The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 44: Aug/Sept 2019 | Page 27

IN PROFILE STEVE CLARKE CEO WHSMITH How did your career at WHSmith begin? I joined the business as a Marketing Director in 2004 before being promoted to Commercial Director of high street business. I then moved on to become Managing Director of high street, before being appointed as Group CEO in 2013. What has changed in the last 15 years? Always stationery, never stationary. Ahead of the Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s Business Growth Summit in October, we interviewed CEO of WHSmith Steve Clarke, who will be delivering a keynote speech on ‘Looking Beyond Digital for Profit.’ Since Steve took over as CEO in July 2013, shares in WHSmith have tripled, the brand has continued to grow and the business is emerging in to new markets internationally. We met Steve to find out how his leadership has helped WHSmith buck the trend and continue to thrive in a struggling high street and retail marketplace. The whole marketplace has changed with digital and online and the rise of the supermarkets in non-food. We’ve had at least two high street recessions during this time; one following the global financial crisis and another one that we are currently going through driven by high street footfall continuing to drop. Despite this, WHSmith has maintained a very stable, profitable high street business but we have also seen the rapid growth of our travel business. Train stations, airports and hospitals (all of which are classed as travel) now account for over 70% of our profit. 15 years ago, this would have been about 30%. The other key thing for us is that we have gone international. 15 years ago we didn’t have any stores outside of the UK other than one in Paris. Now we’ve got over 400 stores in 30 countries across the globe. Are you worried about the effect of Brexit? It’s hard to know, because we don’t know what it is we should be worried about. Someone said to me recently, “In business, it’s possible to prepare for any outcome. It’s just not possible to prepare for every outcome.” At the minute, we seem to be trying to prepare for every possible outcome. From that point of view it’s difficult. I don’t think Brexit has got any nasty surprises, specifically for WHSmith. I think the biggest risk of Brexit for us is the impact a hard Brexit will have on the overall economy and the country’s growth rate. We’ve all been living this for the last few years. I think that we have to be very alert to the Brexit weariness that we’re all experiencing so that it doesn’t allow us to sleepwalk in to just any conclusion. We are going to have to live with the consequences of the decision for a long time, much longer than the three years we’ve been waiting. We shouldn’t let our collective exhaustion with the subject dim our awareness to the consequences of having a really bad outcome. In the next two years can you see growth for WHSmith? We continue to see growth in all markets. The success of the travel market is purely dependent on two things; the number of passengers (these are forecast to grow throughout the UK airports in particular) and the spend capacity that we get through developing our format. We have done lots of work on this. In hospitals we sell Marks & Spencer’s Food to Go, and we franchise Marks & Spencer’s Food Halls and Costa Coffee. More recently we’ve launched a new WHSmith pharmacy format at Gatwick Airport. What is great about being based in Swindon? We’ve been in Swindon since the 1960s and we have 650 staff members. One of the nice things about having an office in Swindon is that we have access to a very highly skilled and loyal workforce. We have got many people in our office who have worked for us for several decades. We run high street and some group services out of Swindon. It’s much more economic to have an office here and it’s a perfectly convenient location for us with the M4 motorway and rail network. Can you tell me more about the culture you’ve created at WHSmith? Internally, over the last few years we’ve put a lot of focus on mental health and the general wellbeing of our staff, so we’ve done things like training up mental health first aiders. We now have more mental health first aiders in the company than we do regular first aiders. We did an initiative where every single line manager received half a day’s training in recognising mental health issues in the workplace. This includes all of our store managers which was really important to us, because sometimes it’s easier to do these things in an office than it is to implement changes in remote stores. Managers can recognise when performance or absentee issues are more to do with mental health problems than anything else. Stepping down in October, you’re probably reflecting on your time at WHSmith and how you’ve made your mark on the organisation. What are you most proud of? In my time as CEO we’ve had six record years of profit growth. I think what I’m most proud of is the work that we’ve done around mental health. I think that gives me the biggest personal pride. WHSmith is such a brilliant business and it’s got such a wonderful team of people, whether that’s in store or in the distribution centres or in head offices. If I was really honest I would say I’m proud of their achievements, because nothing that has happened at WHSmith in the time that I’ve been here would have been possible without the real dedication and commitment that we have from the people in the business. Is there a future for the high street? We have about 600 shops on the high street, five years ago we had about 600 shops on the high street. 15 years ago, we had about 600 shops on the high street. We haven’t been one of those retailers that has gone for lots of store closures and we have main- tained a very profitable business. Last year was our second or third most profitable year in the last 15 on the high street, so we continue to do well in challeng- ing circumstances. What I would say is, if you look at the data, something like 22% of non-food is purchased online. That still means that 78% is purchased in physical shops. Of the 22% that’s purchased online, a lot of that is click and collect, so physical shops are still required in order to fulfil those orders. I think there is a strong future for the high street. I think it can be made stronger if the government were to be more focused on how they can relieve the pressure of busi- ness rates, particularly in an environment where footfall continues to decline. I also think it’s incumbent on retailers to develop strategies that will enable them to thrive, even with footfall declining at 2 or 3% a year. It’s not all about sales, it’s about profitable sales. There is no doubt that the inequities of business rates make it much more difficult for retailers to be successful. If you look at the number of retail administrations and failures over the last few years, many of them wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t have such onerous business rates. It is bonkers that we are taxing retailers out of business. Then you look at companies like Amazon who are absolutely dominant in the UK and are not really paying a lot of business rates or corporation tax. The inequalities there are crazy and at some point the government has to stop taxing retailers off the high street. Over 227 years how has WHSmith changed? WHSmith started in 1792 as a family business and in the early years they sold newspapers, then as they started to expand into train stations, they sold books and pencils and notebooks. So basically, all of our history, we’ve been selling books, newspapers, magazines and stationery and today the core of our business is the same. We’re one of the few businesses that’s been around for 227 years which essentially does the same thing they did when they were founded. “15 years ago we didn’t have any stores outside of the UK other than one in Paris. Now we’ve got over 400 stores in 30 countries across the globe. ” THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2019 27