Between Dr Martens’ 2021 London listing and the end of March this year, when Kenny Wilson departed as chief executive, the bootmaker lost more than 80 per cent of its value.
Reflecting on his almost seven years in charge as he moves on to non-executive roles, Wilson insists the business did not go backwards under his watch.
“It’s easy to look back and go, ‘I wish it had listed at a lower price,’” says Wilson, who remains Dr Martens’ largest individual shareholder. “But the reality is, the market was in a different place.”
“We were coming out of Covid-19, we hadn’t had all the issues we’ve had on energy prices, inflation wasn’t [high]. And then we misread what happened in the US,” he adds, referring to Dr Martens’ botched expansion efforts that subsequently contributed to profit warnings.
Wilson recalls Dr Martens, whose yellow-stitched black boots were once the uniform of punks and skinheads, was eight times oversubscribed at £4.40 a share before its initial public offering. It ended up listing at £3.70 — valuing it at £3.7bn — during a flurry of other IPOs at high valuations as the world emerged from lockdowns. “I remember sitting in a room and saying, ‘I don’t think we should
The share price is now around 55p, giving the company a market capitalisation of just over £500mn.
“If somebody bought in at £3.70 and the shares are worth a lot less, I understand they’re not going to be happy,” says Wilson, who sold £20.4mn of shares at the time of the IPO. “I’m not happy. I like to do well, and I’m not going to sit here and lie and say I’m pleased.”
Chief executives tend to like to leave their posts on a high — but Wilson has departed just as the business may be beginning to turn a corner after a tough couple of years. The company said in January that sales had improved in the US, signalling the start of its turnaround, although this was before President Donald Trump’s tariffs were announced.
Wilson, who has handed over to former chief brand officer Ije Nwokorie, says the business made progress in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as in Asia, during his tenure. Revenues increased from £349mn in 2018 to £877mn in its last financial year and pre-tax profit from £1mn to £93mn, albeit he admits the growth trajectory has not been linear. The company swung to a £28.7mn loss in the six months to September 29.
“Is this still a great brand? Yes. Will Dr Martens recover? I think it will, yes.”
A seasoned retailer, having spent almost two decades at jeans maker Levi’s, Wilson has significant experience leading and growing businesses through stable times and periods of significant change and challenges.
He is now one of the record number of chief executives quitting their jobs in recent months. After several years as CEO, he says he thought “it’s time to do something different”. His decision to leave was partly influenced by a health scare his wife suffered, which “makes you think about life as opposed to just your job”.
“I’d been a CEO for 14 years, and that’s a six-day week job, and I’d been in a very senior job for 25 years. So when you do that, you have your job, and the little bit that’s left around the edges is your life.”
Wilson says chief executives of listed companies, like politicians, often “start at your most popular and your least competent, and end as your most competent but least popular”.
The key is to remain optimistic, maintain team morale and view each challenge as a learning opportunity that ultimately makes you a more adaptable and resilient leader, he adds.
He says he learnt most during the 19 years he spent at Levi’s, a time he describes as “the defining period of my career”. He ended up as president of the brand for Europe.
“I didn’t realise what I knew until I’d left . . . I always thought very highly of that company, because . . . they put all the different tools in my toolbox, and they gave me an incredible schooling and [taught me] how to manage and run a brand, but more than that, how to run a business and how to control a profit and loss account.”
Born and raised in Aberdeen, Wilson was a straight-A student who went on to study English and psychology at the University of Aberdeen. He briefly considered becoming a sports journalist but then embarked on a graduate scheme in retail. “It was never really some big plan. I just thought, I like things that are quite target orientated.”
He says he worked his way up at Levi’s by taking on “whatever secondment was available, whether it was a new function or a new country . . . I was never really that interested in hierarchical moves.
“People always say to me, ‘Oh, did you want a top job?’ It wasn’t really about that . . . I was quite ambitious at that point. [But] it was about learning. I was thirsty to learn new stuff.”
He left Levi’s in 2009 as the next role would have meant living in either San Francisco or Singapore, away from his daughter. “The other thing I thought, if I’m brutally honest, was: ‘Am I good or am I just good here?’”
He worked at accessories retailer, Claire’s, and later ran Cath Kidston, before landing at Dr Martens.
“I’m a product guy. If you love the product, you can go out there and evangelise about it, and Dr Martens for me is like Levi’s. It’s a brand I grew up with. But the other reason why I joined . . . I thought, ‘With my skill set, I think I can help here.’ And I’ve always lived my life by the ‘achieving while having fun’ motto. I like to do well, but I also like to enjoy doing it.”
He rejects negative generalisations about the private equity industry, noting that its backing at Dr Martens and Cath Kidston led to significant growth and created jobs.
The high point of his career was managing Dr Martens during Covid, when stores were forced to shut worldwide. Despite initial fears about cash flow, his team came up with a “survive now, grow later” approach and he sought to galvanise employees in the warehouses to keep online operations running. This led to record performance and employee engagement scores.
“The pressure of those [first] three months was off the scale because we were having to provide comfort and certainty to people when we really didn’t have the answer.”
The low point, he admits, were the subsequent issues at the distribution centre in Los Angeles, where several decisions led to supply chain problems that, though fixed relatively swiftly, he says, continued to be discussed for much longer.
“Some of it was of our own making and people were looking for me to punish people, and I don’t believe anyone comes to work and wants to make bad decisions. A distribution centre got closed quicker than it should have done; somebody diverted product that they shouldn’t have done; but none of those people tried to do the wrong thing.”
He adds: “Obviously people then go, ‘Well, you’re accountable, you should have known that.’ It’s physically impossible, as the CEO, to know every decision everyone is making around the world. But you feel accountable because you’re the boss, and that didn’t feel good.”
At 58, Wilson says Dr Martens was his last executive role. He was recently appointed chair and non-executive director of upmarket streetwear brand Represent and has joined the board of K-Way, a French premium outwear brand.
He says he sought opportunities with companies that have growth potential but, rather than being the driving force, he now wants to use his experience to support and advise chief executives.
“I know I can’t stop, I’m too young to stop working . . . but I don’t want to be a CEO right now.
“I’m sort of in the last phase of my career. I still want to achieve things and have fun, but I also want to pass things on to the next generation.”
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