board and advisory

A broader perspective around the table

Alongside my executive career, I contribute to a small number of advisory relationships where my experience across product, sourcing, manufacturing and retail can bring an additional perspective to the table.

Having worked across different parts of the industry, from international manufacturing and the global supply base to some of the UK's largest retailers, I tend to look at businesses through a broad commercial lens.

Product, sourcing, margin, people, sustainability, risk and the customer are rarely separate conversations. The interesting questions are often about how they connect.

Industry advisory

Source Fashion

Board Advisor

I sit on the advisory board for Source Fashion, contributing to regular confidential roundtable discussions with senior leaders from across the industry.

The board considers issues affecting the future of product, sourcing, manufacturing and responsible business, bringing together different perspectives from across the sector.

My contribution draws particularly on my experience of global sourcing, international manufacturing, retailer and supplier relationships, sustainability and the commercial realities behind product decisions.

I also support the wider Source Fashion community through the event and, where relevant, industry discussions and panels.

Spring Fair

Board Advisor

I also sit on the advisory board for Spring Fair, contributing a retail and sourcing perspective to discussions around the opportunities and challenges facing product businesses.

The advisory format brings together senior people with different areas of expertise to challenge ideas, share experience and contribute to the future direction and relevance of the event.

For me, the value of an advisory board is exactly that: different perspectives around the same table.

Applying experience at a different scale.

I've also worked directly with growing product businesses, where the questions can be very different from those facing a large retailer, but the fundamentals are often surprisingly similar.

For Sophie Allport, I advised on sourcing strategy and organisational structure, looking at how the business bought product, how it could buy more effectively to achieve better commercial outcomes, and how to create a more balanced and resilient supplier base.

Working with a smaller entrepreneurial business requires a different lens. The answer isn't to import the structures of a large organisation. It's to understand what the business is trying to achieve and apply the parts of that experience that are genuinely useful.

Good advice has to fit the business, not the other way around.

Knowing what you don't know matters

I don't believe being an advisor means having an answer to everything.

Three decades working internationally have given me a strong network across retail, sourcing and the global supply base.

That includes manufacturing and sourcing expertise around the world, alongside experienced retail specialists across different disciplines who understand transformation, organisational change and restructuring.

Knowing when another perspective is needed is part of good judgement.

Sometimes the most valuable contribution you can make is to ask the right question. Sometimes it's to challenge an assumption. And sometimes it's recognising that somebody else has exactly the expertise the situation requires.

From executive experience to governance

My interest in advisory work is part of a wider interest in how businesses make good decisions.

Working within listed, employee-owned and founder-led organisations has exposed me to very different approaches to ownership, governance, culture and accountability.

More recently, I have continued to develop that perspective through the Non-Executive Director Programme at Cranfield University, alongside my existing advisory roles.

I am particularly interested in the point where product and sourcing decisions become wider business decisions: where they affect commercial performance, risk, sustainability, organisational capability and long-term value.

The best questions rarely belong to one function.

A perspective shaped by both sides

I've spent much of my career moving between different parts of the product world.

Retail and manufacturing. Product and sourcing. Creative thinking and commercial discipline. Large organisations and smaller entrepreneurial businesses.

That means I tend to see connections as much as individual functions.

And around an advisory or board table, I think that breadth matters.