Ethel Austin’s new owner tells Bill Gleeson about her plans to revive the struggling stores group
SUE TOWNSEND plans to return retail chain Ethel Austin to its North West roots and breathe new life into the once- famous high street name.
Following her acquisition of the North West stores of the financially collapsed retail chain from its administrators last week, Ms Townsend now plans to beef up business processes and attract more shoppers to the stores.
The first thing she has done is ditch the Life & Style name that it had been trading under for the past 18 months.
Ms Townsend told the Daily Post yesterday: “Of the current 62 shops that we bought, 59 are still trading as Ethel Austin.
“It was the Ethel Austin brand that I was interested in.
“Their by-line was quality clothing at affordable prices. That can still be true of this brand.
“It’s a great little high street chain.
“It just needs the processes and the product to be made right for existing customers.”
The 62 stores acquired by Ms Townsend had previously belonged to Elaine McPherson’s Life & Style chain. These shops had traded as Ethel Austin stores before Ms McPherson changed the name.
Between them, Life & Style and Ethel Austin businesses have been in administration three times in the past three years. Ms Townsend did not acquire another 40 stores in other parts of the country that have now been closed.
“The previous administration lost their way with the Life & Style brand and forgot the core customer,” said Ms Townsend.
Ms Townsend, formerly a director of Blackwell’s bookshop chain, dismissed concerns that Ethel Austin had suffered lost market share because it could not compete with rivals such as Primark and Matalan.
She said: “From the point of view of an outsider looking in, it wasn’t about the competition as to why it failed.
“There was definitely a customer base there.
“Matalan and Primark run very different types of operation to Ethel Austin’s traditional high street shops, which have a relatively small floor space.
“I can see that statement (about the competition) running true for Life & Style’s 25,000 sq ft shops, in places like Watford, but, in the North West heartland of the Ethel Austin brand, those retailers are not direct competition.”
As well as restoring the Ethel Austin name, the new owner plans to radically overhaul the way the chain does business. She believes efficient business processes are key to ensuring a profitable future for the chain that has otherwise struggled to remain viable in recent years.
Ms Townsend said: “There’s a fantastic brand in Ethel Austin.
“There’s lots of opportunity to do things the brand has never really embraced.
“They never had a digital platform. As many value retailers trade well on a digital platform as premium retailers. E-bay is the UK’s biggest digital platform and I would not say that’s a premium site.
“The existing chain has lacked a lot of the retail disciplines. It needs a strong promotional and marketing calendar.
“You need to give your customers regular reasons to return to your shops. You need good value, frequent promotions.
“We need a customer relationship marketing plan. I would like to go out and engage with our customer base.
“We will be advertising the promotions. At this stage, we could do with a very solid direct programme of marketing. We will be using email and text messaging and local media.
“My priority is to stabilise the existing 62 stores. I’m an old school retailer. The adage ‘retail is detail’ is absolutely true. This is a chain that lacks processes.”
One of the first things Ms Townsend will do with the shop portfolio is introduce a model shop concept. She explained: “We will take an existing shop in the portfolio and use it to test operational processes and practices – what is the best way to lay out a shop and how often should window displays be changed? – all the things that make a retailer the retailer it is.
“We can then roll the successful model out to all of the portfolio.”
Ethel Austin was previously headquartered at Knowsley before Ms McPherson moved it to Altrincham, close to her own home. Could it now return to the area?
Ms Townsend said: “At present, we are definitely staying where we are, though on a much reduced footprint.
“But obviously I recognise the brand’s affinity with Liverpool.
“I never say never.”
She will be trimming back on the Altrincham head office overheads to make them more appropriate to the reduced size of the Ethel Austin business.
Ms Townsend said: “It previously designed all of its support functions to support a much larger chain than it had.
“It was over ‘footaged’ at Altrincham, in terms of warehouse and office space.
“We have no immediate or even medium-term need for that much space. We want to keep the cost base tight so we can invest in front-of-house areas.
“The majority of the chain still looks very good, but having been through three administrations there is some remedial work that needs to take place and housekeeping work across the whole chain.”
Ms Townsend said that she expects to retain the services of the 470 staff taken on by her new business.
“I have acquired people,” she said. “The people have been ‘TUPEd’ over. I’m expecting to keep them all.
“There’s only one thing I can’t foresee. It’s my intention to keep all the shops, but we need to speak to every landlord.”
Asked whether she planned to expand the business beyond the current 62 stores, Ms Townsend said: “Absolutely.
“I’m really positive about the future.
“I want to stabilise the existing chain first.
“I’m as ambitious as the next girl, but we will do it in a controlled way.”
Ms Townsend was the commercial director of Oxford-based academic bookstores Blackwells for 3½ years. She left that post in spring, 2009, after helping oversee the turnaround of what was a struggling business.
She has since continued providing consultancy services to Blackwells, but this arrangement is coming to an end shortly.
In 2008, she founded Gifted In, a consultancy business that advises retailers on how to develop own-brand products.
She is also a director of the Edward De Bono Trust and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
