Sally Bailey, White Stuff: The right stuff

If White Stuff chief executive Sally Bailey had to describe herself as an animal it would be a lioness. “I am very protective of my cubs, I love bathing in the sun, but when I need to I can go really fast,” she explains.

The keen traveller and animal lover – she would have become a zookeeper if she hadn’t fallen into retail – has proved those credentials in the past five years at the helm of White Stuff.

Bailey has a stellar CV – despite not knowing what she wanted to do after completing a history degree. However, she was not first in mind for the chief executive job at White Stuff, which began life when founders George Treves and Sean Thomas started selling t-shirts out of a van in the Alps.
Having spent five years at Topshop working with a dream team that included Jane Shepherdson, Michael Sharp and Karyn Fenn and after taking a year off to travel with her husband, she was asked if she knew anyone suitable for the role.

“They assumed the business was too small and the salary too low for me,” she says, but she went to look at the shops anyway. “I thought it was quite interesting and there was a lot I could do with it,” she says.

She expressed an interest in the brand popular with affluent yummy mummies. “I knew I didn’t want to go back to corporate land because I am so not a corporate person,” she says. “I could afford to make a mistake or just see how it went.”

Bailey knew she’d found her calling when she joined Topshop. “Working at Topshop was like coming home, I absolutely loved it,” she says.
When Arcadia bought the struggling Sears womenswear businesses in 1999, including Miss Selfridge, Wallis and Warehouse, Bailey was drafted in to Miss Selfridge as brand director and returned it to profitability within three years. It was her experience at Topshop that helped her both achieve that and helped her add structure to White Stuff. She says it was an interesting change after coming from Arcadia, “where there was a department for wiping your bottom”.

“All I did was take a small family company to become a medium-sized teenage company. There were growing pains and anyone you talk to at White Stuff in the past five years will say there has been so much change and there will be masses of change next year because there is so much opportunity.”

Bailey’s influence is felt in White Stuff’s tongue in cheek marketing campaigns, most recently with character Cyril the Squirrel adding a touch of Bailey’s infectious sense of fun.

However, underneath the pithy asides there lurks a keen retail business sense. Despite the business’s stellar performance – with retail sales up 35 per cent on the year for the six months to the end of October and home shopping sales up 83 per cent – Bailey says White Stuff is not immune from the downturn. “We are going to be hit in some way at some point because this is the worst banking situation in my lifetime and some of our customers do either work in the City or their partners work in the City,” she says.

It was the banking crisis that put paid to plans by Treves and Thomas to sell a minority stake in the business, she says. “We have always been self-funded and one of the things we talked about doing for the evolution and maturity of the brand was to work a bit closer with the financial community, but we haven’t had to have a close relationship with them because we have money in the bank.”

A strategic review began last January. Then “the world started changing”. Bailey says it has turned out to be the “toughest market in living memory”. Now, she is focusing on expanding ranges to include footwear and nightwear and intends to increase both UK store numbers and international wholesale accounts.

The 55-store retailer plans to increase its portfolio to 80 in the next three years and will open further wholesale accounts in Ireland and Norway, as well as debut in Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

So when will the business Bailey has nurtured become fully grown?

“I don’t know and I don’t know if I want to be fully grown either,” she says. “I think maturing is good and I think we are maturing. We are learning all the time, but we do have fun while we are doing it. I have found out more every year about what I don’t know and that is healthy.”

Bailey’s wild side
Age: 42
Lives: Wandsworth, but escapes to Dartmoor when possible
Family: married, with two spaniels
Interests: animals, travel, eating and drinking, walking

CAREER HISTORY
2004-present: chief executive, White Stuff
2004-05: chief operating officer, White Stuff
1999-2003: brand director, Miss Selfridge
1995-99: various roles, latterly merchandise director, Topshop
1990-94: various roles, latterly merchandise manager, Freemans
1990: assistant merchandiser, River Island
1998-89: merchandise distribution assistant, Debenhams