Paphitis hits out at ‘window dresser’ Portas

RETAIL entrepreneur and TV Dragons’ Den star Theo Paphitis has questioned the credentials of Mary Portas, the so called ‘Queen of Shops’, to save the high street.

Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com last night, Mr Paphitis said he wouldn’t be taking advice from “a window dresser” who has “never run a shop”.

He said the high street had suffered a ‘triple whammy’ with first supermarkets then out of town shopping centres and then the Internet all “eating its lunch”.

He said the Government should have drafted in someone like WH Smith’s Kate Swann to lead its retail review: “If anyone knows about the pressures on the high street she does, and I would listen to what she had to say, rather than a window dresser who has never run a shop anyway.”

The businessman said he was delighted with the early success of Boux Avenue, his new lingerie business which has a Trafford Centre store, and said three more shops would be opening soon, in Westfield, London, Birmingham’s Bullring amd in Norwich, which would take the chain to 11.

“I’d like to open a second in Manchester, in the Arndale centre – Boux Avenue had a fantastic Christmas. I’d like to get to 15 shops by the summer and 18 to 20 by the end of the year.”

Speaking later to business people at the final of the Royal Manchester Childrens’s Hospital’s Many Hands Appeal – he said he was “saddened” by the demise of La Senza, another lingerie chain which he sold to private equity firm Lion Capital for £108m in 2006, and which went into administration in January.

He claimed there had been a failure to invest in the business after the recession and that La Senza had been shouldered with too much debt.

“I think that the private equity model is not going to work any more – the days of all the debt are over – they are going to have to start putting in more equity.”

Tackling the cost of retail rents is the key to reviving the high street, he said when asked what he would do to help the sector.

“It’s not going to be easy though as most of the shopping centres are owned by pension funds and if you cut rents, you cut their income, so it’s not easy. Broadly though shops should be one of two things: either really simple and stress-free and easy to use, or offering a really great experience.”