It’s all change at John Lewis since seasoned retail chief Peter Ruis returned to the division retailer group as govt director 18 months in the past. John Lewis had been grappling with heavy losses, retailer closures and falling demand. Ruis has been tasked with reviving the retailer’s fortunes, and one side of that is to construct up his senior crew.
Most not too long ago, it appointed former Marks & Spencer advertising and marketing director Anna Braithwaite as chief buyer officer on 17 June. She has been a key determine behind M&S’s efforts to modernise the model picture and showcase its improved model credentials, serving to kind partnerships with celebrities akin to Sienna Miller.
In her new position at John Lewis, which begins in October, Braithwaite joins a refreshed management crew below Ruis: Vikki Kavanagh, former managing director of Web-A-Porter and Mr Porter, joined as chief business officer in April 2025, following Rachel Morgans, former Topman shopping for director, who was employed as style director in June 2024.
Below the brand new management, there are early indicators of business success as John Lewis gross sales elevated 2.4% 12 months on 12 months within the 12 weeks to 27 April 2025, outperforming the full style market, which grew by 1.4%, Kantar information exhibits. The adopted improved efficiency throughout the John Lewis Partnership, which additionally consists of Waitrose, with revenue earlier than tax up 73% to £97m within the 12 months to 25 January 2025. Gross sales elevated 3% to £12.8bn pushed by “investments in high quality merchandise, worth and repair”.
Nevertheless, regardless of its progress, John Lewis has extra work to do to meet up with excessive road rival Marks & Spencer, which has improved its style credentials and gained again prospects lately. GlobalData estimated that M&S grew its UK clothes market share from 4.9% in 2023 to five.2% in 2024 whereas John Lewis’s has remained flat at 1.6% since 2019. Ruis beforehand stated John Lewis has the potential to double its style enterprise.
John Lewis And/Or summer time 25
One trade govt thinks John Lewis must “get its identification proper” to compete with M&S: “As soon as the product improves, will probably be on a corrective course – John Lewis must undergo the cycle of re-educating the shoppers about why they exist and what their proposition or USP is.”
For model companions, retailer presence in John Lewis “affords an necessary path to market”, which is totally different to being stocked by different retailers’ marketplaces, stated one style guide. He argued that John Lewis must double down on its division retailer mannequin to distinguish itself from rivals akin to M&S, which primarily works with third-party manufacturers by way of its web site.
John Lewis’s turnaround efforts are centred on bringing the enterprise again to its retail roots, by investing in customer support and retailer expertise and sharpening its style providing.
The retailer is “not off course”, stated the proprietor of 1 womenswear model that sells by way of John Lewis’s web site: “With the precise crew and all of the modifications, I feel they’ll actually transfer ahead.”
The CEO of 1 footwear model stocked by John Lewis in shops and on-line additionally praised its turnaround efforts: “Peter, Rachel and the crew have introduced an actual impetus to it. They’ve now bought an awesome crew.
“[In terms of] the shopping for crew and the way we work with them, they appear to be wanting to construct enterprise collectively and it’s extra of a partnership. The shop surroundings can be enhancing so it’s good to see.”
SS Daley is new to the John Lewis roster of 250 third-party manufacturers
Bodily retail is a key a part of John Lewis’s development technique. In October 2024, it pledged to speculate £800m into the enterprise over 4 years, with a deal with retailer upgrades. This 12 months’s plan consists of refurbishing its Liverpool and Bluewater shops, and revamping 5 magnificence halls, alongside wider enhancements throughout the portfolio.
To drive footfall and enhance the buying expertise, the retailer may even open 5 new cafes and eating places in shops this 12 months, taking the full variety of hospitality venues throughout its property to 62. A brand new Jamie Oliver cookery college and cafe, spanning 4,600 sq ft, opened in its Oxford Road flagship in Could.
Ruis and Jason Tarry, chairman of John Lewis Partnership since September 2024, have centered on returning to the retailer’s core values. This included bringing again its “By no means knowingly undersold” worth pledge in September 2024, which was dropped in August 2022 after almost a century, in addition to enhancing customer support.
The CEO of 1 menswear model, which was stocked in John Lewis shops, stated customer support is vital: “Traditionally, all of us went to John Lewis as a result of it was service pushed, so it’s good to see they’re going again to their roots, which usually works.”
John Lewis has been reviving the in-house style ranges throughout girls’s, males’s and kids’s clothes in addition to introducing new third-party manufacturers. For spring/summer time 25, it added 49 new labels, together with SS Daley, Dragon Diffusion and Suncoo, to its roster of 350 model companions.
A brand new Jamie Oliver cookery college and cafe, spanning 4,600 sq ft, opened in its Oxford Road flagship in Could
The proprietor of 1 lingerie model stocked by John Lewis stated the retailer “ought to try to discover a contemporary approach to compete, akin to supporting new and upcoming manufacturers and providing extra curated collections that differ from their friends” however watch out to not “alienate its core buyer base”.
The two.4% complete John Lewis gross sales improve this spring was “primarily pushed by own-label merchandise relatively than branded ranges, suggesting that enhancements within the model and enchantment of John Lewis’s own-label collections are resonating with prospects”, stated Olivia Kelly, style market govt at Kantar.
John Lewis advised Drapers that robust classes this spring/summer time season embrace males’s tailoring, the place gross sales are up 13% 12 months on 12 months, together with a 26% improve in its personal model, in addition to girls’s denim, led by a 17% gross sales rise in third-party manufacturers akin to Paige and a 5% development in its in-house denim label And/Or.
In addition to intense competitors and a troublesome financial surroundings, John Lewis additionally faces the problem of workers morale after it determined to speculate its improved revenue again into the enterprise versus providing its workers a bonus.
In early June, John Lewis workers launched a petition towards its choice to withhold bonuses for 3 consecutive years, stating that “the core concept of the partnership is being misplaced”. In response to the marketing campaign, which obtained greater than 4,000 signatures, a John Lewis Partnership spokesperson stated bonus “stays an necessary characteristic of our employee-ownership mannequin and we have publicly said that we’re decided to pay one as quickly as attainable”.
The brand new management crew can be shaking up the working patterns at its London head workplace: workers in its business groups have been requested to work both within the workplace, shops or visiting suppliers not less than three days every week from July. The choice is known to be aimed toward enhancing collaboration and coaching new recruits as a part of its wider turnaround plan.
John Lewis seems to be getting again on target with a brand new crew on the helm, a return to its core values and investments in its buyer expertise and product ranges. Nevertheless, it should construct a transparent proposition and encourage workers throughout the enterprise to proceed the upward trajectory.
