Carsten's calling

Menswear used to be seen as womenswear's poorer brother. But with the rise of the dandy and the metrosexual, clothes are no longer mainly functional in the male wardrobe.

At John Lewis, growth in branded menswear sales has been exceptional. In May, the sector reported a 20.5 per cent year-on-year (half to date) increase, while brands such as Fat Face, Crew Clothing and Tommy Hilfiger reported half-to-date increases of +172.9, +79.8 and +52.5 per cent respectively.

Into this growing market comes Carsten Skovgaard who carved out a career at Harrods and joined John Lewis in May.

Carsten is planning to introduce more premium brands, and reckons that menswear customers will increasingly buy into more fashionable, premium clothing – they just need a little coaxing.

'I call it drip-feeding. We've got affluent customers who can afford more expensive labels but they're not that adventurous,' he explains. 'If we can just drag them into fashion, we've got a great opportunity.'

And not all these customers are male. 'Sixty-one per cent of our menswear customers are wives and girlfriends,' he continues, 'which is one of the reasons why we sell colour. Women are educating their husbands.'

Building the brand

When it comes to department stores, Carsten knows his stuff. He spent 13 years at Harrods, where he rose to senior buyer in menswear.

'We trialled expensive leather jackets and shearling coats last year in John Lewis, and proved that we have the customers there,' he says.

'We didn't throw hundreds of new things at customers but we said, 'let's educate them slowly'. That's how you build a brand. You give them the basics – the jeans, the chinos, the polo shirt, the shirt – then you build the more interesting items around that.

'It's about constantly giving the customer newness, and that's a challenge for our suppliers as well as ourselves. We're asking them to give us two or three selections a season. It's what the high street is very good at – constantly evolving their windows so they make sure you entice the customer with something new.'

Brand news

But the real challenge for Carsten is how to entice 20-something customers into the store and keep them loyal.

'As a menswear buyer, you have to challenge yourself all the time to make sure that your existing customers are moving with you as they get older,' he explains.

'I think we've got a great 30 to 45-year-old customer base in John Lewis, but now we've got a younger base, too, with labels such as Ted Baker, Levi's and Ben Sherman.'

Such exciting brands are perhaps driving branded menswear success. For example, Fat Face, a label bought in by Peter Ruis, Buying Director, Fashion, is exclusive to John Lewis in the UK; the only other place you can buy it on the high street is through the label's own outlets.

'We give (customers) something slightly different to other department stores out there,' says Carsten. 'We don't have every brand under the sun; we focus very much on a few good brands and we do it in a good way.'

Liverpool lift

Carsten thinks there's a wealth of opportunity for branded menswear in recent and future store openings – Liverpool, Leicester and next year's Cardiff.

Liverpool is house position number four for branded casualwear already ('it flew off the shelves as soon as we opened and they were the more expensive labels'), while the space allocated for menswear in Cardiff is in a premium ground-floor location.

There's also massive potential in existing stores.

'We're refitting menswear in Peter Jones and that will be completed in early September when some new brands are coming in.

'There's a slightly more affluent customer there so we will be introducing the main Nicole Farhi line (John Lewis already sells the less expensive Farhi range) and Danish label Day Birger et Mikkelsen, which I've bought in.' Both brands will be sold in selected stores from the autumn.