Mr. Wan: Certainly. Harvey Nichols started in 1813 in London as a single store business for more than 100 years. It is not until 1996 when we floated the company on the London Stock Exchange that the business embarked upon an expansion plan growing out of the one store business in Knightsbridge. Today, the Group has two stores, one in Knightsbridge, which is our flagship store in London, the other one was opened in October 1996 in Leeds, a city in the northern part of England. We have also signed up sites in Edinburgh in Scotland as well as Manchester, another northern city in London, to build another two full size stores. The one in Edinburgh will come into operation by 2002, followed by the one in Manchester in 2003. All the Harvey Nichols full-sized stores are a very focused fashion business. Harvey Nichols is not a full range department store, but just a very focused fashion and lifestyle store. The difference is that in full range department stores these businesses sell washing machines, TV, antiques, books, toys, many other things, but none of this we carry. We are just focused on fashion and lifestyle products. Furthermore, since our floatation on the London Stock Exchange, we have introduced a new business division, which is stand alone restaurants. Currently, we have a restaurant in the South Bank of River Thames called Oxo Tower and then another one in the city of London near the Stock Exchange called Prism. Last year, for the year ended 31st March year 2000, the Group generated turnover of approximately over £130 million with after tax profit of just over £10 million. Our current business strategy is that we will continue to expand the Group's business by introducing, in a very aggressive manner, during the next five years, the development of our own label program. Meaning to introduce Harvey Nichols own label, women's wear, men's wear, fragrances, accessories, et cetera, bearing in mind that we already have our own very successful label food products. Therefore, by the time we are able to launch all these other own label products, we will have a comprehensive range of Harvey Nichols products, thereby enabling us to rollout smaller size stores selling primarily own label products. The idea is that, in our next five years, we would like to achieve the doubling of our turnover as well as bottom line profits. The reason why we believe we can achieve this is because the opening, as I mentioned earlier, of two more full sized stores in Edinburgh and Manchester, the launch of our own label program products and also the further rollout of smaller size stores selling own label products primarily. In a way, we are transforming the name of Harvey Nichols from a very well known retailer in the UK to that of a brand name in its own right. Basically, these are our, in a nutshell, our next five years business strategy and plan to deliver double our turnover profits organically.
Tickers included in this excerpt: HVY.L
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