In 61 years, River Island founder Bernard Lewis has seen retail go through it all. He talks to Lisa Berwin about success, surviving the downturn and why he’s backing UK retail

A single shop made of corrugated iron and old timber on a bomb site might not be the most promising foundation on which to build a high street young-fashion powerhouse.

But 61 years later, that shop in north London’s Holloway has blossomed into one of the UK’s most enduring and consistently successful retail businesses.

Bernard Lewis was the man who set up that store and after six decades he still chairs the business that has become known as River Island. And while he is a man who normally keeps his counsel, this week he has broken his silence to speak out in support of Retail Week’s Backing UK Retail campaign. “The retail industry in this country is innovative, socially conscious and responsible and a credit to the country,” he says.

Known by his colleagues as Mr Bernard, at 82 he still works seven days a week as chairman of River Island and during his career the face of retail has changed beyond recognition. He recalls the industry he entered after leaving the Royal Air Force at 21 as “another civilisation”.

At present, along with most retailers, River Island is facing one of the most difficult trading periods in history. When asked how the present crisis compares with other downturns Lewis has seen, he admits he thinks this one is the worst.

“In the early 1970s when there was a financial crisis, it was not as severe as this,” Lewis says. “Previously it was the small banks in potential trouble but this time it is the worldwide banking systems and the banks themselves – even the big ones – don’t know how bad it is. In the past 10 years the financial system has become more sophisticated and in my view has got out of hand.”

River Island is protected in part by its more resilient younger customer base and Lewis says it is still busy. “I went into the malls last Saturday and they were busy – not just us. You can go around the shops and think: what recession? There is simply no evidence of it, but if you read the papers there is. So I think we have a peculiar position going on.” For retailers facing trouble he says: “The individual retailer can do nothing but try and run his own business.”

The story of River Island shows just how successful that approach can be. Lewis’s ability throughout his career to stay in touch with modern retail and its progression is what has brought him and his family the success and longevity that has evaded many of his competitors over the years.

In the late 1950s, when his 15-store, London-based chain was called Lewis Separates, he was one of very few to take his chain national.

His first stores outside London (numbers 16 and 17 he recalls) were opened in Hull and Glasgow. There were only a handful of other national chains at the time, including Dorothy Perkins, Jax and Scotch Wool & Hosiery.

Lewis gave his business its first real makeover in the mid-1960s when the chain changed its name to Chelsea Girl. River Island was adopted in 1988 when, Lewis says, it was felt “a totally new approach” was needed to carry on appealing to customers.

He says the name change came as part of a fashion retail trend towards generic fascias, such as Topshop and Next. The River Island name was the idea of Lewis’s son Leonard, who was chief executive at the time. “One of his ideas was to call it Oyster Island, why he chose River I don’t know,” says Lewis.

The name change went hand in hand with other modifications. “We enhanced the whole visual approach, the shopfitting and design,” says Lewis. “There was less emphasis on price. Chelsea Girl was younger and there was more emphasis on the price.”

The retailer also made its fashion design more professional. Today, River Island has a design room of more than 70 people and that is one of the elements that the business prides itself on.

What keeps the young-fashion chain firmly on the pulse of the high street, which he refers to as the high road, and of today’s young shoppers, is the people River Island employs, says Lewis. “We have very good quality people, we work hard at it,” he explains.
“We are out there all the time, on the high roads all over the world – looking at the clothes certainly, but not just the clothes. It is the clothes and the image that you present. You create a brand and everything
is part of it.”

He says that being a family business has helped River Island through the inevitable ups and downs. “There is no internal politics with us, a decision is taken and that is it,” he says.

Lewis is proud that many within the business are long serving. Chief executive Richard Bradbury has 20 years under his belt, director of womenswear Farida Kaikobad started at 17 as the youngest member of the buying floor and Lewis’s wife, Vanessa, started working for the retailer 39 years ago and now heads the merchandising team.

The retailer’s success has helped the Lewis family to become one of the richest in Britain. Including other interests such as hotels and property, the family is estimated to be worth about£1.6bn. The most recent figures filed for the Lewis Trust Group showed profits for River Island fell from£157m to£152.8m in 2007. Sales continued to climb, however, rising 8.5 per cent to£727m for the year.

River Island’s story is representative of UK retail, which has also constantly changed to ensure continued consumer appeal.

Lewis cites the relationship between suppliers and retailers as one of the most significant shifts he has seen and one that exemplifies what makes the stores sector so vital – not just in the UK, but on an international level.

“I think the retail industry is a remarkable one worldwide,” he says. “It is so sophisticated nowadays and to a large extent it develops its own products.
If you look back 50 years it wasn’t like that – producers showed retailers their goods and they bought it.

“It’s the other way round now. Retailers are the innovators, in touch with the people, and they get in touch with suppliers and tell them what is required. Without retail, manufacturing could not exist in the way it is today.”

Retail’s trailblazing progress and high visibility makes it inevitable, he says, that it should attract so much press attention – often bad. “Everybody sees retail. Some of the big retail names are the most recognisable names in people’s minds.”

He highlights the latest Primark supplier scandal, which broke just a few days before the interview, as a case in point. “Primark is getting the blame, not the factory so much,” he says.

“If they hung it purely on the manufacturer, it is an unknown name. They focus on the name they know, the same as if a celebrity is on a beach doing something, it is newsworthy.”

He is similarly sanguine about some of the retail collapses that have accompanied the downturn. He finds the outpouring of public affection for Woolworths surprising and sees the failure of the variety store group as representative of a transformation on the UK high street.

“You have a lot of the shopping done now in the malls. There is a complete revolution in retail from the point of view of the public,” says Lewis. And that is no bad thing he believes. “If you think about it, on the high roads you get small and peculiar sized shops. Take Oxford Street. It is hard to get a decent unit there and some of them are ramshackle affairs. Malls build premises on the whole to allow retailers to get a decent amount of product out in decent-sized premises.”

Another, more recent, revolution of which Lewis is also a fan is the move towards online shopping – even though he would never have predicted it.

“I don’t think I would have thought, for clothing, that it would have been as acceptable as I now see it is,” he admits. “What is interesting is that it is fun and you wouldn’t have thought so. The fun aspect is going to get better as the technology improves. Envisage the picture you get on the screen now, but the picture you get in 10 years time – what is that going to be? A hologram?”

Lewis has shared the fruits of his own success through heavy involvement in charity work, and the Lewis Trust has given millions of pound over the years to good causes. In the last New Year Honours list, Lewis was awarded an OBE for his services to charity.

He hopes that the business continues as a family affair but concedes that it is out of his hands. “If the family want to do it, it is a lovely life, but if they want to do something else it is up to them,” he says. With one of his sons, Sam, 24, now on the buying floor and two of his other sons on the board he is hopeful that is the way it will go.

Keeping businesses moving forward all the time, he says, will also be key to survival. “In retail you cannot stick in the mud. You see what happens. People who fall behind, like Woolworths, are not around for long.”

And as, arguably, the longest serving person in retail, Mr Bernard above anyone else should know.