Jim McCarthy the CEO of Poundland joined GLP and delivered an inspiring talk to over 220 students on campus entitled ‘Lucky Jim- 25 years of amazing value at Poundland’. Jim outlined his early teenage experience of hard work and strong ambition to an enthralled crowd, outlining his fundamental dedication to his career and the resilience and determination needed to make it to the top of his profession in retail.
Jim highlighted his humble beginnings working for Dillons, to a later move to running Sainsbury’s convenience store business and overseeing its rapid growth. Jim went onto talk about his career at Poundland and his leadership and wise strategic moves which transformed the business to an estate of almost 550 stores and a plan to establish international stores. Effectively, this meant impressing on Poundland the same high standards that he had learnt from running Sainsbury’s Local and T&S Stores, an empire of 862 convenience stores that he ran for eight years before selling it to Tesco.
With a strong emphasis on pleasing the Poundland customer and quality brands Jim noted “If you can’t show amazing value, we delist it, we don’t sell it. So we delisted Nescafe Brazilian blend after we sold five million of it in a 100 gram jar,” having removed it from sale after the price of coffee shot up. Also Jim commented that “we don’t sell £1 products, we sell products for £1”, reiterating the focus upon quality assurance and encouraging students to take this ethos on board for their future careers.
Jim’s message for successful leadership centered on hard work, creating a great team, demonstrating passion and defining a clear strategy. He also highlighted the importance of having a clear goal… and sticking to it! The main message of leading a global company was good communication skills and a transparent strategy which Jim demonstrated perfectly through his fantastic career. At the end of Jim’s talk he held a questions and answers session where students probed Jim regarding his lessons learnt through tough times, equal opportunities in recruitment and work life balance.