The Works boss Gavin Peck on new strategies, cyber security and rising crime

For the year to May 4, 2025, The Works upgraded its profit expectations to £9.5m. Total revenues at the retailer for the period were down 2% to £277m, while like-for-like sales were relatively flat at 0.8%, although sales through stores were up 2.3%.

The Works took a ‘big step forward’ in the second half of the year. Is that all down to the new strategy?

“We’ve done a lot of work on defining who we are as a brand and what we want to be famous for, and the new ‘Elevating the Works’ strategy is part of that.

“We’ve got our new ‘Time Well Spent’ strap line which is all about our ambition to become a famous destination for affordable, scree-free activities for the whole family.

”We started to bring that to life from October/November time and that is really resonating well with customers.

“We know our customers like newness and new products. So, across all of our categories, we’ve increased the amount of new products that we’re offering customers since Christmas, so that’s also driving growth.

“On top of that we’ve been doing a lot of work around how we flow stock and how we improve product availability, so we know that availability has improved in stores. We’ve also done a lot of work in the last 12 months to improve the consistency and the level of standards in our stores.”

You had some fulfilment issues at Christmas, how have you gone about sorting those out?

“We moved to a new facility, managed by a third party in January 2024, and all the way through last year it was operating as we expected. We were seeing great efficiencies coming through until about September, and then as the volumes started to pick up in the run up to Christmas, the facility had a lot of automation in it, but they tried to blend that with manual processes for the first time, and it just didn’t work.

“We’ve taken the decision to move to a new provider that will reduce costs and improve customer service, because we did let customers down at Christmas”.

Retail crime continues to be a huge issue for the sector. Are you experiencing higher levels of crime and what are you doing to try and curb it?

“We are seeing, as everyone is, an increase in product shrinkage. So first and foremost, we’re trying to protect colleagues and do what we can to ensure their safety. We’ve been implementing sort-of wearable security devices, trialling body-worn cameras and where we can—putting extra security measures in place.

“Our challenge is—given we sell quite low-value items, adding in some of the security around specific products, security tags and so on, just doesn’t financially make sense.”

“We wanted instead to focus on just giving the best prices we could to everybody”

Retailers across the sector are either launching new loyalty schemes or enhancing existing ones. The Works stopped its loyalty scheme last year, is there any plans to bring it back in a new form?

“There’s no plans to bring our loyalty scheme back. Our loyalty scheme was quite expensive to run so it cost us a few million pounds a year. We wanted instead to focus on just giving the best prices we could to everybody.

“So we took the decision to take that away, and invest as much of that as we could in keeping prices low. Having said that, we definitely want a closer relationship with our customers. So we’re looking at different things from an email perspective around how we offer more tailored and personalised communications with customers.

“A bookworm is very different to an artist or a craft but, at the minute, they’re getting served the same sort of content.”

There’s been a flurry of cyber attacks recently on retailers. The Works suffered one itself in 2022. Are you investing more in cyber security as a result?

“Having experienced an attack three years ago, I have a lot of sympathy for those who are going through it at the minute, because it’s a huge interruption to your business. Not just in the short term, but in terms of bringing systems back online, managing customer messages, and so on.

“We’ve spent a lot of money at this point on improving our cyber measures. So we increased the opex we spent on cyber security by £500,000 a year in terms of the defences we have in place.

“I think we are well secured, but obviously these hackers move on and progress. We think we’re spending the right amount and have got the right defences, but ultimately these things typically come down to a human error. So, we have doubled down on our training related to cyber security. We’re doing a lot of phishing tests at the minute and following up with training for anyone who fails”.

How do you see the customer behaving at the moment?

“The spend data seems to suggest that people are spending more and on a macro level, and people have more disposable income. But consumer confidence does seem to remain fragile. And when you overlay tariffs, wars, inflation, interest rates, I think it’s going to remain fragile even if people technically have more to spend.

“I think this year is going to remain up and down in terms of how people are feeling and how much they spend over the coming months. But it definitely feels better than it was a year ago.”