Terry Green’s departure from Tesco was always inevitable, but he held on there for longer than I and many others expected. He’s rubbed plenty of people up the wrong way down the years, but I rather like him - retail needs its larger than life characters and he’s certainly one of them.

Yesterday’s news from French Connection that it had sold the Nicole Farhi brand and was closing most of its US stores seems like a sensible move and allows the company to focus on its core brand.  Nicole Farhi is an iconic brand but I’ve never understood how it fitted within a retail and wholesale business like French Connection, and the answer probably at least partly lay within sentimental reasons, given founder Stephen Marks’ close relationship with Farhi herself. Even though the company is closing stores in the US, it still has the ability to wholesale there.

I’ve only met Marks a few times, but just after I started here I managed to get a rare interview with him, with the help of the then unfamous Mary Portas, whose consultancy was doing some work with French Connection. I can honestly say he was the most difficult interviewee I’ve ever met, with every question being answered with a question - for example, if I asked “Are you happy with this season’s collections?” the answer would be “well what do you think of this season’s collections?”

I liked him though. He’s passionate, utterly committed to his brand and a retailer through and through. But his stubbornness means he’s not the ideal man to run a quoted company with outside shareholders, and also probably makes it harder for him to manage the continual reinvention of the brand which any fashion business needs to do. Having achieved the huge success that it did with FCUK but clung onto the concept for too long, that process has become even harder.

But by streamlining the business and focussing on getting the product right rather than having retail chains all over the world, he’s doing the right things. It’s taking time, but Marks is going in the right direction and if he can get it right French Connection is a brand which definitely has a future.

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