Revamped Brown Thomas looks forward to M&S

PAUL Kelly says he can hardly wait for Marks & Spencer to open its new Grafton Street store directly opposite the revamped Brown Thomas. According to Mr Kelly, chief executive of the Brown Thomas group, the new Brown Thomas is already trading above targets and will do even better once M&S opens its flagship store in the old Brown Thomas building.

"Having an empty building across the road . . . a building site if you want to call it that, has been a negative against us," Mr Kelly says.

After the Marks & Spencer store opens in the autumn, Mr Kelly believes consumers will have more reason to linger in the vicinity of Brown Thomas and its sales therefore should actually benefit.

"You'll have two good stores right opposite each other on Grafton Street . . . it will underpin Grafton Street," he said. "There's no benefits being beside an empty building so when Marks & Spencer opens in October that is going to be a positive thing."

Although Mr Kelly is often mentioned in social and gossip columns, interviews in which he discusses the company's financial performance are quite rare. The decision to throw open the doors of his spacious attic office was not taken lightly and it appears it was brought about for two reasons.

Last month two senior members of the Brown Thomas management team - with 20 years of service between them - left the company prompting reports of possible internal strife. The two departures also fuelled increasing speculation that the new Brown Thomas has not traded as well as had been expected.

Mr Kelly dismisses these suggestions. The store is doing well and there are no major management troubles, he claims.

The new Brown Thomas store, situated in the former Switzers building, celebrates its first birthday this week. During its first 12 months, according to Mr Kelly, the revamped Brown Thomas had a turnover of £50 million compared with the £55 million generated by Brown Thomas and Switzers in their last year as two separate stores.

Some 88 per cent of the £50 million is generated directly by Brown Thomas while franchises that operate within the store account for the remaining 12 per cent. According to Mr Kelly, the company's financial performance over the past year is highly creditable? particularly when the logistics of the move and the re design are properly considered.

He said that when Brown Thomas vacated its old premises and moved across the street to Switzers, the revamp of the building was only half finished. Some departments including cosmetics were ready on day one, however others such as interiors were only completed after several months of refurbishment. Work is continuing in the basement area of the store and the final elements of the £15 million move are expected to be completed by July.

When the Dublin work is completed the Brown Thomas group will embark on a £10 million expansion and refit of its Cash's department store in Cork which should increase its retail space by up to 50 per cent. A revamp of Todds in Limerick is also expected in the long term, while the group's other department store, Moons of Galway, was re designed three years ago.

When the new Brown Thomas was launched last year, its Canadian owner Mr Galen Weston said the new operation should achieve an annual turnover of more than £60 million. To do this the company has to harvest sales of £420 per square foot of retail space which is well above both the average for Grafton Street properties and approaching the levels achieved by prestige department stores such as Harrods in London.

Mr Kelly said that this year's turnover at Brown Thomas would rise by 8 per cent to £54 million. By 1997, which will be its first full year of trading with the refurbishment complete, sales will increase by a further 11 per cent to £60 million. He said these target figures were realistic rather than aspirational and he is confident that they will be met.

Using the ratio favoured by Mr Weston, last year Brown Thomas had sales per square foot of £344. This will rise to £372 this year and reach the predicted level of £420 per sq ft during 1997.

Mr Kelly said the sales per sq ft which Brown Thomas would achieve this year will be about twice that of the British based House of Fraser group which operates Harvey Nichols and D.H. Evans in London and a number of stores in large provincial

While the builders have been remodelling the structural fabric of Brown Thomas its senior management team has also had a major face lift recently.

The store's general manager Mr Mark Heather left in mid January while the company's well known women's fashion buyer Mr Ian Galvin parted company with Brown Thomas two weeks previously. Mr Galvin dressed many well known Irish women and was one the main public faces of Brown Thomas.

Mr Kelly said again this week that the two departures were not connected, and rejected any suggestion of a management dispute at the store.

"I wasn't aware of any blood on the board room floor or the board room table," he said. Despite media reports to the contrary "at no stage did I have to have my back protected," Mr Kelly added. "There is no internal strife, and there hasn't been."

Mr Kelly said that Mr Galvin was part of a team of six buyers for the women's fashion department and was on the same level as the other members of the team. Mr Heather had merely decided that "he wanted to go off and do something different" and that was his business. Mr Heather's job is to be advertised shortly, but Mr Galvin's position will not be filled.

Asked if the store might lose sales or customers as a result of Mr Galvin's departure, Mr Kelly said that the company had many employees that had one to one relationships with customers. "There's not just one person like that."

The fact that two of the company's 500 staff left within two weeks of each other was a mere coincidence, Mr Kelly said. "They weren't working together, they were carrying out two different functions.

Mr Kelly, who has responsibility for all the operations in the Brown Thomas group including its stores in Galway, Limerick and Cork and the A Wear chain, said the overall group had a turnover in excess of £100 million last year. He declined to reveal the group's profit figure but said that it would be a "seven figure sum".

He likens the redevelopment of Brown Thomas to turning an oil tanker. According to Mr Kelly, it has to be slow and deliberate, but the staff know they are "going in the right direction".