The appointment of Starbucks’ UK boss to run Clinton Cards is a remarkable appointment, but he has his work cut out

I was out of the office when I saw the announcement that Starbucks’ UK MD Darcy Willson-Rymer is taking over as chief executive of Clintons, and I nearly walked into a lamppost in surprise. We knew, following Nicola’s revelation in Retail Week a couple of weeks ago, that the founding Lewin family was looking beyond its own for a new leader for the business, but Willson-Rymer is a great name to land as a replacement, and a real coup.

While it’s great news for Clinton, the rationale from his point of view is less obvious. Starbucks is one of the world’s great brands and has been really reinvigorated in the UK by Willson-Rymer in his time in charge. Clinton has been going through a slow decline over recent years, is on the watch-list of every landlord, and its only solution to its problems has seemed to be to make the stores even more orange.

The greeting cards market is a very challenging place, with the emergence of low-priced rivals like Card Factory, the supermarkets developing their offers, and personalised online outfits like Moonpig emerging. Fairly or otherwise, the perception has been that Clinton has been relatively easy to take share off in recent years.

What Willson-Rymer will bring to the table is a real understanding of retail environments and brand, and I suspect he will also add a fresh way of thinking to a place where perhaps inevitably there has only been one way of doing things, which has been the Don and Clinton Lewin way.

Of course this appointment follows in the footsteps of Thorntons - an equally challenged high street retailer - appointing Cafe Nero boss Jonathan Hart to lead its turnaround. There’s a lot of logic in both appointments - the coffee shops have taken the high streets of the UK by storm in recent years, and the future for both businesses on the high street probably lies in introducing some leisure elements to the stores. But as Hart is already finding, these reinventions are very hard in retail - we wish them well, but both men have massive tasks ahead of them.