Last night’s episode of Mary Queen of Shops culminated in the star, retail expert Mary Portas, being kicked out of the business she was tasked to turn around.
Despite having applied for her help, the subject of Portas' business rescue operation was resistant to pretty much all her prescriptions to help reverse her tumbling profits.
The premise, in case you didn’t know, is that retail doyenne Mary Portas descends on struggling shops and restores them to rude health a la Gordon Ramsay with restaurants, minus the swearing, shouting and hectoring.
Last night Portas, who was instrumental in the rise of Harvey Nichols, move away from her usual territory, clothing retail, and visit a bakery in south-west London's Raynes Park. Portas quickly identified the fundamental problem at Maher and Sons, that the produce was too heavily orientated towards 70s-style cakes, with a limited range of only three types of bread. The owner had set up the business with her husband 36 years ago and the produce, by her own admission, had been in stasis during that time.
Every suggestion was taken as a personal affront, and eventually the woman snapped, kicking Portas off the premises and halting filming
Personal affront
Mary Portas, whose advice on refreshing stock, overhauling decor and changing layout had transformed the fortunes of countless retailers in previous episodes, found that personal pride was an immovable barrier to change. Every suggestion was taken as a personal affront, and eventually the woman snapped, kicking Portas off the premises and halting filming.
In so doing she at least can be credited with breaking from the defining convention of the Celebrity-Messiah-saves-regular-Joe-from-their-own-incompetence genre: a narrative arc which sees a dishevelled, colour uncoordinated individual in need of a new wardrobe, a short-tempered, floundering restaurateur or a struggling shop owner overcome initial pride-driven recalcitrance once they witness the vast improvement yielded by changes foisted upon them by a celebrity saviour.
At first it seemed quite sweet when bakery owner Angela Maher said she wasn’t bothered about making much money, which suggested that she was in it for the love of baking and being a focal point for the community instead. However, her lack of avarice extended to blocking even the most rudimentary changes to boost falling revenues and demonstrating ignorance of some of the most fundamental principles in business.
Lesson one was related to the importance of understanding your local market; giving your customers what they want, not what you think they should want. It quickly became apparent that she had failed to notice – or refused to notice – changes in taste and demographic.
While tastes had become more sophisticated the area around her had become increasingly affluent and home to the ‘yummy mummy’ demographic, her bread and cakes were stuck in the decade that brought us spam and Smash mashed potato mix.
Her customers liked her products, she insisted, but this was clearly a small and dwindling band of customers given her small and falling profits. But she was too proud, apparently, to recognise this.
Which brings us to lesson two: have some humility. Throughout the episode the bakery owner bridled at any criticism. “Wouldn’t you?” she asked, quite reasonably, as it’s human to be offended when your work is criticised.
However, most other participants on these programmes eventually learn not to take the criticisms personally. They recognised that Gordon Ramsay is one of the best chefs in the world, that Portas is supreme at retail and that, erm, Gok Wan knows a thing or two about clothes. As the saying goes, there’s always someone out there better than you, so there’s no shame in paying heed to advice, even to people younger than yourself.
The woman’s legitimate concerns that Portas’ background in clothing retail gave her no authority in the world of bakeries were very easily addressed. Portas simply agreed, but pointed out she had commercial skills which transcended clothing retail.
As for baking, she left that to the experts: she took Angela to an award-winning artisan bakery, a cake maker to the stars, and a shop fitter with a peerless track record.
But, resolutely unimpressed, the awkward baker was rude to the polite young artisan, saying that she’d been in the business for 36 years and bristling at the idea that someone so young could be better than her. She was suitably embarrassed, however, when he politely pointed out that he was the inheritor of a family bakery founded almost a century ago.
As for the shop fitter, the rustic display unveiled to her was met with an impassive face, a lengthy, excrutiating pause, and finally a half-hearted murmur that it was OK. Only the cake maker elicited any kind of enthusiasm.
“I’ve been in this business for 36 years” was a constant refrain as if the very idea that she could have anything left to learn, even from exemplars of the trade, was a gross insult. Well I’m 28 and I’d say I’ve played football for longer than Wayne Rooney, but if I got to train with the Manchester United striker in a programme called “Grow some Venables”, where Terry Venables tries to improve the skills of park footballers, I wouldn’t have the temerity to trot out: “I was juggling a football when you were still in nappies.”
Lesson three was identify your USP – or point of difference, as Portas called it. Portas quickly identified the bakery’s on-site bread-making ability as the USP, a boon given supermarkets' growing dominance and ever-widening bakery range.
But despite the fact that the in-house baker insisted that he could manage it, the bakery owner refused to countenance a serious expansion to freshly baking, on the premises, a diverse line of continental breads.
Which brings us to lesson four: have faith in, encourage and listen to your employees. and encourage them to generate ideas for the business. The on-site baker, a chap called Paul who feared he’d struggle to get another job if the business failed because of his age, was more than receptive to Portas’s ideas. Energised by the chance to do something different, not to mention compliments and encouragement from Portas, he baked a batch of artisan breads and proudly invited Portas to compare them with the best in London. Here was a man who had rediscovered a passion for his work.
Now, it would be unfair to assume that Paul was underappreciated, that he was never complimented by his boss, as TV documentaries can be edited to fit a misleading narrative flow. However, I will only point out that when pressed why she wouldn’t allow him to even have a trial run at baking the new breads, she said she didn’t think him capable, unlike the man himself.
Some people, tired of TV entrepreneurs and style gurus condescending to help us non-celebrity mortals overcome our pathetic inadequacies, will rejoice that someone finally refused to embrace their plans and bow down to their celebrity deities. This is what the Independent’s critic, Amol Rajhan, more or less argued.
But Portas is no Gordon Ramsay; she doesn’t bully, shout and spit abuse. And remember, people have to apply to this programme. Angela Maher obviously just wanted a free refit (why she believed that a TV programme about a bakery getting a new floor and a lick of paint had been commissioned is anyone's guess) and got more than she bargained for.
Update 14 June: Maher fights back. Angela Maher has responded to criticims directed at her, saying that she was misrepresented, that the BBC had "given the impression that this programme was to be a celebration of small businesses bucking the trend in the recession, while offering some advice and ideas for the future" and that she had introduced new lines to the bread range.
