Profile: Steven Cohen, chief executive, Blue Inc

Blue Inc chief executive Steven Cohen has plenty of reasons to be cheerful this Christmas. He predicts a sales boom over the period and his wife is due to give birth to their fourth child on Christmas Day.

“It’ll be a toss-up where I’ll be – the delivery room or the shopfloor,” jokes Cohen, who last week revealed a 28% jump in EBITDA to £3.7m for 2011 on sales up 41% to £79m.

Cohen is no stranger to the shopfloor. He describes himself as a hands-on boss who is “focused on detail” and he visits one of his stores each week.

His approach has made Blue Inc one of retail’s success stories over the past five years. While many have fallen during the downturn, Blue Inc has prospered and increased store numbers from 50 in 2006 to 200 today.

“Post-credit crunch it was a good place to be,” he says. Because the retailer has a young shopper base without mortgages, spending was not hit in the same way as it was at some retailers.

Cohen used the crash as an opportunity. He has benefited from more advantageous leases since Lehman’s collapsed and was there to pick up the pieces when rivals floundered.

Blue Inc snapped up Officers Club out of administration in March last year and bought 20 stores from collapsed jeans chain D2.

Cohen has been at the helm of Blue Inc since acquiring it through his Marlow Retail investment vehicle in 2006. At the time, the 100-year-old retailer was still a family business, owned by the Levy family, including Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy.

“When I was negotiating to buy Blue Inc, he was trying to buy [Tottenham midfielder] Edgar Davids. I think he may have been more focused on the Davids deal,” jokes Cohen.

Perhaps that’s why he got Blue Inc for a seeming snip: the deal was understood to have valued the retailer at less than £5m. Cohen says it was breaking even, but he saw the potential for growth.

“At the time, Officers Club were the big boys and Blue Inc were minnows. They [Officers Club] had 200 shops and a price tag of about £50m,” he says. “We wanted a smaller platform with significant growth opportunities. Blue Inc fitted the bill perfectly.”

Prior to buying Blue Inc, Cohen was chief executive of sportswear retailer First Sport and before that did a stint at furniture retailer Courts as operations director, but the Cambridge graduate spent his earlier career in banking.

His financial background has helped him throughout his retail career. Cohen is eager to point out that Blue Inc’s rapid expansion has been funded by equity, not debt. “We believe in good corporate governance,” he says.

Along the journey, Blue Inc has picked up high-profile backers including billionaire investors the Reuben brothers, and former Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose is now chairman.

The heavyweight boardroom has inevitably led to float speculation, and although Cohen concedes the line-up makes Blue Inc “eminently backable”, he says he is in no rush to join the stock market.

He says: “We’re considering [a float] to crystallise value for our shareholders, but it’s not something we’re in a hurry to do.”

In the meantime, Blue Inc is focused on growth. Cohen believes there is potential for 250 Blue Inc stores in the UK and can see scope to expand Officers Club. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Cohen has already pushed the button on international expansion, focusing on Eastern Europe and Asia. He also sees scope to develop own-brand Twisted Soul through wholesaling.

However, not all has been rosy at Blue Inc. The retailer was hit hard in last year’s riots.

Cohen says: “We were one of the top five most rioted companies, only behind the likes of JD. It’s possibly some kind of endorsement.”

However, Cohen is committed to easing youth unemployment and has created more than 2,000 jobs for people aged 16 to 30 over the past few years.

Outside of the office, Cohen is a keen waterskier, and often hits the waves in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Under his leadership, Blue Inc seems to be progressing at speed too.