Why John Lewis has turned to retail experience as it replaces Dame Sharon White

‘British retail royalty’ Jason Tarry is tasked with refocusing the company back to its core business

When the John Lewis Partnership appointed Dame Sharon White as its sixth chairman in 2019, it admitted that the former Ofcom chief and civil servant was not “the conventional retail choice”. 
But, as outgoing chairman Sir Charlie Mayfield argued, “these are not conventional retail times, nor is the partnership a conventional company”.
Instead, she was there as “an inspirational leader with the personal and professional skills to ensure the partnership continues to innovate and change”.
Today, as John Lewis names its seventh chairman, it is clear innovation and change are no longer at the top of the agenda.
The partnership has turned to Jason Tarry, a grocery veteran with more than 30 years experience at Tesco, to steer its operations.
Rita Clifton, John Lewis’s deputy chairman, said he was a good fit “as the partnership moves into the next phase of its modernisation, focused on our core retail business as well as future growth”.
Tarry’s appointment follows the hiring of a string of other retail veterans over the last year in a sign that John Lewis is shifting its focus away from new ideas – such as housing and financial services – and back towards its core business: selling things.
“He is a very high-class act – British retail royalty,” Shore Capital analyst Clive Black says of Tarry.
The 56-year-old has served as Tesco’s UK and Ireland boss for the last six years and, prior to that, is said to have been central to the turnaround of the supermarket following an accounting scandal in 2014.
Tarry was appointed as head of commercial in the wake of the discovery of a £263m black hole in the supermarket’s accounts.
“Jason was absolutely central to [the turnaround project] and would have been [former Tesco chief executive] Dave Lewis’ key lieutenant,” says one senior food and drink industry executive.
“Dave Lewis set the context for it, but Jason was the guy who rebuilt the trust and relationships with all Tesco’s key suppliers.”
Tarry, who hails from Tonbridge, Kent, was part of the team that helped Tesco regain its position as Britain’s biggest supermarket. Its market share went from 9.7pc in 1990 to 27pc today.
He was a key player in Tesco’s “Project Reset” in the second half of the last decade, which saw the supermarket ruthlessly cut products that weren’t selling in a bid to attract more customers to its shops.
Many household names disappeared from its shelves including, for a period, around 30 brands sold by Heineken in a row over prices.
Waitrose has recently been employing a similar strategy by reducing the range of products stocked on its shelves to remove “duplication”. The Telegraph revealed last year that its yoghurt range was down by 10pc.
Tarry, a fanatical Arsenal fan and season ticket holder, is said to have always respected Waitrose as a rival.
The food and drink executive says: “He liked the customer set, the focus on quality, and regional store footprints. I think he’ll be approaching this with some excitement.”
However, the executive adds: “The challenge with Waitrose is that it’s much smaller. The same playbook that Tesco traditionally had, which was very high volume and lots of scale, is not available to Waitrose. He’s going to need to find something else.”
Tarry is one of several newcomers to the John Lewis executive team, all of whom have track records in retail and consumer industries.
The partnership hired turnaround expert Nish Kankiwala as its first ever chief executive in March 2023 and recruited alumni Peter Ruis, the former Jigsaw boss, to head up its department store business in January.
The revamped leadership team comes after a bruising few years for the partnership, which also owns Waitrose. John Lewis cancelled its annual staff bonus for the first time since the 1950s in 2020 and endured several years of losses.
There are signs that the business has now turned a corner after returning to profit in 2023. However, there are still hard yards ahead: the partnership has warned that up to 11,000 jobs face the axe and Dame Sharon has pushed back the deadline for her turnaround plan by two years.
Those who have worked with Tarry say he has what it takes to complete the turnaround. He has a “real ability to cut through the ‘noise’ to focus a business on what matters most to customers,” says a former colleague.
Customers aren’t the only constituency at John Lewis: the partnership is co-owned by its 76,000 employees who have a say in the direction of the business. It makes the job of running the business a political one as well as operational.
Here too those who know Tarry say he has an advantage.
He is “very good on the shop floor and can speak to people at all levels,” says one executive.
“Jason is such a great bloke,” says Tim Mason, the former deputy chief executive of Tesco who now heads up loyalty card company Eagle Eye. “He’s got very high levels of emotional intelligence and you can see that from the fact that he’s worked with all the different generations of Tesco management and has been as successful as he has been.”
Richard Brasher, the former UK chief at Tesco, once said of him: “I can’t find anyone who says a bad word against you but you seem to get things done”.
Tarry joined Tesco as a graduate in 1990 and worked across its various businesses during his long career with the supermarket, including roles in the bakery division, clothing and running operations in central Europe and Turkey.
“Unusually for somebody who reached the level of seniority that he reached at Tesco, his background is actually through non foods and international,” says Mason. “He was intimately involved with the Tesco apparel business in the early stages of his career.”
This experience will be crucial at John Lewis as it aims to revive sales at its department stores, where fashion and homeware have lagged in recent years.
Perhaps the biggest signal of Tarry’s pedigree was the reaction of shares in Marks & Spencer, JLP’s biggest rival. The retailer’s stock dipped around 2pc on news of his appointment, amid expectations of stiffer competition in the coming years. 
Tarry said on Monday he plans to bring a “sharp focus on being brilliant retailers for customers and investing in growth”. Dame Sharon said she was confident he would take the business “from strength to strength”.