Why, and why now?
The first reason we launched Henry & Saint-Martin is simple: Andrew and I love working together. We enjoy thinking differently, challenging each other and backing each other up.
The second is an observation. Between the two of us, we bring a combination of experience and skills that can make a real difference to a consumer business. The people whose judgement we trust told us the same thing.
The timing mattered almost as much. Andrew had spent years climbing the corporate ladder, and I had spent as long navigating new markets, cultures and countries. Then, for the first time, our timings aligned: both of us out of corporate, both in the same place, both ready to build something of our own.
One day at lunch, a simple question: "What about launching a business together?" And an answer that didn't need any thinking: "We should absolutely do that."
Where it started
To understand where this comes from, you have to go back to 2012, shortly before the London Olympics.
A colleague from the UK office introduced Andrew to a 19-year-old kid and suggested he do his next internship in Andrew's EMEA retail buying team. Good guess: that kid was me. The internship happened, and it was all about product and stores: what works, where, and for whom. Loved it.
A couple of years later I was working full-time, bringing business analysis and forecasts together to support Andrew as he set product strategy across the globe and prepared for meetings with the senior leadership team.
Fast forward a few more years, and Andrew had taken charge of the group's 180-store EMEA retail network. I was in the Middle East, scaling an e-commerce business unit 2.2x to $240M. We still jumped on calls to talk about work and life, and on planes to go to concerts together.
This is a friendship built from a working relationship.
What led us here?
Who doesn't love a good brand?
Nobody in our industry undervalues a strong brand, and certainly not us. As Andrew puts it, "the brand is everything."
Whether it comes from great products, brilliant activations or a mission to change the status quo, it all sits under the brand name. We love that story for its beauty and its strength, and we will protect it and its DNA. But we also know the brand is only the visible part of the iceberg, and we love that there is so much more to it. Even more so since this is precisely where we know how to make a difference.
The brand holds the value, which is why groups and private equity buy brand IP. But that value only turns into profit if the commercial and operational settings are right.
Product and numbers together
One of Andrew's favourite places to look first is the range, and he tells it best: "I love product, I always have." He is the artist of the two of us (music, drawing, painting), and he has a natural eye for design. From early in his career he built his commercial judgement with customers, merchandisers, buyers and factory suppliers alike.
I usually dive straight into the data, as it allows me to grasp the bigger picture first, and to come up with the questions and answers you only find if you know what to look for. Between us, commercial and operational questions get discussed with the numbers in hand, the product in sight, and the right experts in the room.
The people, the key
Our careers took us from individual contributors to senior leaders with large responsibilities and teams, across different organisations, continents and cultures. Along the way we learned about ourselves and, equally if not more importantly, about what our roles and the people around us needed from us.
One thing we took from this is that helping a business and its team starts from a place of empathy. Leading well means listening properly while encouraging the right balance of initiative and control. Andrew calls it "freedom within a framework." The reward? Empowered teams, the right level of access to information, and faster, better decisions.
Clear lines of communication and balanced accountability keep teams together too. And it shows in the balance sheet, as I like to put it: "Happy teams, happy margins!"
How we're wired
I will let you in on a couple of aspects of our personalities that tie directly to how we approach brand, equity and profit. Part of why I like a good plan is that I dislike waste, and I try to avoid it where I can. I cook? I buy what I need, and the scraps go into the stock. On his side, Andrew is the one redesigning the kitchen so it is as functional as it is organised. Different starting points, the same drive: assess, optimise, improve. In practice, that means saving time, energy and money.
Things that matter to us
Staying true to who we are is how we get the best result for a client.
Fit matters, both ways. Respect comes first for both of us. We need to believe in a client's vision, its people, its culture and its brand, and they need to believe in us. When that alignment is there, we work side by side with the team, pushing in the same direction from different places. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.
Competitive, in the right way. We share a healthy competitive streak. Play chess or pool with Andrew and watch his focus on the task at hand. It is contagious, and it is exactly how he leads by example at work. I've played competitive basketball for 25 years, which taught me discipline, and that there is strength in different people aiming at a common goal. In this industry we know the lingo, the deadlines and the pressure: for us, it's like playing home games all season.
Listen first. Getting it right starts with listening. We listen, observe and ask before suggesting anything, the way you taste the soup before reaching for the salt. I saw this done well when a partner brand came to my team with big ambitions and one open question: "How can we help you help us?" We don't change things for the sake of change. We prioritise, and only go after what will make a difference. And when change is the answer, we stay to ensure adoption, implementation and handover.
The right dose of transparency. We believe in what we'd call controlled transparency. Challenging opinions and confronting perspectives build great ideas. Empowered teams come from sharing the right information and inviting people into the strategy. So we respect the disclosure and confidentiality terms agreed with leadership, and involve the right people in your organisation case by case. We share what we see, when we see it, with the right people. No waiting for the third meeting, and no batch of recommendations to cascade down.
What we want to share
We are driven by our will to help, our need to buy into a vision, and our certainty that together, we are a comprehensive commercial solution: Andrew knows what it takes to build a brand and how to manage a store network; I know business analytics, how to grow a platform and how to develop partnerships.
Between us we've had our share of complex situations, tough calls and successes. That experience is precisely what we want to share, and what we want to be remembered for.
If you want to know more about us, or are interested in our perspective on a given topic, we're always happy to talk.
