Weekend Interview: Jigsaw CEO Beth Butterwick On Retail Renaissance And U.S. Expansion

This series goes deep with some of the most compelling figures in commercial real estate: the deal-makers, the game-changers, the city-shapers and the larger-than-life personalities who keep CRE interesting.

It would probably be easier to list the fashion retailers that Jigsaw CEO Beth Butterwick has not held senior roles with than those she has. But there is no doubt that via Gap, Marks & Spencer, Bonmarche and Karen Millen, she has arrived at her true love.

Although, Butterwick wasn’t really supposed to become the boss of a premium and well-established fashion brand that, come her arrival, had lost its way. She had been asked to help revive the business by backer and Carphone Warehouse founder David Ross. Meeting him over coffee in late 2019 was enough to convince her it was an opportunity she couldn't pass up. 

She agreed to parachute in as an emergency turnaround consultant. But within a few months of her arrival, the pandemic had struck and some ruthless decisions had to be made to stabilise the business and put it on a steady footing for growth.

Far from operating as a temporary trouble-shooter, instead she not only saw the business through hugely challenging times but by autumn 2021 was the permanent CEO, spearheading a three-year plan that should see it eventually reopen stores in the U.S.

Open and a self-confessed retail rock star, Butterwick told Bisnow about resurrecting a popular fashion brand, pondered why the simple lessons are often the hardest to learn and outlined her plans to hone a business as sharp as its fashions.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Bisnow: You’ve worked in senior positions across a number of high-profile fashion retailers. What are the big learnings you’ve taken from them?

Butterwick: I think the first thing is obvious, but people don't apply it enough: You really need to have a deep-rooted understanding of what your brand stands for. What the sweet spots are, as in its USP and who your customers are. And from there, you can build out your strategy.

It's amazing how businesses don't hone in on that and obsess about it and decide to go off and chase other things, which ultimately can lead to issues. So it's about putting brand purpose for customers first. Once you do that, you can bring your new experiences and create lasting memories for them. Because we're all trying to strive for competitive advantage in a world obsessed with digitisation.

Then, there's a whole piece about leadership now and I think leadership has changed so much over the years. When I grew up at Marks & Spencer, it was all dictatorial, that’s the strategy, do it.

But I think now the best leaders inspire, lead, nurture, measure.

We have to be the ambassadors of values and behaviours now as well as overseeing strategic plans and execution.

That goes for employees that want to work for businesses as well. Younger generations coming through — and I notice this when we are recruiting people — they're not just attracted by a job offer but what a brand stands for. They want to understand what the culture is and its values and the diversity and inclusion, and the culture and then the softer side, extra benefits that's really important to them.

Then I think the final thing is, people come up with ideas and you get so distracted but when I look at best-in-class leaders, they've got a plan, they've got the things that are going to make a difference and deliver and then they absolutely stick to it.

Bisnow: What attracted you to the CEO role at Jigsaw and what did you arrive hoping to achieve?

Butterwick: Well, I've got a real passion for retail. You know, I've been doing it for 30 years. It's my absolute love and if you spoke to my husband it bleeds into my home life and really my home life is my work life.

Jigsaw’s a really wonderful brand. When I started my life at Marks & Spencer on their graduate training scheme, Jigsaw was one of my go-to brands for my work uniform. I wasn't wearing Marks & Spencer in the '90s, I was wearing Jigsaw.

So I've always had this appreciation and love and sort of sentimentality towards the brand so when I was given the opportunity just before Covid it was a wonderful emotional opportunity to come in, to play a part and make a difference.

It was an incredibly strong brand, but going through some difficult times. Jigsaw was always beautiful classic pieces that stood the test of time. I hoped to set out a clear plan and to get rid of the distractions. The distractions were menswear.

We needed to stabilise it again to grow, and that's what we're doing. And of course, we're going to carry on.

Bisnow: And where are you on that journey?

Butterwick: We've made good progress. I mean, in retail it's never all done, that's the thing. So we're on the journey and we were strengthening the product, we've got all our stores as profitable. We're growing the business. We're growing profits.

Our roadmap is more ambitious than that. We've launched online internationally again. That's doing well but we do not have an international footprint and that's something that we want to relaunch in the future and for your readership in the U.S. that will be particularly interesting to them, because the U.S. and Australia is where we would hope to go back. Customers are buying online. America is one of our biggest online markets, internationally speaking.

I'd say we're 25% through our long longer-term plan.

Bisnow: Jigsaw first retrenched and then went back into expansion mode. Can you explain the thinking behind that?

Butterwick: In the UK we were in shopping centres, city centres, regional locations, as an example Blackheath, Dulwich, Muswell Hill or Richmond [affluent London suburbs] and then affluent market towns. Funnily enough, big expensive city centres don't work for us and shopping centres don't work for us, so for us we need to play to our strengths.

It goes back to knowing who your customers are. Heartland customers typically live in regional centres. So the Chiswicks or the Richmonds or affluent market towns like Cheltenham, Ilkley, Harrogate, Beverly, all those kinds of places. So that's where we are, back in those locations. We have gone back into a London location, and we are looking to go back into the centre.

But the difference last time is that we had very, very big formats of 2.5K-3K SF. We're now looking to make a smaller format work much harder. You don't need the breadth of range we had before [because of online]. It’s a curated offer really. I think that's the message.

Bisnow: What do you look for in a store location now and how does that differ from the past?

Butterwick: That's a really good question. Stores are a fundamental part of the Jigsaw story and, more importantly, customer experience. Our customers love going to stores and while online is a significant part of our overall sales mix and has grown since 2019, our product is premium we use the best-quality fabrics and we're famous for that. Our fit is excellent. And our garments have a twist. They're classic with a twist. Therefore, you have to go into a store to touch and feel and try our product. But it's more than that. Our stores are often anchor locations in the community.

Every single store is slightly different. We almost create an environment where you're going into someone's beautiful hotel or your home. They're very cosy and comfy, beautiful furniture, beautiful fixtures and fittings. Gorgeous big and spacious fitting rooms, served by people that really understand the product and often have a very personal connection with their best customers, and can talk to them about ‘I know you've got that. Try this one.’

So, our stores are places where people like to go and dwell, places where they can gain confidence from the people serving them and where they can actually have a lovely, inspiring time and have fun as well. So that's the role of our store and that's what we do.

Bisnow: And the same question in terms of what the store offers? When you visit your stores what do you like/not like to see?

Butterwick: Some of our stores are 25 years old. We've got a real refit programme. So we need to bring some of those older stores up to speed with our modern thinking, so that the collection is showcased appropriately, and the selling environment and the customer experience is one of just beauty and not cluttered and distracting. That's what we need to do. All the stores are profitable, but there are some that need updating.

We also run pop-ups and interestingly we've had more success with [horse event] Badminton or a short weekend pop-up at a fair or event. The role is to make more people aware of Jigsaw because when a brand is 53 years old, and people move away from it and go off and find other brands, sometimes it's more difficult to get them back than it is if you're a brand-new shiny startup. 

The role of a pop-up at a fair is to say: ‘We're here, we should be on your radar. We're relevant. Come back and look at it. We've changed and what you loved about us before is back again.'

Bisnow: What do you look for from landlords when choosing a new location and what could the real estate industry do to make life easier for retailers?

Butterwick: I think in some of the city locations we'd like landlords to, going back to that community thing, it would be great if landlords could think about what they want customers and communities to experience as a whole. Now that's not going to happen unless you've got a landlord that literally covers quite a substantial part of the street or location because typically, they’re little landlords.

But when locations are thriving, even in poorer areas, it's no coincidence that the councils or landlords have really thought about bringing an interesting suite of shops and experiences that get people out on the streets and spending and dwelling in those locations.

Secondly, I think city centres are quite difficult. It might come back to those advising landlords, who need to think about realistic rents. In some locations, there are still too many vacant shops. And that makes it really difficult for those that are there to bring a feeling of getting people out in the streets to shop.

Specifically in the UK, we really need the Chancellor to reverse this international sales tax [the UK government has been under pressure to reinstate sales tax returns for overseas visitors].

It does not make sense, London has gone from No. 2 to No. 9 in the most-visited cities for shopping, and yet we have some of the best brands in the world.

But it doesn't just affect retail it affects hospitality, theatre and the arts. We need to get London back as the No. 2.

We've got locations in St. Pancras, on the King's Road, Kensington, you know, it's not Regent Street but we can measure it [the impact] with footfall.

Bisnow: What is your aim in terms of store numbers? Or do you see ‘success’ for the business in different terms?

Butterwick: We have 46 stores now and we'd like to add about another six or seven locations and we could potentially open those at the end of this year but it might not happen, you never know when all the legals go through.

We did a really big piece of customer search and no surprises, but our customers gravitate, apart from London stores, towards market towns and regional centres.

I just think it's hitting our business plan, it’s growth on the year. It's an improvement in our product performance. It's us going, ‘oh my god, we've got to open more stores, more quickly’.

Essentially, success would be accelerating our three-year plan.

Bisnow: Give us a bold prediction for the rest of the year.

Butterwick: I think this year will be really interesting actually, because we're probably not going to go into recession, but it could be long and shallow, which you could you say it is just as painful, or not quite as painful. So, if you if you look at consumer confidence, which has gone down, it's negative territory.

Even if inflation comes down, prices aren't coming down enough. So there will be a continuation of caution. I think things will get better next year, but I actually don't think they'll start getting better until halfway and they won't get significantly better. 

Bisnow: This is the weekend interview. What is your weekend routine or favourite weekend activity?

Butterwick: I've got three dogs, so if I could come up with my dream weekend it would be walking my dogs, either in Richmond Park in London or Norfolk on the beach, and going out for lunch with my husband and my children. Family time is really important to me.

I also absolutely adore reading all the newspapers at the weekend. I get every single newspaper. I get the digital version in the week and I love the paper versions on the weekend. And I have been known to visit a few shops just to see what's going on.