How Farfetch and Browns’ boss is moulding the store of the future

Holli Rogers2

Sipping a ’deconstructed’ cup of tea in a trendy café in Shoreditch, Browns chief executive and owner Farfetch’s chief brand officer Holli Rogers reminisces about the day Farfetch founder Jose Neves offered her the role – and some resistance that accompanied his plans.

“Jose called me. I had never met him before, but he said I’ve got something interesting,” she recalls. That something interesting was Neves’ ambition to buy famous fashion store Browns and to turn it into a ”store of the future” that would change how retail is perceived and experienced.

But Rogers found out very quickly that “a lot of people were really unsure” about the wisdom of changing 50-year-old Browns, founded in 1970 by fashion entrepreneurs Joan and Sydney Burstein. The South Molton Street became a West End retail destination and institution.

Browns is famous for discovering designers such as Alexander McQueen and Christopher Kane and introduced Armani, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren to London.

 

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