The Eric Musgrave Interview: Paul Platt of Midlands menswear mini-chain Pockets

In the latest of his interviews with progressive CEOs, Eric Musgrave hears from Paul Platt why he has not sold out to Frasers Group, why he’s adding womenswear to Pockets and why he’s actively looking to open more shops to add to the current four.

Anyone needing a powerful reminder of what an excellent premium menswear independent can look like should visit Pockets in the centre of Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

The flagship of a regional four-branch chain, it trades across five floors of a 300-year-old Georgian townhouse with every one of its relatively small rooms attractively and differently decorated and merchandised.

The selection of 40-plus brands majors on familiar favourites such as Acne, Boss, C P Company, Emporio Armani, John Smedley, Lacoste, Moncler, Norse Projects, Paul & Shark, Paul Smith, Polo Ralph Lauren, Stone Island and Tod’s.

Paul Platt started Pockets in Shrewsbury in 1996 and subsequently added branches in Nantwich, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Hanley.

After some recent tough years, he is in confident mood again, with a  strong belief in the relevance of physical stores over online selling, and in the viability of stores like his against the inexorable spread of Flannels, the Frasers Group fascia which runs more than 60 premium fashion stores nationwide.

Having ridden out COVID, the short-lived post-lockdown boom, and the very steep post-boom decline, Platt is looking forward to 2025 by adding womenswear to the Pockets line-up and actively seeking sites for more shops.

On the quiet Thursday morning I visited Pockets, a neatly-turned-out elderly gent came in before I started the interview. The banter between him and the owner suggested he was a regular. He departed promptly having paid £100 for a John Smedley polo shirt, reminding Platt, “Don’t mention this to my wife if you see her.” It was only 9.40am, so this decent start to the day’s trading prompted my first question.

Who are your customers now and how do they differ to the type of people you attracted in 1996?

It's so varied. We have a 14-year-old schoolboy who will come in and buy a Ralph Lauren polo shirt in the Sale, or his mum and dad might buy him something nice for Christmas. Then we have a gent like Kevin, who you just saw, who is in his eighties. He’ll drop by and spend 100 quid on a Smedley to play golf in.

Put simply, we appeal to anyone who likes nice clothes. Their age is not a factor and I don't think it ever has been. Our ethos is the same as it was in 1996 - to sell nice products and to give good service. That won’t ever change. That should be the attitude of any good independent.

How has the merchandise offer changed?

We have traded up a bit but we’ve had some our brands for a long time. It's very difficult to start off in this industry. It was hard then to get brands and it’s probably even harder today. It's always the same story – Brand A says if you get Brand B, they will sell to you, while Brand B says if you get Brand A, they will sell to you.

I managed to blag getting Armani and Boss very quickly by telling each of them that I'd got the other, which was not exactly correct…

Products have changed over the years, of course. We sold more suits then, but suits and formalwear will always be in our DNA. We will always have suits in Pockets.

Why, when tailoring is not what it was?

My grandfather Clifford Platt opened a traditional men’s store under his own name in Crewe in 1966. My father David and his brother Ray joined him in the family business. I helped out at the weekends and holidays. I got sacked very often by my dad because I wasn't good enough. But tailoring is my background – and we still have the business in Crewe. It’s very successful now as Platts Formal Hire.

In the early 1990s, when I was in my early 20s, I worked in London with a well-known menswear agent called Alan Endfield for a couple of years, then I went travelling, ending up in Australia. In Melbourne I worked for a menswear store called Harrolds. Over there, reading a men’s style magazine, I saw a line that said something like, “He slipped his hands into his pockets…” and I immediately thought that would make a great name for a menswear store if I ever opened one.

When I came back to the UK my dad asked me to re-join the family firm, but I said I’d only do it if I could run something on my own. I was 26. He and my uncle Ray loaned me around £15,000 and I started Pockets, which always has been part of the family business.

I never asked anyone what they thought of the name. I liked it because it has an association with menswear but doesn't give you a preconceived idea of whether it's high-class or budget level.

Originally the Shrewsbury shop was tiny, with only half of our current ground floor space. Over the years we have acquired more of the building, eventually taking over the offices of a solicitor’s firm that had the upper floors.

This building and Newcastle-under-Lyme are leaseholds. We have the freeholds of our buildings in Nantwich and Hanley, plus the store in Crewe and our warehouse in Shrewsbury.

Who is involved in running the business?

I do all the buying with my fellow director Mark Taylor, who also manages the Newcastle and Hanley stores. He was working at our family business in Crewe and joined me at Pockets in 1998 when I’d been trading two years.

The Nantwich store is managed by my brother-in-law Anthony Preston, who is married to my sister Susie. She has painstaking and difficult job of looking after the finances. They are both directors of the company.

We employ about 30 people across the business.

The three other Pockets stores are all within about 45 minutes’ drive of Shrewsbury. Why are you looking to go into womenswear, and also planning to open more stores?

On womenswear, two long-established shops in Shrewsbury – The Dresser and Carol Grant – closed in the recent past. They’d both been trading for about 30 years and while they stocked different brands and looks, they were at a similar level. I expected them to be replaced, but as that hasn’t happened, I thought we’d try. We have had a long line of wives and girlfriends of our customers asking why we don’t do womenswear, so…

It's very early days, so I am doing the buying with Mark Taylor. It’s been interesting!

Of the menswear brands we stock, the only one I know we will buy for women is Ralphie (Lauren). I want to buy Max Mara too and I’m looking at several other brands.

To start with, in spring 2025, we will devote about 600sq ft in our lower ground floor in Shrewsbury to womenswear. When we get it established, we’ll probably hire a specific womenswear buyer.

In terms of opening more stores, the tide has turned again in favour of independents. We are actively looking at sites within an hour or two’s drive of Shrewsbury but we are looking south rather than heading towards Liverpool and Manchester.

What was the effect of the COVID lockdown on Pockets?

Like many businesses, we only survived because of the government’s help. Our annual sales are about £4 million and we lost around £2m in turnover due to the lockdown and what happened after it.

Again like most people, we made some big mistakes in overbuying after the post-lockdown spike in demand. We thought that spike would continue and it didn’t. Everyone overbought, so everyone, including us, had to discount to clear the stock. There has been a massive online discounting battle going on.

In the past couple of seasons we would have traded quite well if we had not had that overstock issue. Despite a little less cash being around, we’ve traded all right. Our financial year finished at the end of August. We were a bit down on turnover and we didn’t make much money because of the discounting, but autumn-winter has started off reasonably well.

Stock-wise, I’m now where I want us to be and I’m quite confident that we're going to do okay. We're in a much better, stronger place. I’m confident the future is looking pretty bright, hence the expansion plans for 2025.

Pockets is one of the very few premium menswear indies that has not sold out to Frasers Group. Why?

I have been very open within the trade about Frasers making approaches to us even before COVID. We had conversations but obviously their ideas were not in our favour. There have been subsequent calls from them but we are not interested. Whatever the money, selling to Frasers would mean the end of Pockets, so there’s no point.

What has been the impact of Flannels opening 60-plus stores? What’s been the effect on the relationships between brands that sell to Flannels and to independents like you?

For about five or six years, in the period just before, during and after COVID, it has been difficult for us. With their deep pockets, Flannels were able to buy huge amounts of numbers, but when these didn’t sell, it caused more of a problem for us because of their heavy discounts. It's still ongoing.

But it is getting slightly better and as the years go on, it will get a little bit better still. Certain brands, which I won’t name, were in bed with Flannels. A corner has been turned now and Flannels’ influence is not quite as important to brands. Or maybe brands have realised the Flannels grass isn’t quite so green.

Actually, the number of Flannels stores is making me more confident in our future because they cannot present themselves, or the brands, or serve the customers, as we do. I don’t think the Flannels position is all rosy.

I don’t want to discuss which brands are good to us and which aren’t. You're always going to have really good relationships with some and worse ones with others.

There was a time when everyone thought the internet was to be the demise of shops, especially independents. Maybe some brands thought there was no need for shops like ours any longer, that we were not a wanted, needed thing. But we've come through that. There is respect and recognition our kind of shop is still required, although maybe not in as many numbers. And you need to be better than you used to. We independents do need to up our game retail-wise in the UK. Indie standards need to be improved.

We are lucky in Shrewsbury being in a 300-year-old building with some character, so we make the most of it. We constantly change it, repaint it, reinvent it in our own way. That's important.

Fashion independents today must have a really good environment and a good offer, otherwise there’s no point. If you're mediocre, you're not going to survive. But if you're good, you'll do well because there's always going to be someone who wants to walk through your door, have a chat, touch and feel the product, and try things on.

When did you start selling online and what version of your website are you on?

We went online about 15 years ago and our current version of the site is one that doesn't sell very much! To me, it's a necessary evil. The strength of our business is still the stores, no doubt. We do make sales online, but it's mainly old stock and Sales stock. We don't sell much full-price stock on there, that's the difficulty.

If the world is sold out of a particular Moncler jacket in a size Large, and we're the only one with it, the customer will find us, will buy it, and that's great, but ultimately we're the last on their list. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Maybe the future is for us to have a non-transactional website with beautiful imagery to promote the stores, or to have one that sells only aged stock. This is something we are discussing internally but we are not near making a decision yet. I definitely believe we would still have a successful business without an online sales platform. For one thing, the costs of selling online are becoming prohibitive.

Have your customers felt the cost of living squeeze?

Some have. The young lad who lives at home is not affected. The super-wealthy guy is not affected. But the guy in the middle, who’s in his 30s or 40s with a couple of small kids, he's going to put his family first, so he's probably spending less.

What is Pockets good at and where do you need to improve?

Mark and I are good at buying. We’ve got a good eye and a good taste level after more than 20 years of buying side by side.

Also Pockets is very good at sales, service, looking after people. We’re very good at merchandising, store displays, keeping the environment nice.

My personal weakness is probably on finances and accounting.

We are currently looking at everything we do as a business. We know we are quite weak with online and with social media. We do Instagram (@pockets.fashion has around 2,400 followers) but we're not good enough at it. We don’t put enough effort into it. We must do better. That is our remit for the next 12 months.

How do you feel with Pockets’ 30^th anniversary only about 18 months away?

If you are good enough, if you reinvent yourself, make yourself interesting and exciting with the store environment, the windows, the product you buy, then you always going to be relevant. As humans, we like to interact with other humans.

I feel grateful we're still here after almost 29 years. I feel very sad a lot of our peers have gone. I really would like to inspire a new generation of people to see there is value in physical store retailing. Hopefully we can achieve that.

www.pockets.co.uk

IG @pockets.fashion

Photography of Shrewsbury & Hanley stores by Eric Musgrave