Zia Zareem-Slade

… pioneered as Customer Experience Director at Fortnum & Mason where the challenge was to become relevant to more customers more often – a shift from ‘toffs and tourists’ to Londoners and the UK more generally as a special but accessible place to go. The mindset was ‘world’s oldest start-up’. Central to this were the products themselves – they had to be good enough to live up to their Royal Warrants, in part to make sure they were retained. Around them, a digital revolution ensued, at pace, while partnerships and pop-ups added rocket fuel in other ways – from Skating at Somerset House to a chapel built in the atrium with real weddings taking place. The pioneering reinvention worked, achieving the serious revenue and profit growth that made the brand and business sustainable again. Zia is now CEO at jewellery business Annoushka.