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Photo: Jeff Kirk |
Once upon a time, it was possible for Canada’s deepest-rooted retailer to rightfully boast “it’s hard not to think of the Bay.”
But that was then. In the years since, everything from niche boutiques to big-box discounters have pushed department stores further up the endangered species list. Simpson’s disappeared in 1991. Woodward’s followed suit two years later. Eaton’s declared bankruptcy in 1999 and went to the great clearance sale in the sky in 2002. The Bay endures, but remains widely perceived as the lone dinosaur to survive the crunch. How can the moribund icon refit, reinvent and revitalize itself to regain status as a go-to shopping destination?
Enter Bonnie Brooks. Last August, HBC president and CEO Jeffrey Sherman tapped Brooks to lead the 94-store chain. Announcing her appointment as president and CEO of the Bay, Sherman enthused that Brooks would “elevate the Bay to a new position within the Canadian retail landscape; one in which the Bay will be a premiere department store experience with better brands and service.” It’s a tall order, especially given the turbulent economic climate, but one for which Brooks seems particularly skilled.
Brooks began her career in London, England in the early 1970s, as a salesgirl at chic Biba boutique. Returning to Canada, she worked her way up the retail ladder, progressing from stylist and copywriter at Fairweather to director of marketing and, ultimately, executive VP, at Holt Renfrew. In 1994, Brooks began a two-year stint as editor of Flare, subsequently returning to Holt’s. Her biggest, boldest move came in 1997, when she decamped to Hong Kong to serve as merchandising and marketing VP for the massive, and severely outmoded, Asian department store chain Lane Crawford. Eventually rising to president of the 500-store network, Brooks transformed the sleeping giant into a thriving retail trendsetter by securing the rights to a spectrum of coveted brands, including Jimmy Choo, Marc Jacobs and Stella McCartney. After a decade of escalating success at Lane Crawford, Brooks was eager to come home, and considered Sherman’s offer “too compelling to pass up.” Recently, just seven months into her role, Brooks sat down with Marketing executive publisher and editor-in-chief Christopher Loudon to discuss her strategy for getting everyone thinking of the Bay anew.
MARKETING: When your appointment was an-nounced last summer, your stated desire was to “transform the Bay from its existing format to world class.” Could you expand on that vision?
BONNIE BROOKS: That’s the way it was quoted in the paper, but I think what I actually said was it would be a real honour and privilege to come back to Canada to head up such an unbelievable institution as the Bay, because I feel the Bay has one of the most exciting heritages in the world. I’m not sure if you know this, but it is the oldest company in the world and once owned one-twelfth of the world’s land, so it is a remarkable history. I remember the Bay as being an incredible department store. It was exciting and full of newness, launching all the key brands and running incredible events and promotions. I’m not sure today’s customer would necessarily remember it that way or think of it in that way. Being world class means being thought of in the same space as Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Printemps, Harrod’s. There are only a handful of world-class department stores, and the Bay deserves to be in that space.
MARKETING: Since the time of your announcement, the economy has turned upside-down. Has that altered your vision?
BB: Absolutely not, [but] it means we will have to be more creative, and have to do more with less. That is actually proving to be an even more fun challenge because it means we’re really stretching the minds of all the internal people who are working closely on the project as well as the external people who are helping us to say, ‘you know what? We actually don’t have the funds required to make major changes, so we will change the feeling people have about the Bay with limited funds.’
MARKETING: You’ve spent the past decade in Asia. How did that experience alter and/or enhance your understanding of the retail field, and which lessons do you think are transferable to your current challenge?
BB: The department store I joined in 1997 was 150 years old and had been started by two men from Scotland, Lane and Crawford. Lane Crawford was started on the wharf in Hong Kong, mainly as a tailor for ship uniforms and chandlery. So when I joined Lane Crawford it was a very old company. At one time it had been a grand ol’ dame, but had become a little dusty and needed re-branding and repositioning. It took several years, but it is now a completely transformed company, and we had increases of more than 20 per cent each year over the past seven years. We substantially changed the business model. We did that by not just working on Lane Crawford as a department store. We brought a number of brands to Asia that required distribution [beyond] what we could provide at Lane Crawford. So we set up three different distribution companies: one for shoes and accessories, one for younger, fast-moving fashion and one for designers. We had everyone from Stella McCartney to Juicy Couture, Club Monaco, Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo. We had over 500 stores, and building the brand relationships as a franchise partner or distribution partner was very valuable because I believe we have a similar situation in Canada, where a number of the brands you want to bring to Canada don’t have operations here. It means you learn the skills of brand stewardship, [which is] all-encompassing. When you are the brand’s representative for the country you are responsible for all aspects of marketing, including pricing, positioning, the people who are going to sell the brand, the overall look and feel the brand is going to have to the customers and the brand’s actual performance, so it is a different responsibility than being a buyer and seller. The world is changing in terms of what brands require from their retail partners.
MARKETING: So much of your history is tied to the fashion industry. How do you expand that skill base to embrace the myriad categories at the Bay?
BB: I had the same categories at Lane Crawford. We even had freestanding home stores. We sold everything from rugs to soap to books. But it was done in a very modern, very edited format. The size of stores we have at the Bay require a larger presentation and a larger number of brands, but the Bay still requires a very strong edit. I think that’s what I bring to the company—a focus on a specific customer, [and] I will be doing a lot of editing, reducing the number of brands we carry and being more succinct with a full assortment of the brands we do carry.
MARKETING: For years there has been a general perception that department stores are dinosaurs and the department store model is unwieldy. How do you think you can change that perception?
BB: We need to make sure we’re the headquarters for the businesses that we choose to be in and that we have exciting assortments. One of the biggest challenges is to get on [consumers’] calendar as one of their first stops.
MARKETING: And how do you achieve that?
BB: Through marketing and having the right brands.
MARKETING: You spoke of a “specific customer” you have in mind. Can you describe that person?
BB: I can’t talk about her yet—or him! It’s a he and she. What I find interesting is there’s a big difference in the letters I get from male customers versus female customers. The letters I receive are generally of the complaint nature. Either they’re complaining about a service situation or a product situation. But in the letters I receive from female customers they round out complete solutions, suggesting how they would [correct the problem]. Men just make a complaint and want someone to answer them within 24 hours.
MARKETING: When all of your changes and improvements are completed, what impression do you want a customer to have as soon as they walk in the door?
BB: I’ll tell you what. When we’re ready, I’m going to let you walk into the store and then tell me what feeling you get. Then I’ll know! Actually, I don’t want to say just yet, but I do want to make some changes inside the stores. My dream is for people to have a much different in-store experience in the fall than they do today. It is a major challenge.
MARKETING: It’s my opinion that the retailers who will best survive the current economic downturn are those that offer the best customer service. Would you agree?
BB: Absolutely.
MARKETING: But department stores aren’t generally celebrated for the superiority of their customer service. What can you do to improve that?
BB: We’ve made some changes already. We have an executive who has been with the company for many years [and has worked] in various divisions. Now she is responsible for all stores. It’s the first time we’ve had a woman responsible for all the stores, and she’s making major changes to the service. We’ve already seen big changes in customer reaction. I’m receiving many positive letters, and people are phoning to tell me about their incredible store experiences. Also, the level of enthusiasm among the Bay team about working with the customers has been a wonderful surprise to me. There are really three things [that need to be addressed]. There is the amount of staff [on the sales floor], there is the absolute intelligence they have about the products and there is their service approach. We can do something about product knowledge and we’re working on that. We can also do something about their service approach. We may not be able to do a lot about the amount of staff, so we’re going to have to be very clever about where we place people. That’s all part of the roll-up-your-sleeves analysis we’re doing at the moment. That’s where the bulk of that work is.
MARKETING: A store like the Bay certainly serves a dual audience, but the primary customer is still female. Given the depth and breadth of your experience, how would you say the female consumer has evolved over the past quarter-century?
BB: I think it’s fair to say customers are now much more sophisticated at a much earlier age, and that’s because of media. Women are becoming more brand loyal, yet at the same time more experimental. [They are] much more savvy to products and are developing a style much earlier than in my generation. I remember when Seventeen magazine was launch in the mid-sixties. It was the first young fashion magazine. Then Miss Chatelaine [which evolved into Flare in 1979] was launched in Canada. Now there must be 100 fashion titles for [younger readers] to select from, plus TV, plus the Internet. So, generally the availability of information has exploded over the past 25 years, and it encourages young people to be individualistic and make their own statement.
MARKETING: So, if you had to sum up your plans in just one word?
BB: My new word for the Bay is “authenticity.” Authenticity is incredibly important to me. What I mean by authenticity is knowing how to edit; knowing what is right. It’s different from heritage, it’s different from tradition and it’s not about history. Authenticity is finding the right part of the story. I’m reminded of [U.S. retailing guru] Mickey Drexler [who was the driving force behind the revitalization of The Gap and is now leading an equally bold, and equally successful, makeover of J. Crew]. The thing I loved about Mickey when he was at The Gap was he was so authentic. He knew the difference between a very un-cool white t-shirt and a totally cool white t-shirt. It wasn’t too tight, it wasn’t too big, it had the right stitching around the neck, it had the right sleeves and it was the right cut. I think he’s doing the exact same thing at J. Crew. He knows how to make authentic clothes—the kind of clothes people with an eye for detail can understand. He knows the difference between bad corduroy and good corduroy, and understands the cut and the shape and the fit. That’s exactly what I’m working on here at the Bay. I already believe that in many departments you can trust the Bay’s eye. But we will have one of the best edits in the world of the leading brands.
HBC TIMELINE
1670 – HBC founded when King Charles II grants a group of investors a Royal Charter allowing them a monopoly to trade fur in the Hudson Bay drainage basin
1774 – first inland post built near Saskatchewan River
1881 – first HBC mail order catalogue produced
1907 – establishes wholesale department to sell liquor, tobacco, coffee, tea, confectionery and blankets
1913 – opens new modern department stores in Calgary and Edmonton
1960 – arrives in Eastern Canada through acquisition of Henry Morgan & Co.
1964 – introduces the Bay banner, converting its retail stores to the new brand
1978 – acquires Simpson’s, which eventually closes in 1991
1978 – acquires Zellers, maintains it as a subsidiary
1993 – acquires Woodward’s and converts most of its locations to Bay or Zellers stores
2006 – HBC is acquired by American businessman Jerry Zucker, who takes it private, thus ending 336 years as a publicly-traded company
2008 – after Zucker’s death, the company is sold to NRDC Equity Partners
