How hard is it to turnaround a legacy brand?

Britain has a long and storied history with retail having a number of companies which have been established for well over a century. However, in recent years many of these legacy brands have struggled, especially as retail has become so much about online. Many of these brands have had to contend with a changing consumer and have failed to adapt their offering or bring about the change needed to survive. One retailer who has faced these challenges and overcome them is Freemans, led by CEO Ann Steer.

Freemans was founded as Freemans and Co in 1905 and launched its digital turnaround in 2020 after years of losses. Most recently saw its sales increase 13% during the 13 weeks to 20 December 2024. The brand also delivered its strongest yet Cyber Week (Black Friday and Cyber Monday) with sales up 25% and 28% respectively year-on-year which resulted in a +17% positive gap to the wider market. How has Steer managed to bring Freemans into the year 2025 and just how hard is it to turnaround a legacy brand?

Modernising the brand

The biggest challenge for any legacy brand is getting people to view it as one that belongs in the modern age. It can be very difficult to convince a new generation of customers, in this case women over 40, to view a legacy brand as a brand for them rather than a brand for their parents or people older than them. Therefore, any turnaround has to start with appealing to the customer and getting them onside.

“I saw Freemans as a great business with great potential, but one that had been slow to modernise and started to really lack relevance. So putting the customer back front and centre was very important to put a well known heritage brand back into the market,” says Steer.

However, a legacy brand does have the advantage of already being known. It can be easier to change the perception of a brand rather than introducing an entirely new brand to the market.

“Freemans has got 72% brand awareness. So it is a brand that was once loved and had been a bit neglected in recent times. Having that level of brand awareness is really valuable, it’s a level of an awareness that new brands would die for. So we made sure that we brought that into re-describe the brand in a modern way,” Steer explains.

Know the audience

Knowing the audience you are pitching to is an important part of success for any retail brand, but it can become difficult for a legacy brand as that audience may change or the people working for that brand may not understand how to reach that audience anymore. As previously mentioned, Freemans’ customer base is predominantly women over 40. Once Steer realised this, she was able to curate a brand aimed squarely at this market. Steer states that one of the main questions which the team focused on while modernising the brand was; “How are we giving great value to our customer and making it really relevant for her?”

Steer also states that one of the things that aided the turnaround was that she herself was part of Freemans’ desired target audience, as were a number of the people she brought with her.

“We are the same age and same gender as our customers, and that creates a really exciting dynamic. That gives us that barometer in terms of making sure that we’re making the right decisions for them,” she states.

Getting the right people in

Getting the right people in is paramount for any retail business, whether starting out, consolidating a position in the market, expanding or looking to recover, nothing happens in the industry without the right people. In the case of Freemans, Steer was able to lean on Susie Calvert, the chief merchandising officer at Freemans who had previous experience at Debenhams. Steer states that Calvert understands how to curate a company’s own brand but also knows how to work with credible third party brands to create a unique blend of brands for the customer.

“I think it’s important to bring in new skills to work with colleagues who’ve been loyal servants of the business for a long time, who’ve got that muscle memory in terms of what works and doesn’t work for the business. By doing that you’re creating that dynamic of new hires working alongside experienced heads and unlocking the potential that’s already within the business,” Steer explains.

Modernising behind the scenes

While all the more esoteric elements of a turnaround for a legacy brand are very important, no turnaround like this can be done without modernising the way a company works behind the scenes. This is the element of a turnaround that is unlikely to be given much praise as it happens behind closed doors away from the public eye. It is easy for the layman to spot when a brand has turned around its image but they’re unlikely to see how improved the backend is. Part of the reason why many of these brands fail is because they have had a certain way of working for a number of years which becomes outdated, but once habits are set it can be hard to break them.

For Steer the main focus has been on cost efficiency, especially in the supply chain. As a result, Freemans has overhauled its warehousing and logistics capability and put a lot of work into cost efficiency. It can be easy for a lot of bloat to appear when a brand has been around for so long. Furthermore, Freemans has also put a lot of effort into modernising its credit offering. As a catalogue business the company is no stranger to the idea of finance, but the fact Freemans has offered it for so long means that its systems were outdated.

Overall, the turnaround at Freemans is the result of a willingness to change and accept that one business model and one way of working cannot work forever. Freemans can be held up as an example to other legacy brands on how to stay relevant in a new age.