Profile: Susanne Given, SuperGroup chief operating officer

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Supergroup’s new chief operating officer Susanne Given’s favourite play is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, but there will be few pauses for thought in her new position.

The fashion retailer’s boss Julian Dunkerton will need Given to hit the ground running when she takes control of operations at the business next month.

Since former chief operating officer Diane Savoury left last May, the retailer has been struggling with growing pains. Distribution issues created by a systems overhaul will wipe £8.8m off its current full-year profits.

“I was being stretched and needed help to run the business,” SuperGroup boss Dunkerton explains honestly.

Fortunately, there are few more experienced people to be taking the reins than Given.

Her CV includes stints at some of retail’s biggest names including Furniture Village, House of Fraser, Homebase, Harrods, TK Maxx and, most recently, John Lewis where she left last month.

Born in Denmark, Given moved to the UK aged 20 on a gap year. An eventful 12 months included working as an assistant to Chancellor Helmut Kohl – the first chancellor of the reunified Germany – during international talks, and she decided to stay in London. “My father has never quite forgiven me for that,” she jokes.

She “fell into retail” with her first job in the sector at Furniture Village, and has not looked back since.

Dunkerton describes Given as a “very bright and logical” individual who will provide the yin to his yang as he looks to complement his flair for product. 

“There is a real job to be done here,” says Given. “It has been a fast-growing company for a while now and Julian has had operational issues which have taken him away from his core talent. The operational side of the business is still formulating itself. It is a business that’s growing very fast and needs to move to a stronger, longer-term foundation.”

Given’s skills will be employed to oversee logistics, sourcing, IT, property and marketing – no small task considering SuperGroup is expanding its business overseas. She will also be charged with marketing one of the hottest brands in fashion – Superdry.

“The marketing side of the business is quite stable, Superdry has performed incredibly well by word of mouth and it has become self-propelling. My job will be to drive that forward over the next two to three years,” Given explains. 

She will live in Cheltenham during the week and remain in London at the weekends in her new position.

Given has seen great change in the consumer environment since she began life in retail in 1993. “Most conventional retailers are finding keeping their core chain profitable and maturing their online business challenging,” she says.

And she believes globalisation and international travel have impacted on where retailers are targeting investment.

While her most recent position was buying director for fashion at John Lewis, it was at TK Maxx where Given’s star really shone.

Working under former boss Paul Sweetenham, Given moved from buying director for home and menswear to managing director in just two years.

She says: “TK Maxx was a vibrant and dynamic environment. Paul was a fantastic role model.”

Sweetenham, John Lewis’s Peter Ruis and Furniture Village founder Peter Harrison join Mohammed Al Fayed on Given’s impressive list of bosses. “I adored Mohammed,” she says. “He is the type of individual you either love or hate but we got on well.”

In time, Given seems destined to join this roll call of celebrated retail figures.