Profiles

I graduated with a degree in law, but I’d make a third rate lawyer! Since the age of 15 I have loved the excitement and buzz from the shop floor. In my first company I learnt my views on life and about the relationship a brand can have with its customer base.

I am very proud to have been appointed Marketing Director at the age of 28, but if I could do it again I would want to do it with the wisdom I have now. I have always been ahead of my years - my friends say that I was born aged 10, but that’s not because of my talent but maturity. I try to be insightful and I feel that if you haven’t got anything to say, don’t say it!

For a large part of my career I worked in offline fashion and then more recently in a pure play outfit. Aurora attracted me as I wanted to work in a true multi-channel environment, a strategy that Aurora was already strongly committed to. I also wanted to work for recognised fashion brands like those in the Aurora portfolio, that span the high street and premium markets.

We all need to work together to get things done; hierarchy and title doesn’t mean as much to me anymore. It has always delighted me to recruit. It’s great to discover commonality in vision and I love the jigsaw puzzle of building a team. With new teams, there are penny dropping moments when you hear your team members say things that you are thinking and that’s when you know the team is really coming together.

“I have a pivotal career moment every day”

I’ve learnt that you can’t do it alone and to appreciate there are always people better than you. I’ve learnt to be more open about my weaknesses rather than my strengths to maintain expectations. If I am honest about my abilities, I am more able to include and inspire teams.

“We can only be great at a few things and good at everything else.”

I consider the fact that I am my own worst critic my biggest challenge. I am happy to not always achieve perfection but find it hard to compromise on anything to do with our customers. I strongly believe in my team having a good work life balance as if a team is burnt out then they have not been managed well and I take that as my personal failure.

I do this job because I love it. Although we don’t save lives, we make people look and feel good. I don’t do this just to make money! I believe that if we do things right for the customer, we’ll also make money from it. I love, love, love it when there is laughter in meetings and feel we are so lucky because so many people have jobs they don’t enjoy. I go home and I think about what I have achieved for my customers at the end of every week, and if I have achieved what I set out to do I have the most amazing weekend.

I joined Oasis in 1995 as a student on a 2 week work placement within the CMT Buying team. Towards the end of my experience, I was asked to stay on for an extra 2 weeks, and then another, before being appointed as an administrator on the Product Development team. This was during the time that Oasis was starting to grow and I got my head down and took every opportunity to work hard and learn from everyone around me. I didn’t hesitate to tackle any opportunity presented to me and was soon appointed to Assistant buyer covering a maternity leave.

I feel so privileged to have had the exposure and hands on experience I did, and with a small team of 2 people, was involved in every step of every process, an amazing opportunity to be exposed to all aspects of production which you just don’t get anymore today!

I learnt everything at this stage and interacted with people across all departments from production, Merchandising, Buyng, Design and fabric agents. I would visit the UK factories and deliberately get there early to have time to ask questions and ask to be taken around and find out how everything worked!

The company provides an extensive Learning and Development programme and I went on all training courses available and was promoted further to Supply Manager. This was a huge learning curve for me, from being one member of a small team, to a manager leading 6 people. When the structure of Oasis changed, I was appointed to Head of Production in 2000. The business was very supportive of my continuous development and provided me with a life coach for several months to facilitate the changes in my life and work.

The next big stage in my career was when the group started to acquire other brands, first Coast followed by Karen Millen and Whistles in 2004. Working in a multi-brand environment was very exciting and really appealed to me as I love to learn new things and was fascinated to discover how the different brands operate. It was then a case of determining best practice for all brands under a shared service infrastructure – a great challenge which turned out to be a huge success, maximising many economies of scale (and getting more staff discounts to take advantage of!)

I would say my biggest piece of advice to anyone would be to have the right attitude, be persistent and be honest. The right attitude is key, appreciate what a great opportunity you have been offered and get your head down and work to the best of your ability – that way you can look back and know you have reached your potential. When I started at Oasis I could have been asked to clean out the toilet and I would have done it with a smile on my face! Treat everyone equally but also have a laugh as this is where you spend most of your time.

Its very important to me that all of my team realise how important they are to the business. When the Trims admin or Production admin assistants are away, life becomes hard work! They are the foundation of the department and crucially important to the production process, everyone is of equal value to the business.

In 2005 I became Production Director and have just recently been appointed Karen Millen Supply Chain Director so my career so far has truly climbed from the bottom up and I’ve loved every minute of it (Well nearly……!!). I consider myself very lucky to have been able to work and learn alongside Derek, Mike, Richard and Meg, they are truly inspirational people and the exposure to their knowledge of the retail industry has been invaluable. (I cant wait to see where Aurora takes me next!)