Retail queen pays tribute to the ‘Marys’
Retail ‘guru’ and sustainability campaigner Mary Portas has paid tribute to Specsavers’ track record on both fronts after more than 40 years in business.
Ms Portas was the guest speaker at the Chamber of Commerce annual dinner, where she talked about her journey to embrace sustainability and the ‘kindness economy’ over than rampant consumerism.
‘I spent my early years selling stuff to people, creating magnificent stories that told them that “this Gucci handbag will change your life and you’ll pay £1,000 for it”,’ she said.
‘I was doing what I was doing and not knowing the impact. But once you do know that, you can’t keep going in the same way.
‘From selling and creating brands, you learn to create something to make people’s lives better through marketing – and it was a dream that quite fundamentally wasn’t true. We all believed that the more stuff we had our lives would be better and that’s not the case.
‘You wake up to that one day you have children, you see the impact, and ask, can I keep doing this?’
With Specsavers sponsoring the event, Ms Portas spoke enthusiastically about different types of businesses run by ‘the Marys of the world’.
She said that Dame Mary Perkins had set out to create something special in business.
‘She’s said: “I’m going to create something that’s going to have an impact on people, going to help them, they are going to be able to see better, we will bring people and communities together, create jobs, create a culture that makes a difference – and I’m going to make money”. And that’s fine.
‘We can do this, so many people aren’t, and we have to do something – we are living through the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced and we have to face up to that.
‘Once you know that, you’re asking “how do I add my voice to this?”’
