12/08/2026
The only profitable brand in the joint venture, within six months.
That's what happened when M&S gave me Per Una and Limited to manage across Eastern Europe. I'd joined from Stradivarius, and Per Una was the biggest womenswear brand at the time, around 10% of total sales, sitting inside a newly formed joint venture that was still finding its feet.
My job: make Per Una profitable.
Easier said than done. The brand ran on different systems to the rest of the business, with dead stock left behind by previous management.
What I learned has stayed with me ever since: a brand is profitable when it sells what it planned to sell. The moment stock stops moving, that's where the problem starts.
So I made sure that the product mix was right every season, based on sales, sometimes negotiating with the buying team and having to push the VM team to support our strategy and create displays that were different to the UK. I got stock quantities matched to actual demand, store by store with some replenishment in the warehouse (very different to the rest of M&S) To do that properly, I visited the stores myself, spoke to the managers, learned each location's customer and competitors, a habit I'd picked up at Inditex, where knowing the store was never optional.
Six months later, Per Una was the only profitable brand in the joint venture.
I apply the same principle to ad management now.
Profitable ads come from digging into what actually needs to be sold, understanding the customer at a granular level, and making sure your big volume lines are part of the campaigns with the right creatives. There's no single secret, it's every element working together.
If your ad agency is disconnected from your brand, perhaps it's time to work with one that actually cares.
Book a call.
