River Island: Evolving Entrepreneurship

LONDON, United Kingdom — The Lewis family began their clothing business by selling knitting wool alongside fruit and vegetables on a market stool in a Blitz-damaged North London in 1948. As the first fashion retailer in the UK to target the teenage market, and one of the first fashion chains to deal with global garment suppliers directly, the family has a history of innovation across three brands: Lewis Separates, Chelsea Girl and River Island, the last of which was founded in 1988. Today, the River Island retail brand has a network of over 300 stores, 40 of which are located overseas in Continental Europe, the Middle East and Australia.

The driving theme of this more than 60 year history is a culture of entrepreneurship and a commitment to innovation, making River Island a market leader at home and abroad. The brand’s near-900 head-office employees work on an expansive open-plan site, which includes a mocked up store, in-house production capabilities, design, buying, merchandising, marketing, operations and digital teams. The space is purposefully designed to foster the exchange of ideas between individuals — from all areas and levels of the organisation.

BoF sat down with chief executive Ben Lewis to learn more.

How would you define River Island’s DNA today?

It’s a family business, and I think that helps in terms of how we run the business, how we plan the business and the culture of the business. We can think long term and make decisions that are right for the business in terms of its commercial sustainability and growth. At the same time we are very happy to experiment; in fact we see it as a key part of our DNA to try new things. We’re not frightened of experimentation, and follow very much a test and learn approach. That’s really been a theme that’s run through the businesses — right from the start, from the late 1940s and early 1950s. We don’t have all the answers, but what we have is initiative, we have energy, we have creativity and we apply those to find our customer.

We also value creativity throughout the whole business, and when I say throughout the whole business, I mean not just in terms of the all the way through the levels of management, which is absolutely true, but also across all functions as well.

How have you maintained the culture of entrepreneurship as the business has expanded globally?

I think it’s maintained because it doesn’t matter if you are a senior director or you just joined five minutes ago, everyone comes into contact with each other. There is always an attitude of how can we do it better? How can we improve it?

Our business over the years has expanded by taking many, many small steps. It has been a constant process of iterative growth — trying something, discarding the things that haven’t worked, and doing more of the things that have worked. That’s the spirit of a start-up, the spirit of being entrepreneurial. I think it runs through the veins of everyone that joins the business even if they have been here for a relatively short period of time; it’s just in the culture. It’s a culture where people feel they can air their opinions and their ideas, and know that those ideas are welcome and people are rewarded for their opinions.

We’re curious, we’re very inquisitive; we work at a low level of detail and are always encouraging people to come up with ideas and solutions to help to grow the business or to improve the business. There’s great teamwork at River Island. People take responsibility for not just finding the problems that need solving, but also coming up with solutions, and using their own initiative. Our leadership culture is not about issuing instructions; it's about encouraging thinking, enabling people to come up with their own answers, so it's a more of a questioning approach.

How is this reflected in the drivers you look to for future growth?

Of course the big themes for us at the moment are omni-channel, in particular within the UK and markets that are close to home, such as Continental Europe. I see lots of growth in terms of developing our business through multiple channels in new markets. Then of course there is also product-driven expansion. We started as a womenswear only business, added menswear 30 years ago now, kidswear about five years ago and babywear about one year ago. So we’re constantly looking for ways to expand our width of product, which then allows us of course to service our customers even better.

We have a very strong culture of trading. What I mean by that is we have a very clear idea, as we start our product development, of what we think the River Island take on fashion is going to be for a season. But once you put that in front of the customers they will have their own view. We recognise the fashion business is a whole sequence and series of experiments, where you are trying a new design and if the customers like it you have to have to have the ability to turn the tap on and get more of it. Likewise, you have to know when to turn the tap off if they don’t like it.

How have you ensured that the business evolves with the market, in terms of both operational strategy and branding?

Experimentation and innovation — I mean right from the start; opening the first clothes shop was an experiment at the time, the market for ready-made clothes was only just opening up — it was a big financial risk for us. The design of the first shop was an experiment; we innovated with the window display using wire formed bust shapes for the tops, which was new at the time. We were very, very early when we took design in-house; I think we only had about three or four shops. We were perhaps the only small retailer with a few shops that actually had its own design function and then its own production. So that was an experiment, which also worked.

We’re one of the first businesses that started to source directly from Hong Kong and from Asia in generally. Virtually all other retailers relied on supply importers and agents to do so. We went directly to factories and did that very early on in the opening up of the Asian markets. And, I think perhaps more in the public eye, is the change from Lewis Separates, which was the name above the door in the early stage of the company, to Chelsea Girl. At a time when the 1960s fashion boutique was really taking customers in their youth, a teenage market was really opening up. We took those ideas, which were only really seen around Kings Road and Carnaby Street and spread them nationally. So, Chelsea Girl was the first national chain of 1960s fashion boutiques.

Looking to the future what excites you most about River Island’s potential?

You’ve got to have something to say in fashion. It’s a very crowded market; people don’t need clothes they’ve got to want clothes, it’s very, very important as far as the River Island brand is concerned that we are offering a new take on fashion. We’re constantly pushing the envelope as far as the design content is concerned, and design doesn’t just mean the style, it means fit, quality, everything. We’ve got product and a brand reputation that is highly desirable in many places around the world. We ship to about 120 countries, through our primary website and through dedicated international websites in France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Australia and the US and we have 40 overseas outlets in the form of stores, franchises and wholesale partnerships. Out of that we have about eight key markets. I think the business is in a great shape, what really excites me now, is that we are of a size that we are able to scale the business very, very effectively.