Cottoning on to value in the men’s shirts business

Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts founder Nick Wheeler has taken a highly conventional business – making and selling high-quality shirts and menswear – and taken it from a university sideline into an £195 million turnover business with bricks-and-mortar stores in Paris, London and New York, and a global online presence which accounts for 70 per cent of sales. He was in Dublin last week as the inaugural guest speaker at the KPMG Inspire Series.

Wheeler’s message to entrepreneurs is relatively simple: “Focus on quality, service and value for money,” he says. “If you do those three things well your business will work.”

He grew his business from very small beginnings. “I was studying geography and didn’t have many lectures to go to so I had time on my hands,” he says. “I spent £99 on getting 5,000 leaflets printed and any time I got someone’s name and address I kept it and sent them a leaflet. I would write letters to people and individualise them with a quirky and fun PS to personalise them.”

These leaflets were the forerunners of his shirt catalogues and the cover letters piqued the interest of the recipients sufficiently to generate responses and sales. "What I was doing was very basic. I didn't even have a phone number. All communication had to be done by post. It was all quite Heath Robinson. "

But it worked. He was generating sales of £12,000 a year while still in university and kept this up after graduation while working for a management consultancy. After two years there he decided to devote himself full time to the shirt business.

Innovation was key to success. “I came up with the idea of brass collar stiffeners for shirts. The newspapers used to have ads on the bottom right hand side of the front page. I advertised free brass stiffeners with shirts. I got 2,000 requests for catalogues for a £400 ad. Men hate shopping and we were selling men’s shirts to people who didn’t like to shop.”

Jermyn Street

The business grew steadily from £12,000 to £75,000, to £125,000 to £1.25 million, to £3.8 million and on until it reached today’s level of £195 million. But it hasn’t all been catalogues. While it was selling Jermyn Street-quality shirts it didn’t have the credibility of a physical presence there. In 1997, he opened his first shop on the street regarded by many as the home of quality shirts.

“That gave us added credibility and worked fantastically well. I didn’t really care if the store itself worked or not. It was all about branding. Then the internet came along in 1998. We went online straight away – we had moved from paper to bricks to clicks in the space of one year.”

Online sales now account for 70 per cent of the business but he learned some valuable lessons over the years. “The internet is a massively important part of the business but we skip the clever stuff. Customers want quick and simple service. They don’t want gizmos that slow things down and make them more complicated.”

Having grown at an average of 22 per cent a year for 20 years the last two years have seen a bit of a lull. “There is a bit of uncertainty out there”, says Wheeler. “People thinking more carefully about what they spend their money on. We have had ups and downs in the market over the years and we will get growth back again.

“A lot of retailers spend a lot of time and effort thinking about external factors such as Brexit and political instability,” he adds. “That makes you lose focus on what is going on inside the business. What you need to do is go back to basics – great quality, value for money and offer great service. It’s just about being damn good at what you do. Want to be best shirt business in the world. Every day is about getting a bit better. We still want to make it easier for men to dress well.”

"True entrepreneurs don't just think sell, sell, sell," says KPMG private enterprise partner Olivia Lynch. "They think about the experience they are selling to the customer. Nick's innovation is making it easy for men to dress well. He has stayed true to that core vision and that's what makes the difference and where the magic is."

But she is concerned that entrepreneurs in Ireland are placed at a disadvantage to their UK counterparts by the tax system. "Our nearest neighbours have a much more advantageous tax regime than us. The UK system is deliberately designed to attract mobile entrepreneurs. I don't think our system sufficiently rewards entrepreneurs and it is too complicated. More needs to be done with the system, especially in the context of Brexit. We have to encourage entrepreneurs to stay in Ireland, take risks here and create jobs here."