Debenhams Group’s ESG Playbook with Sophie Rycroft | RTS 2026

Hello, everyone.

This is omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton and I'm coming to you live from the Retail Technology show in London in the vuzion podcast studio.

And joining me now is Sophie Rycroft.

Sophie is the Group ESG Sourcing and Quality Director for the Debenhams Group.

Sophie, welcome to omnitok.

Thanks for having me.

That's a tongue twister, isn't it?

It is, yeah, it is.

But believe it or not, it's not the hardest title I've had to pronounce today.

Okay, good.

I actually did it fairly well.

The other one, not so much.

But let's get started by.

Tell us about yourself and tell us about your role and also about Debenhams, too, for those maybe over in the US that aren't as familiar.

Absolutely, yeah.

So Debenhams is a umbrella of five powerhouse brands.

Under our umbrella is Debenhams Boohoo Man.

Boohoo ladies.

Pretty Little Thing and Karen Millen.

We are online only.

We're digital.

Fashion, beauty, lifestyle.

We have no bricks and mortar.

I have worked for the group for 13 years.

I didn't.

I wasn't grey before that and now I am.

But it's been amazing.

I started as a buyer in Manchester and worked my way up.

When we were Boohoo only, I learned sort of up the ropes on the buying ladder, became ahead of buying, then transitioned across into sourcing, then sort of bolted a few things onto the umbrella and added to my role.

A few more strings to my bow, Ethical, sustainability and quality.

And then I've been in my current role for two years.

Along the way, we've acquired some amazing, incredible brands as well, which has been brilliant because we've got a real spectrum of customers.

Caramillon's are sort of premium brand.

We've got brands like Boohoo and Pretty Little Thing, which are amazing.

And a bit more of our youth brands along with Boohoo man as well.

And then Debenhams in there is great because it's a bit of everything that fashion, beauty, lifestyle really sits under that Debenhams umbrella.

Right, right.

Are you from Manchester originally?

I am not.

I'm an Essex girl.

Does that mean anything in America?

No, probably not.

But, you know, I was just curious.

I don't know if it's a good thing.

I am an Essex girl.

I'm back in Essex, based in our London office.

But I moved and lived in Manchester for 10 years when I was at my peak sort of buying career.

Okay, got it.

Got it all.

All Right, so you mentioned.

So your roles, as you said, and as I read in the title, you've got sourcing, ESG and quality all under you.

Yep.

Those three things, they sound like they go together, but they can all pull in a lot of different directions too.

So how do you manage all those tensions day to day?

Good question.

So, look, the most important thing to say is there absolutely are tensions and there are challenges, for sure.

There's no shying away from that.

But you have to.

This is the future of retail.

The things have to align, you have to have a strategy.

The key for me is buy in from above board, buy in senior leadership, buy in also all of your colleagues.

So get everyone living and breathing.

Your strategy.

There is no point me embedding and rolling out a strategy on quality and improving our returns rate.

If our buyers just want to buy an entry price point garment, we have to bring them on the journey with us.

So in the two years in my role, a huge part of it has been embedding it into our colleagues, into our team, into our senior leadership, then also, on the flip side of that, our supply base.

So we've done an incredible job on consolidating our supply base and now they're our partners.

We've worked much so, so hard to get them in a place where we work with them hand in hand.

I've got teams on the ground, in our factories every day, visiting our factories, working with them, holding their hand, training them, developing them.

So that's been a key part.

Buy in from everywhere and also making sure that everyone's involved in your strategy and then naturally everything will sort of align.

Yeah.

So while they're disparate, they actually can't be.

They have to be aligned.

In today's day and age of retailing,.

100%, We are in 2026, there is an expectation of retailers that you have to have to be doing all of these things.

Everybody has to have an ESG strategy, whether you're a PLC or not.

Everybody has to have this in place, everybody has to be publishing certain bits of information.

There are big things coming our way as well.

When it comes to legislation.

Digital product passports, which I think hopefully we'll talk about, we have to be ready for them.

You can't wait for these things to just be thrown onto your desk.

So getting one step ahead.

Also a massive part of it as well, is data.

Get your data in order.

You can't do any of these pieces of work or prep for anything coming your way if you haven't got good Data and you can analyze it and it's all in one place.

I imagine that's a very key piece of your job.

Oh, 100%.

Even the teams on the ground in region, we have to review certain factory data.

OPO failure rates, quality, rejection returns.

We are living and breathing this data on a daily basis to make decisions, but as are the buying teams and the commercial teams.

We're an online only business, so we're fortunate enough that we've got that great digital story.

You can fully monitor a customer's journey.

Everything's there.

If a customer walks into a store and leaves, you'll never know.

Whereas online we have that.

So it's an amazing data to.

To track.

Did you ever think back in your buying days, your early buying days, that you'd be as focused on data as you are right now?

Wow.

I don't think I ever would have.

No, probably not.

When I was in a factory in China negotiating dresses and T shirts and talking about having a fight about whether polka dots are going to be more successful with my designer than a stripe.

Right.

No is the answer.

And it's a new muscle.

Right.

I was a buyer when we would handwrite paper orders in factories, it was the most amazingly agile way in which we could buy and negotiate.

But absolutely not.

Everything was.

Was very manual, everything was very gut feeling.

And being a buyer is about that passion and drive.

And I've got this feeling this is going to be big.

I'm going to take a hit on it, I'm going to take a punt.

Whereas in my world, you absolutely cannot do that.

It's got to be fact and it's got to.

You've got to have the data to back it up.

So no is the answer, but I wouldn't have it any other way now.

Customers demanding it.

The way the customer's interacting with us digitally is demanding it as well.

So, all right, you kind of alluded to this, but I want to call it out for my audience.

In the us, the group rebranded from the Boohoo Group to Debenham Group in, I think it was March of 2025.

Is that right?

Correct.

And in so doing, it pivoted to an online marketplace model exclusively.

Right, so what's different about the company now versus when that announcement was made?

Yeah, good question.

So I think, look, we're a hub of five incredible brands and we had a new CEO start in November 2024 and we've done some incredible things since then as part of the strategy as well.

There was a massive ESG strategy that we wanted to roll out and talk about under those big three pillars.

Under environmental, we've done a great piece of work on our Net Zero transition plan.

We've worked and partnered with the Carbon Trust.

We picked three great partners under these pillars to work with.

Under our social pillar, we partnered with pennies.

And I've actually just been on a panel talking about pennies then.

And the most incredible business, if anyone's not heard of it, and it facilitates micro donations to charities.

And it basically means that when a customer is shopping with you, she has the option to round up her pennies to give to the nearest pound and you can donate it to the chosen charity.

It can be 30p.

The customer feels like they've done a great thing.

We've raised £250,000 so far this year for British Heart Foundation.

850,000 Of our customers have just chosen to do that.

So this ESG strategy space has been a massive part of this.

Our customer cares, our customer needs it, our customer expects it.

Retailers should absolutely be doing it.

It is a given moving forward.

And then under our governance pillar, we've partnered with Segura and we're sort of on phase two now of our supply chain transparency.

Full tiers.

We currently audit, map, publish all of our tier one manufacturing sites.

We're just in the process of doing every further tier which is going to get us in great stead ready for Digital Product Passport and it's sort of getting one step ahead.

So as part of the broader rebrand, Debenhams is an incredibly legacy heritage British brand.

We would be foolish not to have pulled on that name when we acquired the brand.

It is incredible.

People have been shopping with us for hundreds of years.

That was a no brainer for us from a strategic move.

Oh, yeah.

I guess from the us.

Yeah.

It probably it's the most everyone, you know in the UK will have someone in their family that's been in a Debenham store and lived and had a coffee there and been for a cake with their nan there, or bought suit from there or bought Christmas presents from there.

So it was the most amazing brand and the name really resonates with everyone here in the UK and hopefully globally as well.

So the biggest part of that change in my world has been our new ESG strategy, which we announced last year.

We're one year into it and we've made some, some amazing movements.

Got it.

All right, so you mentioned the digital passport.

The digital product passport, I should say.

And you're on record as saying you're pretty, you're pretty confident you've done everything you can and that there's, if there's anything new that gets thrown out around that, that you guys are going to be able to jump on it.

So, so what is the, I'm curious what, what creates that confidence and then also what is the business case for trying to, it sounds like get ahead of the legislation versus, you know, sort of react to it and just be complaining.

Compliance even?

Absolutely.

And I think, look, the, the date for the, the live date for DPP keeps changing and I think that doesn't help because everyone's sort of panicking.

Not panicking, panicking.

The challenge with not knowing what's coming your way is how prepared can you possibly be.

You can just do everything you can.

This starts at data.

I referenced it before.

If your data and you don't have visibility of everything within your supply chain, you will not be ready for a digital product passport.

We don't know what it's going to look like, but I am confident that by that point we will have all of our supply supply chain tier mapped.

We will know where everything in our supply chain is made.

My plan is to pilot digital product passport on one of our brands.

That would be my advice to any retailers out there.

Pilot it on a department.

So if you're one store or you're one website, pick a category, pick tops or pick dresses or pick one supplier and one factory to do it for you.

Contain it, trial it all the way through.

Get all of your team and colleagues bought in to trial it, to order, scan it, map it, start small now before it becomes official that you have to do it.

Give it a trial, give it a test, get a labeling provider, work with someone that you're confident can do it properly.

There's also loads of third party companies out there that, that are doing a great job of this and have really created great tech stacks and AI that are reading all of this information for you.

Do some research and some benchmarking about who's out there that you could partner with.

Or start briefing your internal tech teams now to get ready and geared up.

Because actually the tech behind it, the hardest part, knowing who your supplier is, having relationships with them and telling them what they need to do is one thing.

Working with them to get it right to put the correct label on is another thing.

Giving it to your customer and telling her what to do from the website is one thing, but the tech and the data behind it, it's a QR code, the data's got to be Correct.

And what I'm most excited for as well with the DPP is the after of it.

So the circularity element, so our customers can sell it on Vinted, and I want them to put that in their dpp.

It's not just about the supply chain part and about them telling us and us giving visibility to our consumers of where it was made, where the cotton came from, where the fabric came from.

It's the end of life, actually.

Then sell it on Vinted, tell us who you sold it to when you buy it on Vinted, scan it again, and then we can see that these customers are then selling and reusing and repurposing.

So I think the exciting part for me also is that afterlife pit and the circularity piece, which feels really exciting, which gives.

Yeah, that's really good advice.

That's really interesting to hear you say that too, about, you know, pick an area, pick an apartment, pick a factory relationship, whatever it is.

I'm curious, so how.

Because you're running a marketplace too, where, you know, certain things in the marketplace are easier to control than, say, the things that you control directly as the retailer themselves.

What are some of the dynamics your advice you'd have in terms of, you know, corralling?

I don't.

I'll say corralling.

Corralling the marketplace vendors onto what you're trying to do as well for the dpp.

And this is back to bringing them on the journey.

What you don't want to do is in a year's time, if you work on a marketplace platform, be reaching out and telling them they need to do something.

They should know already because a lot of partners and people will be working with everybody else.

And this legislation isn't new and fresh.

However, bring them on the journey.

We started having conversations.

You know, this is coming.

What are your plans?

Presentations, talks, chats, engaging them, hearing their story.

A lot of people will already be doing this, actually, because they've wanted to get one step ahead as well and are living and breathing it.

So engaging them, conversations, finding out partners, maybe that aren't anywhere near on that journey.

Tell them what you're doing.

Recommend people that we've already benchmarked that could be good for them to work with.

Recommend labeling companies, recommend people that they can support in terms of their supply chain.

So engaging them as soon as you can, if you're doing that journey for Made to Order in parallel, because it's just as important and leaning on them for advice because surprisingly, a lot of them have already gone down that path.

And on that journey.

And until you ask, you won't know.

So that's part of it as well.

But my biggest, biggest, biggest takeaway.

Data.

Data, data.

Sort your data out, get it clean, get it in one place.

Make sure you've got visibility of your greenhouse gas emissions.

Make sure you've got visibility of your packaging, your tier, mapping your supply chain.

Start bringing your colleagues on the journey with you and the senior leadership.

Right, well, it's so funny hearing you say that because like I can remember back in the day when I was heading up E commerce at Target or home furnishings E commerce at Target, like trying to get people around the idea of data.

And now to be at these conferences and hearing it's like the primary focus of so many retail executives, just shows you how far we've come as an industry.

All right, Sophie, so I'm going to put your feet to the fire here before I let you go, what needs to happen over the next three years for you to feel like you were successful in your job and that the ESG transformation happened to the degree that it should?

Wow.

Million dollar question.

Well, if it's been really successful, I probably won't be here, so that's good.

It will be running in slick operation without me.

All my team will have supersed me because they're amazing team number one team colleagues, absolutely champion my team, make sure they've flown their flag under the three pillars that I mentioned.

The pieces of work that we were doing are super important.

We will be pretty much near enough our near term 2030 net zero target.

So that will be a key thing if we're on track with achieving what we said we would there, so that that timing would probably be.

Would be perfect.

We will have succeeded on that journey and I'll be confident in that space under our social pillar.

I've just loosely had a conversation with Pennies and we're going to aim for a million pounds this year in terms of social donations under our governance umbrella.

That piece of work with Segura on supply chain mapping, digital product passports on everything.

No brainer visibility of that, that whole piece for our customer.

And also then bolting on the circularity piece at the end to showcase all of the work and everything that our customers can do to sell it on.

So not much.

Yeah, that's pretty.

It's pretty well thought out though.

But what, so after three years, what, they just put you out to pasture?

What.

What's going to happen?

Well, there'll be something new, there'll be a new legislation, there'll be a new.

There'll be a new tech will all be AI.

It's never going to end, right?

Yeah.

There'll be something else, I'm sure.

All right.

Well, Sophie, thank you so much.

Thank you.

You're very welcome.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I sure did.

Hope you listening back home did as well.

Again, Sophie Rykoff of Debenhams Group, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks to the Retail Technology show and to Fusion for sponsoring our content at the conference of all week long.

And on behalf of all of us at omnitalk, as always, be careful out there.

Thank you.

Bye.