Selfridges' man with the wow factor

By IRENE CHAPPLE

Selfridges chief executive Peter Williams is wearing a deep purple suit that hints at decades past.

His shirt is striped with thick and thin lines, in purple and blue. It is a Paul Smith shirt, he tells me.

The outfit has very sharp edges which offset nicely his very shiny and very pointed Dolce and Gabbana shoes, of which he has four pairs.

Today he is wearing his black pair. He also has two brown pairs and one brown suede pair.

Williams' dress sense has been written about before. A previous article made mention of a mint sorbet suit, matched again with very pointy shoes.

It is worth repeating because the 49-year-old has effectively ensured he is an immediate standout during his drop-in visit to Christchurch.

It is where the Asian Retailers' Conference is being held and it is awash with black suits and white shirts.

The new Selfridges head is well attuned to the power of style, glamour and a celebrity connection.

Asked how New Zealand clothing designers could get their products into a Selfridges store, he suggests they get the All Black team dressed in their outfits.

"There has to be visibility in our market. Celebrity association and public relations are good."

Bridal designer Vera Wang unveiled her first fragrance at Selfridges this month.

Kylie Minogue launched her Love Kylie brand there and Selfridges held exclusive selling rights for six months.

In May Selfridges stores hosted a month-long festival called Body Craze - together with an R18 area - which was launched, said Williams, "with a VIP party attended by supermodels, fashion glitterati and a huge number of other influential people".

The press and television coverage, he said, was fantastic " ... the public relations value alone is likely to be 10 times the total investment in the promotion".

The man with the background in accounts is named as the protagonist behind Selfridges' rejuvenation, although he is careful to credit such people as his predecessor, Vittorio Radice.

Williams now heads the chain of four Selfridges stores, including the nearly 100-year-old London store and the most extraordinary £93 million ($260 million) creation in Birmingham, now three weeks old.

This store glimmers with 1500 aluminium discs and is expected to attract 30 million visitors a year.

Williams is in New Zealand to talk about the Birmingham store, and Selfridges' new direction, from a store rejected by the likes of Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein to one where supermodels flit.

He is also here for some skiing in Queenstown, where he is spending the weekend.

Williams doesn't mind repeated interviews on the Selfridges model.

"I like talking about it," he says.

Williams' presentation - despite, on this last day, just a small audience sprinkled through the town hall's cavernous surrounds - invigorates a conference notable for earnestly dry sessions.

The Selfridges model is essentially its service, its environment and what it stocks.

It does not produce private label merchandise and the brands it stocks create their own instore environments.

Some brands pay for the fit-out and employ the staff. Others allow Selfridges to employ the staff but control the fit-out.

Selfridges is the theatre in which the brand is presented. Williams says its concept is this: a big space, real brands, architectural impact and a "wow" when you enter the store."

His presentation details research that 80 per cent of people walking down Oxford St, where the original Selfridges store is found, "don't know why they are there. They're on a day out. They're sightseeing".

Going shopping, says Williams, has become a way of spending time, not necessarily an aim to buy product. And so a department store needs to attract that market.

"By creating places, the product almost becomes a souvenir of the visit, not so different to the ones that we all buy when we go on holiday."

He produces an example.

"A woman will spend two hours trying on shoes. Enjoying different brands, shapes, colours.

"Once she's bought them, they go into a cupboard with all the others and wearing them eventually becomes routine. The excitement was in the store."