‘I was paid half as much as my male counterpart’

It is early morning and the doors of Peter Jones are closed to the public, but up on the second floor, John Lewis boss Pippa Wicks is already in the Sloane Square store, posing for photos. In a green patterned blouse from the company’s new Anyday range, she tells me the new collection is “flying off the shelves” – the mannequins decked out in the collection’s dresses, coats and sweaters look more Top Shop than John Lewis. “It works,” she beams.

Small, quiet and steely, Wicks’s first job as executive director – in 2020 – was to close eight John Lewis stores, including Birmingham and Aberdeen. “I went to all of them and explained to the partners why the stores weren’t profitable. You can do hard things in a compassionate way and in business you can’t do anything if you aren’t making money”.

Wicks began her career at Bain as a management consultant aand at the heart of her plan to boost the fortunes of John Lewis is a strategy to target two key consumer groups: “Busy Inspiration Seekers, 30 to 45-year-olds with young families, who research online but buy everything from nursery goods, to clothes to furniture”; and what she calls “Active Service Lovers, who are 40-plus and who come to the stores to meet a friend and browse. They really value in-store service”.

Surely prosperous middle class families and their parents have always been John Lewis’s target customer? It seems not. “When I arrived, each department had a different customer focus – there was no clear strategy,” she says, looking shocked. She was dubbed the “Retail Turnaround Queen” after her period as deputy chief executive at the Co-op. What is her superpower? “A mixture of the view from 50,000ft and close attention to detail,” she says. “I am obsessive about customer research, personalisation and in-store consultations to get customers to try something new. Oh, and not wasting time on 150-slide presentations. It’s about distillation.”

It is also about the consumer. “Targeting and understanding what they want is what counts. Every month I go shopping with our customers, we’ll go together to different stores. I’ll watch as they feel fabrics, appreciate design… This customer listening is crucial.” With recessionary winds blowing, John Lewis customers want “consistency, quality and style at a great price”.

Her first innovation on joining in 2020 was AnyDay: “More affordable quality, it was the UK’s biggest new launch last year and 90 per cent of our customers bought an AnyDay item.” She is also moving hard into financial services, leveraging the trust John Lewis has among its customers. “The average family has 12 different financial products – I’d like to make that easier for them.” Pet insurance, including online consultations with a vet, are a boom area and “I’d like to move into funeral planning” (She obviously takes her new slogan seriously: “All Life’s Moments!” – new baby, moving house, everyday items, death). What about the downturn? Even that has a silver lining for upbeat Wicks. Customers are spending more on candles and tablecloths and “making entertaining at home special”.

So what of this powerhouse herself, boss of 80,000 “partners” (70,000 in stores, the rest online)? We meet just before Equal Pay Day – the point in the year beyond which women are essentially working for free because of the gender pay gap. Has she fallen victim to that herself? “Things are getting better for women…” she begins. Then stops. “Actually it’s only once in my career that I’ve experienced that, but it was quite late on. I found a piece of paper on the photocopier which revealed that the man I worked with was getting paid twice as much as I was for doing the same job.”

Was she livid? “Oh no, I was very calm. I went to chat to the managers very quietly saying, ‘Is this a misunderstanding?’ You don’t want to be aggressive or assertive, you want to get them on side.”

I am agog. This is a masterclass in how a female leader bosses it. “We need to coach women not to be emotional but calm and rational. I just said calmly, ‘I know I am not earning as much as XX. Can you help me sort it out?’ And it was addressed very quickly.”

Does she think women who are assertive lose out? She pauses. “Unfortunately there are stereotypes. If, as women, we keep it really fact-based and calm, it will lead to people reacting to us positively… You want to encourage somebody to want to be with you and on your side. Not to be accusatorial.”

This wisdom is hard won, Wicks is now 60 and has been a senior leader for 30 years. “When I first started out as an executive, when I was 29, I was the only lady on the executive team. Now the majority of the members of my executive team are females and it’s much better.”

What are her tips for reaching the top? “It is important to be fresh so I stop work at 6.30pm every night to be with my husband. When my son was young I was always home at 6.30pm and we’d prepare veggies and watch Winnie the Pooh. Then, if I needed to, I’d resume working later online. I thought of those two-and-a-half hours as a kind of late lunch hour. I’d also do school drop-off. Putting limits on my working day made me more efficient, focussed on priorities”. She adds that when her son was at school, “I worked flexi-time, where I did a four day week in the holidays then more in term time”.

What does she do to switch off? “I walk, I cook, I love music and go to the concerts and opera. I love box sets. I hang out with my family.” (She has a son, stepchildren and five grandchildren.) “I have a very close group of old friends which dates back to university and I make sure I schedule holidays 18 months in advance so they don’t clash with mine or my husband’s [Martin Taylor, a former boss of Barclays bank] board meetings.”

“We’ve been to Croatia and Norway this year.” I remark they don’t sound like “sitting on a sun-lounger holidays”. She laughs. “I’m not very good at doing nothing, I like to walk, see amazing scenery, but I also think sleep is very important at this age.” She segues into telling me how her “partners in the bedding department have just been on special sleep training courses; they are all experts” and then explains how she works “stealth exercise” – walking to meetings or cycling (she has a folding bike) – into her day to keep fit.

So what shaped her own ambition? Going to a boys’ school for sixth form was a great lesson in how to get on with men, she loved reading zoology at Oxford and much of her inspiration came from her mum, she replies.

“My mother always worked,” Wicks says. “She was a great role model who only stopped being a Justice of the Peace and working in mental health when she was 73. She was forced to retire then or she would have continued.”

Wicks has no intention of stopping any time soon: “I feel like I am at my peak, that I have lots more to give.” What of the future of the high street? With the closure of Debenhams and House of Fraser, are department stores on an endangered list? “No, I think we’ll become destinations for all the family. In our new concept store opening in Horsham next year we’re rethinking children’s floors to bring them all together – clothes, toys, soft play, a child-friendly restaurant. We want to be the top destination for nursery – we’re already up six per cent in a year – as well as homeware and Christmas.” Her new Santa’s grottos are already a sell-out.

How does John Lewis keep up its reputation for service when so much business is now online? “Over 70 per cent of our customers use a mix of coming into the stores and researching online before they buy. We are agnostic about platforms.”

Are we seeing the death of the high street? “Oh no,” she says. “It will just change. We’ll see more mixed use on the high street – shops, commercial places for offices and more affordable housing, like we are doing above Waitrose stores. But we want John Lewis to be a day-trip destination for all the family. Our next focus is turbo-charging our restaurants. Watch this space.”

Eleanor Mills is the founder of Noon.org.uk a platform for women in midlife

Pippa Wicks will be joining us at this year’s Women Mean Business on 23 November. For more information and to book tickets click here.