Excellence in Business Awards 2010: Retail odyssey began in Yorkshire

IF someone were to offer Sir Stuart Rose a job in Yorkshire, he'd be here tomorrow morning.

So said the outgoing chairman of Marks & Spencer after accepting the Yorkshire Post's Special Award at the fifth annual Excellence in Business Awards. Video coverage and podcast

He said: "Yorkshire has a great part in Marks & Spencer's history and a little bit of a part in my family's history.

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"Yorkshire was the first home to Michael Marks, who was a refugee from Lithuania in 1884 and he arrived here, couldn't speak English, but Yorkshire made him feel very welcome."

Mr Marks set up a market stall in Kirkgate market in Leeds selling buttons and threads and was later joined by the accountant Thomas Spencer. Marks & Spencer was born in 1884.

Sir Stuart, 61, said: "My father was born in China and he arrived in England when he was about 15 and the first place he arrived was Yorkshire and he went to school in York.

"I didn't come to England until I was 12 from Africa and I came to Yorkshire.

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"I subsequently worked in Burton Group, which had a big factory, the largest suit factory in the world, at the top of the hill, down the road, and then came back to Marks & Spencer, which was born here, so I have very strong roots here.

"I've still got two living godfathers in Yorkshire and

I've always said if somebody offers me a job here tomorrow morning, I'd arrive."

After spending his early childhood in Warwickshire and Tanzania, he attended Bootham School in York and, instead of going to university, he wrote to different companies asking for work.

The first one to write back and offer him an interview was Marks & Spencer.

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He joined as a management trainee and spent the next 17 years learning the art of retail the M&S way, under towering figures such as Lord Sieff, Lord Rayner and Sir Richard Greenbury.

He left M&S to embark on a retail odyssey, working up through high street names such as Debenhams, Evans, Dorothy Perkins, Argos and

then Arcadia.

In 2004, he was welcomed back into the fold as chief executive of Marks & Spencer, one of the top jobs in UK business, at a time when the company was perilously close to falling into private hands.

He successfully fought off takeover bids from Sir Philip Green and then started a turnaround plan for the

grand old retailer, improving both the image of the

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company and the quality of its products and increasing its market share.

Sir Stuart, who is standing down as chairman next year, told the Yorkshire Post the most important lesson he has learned in business is to "put a good team around you, have a clear plan, articulate it clearly and stick with it".

Asked about his greatest achievement at M&S, he said: "I have been associated with Marks & Spencer for nearly 40 years. It's a fine business.

"We have two stores, Castleford and Wakefield, where we have been trading for 120 years each.

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"People often say this business is not what it was and it is past its best, but I think at the moment it is firing on all cylinders so I'm immensely proud it is still a publicly owned company, it's got 240,000

private shareholders and it's not a private company owned by a single individual and I had a part in that and I'm very proud of it."

Former Morrisons chief executive Marc Bolland took over from Sir Stuart as chief executive in July.

Sir Stuart said: "I said to him, remember Marks & Spencer is a taxi-driver business. Everyone has their own view of what we should be doing. All the views are different, therefore trying to steer a

line that keeps most people happy most of the time is extremely difficult.

"I said to him be careful, because customers are king."

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