People stories always prove the most popular on the Retail Week website, and there were two big ones yesterday.

People stories always prove the most popular on the Retail Week website, and there were two big ones yesterday.

The bigger of the two was the departure of Comet’s managing director Hugh Harvey, which Gemma revealed exclusively yesterday lunchtime. On a personal note I was sorry to hear that Hugh, who has been a judge of the Retail Week Awards for several years, was on his way. Hugh has been around for a long time, and beneath a quiet and thoughtful exterior actually had a great sense of humour and was a real thinker about retailing.

However it wasn’t a big surprise. Comet is a really tough job, squeezed as it is between the scale of Dixons and the might of the internet, the general retailers and the supermarkets. Harvey’s successor Bob Darke knows the business well and from what I know of him is an outgoing character, a real trader and if nothing else a change at the top will add some impetus to a business which is in very challenging circumstances at the moment.

Someone else who is likely to add some impetus to a struggling retailer is Julia Reynolds, who it was confirmed this morning is replacing Neil Gillis at Blacks. Julia used to run Figleaves and before that was clothing director at Tesco, and is one of the most straightforward yet good fun people in retail; I hadn’t expected her to stick around for long in the rather ‘straight’ atmosphere of N Brown after it took over Figleaves.

Neil Gillis has done a decent job of steadying the Blacks ship and it’s still in business, which is a tribute to his skills as turnaround specialist, even though Blacks’ CVA won the business few friends in the property community. Now the company’s financing has been stabilised the focus needs to be on retailing and Julia is a proper retailer. It’s also good to see a woman taking the helm of a major UK retailer - there aren’t enough of them.

She’ll have her work cut out though. There are simply too many outdoor shops in the UK and the market isn’t big enough for them all. People who are really into their outdoor pursuits don’t rate Blacks and Millets relative to their rivals, and the positioning of the two brands isn’t clear. But with a stable financial footing to start from, I’m sure Julia will waste no time in trying to put things right.