My Story

After 30 years in Asia and 25 years working in retail and the consumer markets I started my "own shop".

Having worked in and with private and publicly held businesses a few things are clear to me:

• It is very, very hard to make long-run decisions when a business's horizons are focused on quarterly results

• As a business leader asking yourself the question "what would I do if it were my money" is always useful

• Sitting across the table from someone who's money it ACTUALLY is that you are suggesting they invest imbues a sense of far, far greater responsibility and accountability than an annual budgeting process with a corporate bureaucracy

• Bureaucracy kills entrepreneurialism - if you give someone a job to do don't be surprised if they do it, expand it and then ask for a team to do more of it. In this way well-intentioned bureaucracies can grow and strangle businesses

• Consultants can often parachute into a business then exfil out again with little or no ownership of the results of their recommendations

• Entrepreneurs and investors are the life-blood of our economies

• Equitable partnerships are key for long term success. Zero-sum relationships won't last and businesses built on them are fragile.

I started my own business in order to work with businesses, people and projects that are consistent with the beliefs and values these experiences have left me with:

• Long term vision and commitment to a business is vital

• Nimble, fact-based, entrepreneurial thinking and decision making is superior to bureaucracies and management by committees

• The private markets are the best environment to effect real transformative change to a business in a reasonable amount of time & if that's not possible then that mindset needs to be deployed as far as possible

• Fair & mutually beneficial partnerships with like-minded people and organisations are critical

• Consultants work best when they are held accountable & have "skin in the game". 

This is my ethos. I am here to work with brands & investors in fashion & sportswear retail to build great brands for the long-run: brands and business all the stakeholders can be proud of and rely upon.

The Story of the Logo

My logo was developed from a sketch I drew when I was being interviewed for Business Development Director at Specsavers back in 2003. The interviewer, a friend and mentor now sadly lost to this world, asked me why, when he had candidates who were M&A consultants, corporate finance experts, he should give the job to a retailer with an MBA in M&A. My answer was that whilst these other candidates had deep expertise in one side of the deal ie identification & assessment, acquisition and financing or post-acquisition integration I had a good working knowledge of the process AND the operational expertise to own the overall journey from start to end. I drew that chart with the y axis being level of engagement/ownership and the x axis being time. The central line is the "deal" and the chart lines are different parties. The straight line being yours truly. Well, it worked and so set me on a different and exciting career path. Over the years I have come to realise it was over simplistic, probably not fair on my competition but the principle remains true and it did get me the job!

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