace an online marketplace and really exciting thing about the marketplace is a really interesting business model and that we on our platform that we develop bring tens of thousands of brands and partners and their assortment to our consumers we upload that through our platform but actually it's the partners it's the brands that are sourcing that product, that are warehousing that product, that are taking the stock risk on it, that are employing their working capital to buy it and making it available for sale in our store, online store and our platform.

26:25The great thing about that though is that we're not forward ordering that stock. We're not having to make the buying decisions about what sells or what doesn't sell. We're not having to warehouse that product and incur the costs of doing so. We're not responsible for the pick, pack and delivery of that. And importantly, we're not responsible for the returns of that. And so that was a really exciting opportunity for me. And as I started thinking about, you know, what other business models exist like this in adjacent sectors, I really sort of honed in on the Spotify business model. And I talk a lot about wanting Debenhams to be to retail, what Spotify is to music.

27:01It's a platform. It's a destination of choice for consumers. It offers ultimate choice. you know whatever you want to listen to whatever album or single that it is you know with certainty that you can go to spotify and listen to it but doesn't it does it in a curated and personalized way you never feel overwhelmed you're not being served up you know taylor swift if you only want to listen to oasis for example it's it's done in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming it feels right and appropriate for you and i i really felt like that was an opportunity for debnum to be that you know consumer destination of choice in fashion home and beauty and delivered in a curated and personalized way I felt like that was a real opportunity for us we had a new business model that we're putting in place that was marketplace led that was stock-like capital-like highly cash generative I wanted to reposition Debenhams as Britain's online department store again most people thought we thought I was nuts you know didn't see that opportunity but you know We went to work on that, assembled a great team of people, brought lots of people with me from JD, people who had climbed the mountain with me before, and we got to work, and it wasn't easy, and there were plenty of challenges, but we put one foot in front of the other, kept getting better every single day, and if we sort of fast forward three years from my appointment into the Deb CEO role, we built a business that, from nothing, from administration, You know, I've done£654 million of GMV,£25 million of EBITDA, 15 ,000 partners in the ecosystem, was growing rapidly.

28:39The most exciting thing of all is we're just getting started. There's so much more opportunity. There's so much more to get after. And I genuinely believe that we can build the Debenhams brand back to be bigger than it ever was before, which was a£3 billion plus GMV business. So, you know, that's exciting. That's what motivated me. I had that vision and conviction and a great team around me and supportive stakeholders. And, you know, we did what many people said couldn't be done. What did you find when you joined? What was there? I guess it was a business that was trying to be what the business had been previously.

29:15It was, you know, in danger of sleepwalking into being another digital dinosaur that was trying to buy stock again, that hadn't fully embraced a marketplace model, didn't really see that marketplace model as an opportunity. It was losing lots of money already. You know, it had had a fresh start and that had been through the restructuring process, it had been bought out by administration. You had the luxury of starting with a blank sheet of paper, but quite quickly that was potentially going in the wrong direction. So on my arrival, we sort of tore up that blank sheet of paper and started again with a new strategy, brought in a new team and set to work on delivering the vision.

29:57The people who are sceptical about it not working, what did they get wrong? What did you know that they didn't know? Look, I think there's an asymmetry of information in these things in that, you know, I'm in the detail of it. I've researched it. I've seen that opportunity. Whereas so often people that want to tell you that it can't be done or, you know, it's impossible or what a fool they are. You know, it's a sweeping statement. and they thought about it for five seconds. They maybe not even thought about it at all. But, you know, if you take a step back and think about it, we really understood how much love and support there was for the brand.

30:30We really understood what had gone wrong previously and where the opportunities were, you know, in putting that right and making that better. And we really understood this new digital business model that, you know, to be fair, others had pioneered a long time before us, you know. Some of what we are doing here is, you know, what Amazon did five years ago or even 10 years ago. We're not claiming to have reinvented the wheel here or anything. Actually, we've just had a strategy that combines the sort of best elements that we've seen elsewhere and puts it together in a way that works as an economic model and as a consumer proposition for our business.

31:06And I guess that's what you learn in consulting a little bit is you go and have a look at who did what well, you know, and piece that together to create consumer proposition and economic model that worked for that business. And I think, you know, we understood that in a way that others didn't. Then also, I think, you know, people often underestimate what a highly motivated, highly capable team can do when they really put the mind to it. I think that's what's often underestimated is that hard work, passion, commitment can deliver extraordinary results. And that's often underestimated. But that's what excites me most I think is that if you assemble the right team of people motivate them in the right way give them a vision and work together relentlessly every single day it's amazing what you can achieve.

31:54How have you got them so motivated? I think it's about the opportunity you know in Debenhams to restore an icon to reinvigorate a British heritage brand to play a part in a tremendous turnaround story to bring back a legend of the British retail industry and to become the custodian of that brand for the years to come and be able to pass that on so that future generations can enjoy shopping at Debenhams in the way that people have done for almost 250 years. And I look back to the small moments, the small part that Debenhams has played in so many people's lives from you know the suit that you might wear at a wedding to the shirt and tie that I wore for my interview at Oxford University it's played a small part in the moments that matter you know when I wanted to make sure that people could do that for the future and had a lot of like-minded similarly minded people who thought wow this sounds like a great challenge we want to be part of that team that restores this iconic British brands.

33:02You obviously brought a lot of people into the business what were you looking for in people you brought in i'm looking for a anything is possible attitude attitude is the most important thing to me it's the ingredient that i look for most in people to say you know anything is possible we set our minds so if we mobilize ourselves we organize ourselves we can get that job done doesn't matter how tall the mountain is doesn't matter how challenging the terrain is i'm a big believer in that great teams of people can accomplish anything that they put their minds to and that attitude is a singular most important thing that that i'm looking for we said yeah we can get that done yeah and uh we're going to get the job done not i'm not sure how we're going to do this or this feels too hard just a unwavering belief that anything is possible when you get the right group of people motivated in the right way put together to deliver it could it have physical shops in the future I don't see that as being part of the future.

34:02I think, you know, we've got this new business model that's working incredibly well for us. We want to be digital pioneers. We want to be at the forefront of digital and never say never. There might be some, you know, I've said, you know, a handful of beauty showrooms to support the proposition. and maybe the brand could be franchised overseas and in different markets where there's a more bias to physical retail, maybe under a franchise arrangement that could happen. But I don't see that in the UK. I see it being Britain's online department store. We have heard an insight here into Dan Finlay's approach to leadership and management.

34:39So I want to look into this a bit more. He has previously spoken about how he is inspired by elite sport and that this can be transferred to business. The thing that I love about live sport is that anything is possible in the game. And, you know, there's so many examples that you can draw from adversity. And, you know, Tyson Fury is somebody that we used recently to motivate our teams on the turnaround journey for the broader group. Because actually there was a lot of similarities with, you know, Tyson's career and the sort of journey that we're on. where somebody can come from nothing and be the masters of their world and conquer the world and become heavyweight champion when he beats Klitschko in Germany, goes to his backyard, and it's an unbelievable achievement.

35:27But then all of the challenges that are faced, and to lose those belts and potentially to never box again and the well-known mental health challenges that he talked so eloquently about, to then come back to get off the floor to be wilder and to conquer the heavyweight division again is a great analogy for business and for life in that let's start with one anything is possible if you put your mind to it hard work determination take the opportunities that you'll come come the way execute anything is possible but unexpected challenges come along there's highs and lows in any journey, in any life, in any business, in any walk of life.

36:11And it's how you encounter those challenges. It's how you take them on. And, you know, you're going to get knocked down. You're going to have to dust yourself off. You're going to have to fight back. You're going to have to come back harder. And that's a sort of, you know, lesson in life, you know, that everybody can learn is, you know, the path to success and that, you know, it's not straight, you know, and it's not easy and there's going to be loads of challenges along the way and it's how you deal with those challenges and you see it in sport all the time and I'm a big Liverpool fan and you know I remember you know back you know when we last won the Champions League and you know we've gone to the Nou Camp in the semi-finals and you know we're 3-0 down to you know Barcelona and everybody thinks oh you can't you can't come back it's over and you know an incredible night in Anfield, you know, Liverpool come back, beat Barcelona, go through to the Champions League final and go on to win it.

37:06And so I feel in sport, there's so many examples of where it looks impossible. It looks like it can't be done. The odds are stacked against you, but it shows time and time again, that a motivated, passionate team of people who really believe, dig in, do the work can change that outcome and can come out on top and yeah look i love sport i love enjoying sport but see so many parallels in sport and life and business how do you balance that optimism and passion with like the the day-to-day execution and making people actually i could don't get carried away with where you could be but each day of delivering look and for me i think about it is often you can paint this vision for the future that people get excited about and then people think oh wow how are we going to get there and again you know it's about the sort of mountain climbing analogy and you know Benita Norris is somebody who's spoke a lot at some of the events that we've done and how we've helped to motivate our teams internally and she was you know one of the youngest ever women to climb Everest and you know when you're stood at the bottom of the mountain the only way to get up the mountain is to slowly but surely put one foot in front of the other and there's no shortcut to the top and you know we've got a vision we've got on north star we've got our ambition for where we're trying to get to but that outcome is the culmination of literally millions of small steps one foot in front of the other day after day and relentlessly focused on getting the job done following the roadmap executing consistently you know to getting that outcome that you want so i think it's great to have that north star but you've got to drive that day-to-day accountability and in digital retail online retail it's hourly accountability the great thing about working online is that you know what your sales were you know a minute ago three minutes ago and holding people accountable focusing on delivering the here and now it's a long campaign and you know executing every single day day after day consistently you know the the culmination of that should be, can be, could be, you know, the result that you want to deliver.

39:17What other business leaders have you learned from? You obviously mentioned Peter Cowgirl, but in the past you've also, you've referenced Terry Leahy, you've said Spotify and Daniel Ek as well. Yeah, look, I think, you know, the great thing about, you know, Terry Leahy is, you know, how he pioneered that data-driven marketing-led approach at Tesco in the late 1990s, you know, a visionary, you know, So to see that opportunity and that experience that is so true today, so many businesses still grappling with the basics of great information, great understanding of the consumer to deliver targeted, personalized experiences.

39:52So lucky to have lots of learnings, lucky to, in this day and age, be able to consume so many podcasts, read so many books. I think that's one of the great things about this day and age is that there's such great accessibility to information and lessons and wisdom that other people want to share with you and can share with you and is so universally accessible. And that's why I'm keen to share my insights where I can because I believe that there might be something there that can help others. What's been the most challenging part of the turnaround? So if I think about the Debenhams brand specifically, it's in those early days, you have that conviction over the vision and where you want to go.

40:31But you're surrounded by scepticism and cynicism and you're knocking on doors. do you want to be a partner on our site? We started with five partners on the site. Today, we've got 20 ,000 partners on the site. You're knocking on the door. No, I'm not so sure about that. Knocking on the door. No, not sure about that. Phone call goes unanswered. Email goes unread. And there's just a relentless determination that's needed to get going, to get that momentum because you get to 50 partners, at least to 100 partners. 100 partners lead to 1 ,000 partners. your first 5 ,000 partners leads to 10 ,000 partners.

41:08It's about never giving up. It's about just that relentless determination to get there, to keep moving forwards. And that is critical because you can get there, but initially you're surrounded by scepticism. And it's a great moment when that scepticism turns to optimism. And actually it's not about how many emails you're sending out, how many phone calls that you're making, how many doors that you're knocking on. It actually comes in. Your phone's ringing off the hook. The email's every single day about, oh, can we partner? Can we do this? That's a great moment when the momentum turns because at the start, it feels like nobody believes what's possible apart from you and maybe a few people around you.

41:50And sometimes they're not even sure. As I mentioned at the start of this episode, Dan Finlay is now the chief executive of the whole Boohoo business, which has been renamed Debenhams Group. This has brought new challenges. Not only is the Boohoo brand in need of its own turnaround, but Mike Ashley's Fraser's Group owns nearly 30 % of the company and has opposed the board on a number of issues, including the appointment of Dan Finlay as chief executive. In December 2025, Dan Finlay found his name in the newspapers when Debenhams announced he would get a£148 million share award if he can increase the company's market value to£4.2 billion, roughly 25 times where it sat at the end of 2025.

42:32So how is Dan Finlay finding the unique challenges of being the CEO of a public company?

42:41Exciting, challenging. It comes with more attention and more publicity than one would naturally like. But in that comes challenges. I think, again, Debenhams is such a beloved brand. I feel like everywhere we go, people are rooting for the comeback of Debenhams and have been rooting for the comeback of Debenhams. you know whenever i go into a room and introduce myself you know as being with debanhams everybody's got a story to tell about debanhams sort of people smile when they tell these stories about debanhams i genuinely feel like you know people are rooting rooting for us of course being the ceo of public company comes with more stakeholders more challenges more communication obligations more scrutiny more focus on what we're doing but you know all of that is part and parcel of the job and we're excited about the opportunities that are ahead and laser focused on delivering value for all of our stakeholders and all of our shareholders.

43:38But I'm enjoying the challenges that it brings. How is it running a business when one of the shareholders is a competitor and being blunt, being difficult? Look, I think what I'm really focused on is putting one stake in every day at a time and focusing on making our business better. And we're beginning to see the benefits of that. We've seen the benefits in the transformation and turnaround of the Debenhams brand. We're beginning to see the benefits in the transformation and turnaround of the wider group. By strengthening the business, by making the business better, by improving the business performance.

44:10That in turn makes a better business. The business today, in my view, is a much better business than it was a year ago. It's worth much more money than it was a year ago. I said a year ago, I believe the Debenhams brand alone was worth over£600 million. The Debenhams brand alone is an even better business today. So what might that be worth today? And so my focus is on relentlessly executing and better improving our business day after day after day. I believe that by doing that, you know, ultimately will be reflected, you know, in the value that's created for all of our shareholders. I want all of our shareholders to benefit from the value that we're creating from the turnaround of the business and the improvements that we're making.

44:49And that's what I'm focused on, creating value for all of our shareholders. What are the priorities for 2026? You know, to continue to keep up the momentum, continue to supercharge the Debenhams business, you know, more brands, more consumers, raising the bar, better experiences, more international development associated with it. in terms of the wider group, continuing that rollout of the fashion-led marketplaces, continuing to drive profitability, continuing to improve the economics, and ultimately getting the wider business and the wider group back into growth. And that's a real focus for us.

45:27We're excited for 2026, pleased with the progress in 25. What's great about our group and our business is that we're just getting started and there's so much opportunity ahead.

45:42You've been listening to the Business Leader Podcast with me, Graham Ruddick. Our producer is Anoush Ketate. For more business case studies and masterclasses, sign up to our newsletters at businessleader.co.uk forward slash newsletters.

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