I work hard and make friends with t

I work hard and make friends with two “old-timers” from the Hepworth days (the retailer that Next rebranded). One, a Ugandan Asian, is the best salesman I have ever seen. I watch him sell a size 44 jacket to a guy that is at best, a 38. We also tailor the British Olympic team that year and, as are sult, we sall a whole heap of extra suits. The other friend is a first generation Afro-Caribbean tailor with the best jazz-funk collection of LPs I’ve ever seen. Between the two of them, they taught me that a suite was not a jacket and trousers that came off a hanger, but cloth that could be crafted by artists to make a man look like a hero, no matter what his shape or size.
It is here that I stumble across marketing for the first time, without realizing it. Next ran a competition for all the branches with made-to-measure facilities, with a team prize for the highest increase in orders. In various sojourns to the stockrooms I remembered seeing box after box of what looked like tie boxes – but that in fact were the copies of the records of not only recent customers, but of customers going way back to the pre-Next days. I hit upon the idea of writing to all of these contacts and persuaded the store manager to fund the postage. Miracle! We not only attracted a large number of lapsed customers to come back to the store to place orders for new suits, all clasping their letters, but we also won the competition.
This success, along with being the branch that the Next directors visited, led to an offer to go work at the head office. With two weeks’ notice I moved from London to a bed and breakfast in Leicester run by a Scottish couple, both ex-ice skating dancers (who had a different tartan carpet on each floor).
Initially, I worked for Next Interior again, in customer services, and then came my big break. At the age of 21 I was accepted for the post of junior buyer and worked for the most inspirational boss I’ve ever had – John Mile. Recruited by George Davies from Royal College, John had a vision for Next Interior that was decades ahead of its time. He also had incredible energy and would frequently catch that train down to London to party all night and then be back, driving us on, first thing the next morning.
It was at this time that I was introduced to the world of design from a different point of view, meeting designers and manufactures and working with them to create small batch run-offs of some great designs. Unfortunately, George Davies’ star began to wane and after a breathtaking year of learning for me, Next Interior’s buying was moved to Bradford to be managed by the net-curtain buyers of Grattan, the mail order firm that Next purchased. This meant that the Next Interior dream vanished, along with my job.