Timothy Melgund

In individual stores, we were taking close to a million pounds.

This concession was?

Yes.

So we watched very carefully as we could see what was unfortunately happening to Borders.

So we knew which towns and cities we needed to move and open our own standalones as quickly as we could.

Why did you do that?

Well, I'm a property person originally.

But secondly, I always think that if you're a retailer…

It's the one thing you can't change.

You can't change the position of the shop.

So you have to make absolutely certain that you've got the right shop in the right market, the right size, the right location within the street.

Each investment is expensive, not just the fit-out cost, but the commitment you're making on the rent and rates.

It wasn't, but I think what we were able to do was to differentiate ourselves from a rather busy market and be very clear about the direction that we were trying to take the business and sticking to this thing about innovation, creativity, design-led, value for money, not the cheapest on the market by no means, by no means, but just absolutely sticking to what our customers wanted.

Sam?

They've given us a target of five years to get the EBITDA to 10 million.

EBITDA is basically profit before you take away all tax and depreciation charges and that sort of thing.

And we achieved that.

In fact, we got to very nearly 11 million.

And they'd always said at that point they would try to exit.

So we knew it was going to happen.