‘Arcadia tycoon Green – from retail’s King Midas to King Canute’

To a younger generation Green is a pantomime villain, his name linked not to retail prowess but to failure – first BHS and this week his fashion empire Arcadia – to greed and to bullying behaviour.

But Green in his pomp was feted in retail, business and wider society for his audacity and buccaneering attitude. 

Many people may have disliked his pugilistic, four-letter style but they still admired, if grudgingly, his ability to pull off bold deals.

“Green’s detractors argue he was never really a retailer but a trader, a financial engineer and ultimately an asset stripper. But he relished retailing”

Bankers knocked on his door to get in on the act. Supporters believed he’d make a better job of running M&S than its management when he attempted to win control of the famous business in 2004.

He was knighted by Labour’s Tony Blair for services to the retail industry and relied upon to splash the most cash and outbid other buyout barons at the annual Retail Trust fundraiser.

He was the driving force behind the creation of the Fashion Retail Academy, backed to this day by the industry’s biggest players as a seedbed for tomorrow’s talent.

David Cameron’s Conservative government called in Green to advise on better procurement; journalists chased him for interviews and happily swapped war stories about how rude he was to them; and consumers flocked through the doors of his Topshop flagship on Oxford Street to grab the latest collections.

“It is a reversal of fortune that would have seemed inconceivable when Green was at the height of his power”

It is abandonment by those customers that has felled Green. And they have abandoned Arcadia’s stable of businesses, including Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis, because amid all the glitz of success, celebrity and wealth he forgot about them, what they wanted and what they thought.

Green’s detractors argue he was never really a retailer but a trader, a financial engineer and ultimately an asset stripper. But he relished retailing. He loved pacing his Oxford Circus store, watching how shoppers behaved. He could create magic, such as through his hugely successful tie-up with Kate Moss in the 2000s.

He could attract some of the biggest names in the business to work alongside him – from Asda saviour Allan Leighton who chaired BHS, to pop icon Beyoncé for the Ivy Park athleisure range, to private equity investor Leonard Green & Partners, which paid £350m for a 25% stake in Topshop in 2012 in anticipation of successful US expansion.

The collapse of an empire

Leonard Green ended up selling its shareholding back to Green last year for 76p. Its hopes had by then been dashed and Arcadia was preparing to launch a CVA. That followed the disgrace of BHS, which after being sold for £1 to chancers – leader Dominic Chappell is now serving time – collapsed and created the subsequent pension scandal, and a slew of stories about Green’s bad behaviour towards colleagues.

It is a reversal of fortune that would have seemed inconceivable when Green was at the height of his power. But, sadly, power and its trappings went to his head and created a false sense of invincibility.

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned my favourite retail maxim, which came from Stuart Rose, a sometime friend and sometime foe of Green: “Look out the window.”

In the end, Green stopped doing that or spent too much time taking in the view from the deck of a yacht or Monaco penthouse rather than over the high street and its changing shoppers.

“Tempting as it may be for some to get out the popcorn and enjoy the theatre of the abrasive tycoon’s demise, it would be better to look at the bigger lessons from his rise and fall”

He failed to invest in his businesses, supremely confident in his ability. He failed to register the scale of fashion’s shift online, pouring scorn on upstart Asos and refusing to sell Topshop product on the site until as recently as last year – even though its presence there would have boosted his top line. He failed to see that his behaviour would turn off many of the shoppers upon whom he depended to spend with him.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this week, Rose, who famously fought off Green’s attempt to seize control of M&S, said: “I’m not one to demonise people. Philip has done some good things in his time and he’s had some difficult situations. I’m sure if he wanted to replay the record he might play it differently himself.”

Green, retail’s King Midas, ended up as King Canute, raging against the tides of change that were sweeping the ground from beneath his feet.

In that, despite in many ways being a one-off, he is not alone. A raft of famous retail names may have been laid low by coronavirus but while that’s what you might find on the death certificates, those retailers, like Arcadia, typically had underlying health conditions. 

Tempting as it may be for some to get out the popcorn and enjoy the theatre of the abrasive tycoon’s demise, it would be better to look at the bigger lessons from his rise and fall.