Jason Tarry admitted recently that not much was expected of him as a teenager after he failed his maths GCSE; and he had come from a family where no one had attended university.
But he was determined not to let that hold him back. Tarry, born in the Kent market town of Tonbridge, went on to finish his A-levels and complete a degree in business studies, before joining Tesco’s graduate recruitment scheme in 1990.
Since then, he has held a number of senior positions at the UK’s largest grocer, including bakery category director, head of commercial and chief operating officer, before being promoted to chief executive of UK and Ireland in 2018. It was a position he held for six years until he stepped down last month.
• John Lewis Partnership names former Tesco boss as new chairman
The food-to-fashion boss is now set to take charge of the John Lewis Partnership, one of the biggest and most high-pressure jobs in British retail. The married father of three will replace Dame Sharon White as the employee-owned group’s seventh chairman in September.
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He joins at a difficult time for the business, which has 329 Waitrose shops and 34 John Lewis department stores. The group has been battling mounting debts and tumbling profits and has struggled to compete against its nimbler, online rivals.
White, who joined in 2020, having never worked in retail before, has recently steered the company back into the black but has been criticised for focusing on non-retail areas such as housing and financial services. Her cost-cutting strategy, which focused on reducing staff, closing shops and streamlining operations, has also been blamed for its decline in customer service, for which the business was once renowned.
As a Tesco lifer, he brings with him plenty of retail experience. He was known to have played a significant role in Tesco’s turnaround amid the fallout of its accounting scandal from 2014 and related £129 million fine. He played a major role in reducing Tesco’s ranges by 20 to 30 per cent, in what was described as “project reset” under the former group chief executive Dave Lewis.
The industry is hopeful that Tarry can get the John Lewis Partnership back firing on all cylinders.
Tarry was also credited with taking Tesco’s F&F clothing brand to its overseas franchises and later for helping to improve Tesco’s grocery sales by making the grocer the most competitive on price that it “has ever been”.
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Zoe Mills, an analyst at GlobalData, noted that Tarry was “at the helm of Tesco during the crucial development of its Clubcard loyalty scheme, taking the [German discounters Aldi and Lidl] head-on and creating a retail model that its competitors have emulated since”.
Mills added that the new boss “certainly has the experience and know-how to rejuvenate the John Lewis Partnership”, but that the role would require different tactics, as John Lewis and Waitrose were more upmarket than Tesco, “with Marks & Spencer, rather than the discounters, a clear threat to John Lewis’s long-term success”. M&S has recently returned to the FTSE 100 and reclaimed its title of Middle England’s favourite retailer having improved its clothing offering and boosted its innovation in food.
As the largest employee-owned business in Britain, with 76,000 staff, John Lewis Partnership is also run very differently to publicly listed Tesco. Employees get to vote on many important decisions, with the view that the company’s success is measured by the happiness of those working for it.
Tarry will have the job of re-engaging disgruntled partnership employees, known as partners, who this year did not receive a bonus for only the third time since 1953 and have seen many of their colleagues let go. They have also been left unsettled after it was revealed last year that White was willing to risk the company’s staff-owned core values by selling a stake in the business to raise more than £1 billion.
Rita Clifton, the deputy chairwoman of the partnership, said Tarry had “impressed everyone throughout the interview process with his warmth, his belief in the partnership’s ideals and democratic principles and his appreciation for our unique and special brands”.
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She added: “We are confident that Jason will provide the kind of inspirational leadership, a proven track record in multi-channel, multi-category retail success and a strong identification with partnership values that we are seeking in this role.”
The John Lewis Partnership said Tarry was supportive of the company’s new “retail-first” strategy and would work closely with Nish Kankiwala, a former Hovis and Burger King executive who was appointed the company’s first chief executive last year.
Last month the partnership vowed to focus “unashamedly” on investing in its core retail business after a controversial shift into housebuilding and after three consecutive years of losses.
The “refreshed” plan for the employee-owned business came after White outlined moves in 2020 for the partnership to make 40 per cent of its profits from non-retailing activities, including construction and financial services, by the end of the decade.
Tarry said: “The partnership and its brands stand for trust, value, quality and service and it’s a great privilege to be succeeding Sharon as the seventh chairman. The partnership is unique and I’ve long been an admirer of the employee-ownership model, its values and partner-led customer service. This starts with a sharp focus on being brilliant retailers for customers and investing in growth.”
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It is said that some staff at the John Lewis Partnership wept tears of joy when Dame Sharon White was appointed chairwoman of the group in 2020.
White, who was born in the East End of London and whose parents were of the Windrush generation, smashed glass ceilings to become the first black woman to take on one of the most scrutinised jobs in British retail. Given that such roles had previously been filled by white, privately educated men, it perhaps explains why her appointment was greeted with such emotion.
Yet, even in an industry where surprise appointments have become par for the course, White, 56, was a particularly left-field choice. She was an economist who had worked as a civil servant for most of her career before heading up the communications regulator Ofcom, and had no retail experience.
Even when her predecessor, Sir Charlie Mayfield, announced that a bureaucrat who had spent much of her working life in Whitehall would lead the partnership, he admitted that she was not a “conventional” retail choice. “But these are not conventional retail times,” he added.
Mayfield was not wrong. Like others in the sector, the owner of John Lewis and Waitrose faced increasing competition from nimbler online rivals: costs such as business rates were biting and a number of department stores were draining money.
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White was determined to do something radical to turn around the fortunes of the employee-owned business, one whose “national treasure status” and profits had tumbled. She scrapped its “never knowingly undersold” price promise, which it had offered to customers for almost a century, shuttered dozens of shops, reduced staff numbers and streamlined operations.
She was also full of novel ideas for how to expand the company beyond its retail roots, outlining plans for the partnership to make 40 per cent of its profits from non-retailing activities, including construction and financial services, by the end of the decade.
However, some have argued that White’s cost-cutting approach and push into non-retail activities is responsible for the partnership’s demise and has led to a decline in customer service levels.
Perhaps the most cutting criticism is of her search for funds to overhaul the business and to reduce debt, including risking the staff-owned group’s core values by selling off a stake in it to raise more than £1 billion. Another one of her ideas was a merger with the resurgent Marks & Spencer.
Amid concerns about the retailer’s direction of travel, White narrowly won a vote of confidence last year, with staff backing her to continue, but dismayed at its dwindling performance.
On the flip side, some industry observers have argued that her plan might have worked if it was not for the unprecedented turbulence that followed her appointment. From the pandemic that forced lockdowns and shop closures to global supply chain fractures and a cost of living crisis, White has faced a plethora of challenges, all while trying to cut costs and boost sales as part of a turnaround plan.
She also had to pick up a number of legacy issues left by her predecessor, including a period of rapid store expansion before her arrival, a mounting debt pile and an ill-advised management restructure, which some analysts have said would have “made life hard” for many a management team, let alone during a pandemic and period of rampant inflation.
