The Figleaves boss is swapping cup sizes for crampons as she takes on the difficult task of completing outdoor retailer Blacks’ turnaround. Gemma Goldfingle reports

Career history

2008 to 2011 Figleaves chief executive

1999 to 2007 Tesco category director

1996 to 1998 Arcadia senior buyer

Julia Reynolds likes a challenge, and her new role heading up struggling outdoors retailer Blacks Leisure will give her just that.

“I must be mad,” says Reynolds, currently boss at lingerie etailer Figleaves.com, who was appointed to Blacks last week and will take up the role in August. “I don’t like sitting still and there’s something about this job that really attracts me to it.”

Reynolds will take over the retailer when it is still mid-turnaround. When current chief executive Neil Gillis joined in 2007 the retailer was staring into the abyss. He carried out much of the necessary structural work – such as exiting its loss-making surfwear business Sandcity and carrying out a CVA allowing it to shed 89 unprofitable stores – but Blacks is not out of the
woods yet.

Reynolds’ current boss, N Brown chief executive Alan White, believes she has the ability to steer Blacks to dry land. “She obviously thrives on a turnaround situation,” he says. “She’s energetic, driven and full of ideas. She wanted to give herself a big challenge, and she’s got it.”

With the corporate restructuring complete, Blacks set out to look for a retailer – Gillis is a turnaround man but had no previous retail experience prior to joining Blacks – to steer it back into the black.

Headhunter Sam Allen, founder of Sam Allen Associates, who led the search for the new chief executive, said they looked for a strong product person. And she says Reynolds’ early years as a buyer for Arcadia was a “brilliant training ground” in product skills.  Reynolds’ existing role at Figleaves is also a challenge as it remains a loss-making business. She has not been afraid of making changes though, even if it rattled cages.

A source said: “She came in and applied Tesco principles to it [Figleaves]. She radically changed the proposition. It used to be somewhere you bought premium lingerie, now you can buy jeans there – it’s not Asos.”

It was retail giant Tesco where Reynolds made her name though. She played a key part in building the grocer’s fashion business, launching F&F – a feat she cites as her greatest achievement.

“Clothing wasn’t even on the radar
at Tesco. We had a blank page and built it up from nothing. It was great to be part of that,” says Reynolds.

She says the time she spent working for her mentor John Hoerner was the most rewarding. Despite previously claiming her life’s ambition was to
run clothing at Tesco she cut her tenure at the grocer short in 2007, saying at
the time that she’d grown sick of “chest-beating alpha males”.

Reynolds explains: “It was a man’s world at Tesco. I hear things have changed now but at the time it was part of the culture there.”

She feels strongly about women in retail and believes that despite still being in the minority in the boardroom, there is a wave of change. She cites Original Factory Shop chief executive Angela Spindler, White Stuff chief executive Sally Bailey and Whistles boss Jane Shepherdson as examples of strong female leaders. And as the new boss at FTSE 205-listed Blacks, Reynolds is now one of the top ranking women in UK retail.

While she has a tough task ahead of her, Reynolds is brimming with ideas to lift Blacks out of the red.

“It’s seen as a masculine brand but there’s an opportunity to widen its appeal to become more of a family brand,” she says. “There’s a difference between the hard core enthusiast and people who just like getting outdoors and having a good time. We need to serve those people as well.”

And she counts herself as one of those outdoors lovers. When she’s not in the boardroom she’s on the piste. As an avid skier, she has a holiday home in the French Alps, where she tries to squeeze in as many hours on the slopes as possible.

“Sometimes I go just for the weekend,” she says. “I’m the first one on the slopes in the morning. If I could find an excuse to work in a ski resort I would.”

In her new role Reynolds may not have that much time left for skiing. But with her enthusiasm in tow, she is gunning to complete the job of bringing Blacks back into profit as soon as possible – a black run if ever there was one.