How Jigsaw picked up the pieces

In 2020, Jigsaw was facing up to its 50th anniversary in bad health. Founded by John Robinson in 1970, the high-street stalwart looked successful, with 76 stores employing around 900 people in the UK, plus locations in the US and Australia. A generation of loyal women who reached adulthood in the 1990s might have still felt a certain nostalgia for the bias-cut crinkle silk skirts, lacy camisoles and beautifully tailored coats Jigsaw was famous for at that time, but the store had become somewhere you might pop into for a reliably boring cashmere knit to wear to the office. Sales had been falling for about four years, and in 2021 Jigsaw declared a loss of £21mn due to the Covid-19 lockdowns.

To get back on track, a new team was hired at the end of 2019, including CEO Beth Butterwick, a former Karen Millen executive, and creative director Jo Sykes, a former Nicole Farhi and Aquascutum designer and founder of her own (now paused) tailoring and occasionwear label, Sykes.

Ask Butterwick today what had gone wrong at Jigsaw and she pulls no punches. “No one was talking about the customer,” she says, talking to me from the brand’s west London headquarters. “There was a lack of obsession of understanding data and how you could use it to your advantage and make the right decisions. Menswear and kidswear had become a distraction to the womenswear business and the women’s offer had become bland and homogenised. It had lost that bravery of the original brand and a point of view.”

Competition in the category had also become stiffer, and Jigsaw struggled to hold market share against the fast-fashion giants who had shot up around it on the high street and online.

A three-year plan was put in place to stabilise the business. The pandemic gave the team some cover under which to action it. “Why waste a good crisis [and miss a chance] to really remodel a business so it’s fit for the future?” says Butterwick now. She has perhaps earned her right to be breezy. After closing 30 stores under company voluntary arrangement, including all overseas operations, halting the men’s and childrenswear ranges and putting into place a “digital-first” strategy, in July this year the company announced a return to profit of £1.2mn for the financial year 2021/22.

“Jigsaw was a pretty traditional business, we weren’t set up to think about multichannel and a smooth customer journey,” says Butterwick, who adds that the company has invested significantly in digital and data over the past two years.

None of this would have happened without the right personnel, she adds: “Having two women who understand the product and the customer, having conversations with the board and other people in the business about what’s right, is critical.” Female CEOs are still a rarity in the UK, with just 18 women leading companies in the FTSE 350. Even among industries such as fashion and beauty, which cater largely to female consumers, women CEOs are in the minority — and on a current downward slide, according to a recent report from data analytics firm Nextail.

Another important part of the relaunch was the complete redesign of the product by Sykes, who has also overseen the stores’ new, warmer look. Far from the dated, white-box model, the shops (eight are planned for new sites in the UK this year) have a boutique feel, with soft lighting and bold mid-century furniture. But the larger share of Sykes’s attention has been given to the clothes currently filling the rails.

Fashion-industry insiders already familiar with Sykes’s output were pleased to hear of her appointment. But her changes have come gradually — as requested by the ownership. I had started noticing small differences, such as the more contemporary-feeling T-shirts in cotton slubs and boyfriend cuts. Then, last summer, there was an ivory trouser suit in a gorgeous Baird McNutt Irish linen, and in the autumn, a suddenly covetable pair of flat knee-high suede boots. My fashion journalist peers started talking. Was it possible, we asked each other, that Jigsaw was becoming relevant again?

“The product has completely changed and we’ve got the best sell-throughs on record,” Sykes says cheerfully. The challenge she was set was to evolve and attract new customers but not alienate the core. “The customer who has grown up with the brand wanted something cool from us again. When she was buying Jigsaw in her twenties and thirties she was very cool and she still is now. She just happens to be 55 or 60.”

With her long bob, black linen jumpsuit and studded tortoise-shell earrings and chunky sandals — everything, apart from the bob, by Jigsaw — Sykes cuts a cool, chic figure. Her sartorial choices are at the more understated end of what is currently selling so well for the brand — vivid resort dresses and separates, jewel-coloured tailoring, well-crafted footwear and leather handbags stamped not with the brand name but the more anonymous “EST 1970 ENGLAND”, and a magpie-enticing range of Italian resin and gold-plated costume jewellery starting at around £40.

“Print is the biggest thing we’ve moved on. Whilst we’ll keep some of the signature florals, ditsies, which are very popular and commercial, we’re trying to maintain a modern style and colouration with them and they’re now sitting next to bolder print,” she explains.

The point about colour is true and probably the reason why I was compelled to buy a chiffon miniskirt in a blue and orange floral in the sale this month. And while the offering has not been taken over by the very cool, very minimalist, luxury design that Sykes has been known for, there are hints of it.

Besides, would that be right for Jigsaw? “When I started, the vision was slightly different from what it is now,” says Sykes. “But I think that’s a combination of getting to know the brand as a persona, and getting to know the customer and also the time that we’re living in, because we’ve gone through this colour explosion of dopamine dressing. It’s happening everywhere, not just at Jigsaw.”

The AW22 collection, inspired by the eclectic interiors at the Fife Arms hotel in Scotland, will put the emphasis on tailoring. Sykes has noticed bright suits taking the place of dresses for going out, having already had success with a hot-pink belted tuxedo she introduced earlier this year (jacket £240, wide-leg trouser £150, jigsaw-online.com). “We sold out in half a day, reordered it and it’s about to drop again.”

The cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine have seen the price of raw materials shoot up — cashmere is up 30 per cent, says Sykes — but both she and Butterwick agree that refusing to compromise on fabric quality is one of the major reasons Jigsaw has been in business for half a century. “It’s the major differentiator between us and what you get in Zara or the high street,” says Sykes.

She’s right. This summer’s linen dresses have been particularly good, some with very elaborate embroidery and finishes that are a cut above other high-street offers. I have a voluminous tiered navy blue gauze linen maxi dress (currently reduced from £155 to £108) with a long cotton lining that would be neglected or scrimped on by many other brands.

But the company will raise prices — slightly. “We’re maintaining our entry prices but we’re grabbing our exit prices, so we’re moving away from our high-street peers by improving quality and price and experience,” says Butterworth. “I think that’s the right way to go because we capture people who can’t afford luxury items, who will shop down.” It’s a healthier place to be.

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