The Griffin Report: Selfridges store director on bringing the 'wow' factor to retail
The wow factor is important to SAM WATSON, especially at Christmas. As high-profile store director at Selfridges in Birmingham, the former Walsall FC programme seller who now regards retail as a piece of theatre, has become a member of the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce board. JON GRIFFIN went to find out what makes her tick.
She’s in charge of the West Midlands’ leading department store after a successful career at the sharp end of retail – and it all started selling football programmes at Walsall FC.
Sam Watson, store director at Selfridges in the heart of Birmingham, smiles as she recalls her first tentative foray into the retail world – as a teenage programme seller outside the Bescot Stadium.
“From the age of 15 I had worked on Saturdays at Walsall FC, where I used to sell programmes. It was a bit of a nightmare because each programme was £2.20, and I was a 15-year-old girl having to deal with money and throwing these programmes up in the air in the middle of a load of blokes.
“At the first game I am pretty sure I lost more money than I took. But you could say that the whole hustle of retail for me definitely comes from selling football programmes at Walsall. And I got in to watch the match as well. Walsall provided me with a complete grounding.”
Sam has come a very long way since her days in the freezing cold hawking £2.20 programmes at the back of the Saddlers’ ground before being promoted to a job serving the directors in the hospitality lounge on matchdays.
Today she combines her high-profile role at Birmingham’s most prominent department store with chairing the Central Business Improvement District (BID), flying the flag for the city’s retail sector, acting as a trustee for Acorns Children’s Hospice and now working with the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce (GBCC) as a non-executive director.
Walsall-born and bred, she is also living proof of the old adage “if at first you don’t succeed.”
With original ambitions to become a doctor she failed to get the necessary A-Level grades to take up a place at Liverpool University to study medicine.
You could say that the whole hustle of retail for me definitely comes from selling football programmes at Walsall.
But medicine’s loss proved the High Street’s gain as she quickly progressed up the retail ladder, as she reflects today.
“I didn’t get the grades I needed, and that was the defining point probably.”
While studying for her A-Levels she landed an eight-hour weekly contract at Next in Walsall – and a career in the High Street began to take shape.
“I fell in love with earning money and also loved talking to people.”
At 18, she moved on to her first full-time job at the Next store in the Gracechurch Centre in Sutton Coldfield, getting to grips with banking, stock movement and other fundamentals of the retail world before climbing the ladder to take on the fashion chain’s childrenswear’s manager role at its Merry Hill store.
“I went on the management training programme with Next and absolutely adored it. I fell in love with retail, everything about it, the commerciality of it, the pace of it, the customers. My favourite working day now is still a Saturday, when I am out interacting with the team, customers and products.
“That is where it happens – you need to get out and see what people are buying, why they aren’t buying, what the experience is like, what the facilities are like.”
That devotion to in-house detail and keeping the customers satisfied was forged over an eight-and-a-half-year stint with Next across a variety of West Midlands stores before moving to women’s wear retailer Hobbs, where she stayed for five and a half years, including a spell in Central London.
A West Midlander through and through, Sam admits she was happy to forsake the lure of the capital.
“I am a real homebird. I love it here, I love the people, there’s a warmth to it. I love London for a day or two days, but I like to come home.”
By now married with her first child, Sam’s priorities were changing as constant motorway and air travel took their toll. And then Selfridges came calling…
“I got approached about Selfridges 10 years ago when the deputy general manager role became available. I’ll be honest, I thought being in one store in one city every day, I would be pretty bored. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I came here in August, 2014, and have done 10 years now.”
Over that decade the high-street has been buffeted by Covid and the seemingly remorseless march of Internet shopping, with Birmingham losing two major department stores in the shape of John Lewis and Debenhams.
Meanwhile, Selfridges has chalked up more than 21 years trading in the Bullring after opening in September 2003.
“Covid was a difficult time. Selfridges have been around since 1909 from London and the flagship store down there. Never in the brand’s history had we ever closed our doors and locked up.
“Even in the war they continued trading. It was really, really strange when we first closed – but our online trading saw the most massive uplift, literally overnight.
“It has been a really challenging few years for retail – and hospitality – and we are still at the tail end of it. Our online business is now 20 per cent – it went up to 40 per cent so it has come back down.”
Retail theatre is about walking into an immersive experience.
Sam attributes Selfridges’ post-Covid recovery to the chain’s insistence on sticking to its original vision of shopping as “retail theatre.”
“I think the advantage that Selfridges have got is our history from Harry Gordon Selfridges’ day.
“Retail theatre is about walking into an immersive experience. You walk in at Christmas and there’s a giant Christmas tree, a festive spectacular where you have got Santa, elves, a brass band, a huge confetti cannon going off. You are not getting that anywhere else and that is just to make people go wow.”
The Selfridges wow factor also extends to personal shopping initiatives, from self-made wealthy business figures to Premier League footballers.
“For the 20th birthday, we invited 25 of our VIPs who shop through our personal shopping to come into the store and have a dinner.
“We took them down in the lift to the bridge link and had dinner there. In September we held the first dinner in Aston Villa’s new dressing rooms – we do what other people never even think to do.”
But while competition from rivals – be it online or bricks and mortar – has never been fiercer in the high-street, Sam believes the 115- year-old Selfridges business model remains integral to the brand’s appeal.
“We are the leading department store in the West Midlands – I say that without arrogance, it’s a fact. Selfridges will continue to do what we do really well. Our vision and mission is to constantly re-invent retail, bringing things to customers they have not seen before - that might be exclusive brands or it might be products and experiences as well.”
Now owned by a joint Thai-Saudi Arabian venture, Selfridges employs 350 in-house team members and another 500 working in concessions, plus around 100 third-party contractors such as security, cleaners and a facilities and maintenance team.
“I love Selfridges, it allows me to run the store and have autonomy for this store, which you don’t have in a lot of retailers. As store director, you are allowed to make it your own and give that store that personality.”
It would seem that Sam Watson has been stamping her own personality on the world of retail ever since selling those football programmes at the back of Walsall’s Bescot Stadium.
This article first appeared in the December 2024/January 2025 edition of Chamberlink magazine.
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