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"I came out at work before I told my family"
Paul Price in conversation with Ioannis Ioannou, LBS Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Summary:
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An interview with Paul Price, former CEO of British high street fashion chain Topshop.
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He was speaking to Ioannis Ioannou, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, for the School’s Out in Business club’s annual EUROUT conference in November 2019.
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Speaking in his final weeks as CEO, Price reflects on his own journey and how he has led a LGBTQ+ conscious global business.
In a frank conversation conducted live at EUROUT, a leading LGBTQ+ business student conference, Topshop Topman CEO Paul Price and Dr Ioannou discussed values and leadership in the corporate landscape.
Price joined the high street fashion chain from British luxury brand Burberry in 2017 as the first openly LGBTQ+ CEO in the business.
He spoke candidly about his rise up the corporate ranks, coming out at work and the challenges for LGBTQ+ people in business.
In parallel, a focus of Dr Ioannou’s research is on understanding why corporates adopt socially responsible strategies and how investors perceive corporate engagement on social issues.
Ioannis Ioannou (II): How has your professional identity interacted with your personal identity?
Paul Price (PP): I grew up in a small town called Spokane outside of Seattle in the state of Washington in the US. I always knew I was gay but I didn't come out until I was 27-years-old.
At the time, being gay wasn't something that was typical. I didn't know anybody who was gay. There wasn't any mentor or any of my parents’ friends or any teachers or any business people or anybody in my community that I knew was gay. So it was a very scary thing and I felt very alone.
“It took me another six years to come out to my family.”
When I went to university, things started opening up a little bit and I felt a little bit more comfortable, but still, I was in the closet and hiding. It wasn't until I graduated and I went to a training programme at Bloomingdale's department store (which for those who don't know, is similar to Selfridges) that things changed. My boss said to me: “Okay, so you're gay and you're probably really good at these things.” After, 22 years of keeping it a secret I just, said “Yes, I am”. I was relieved. I actually felt like I was who I was, and it allowed me to really express myself and, and I think, it is part of the reason why I've loved what I've done. I was allowed to be who I was and I was allowed to make decisions based on the person that I was and honestly, I considered it an advantage. It has made me better at what I do because it helps me see lots of different customer bases and it helps me to relate to lots of different types of people.
I was out at work before I was in my personal life, which is shocking. It took me another six years to come out to my family.
II: Can you describe to us the evolution of the industry since then, because there are preconceptions about the fashion industry being gay friendly and appreciating the LGBTQ+ spectrum. So what has been your journey in terms of how the industry is responding to these issues?
PP: Back in the 1980s when I started, sales associates and young people in the business were very open. But senior executives, for instance, were not out, they were in the closet. Boardrooms were dominated by straight white men, and white females in some cases. It has changed, and over the years I've seen it being more accepted.
In the position that I'm in now it's not an issue. I make a point of telling people that I'm gay because I want to set an example for my team and to let everybody know they can be who they are. But in the industry there's a lot more to do. There are not a lot of gay CEOs, at least not out CEOs.
II: What are some of the forces accelerating the change? Is it more demand driven? Is it the consumer side? Do you think it is more employee driven? Is it more institutional and maybe socially driven?
PP: It's customer driven. People are demanding transparency, people are demanding that, their voice is heard and they're represented. Day in and day out it's not about me, it's about the people with whom I work, and it's about my customers ultimately. I know that I have a diverse customer base and I always say to my team, if we don’t reflect the community, if we're not authentic, if we're not having a good time, if we're not enjoying ourselves, why are our customers going to walk into our stores or go online and experience our brands?
II: Sometimes brands might be a bit hesitant to stick their head out and take a position on some of these issues because they are afraid of the backlash. But we do see brands who are anti-LGBTQ+ very comfortably go out there and make statements. So what are the kind of potential challenges that a big company or a brand or a CEO faces when they take a pro-LGBTQ+ stance?
PP: There are few examples that we have had over the past few years since I've been with Topshop. We had an unfortunate experience about a year ago. There was a transgender customer who wanted to use the female fitting room and one of our associates said ‘No’, she had to use the male fitting room. She identified, obviously, as a female. She went on social media saying, ‘how could Topshop treat me like this’? It was terrible, it was all over the papers and we actually have a gender neutral fitting room policy. We actually do train our associates to embrace that and how to make sure that everybody knows that but this one associate actually hadn't been trained. They were part-time and we failed in that. We should have done a better job of that. We reissued our policy on that and I have to say, the positive comments that we got, significantly outweighed the negative. Not that's why we did it.
We had another instance where we produced some Pride T-shirts that were conceptualised by Charles Jeffrey, of the label Lover Boy. The idea was that we get five artists that would each portray, on a T-shirt, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. There was the right to marriage, the right of gender identity, the right to adopt, the right to intimacy and the right to marriage. The proceeds went to an agency which helps kids who have been bullied growing up.
The T-shirt that was on intimacy was quite punchy. And some of our customers said this isn't a platform for you to be speaking about these rights and thought it was an offensive but, it felt right.
“Wear it proudly and let your employees, employer, co-workers, know how you feel.”
II: What are some of the most effective practices that you have experienced in terms of actually building an LGBTQ+ friendly company?
PP: I don't think we've done enough. I look up to companies like IBM, who I think are doing an incredible job with training and educating their teams. We have diversity training, which is throughout the organisation, and I think we do a good job about that. It touches upon many different types of people. We’ve recently appointed somebody on the team that is going to be delving into more things we can do, how can they be involved in the communities, our teams, how do we give them time to go away from the office to be involved? How can we educate our teams more? How do we have more seminars and make information available more readily than they are?
II: Where does the responsibility lie? Is it with HR? Is it in the C-suite?
PP: It is within everybody. If you think of an organisation as a pyramid, with the CEO at the top, then it flows from the top. But if you flip it on top and you've got a lot of young people and people that are new to the business and people that have these great ideas, I actually think that their ideas and what they're telling us should be leading the company as opposed to starting with me. So I'm trying to have that type of a culture where we’re listening to a lot of people, creating a special task force to bring up ideas. It's fantastic that ideas are coming through and we're starting to follow through on that.
II: What are your views in terms of the contribution of companies in general terms to big, commercial events, like Pride?
PP: I think a lot of businesses just slam a LGBTQ+ flag up on their window or sell a rainbow T-shirt. On the other hand, you could just be, well, we're not going to do anything about it because we don't want to look like we're commercialising it. But then, by doing that you're not talking about it.
You have to ask yourself, so what are we doing to help the community? But you don’t want to stand on a soapbox either. It's a fine balance which we haven't figured out perfectly.
Pride events are weeklong in various cities around the world. But it's not just about that week, I think the important thing, is that these are everyday values that we should embrace and continue to embrace.
II: It seems to me that more companies in the industry are trying to appear to be authentic without necessarily being authentic. Is it becoming more difficult to distinguish yourself as someone that actually cares?
PP: We had some drag artists that were in our Oxford Circus store during that week, and we had some criticism from the gay community. They felt it was stereotypical, and, ‘you can't do that’. We could have pulled it but, we're just trying to have some fun here as well and our customers like that. It is a balance and we are listening but ultimately we did what our customer wants, appreciates and enjoys.
II: Can you talk a bit about how you think about LGBTQ+ issues in the broader sense of the culture and responsibility of your company?
PP: We've had some controversy with my business over the past several years and it isn't just about LGBTQ+, but it's about bringing lots of different people into acceptance. I really have a sense of pride, because it is such a diverse workforce, and people are happy. It's not just about LGBTQ+, it's about all of us and everyone.
II: Is there scope for more industry-level collaboration?
PP: A lot of times, companies perceive themselves as competitors and if we came together and did something that changed the world or the community, I think everyone would be better off for that. But, unfortunately, I hate to say it, each company wants to own that space more than the other company for right or wrong reasons.
II: How do you see this new generation, essentially coming online, coming into the labour force, and particularly in the fashion industry, what's your advice? Especially for LGBTQ+ people that want to build a career. What sort of skills do you think are now necessary to navigate the industry and build a successful career in this space?
PP: Be true to who you are and what your beliefs are. Wear it proudly and let your employees, employer, co-workers, know how you feel and what is important to you. That's the only way that you're going to change the culture of a business that needs changing because if employees want to change or they have something to support that's when companies listen. It's a power to be reckoned with.
