About Speakers - Retail Forum 2009, Marketing Society
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Alan Giles
Fat Face
Alan is Chairman of Fat Face. He retired as Chief Executive of HMV Group in September 2006, having led its leveraged buy-out in 1998 and subsequent LSE flotation in 2002. From 1993 to 1998 he was Managing Director of Waterstone’s, and earlier in his career he worked for Do It All, WH Smith Retail, and Boots. He was a non-executive director of Somerfield plc until 2004 and is currently a non-executive director of Rentokil Initial plc and The Office of Fair Trading. He is an Associate Fellow at Said Business School, Oxford and an Honorary Visiting Professor at Cass Business School.
Patrick Allen
director of marketing, The Co-operative Group
Patrick is Executive Director of Marketing for the Co-operative Group, with responsibility for brand, membership, CSR, customer strategy and commercial marketing. In 2004 Patrick joined United Co-operatives, as Head of Marketing. The two societies amalgamated in 2007.
With a no-nonsense approach to marketing Patrick’s style is characterised by his constant assessment of return on marketing investment.
During his time as the Group’s Marketing Director the Co-operative Group has seen a 400% increase in its leadership perception, significant rises in the Group’s profitability and an overall reduction in the marketing cost base of around £6m.
Over the next two years, he will aim to establish the Co-operative Group as the voice of authority in each of the pillars of the Group’s Social Goals agenda. Those being, the positive impact young people have on society, international development and climate change.
Patrick is also an honorary visiting fellow at the University of Bradford Management Centre, a faculty member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), a Fellow of the Institute of Directors (IoD) and a Board member of the British Retail Consortium.
Sara Weller
managing director, Argos
Sara Weller joined Argos as managing director in July 2004. In the period 2000 to 2004 she held the positions of marketing director, deputy managing director and board member of J Sainsbury plc. Between 1996 and 2000 she was the retail marketing director with Abbey National plc and prior to this she worked at Mars Confectionery UK. Sara Weller is also a non-executive director of Mitchells and Butlers plc.
Nick Robertson
CEO, asos
Nick started his career in 1987 with the advertising agency Young and Rubicam and in 1991 moved to Carat, the UK ’s largest media planning and buying agency.
In 1995 he founded Entertainment Marketing, a marketing services company representing a number of blue chip clients including Pepsi, Mars, Samsung, Carlsberg, Honda and BT.
In 2000, Nick founded ASOS.com, a pure play online fashion and beauty retailer, aimed at fashion forward, internet savvy 16-34 year olds. In October 2001, ASOS was admitted to AIM , and in 2003, ASOS became the second most popular online fashion store in the UK behind Next, a position it still holds today. In 2004 ASOS plc was the best performing share on the LSE.
Today, ASOS is one of the fastest growing retailers in the UK . Full year sales to March ’09 are forecast at £150m, up from £81m in 2007/8.
David Wild
chief executive, Halfords
David Wild is Chief Executive of the leading automotive and leisure products retailer, Halfords, a job he has held since August 2008.
A native of Manchester , David read Chemistry at University College , Oxford before beginning his business life in Food Manufacturing working in both Marketing and Selling for RHM Foods Limited.
In 1985, he joined Tesco, where in an 18 year career he worked in Buying, Supply Chain, International Operations and Business Development. For almost 7 years we was Chief Executive of the operation in Central Europe .
David joined Wal-Mart in January 2004, becoming President of the German subsidiary. After the disposal of this business in 2006, he moved to San Francisco , CA , as Senior Vice President of New Business Development for US Division.
Katharine Wynne
Investec Securities
Katharine is a UK retail analyst at Investec Bank plc and has been a retail analyst for 20 years. She joined Investec's Retail research team in September 2008, having previously headed up the General Retail team at Merrill Lynch. During her 12 years there the team was involved in four retail stockmarket flotations (including Burberry and Debenhams) and was highly ranked in most industry surveys.
Katharine lives in Islington with her husband and four children. Extra-curricular activities include fund-raising for local charities, watching Arsenal play at home and regular (if inexpert) tennis. She recently achieved a childhood dream by becoming a debenture ticket holder at Lords.
Richard Lloyd-Owen
UK consumer business leader, Deloitte
Richard is the Industry Leader for Deloitte's UK Consumer Business practice which consists of over 1,000 industry aligned employees across our four service lines and is also the Global Retail Leader. Richard has over 20 years experience working with major retail and consumer businesses and significant business transaction and investigation experience. Currently he works in the firm’s private equity and audit practices and his clients include investors in and management teams at retail and consumer brand businesses both in the UK and internationally.
Tim McDonnell
retail operations director, Poundland
Tim joined Poundland in August 2006 as Regional Manager with responsibility for Retail Operations in the north of the country. Prior to that, Tim worked for Kwik Save and Somerfield for over 20 years holding a number of roles in both H.R. and Retail Operations and was Regional Director prior to joining Poundland.
Richard Watson
What's Next
Richard Watson is an independent writer and speaker focused on the impact of current and future trends. He is the founder and publisher of What’s Next – a website that documents global trends – and has also been a founder member of both Global Innovation Network and Global Design Register.
Richard has worked on research, innovation and scenario planning projects with, amongst others, McDonald’s, Virgin Atlantic, Westfield, Tesco and Toyota and has been a columnist for a number of magazines including Fast Company (US) and Retail Banking Review (Aus).
His book, Future Files: 5 Trends for the Next 50 Years, has been published in twelve editions worldwide and he is currently halfway through a new book investigating at the impact of technology on consumer behaviour.
Martin Hayward
director of strategy and futures, dunnhumby
Martin joined dunnhumby in 2004 as Director of Strategy & Futures.
He is hugely excited about the growing potential to ‘Connect the Dots’ of marketing; bringing dunnhumby’s world leading analyses of hundreds of millions of consumer’s purchasing habits to provide faster and more granular insight than has ever been possible. These insights are driving truly actionable segmentations and communications for both retailers and their suppliers across the globe. Combining such rich behavioural data with attitudinal and media overlays is further revolutionising companies’ abilities to truly understand cause and effect in marketing.
Martin’s previous position was as Executive Chairman of The Henley Centre, WPP’s leading Strategic Marketing Consultancy, where he worked with many of the world’s leading organisations to help them to better understand how their environment and consumers are changing around the world.
Prior to joining The Henley Centre, Martin was the founding Managing Director of BBH Futures, the strategic consultancy arm of the Bartle Bogle Hegarty Group. He also was Head of the Marketing Services Department for Mercury Communications, during which time Mercury was voted Brand of the Year. Martin began his career in Account Planning at Ogilvy & Mather.
Renowned as a leading commentator on future business and marketing issues, he appears frequently in the media and speaks at many corporate events.
Tim Greenhalgh
chief creative officer, Fitch
Tim Greenhalgh is one of the design industry’s foremost branding and retail design experts.
In addition to his role as Fitch’s Chief Creative Officer, Tim works as Client Director on a number of large scale projects and his clients include British Airways, Lego, Oasis, Jaguar, TAG McLaren, Hackett,Central Foods and Unilever.
Tim began his career with Fitch back in 1985. Whilst studying 3D design at Manchester Polytechnic, he secured a summer placement at Fitch where he worked on one of Fitch’s most famous projects – reinvigorating the Debenhams brand to become one of Europe’s top department stores. Within weeks he was offered a full-time job and ending up working at Fitch for another six years during his first stint with the consultancy.
In 1991, Tim joined Conran Design as Associate Director, rising to become Creative Director. Whilst there, he worked on the redesign of Club Europe for British Airways, and oversaw a host of international retail design projects for clients such as Do it All, Oasis, Antilla (Finnish department store) and Foschini (South African fashion chain).
In 1996, Tim rejoined Fitch as Creative Director of its London studio. In 2003, he became Joint Managing Director of the studio with Lucy Unger, and joined Fitch’s worldwide management team. This successful partnership, with Tim driving the creative culture of the business and Lucy overseeing client management, has resulted in a string of top Awards for Fitch in the last 3 years, including Retail Week’s coveted ‘Store Design of the Year’ for Aquascutum.
Gerry Ford
chairman and ceo, Caffè Nero
Dr Gerry Ford is an entrepreneur, brand developer and CEO. He currently directs the strategy and runs the day-to-day management of Caffè Nero, which he founded in 1997. Caffè Nero is Europe’s largest independent coffee house group.
His background is in managing consumer good businesses and in private equity. He spent three years working at APAX partners in the 1980’s. He then managed several small consumer goods businesses, and in 1992 he cofounded Paladin, a venture capital group, which invests in consumer brands. He is currently the managing partner at Paladin
Gerry also developed the European coffee house concept that is today Caffè Nero in 1996. Caffè Nero was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2001 with a value of £33M. In 2007, Gerry took Caffè Nero private at a value of c.£230M.
Caffè Nero is now a 402 strong store business – including 16 Nero Express kiosks, 12 Caffè Nero sites in Turkey and 3 stores in Dubai.
Dr Ford holds a BA from Stanford, an MBA from INSEAD and a PhD from Oxford.
Martyn Gibbs
customer and brand director, Game Group
Martyn has been in retail for 20 years. Starting in store roles with WH Smith he eventually became Computer Games Buyer. Moving to HMV Head of Games, UK and Ireland, he has now been in the games industry for 13 years.
Now with GAME group for 2 years, he has moved from Managing Director, Gamestation, to a new group role of Customer and Brand Director with the store teams and Marketing function under his guidance.