Focused: Beth Butterwick joined as the pandemic struck
Beth Butterwick is blunt about what she found when she arrived at Middle England favorite Jigsaw. She had been asked to help revive the business by super-rich backer and Carphone Warehouse founder David Ross. Meeting him over coffee in late 2019 was enough to convince her it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.
‘I came to fix the product and return Jigsaw to what it was,’ she says of the label that famously once employed the Duchess of Cambridge.
‘I’d got a long-standing love for the brand. It was my go-to shop for work clothes when I started at Marks & Spencer as a graduate trainee in the 1990s. Jigsaw was all about classic pieces but with a very edgy style that always had a twist,’ she adds.
‘That’s what it had lost. It had blended in with other high street retailers. It had become very homogenised,’ she adds.
Butterwick, 56, agreed to parachute in as an emergency turnaround consultant. But within a few months of her arrival, the pandemic struck.
Painful decisions were needed quickly. Its men’s and kids’ ranges were axed, the international business mothballed and more than a dozen stores closed – leaving just over 40.
‘If you are being ruthless, you have to stop doing things that aren’t working,’ says Butterwick, who has since accepted the chief executive’s job.
It has retreated from Birmingham, Manchester, London’s King’s Road and Wimbledon – places that tend to be the haunt of younger shoppers more obsessed by price.
It has emerged with a more focused sense of its place in the world, she says. ‘We have very few in city centers now. We’re in market towns and regional centers – where customers tend to be local shoppers that go there a lot.’
It will now sharpen that strategy even further, with stores in Brighton, Market Harborough in Leicestershire, St Albans in Hertfordshire, which she describes as a place ‘we came out of but should be there’, and the Surrey towns Reigate and Cobham, plus somewhere in Manchester or the North West to appeal to the ‘Cheshire set’.
Her ‘heartland customer’ is aged over 50, she points out. Many are younger, but she cites her 19-year-old daughter as someone for whom Jigsaw may not be an affordable option.
The Celestial Bouquet Tea Dress will set you back £175 while £120 is needed for a pair of casual platform trainers – now the uniform of ‘Chiswick mums’ that she sees near her West London home, aged ‘from 60 down to 35’, taking a break from the home or office to pick children up from school.
Clearly regarding these as potential customers, she says: ‘It’s a comfort thing. People have got used to wearing comfortable shoes.’
Butterwick, who has run retailers such as Bonmarche and Karen Millen, says her job is to know the customer in ‘intimate detail’. That, very obviously, means a well-to-do middle-aged shopper rather than chasing 20-somethings obsessed by Instagram sweeping through shopping centers or online retailers looking for the best bargains.
Her customers live by the motto ‘buy less, buy better’, she says. ‘Fit and fabric is important – cashmere, silk and linen.
‘They invest in classic pieces that tend to last for years then build out their wardrobe from there.’
Her shoppers are ‘stylish and confident, modern and relevant’, but as likely to find style tips in magazines and ‘talking to friends’ as they are on Instagram.
‘They’re not slavish to social media,’ she adds.
Recent figures suggest the revival is gaining traction. Jigsaw reversed a £21million loss in 2020, to a £1.2million profit last year.
The recent sunshine brought with it a ‘feelgood factor’ helping to defy warnings of a consumer squeeze.
She says: ‘People are still catching up on the going out thing. There is such a backlog of weddings, festivals and parties – all these wonderful summer events that we British so thoroughly enjoy.
‘I’ve been to Ascot and Henley recently and it’s been incredible.’
The end of summer may see the beginning of a ‘bounceback’ for smarter office attire as the drift back to the office continues – a further step away from the preferred pandemic jogging pants and even the ‘Chiswick Mum’ uniform.
She adds: ‘I can’t say that people will come back from school holidays in September and it’s all going to switch back to normal. But we can see searches for more formal shoes growing.
‘I think, from September and into October, there will be more of a normalization.
‘When I speak to people at more corporate businesses, accountancy firms for example, their teams are now slowly going back into the office,’ she says. From her own perspective, the shift has already paid off.
‘There’s only so much you can get done on [Microsoft] teams. You get more done in an office.
‘It’s really difficult for new starters to get the feel for the culture of a business – and get the mentorship you can give them – if they are working remotely.’
During Covid, design samples had to be biked across London to the houses of Jigsaw staff for approval. It slowed the design process, she says. ‘We craft product in here,’ she says, sitting in the Kew office in West London.
‘We make decisions more quickly if we’re all here in the same place, looking at the same thing together, than if we’re passing samples through the post or on Teams calls.’
Butterwick says the fallout from high street chains going bust has left room for the remainder to grow. ‘Some massive businesses have gone, so I think make hay while the sun shines.’ She estimates there are more than three million consumers that fit the Jigsaw customer profile but not yet shopping there.
She also wants to relaunch its overseas operation which embraces Scandinavia, Northern Europe, America and Australia.
This week, it will begin a partnership with luxury rental and re-sale website My Wardbrobe HQ, styled as ‘Jigsaw Forever’.
It will mean customers can rent or subscribe to its collections and re-sell their old ‘pre-loved’ Jigsaw clothes, burnishing its credentials as a brand for the long-term.
Is Jigsaw in good shape to weather a consumer squeeze this autumn as interest rates and household bills rise?
‘I saw some research recently that suggested the most popular search terms online have gone in the last four months, from being ‘best’ to ‘cheap’,’ she says.
‘It will be interesting to see what happens in October when energy prices go up again.’
‘But when I go back to what our core customers want: less is more, quality over quantity. A few nice pieces with multiple uses [for different occasions and outfits].’
‘If that’s the sentiment at the moment, that actually stands us in good stead for the future. Our work in hand is to tell more people about what we stand for.’
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