Group general counsel | Harrods
Dan Webster
Group general counsel | Harrods
Group general counsel | Harrods
Team size: Ten
What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last year?
It was launching the Harrods Beauty business and Harrods China private shopping business, and dealing with Brexit and the loss of tax-free shopping. In addition, we’ve had Covid-19 challenges like everyone else.
Has WFH inspired any innovation in terms of the way you or your team work? Are there any standout products or tech you now use that you never did before?
Like many businesses, we moved to working remotely using video-conferencing to replace face to face meetings. Effectively, we went from having used Teams once or twice, to living on Teams! This has worked incredibly well. The team has worked if anything more efficiently and probably longer hours than when we were in the office. We also have daily tea break meetings to make sure we keep continuity and avoid silos.
Even in the best-case scenario, Covid-19 is likely to have far-reaching ramifications. How are you safeguarding the long-term health of the business?
Covid-19 has been devastating for retail, especially for businesses like Harrods which rely quite heavily on foreign sales. We are having to restructure as we seek to rebuild over the coming years but are still investing in the Chinese market and in upgrading our customer marketing systems.
How positively do you view the Brexit withdrawal agreement and are there any areas that you think future agreements should pay attention to?
It has not been very positively. It creates bureaucracy and costs for the import and export of goods, the loss of tax free shopping makes UK luxury uncompetitive and Brexit is also likely to have a negative impact on our recruitment of staff from outside the UK. I hope future agreements find a way to simplify imports and exports. I would love to see tax free shopping reinstated.
How has the massive shift to e-commerce and the closure of brick-and-mortar stores presented any unique legal challenges or opportunities for your company? Do you see the company maintaining a long-term focus towards online trading even after the pandemic?
Yes, this has posed a massive challenge. Harrods relaunched Harrods.com in February 2020 and this new platform proved itself adept at handling the massively increased demand. Online will be (and indeed already was) a massive focus for Harrods. In order to sell through stock, we have been able to divert store stock to online with some success. Other innovations have been scaling up personal shopping services and opening a sale shop in Westfield to cope with the amount of sale stock.