Consumer >> CEO Interviews >> December 4, 2000

Mark Henderson – Gieves & Hawkes Plc (giev.l)

MARK HENDERSON is the Chief Executive of Gieves & Hawkes Plc. Mr Henderson was educated at the Benedictine run Amplefoth College in Yorkshire. After brief periods working in film and studying law he went to live in South Africa at 21 and studied marketing at Witwatersrand College in Johannesburg and worked for a family engineering business. At the age of 24, he returned to the UK, married and began a career in Brand Marketing, spending seven years in cosmetics with Avon, Mary Quant and Max Factor and then seven years with Alfred Dunhill, becoming Head of Marketing and managing their GBP20 million promotional budget. In 1992, he left and joined Czech & Speake as Managing Director and a shareholder, which he describes as a learning experience in venture capital and running a small private company. In 1996, he joined Gieves & Hawkes as Managing Director and is now into his fifth year of reshaping the Company into a tightly run luxury branded menswear business with 11 sites in the UK including its 6,000 square feet store at Number One Savile Row and 32 in Asia. In 1999, Gieves and Hawkes demerged from the Gieves Group and became a freestanding Plc of which he is the Chief Executive. His ambition is to more than double the business. He is married and has two children. Profile
TWST: May we start with an introduction to Gieves & Hawkes, a brief

corporate profile: what is its business?

Mr. Henderson: We own the freehold of number one Savile Row, which is

probably