How Diesel’s FD qualified and cut a dash in fashion

Annie Guerard’s story is one of many on CIMA’s careers site.

Picture caption: Annie Guerard.

If you are recently qualified and looking for inspiration as to which way you want your career to go, we are here to help. The Careers section of the CIMA website contains case studies of successful CIMA members. Take, for example, Annie Guerard, finance director at Diesel, a CIMA Training Partner.

A great culture

If you had any preconceptions about the sort of personality to be found heading the finance department of a European fashion house, Annie Guerard would probably meet them in full. Guerard is French, multilingual and chic – very chic. This former dancer, who first came to London 20 years ago, wears Diesel’s signature five-pocket jeans around the office. She’s also friendly, candid about the pressures of working in the fast-paced fashion world and enthusiastic about her work and about Diesel. ‘People like the Diesel environment,’ she said. ‘It can burn you out, but like any great company, it has a great culture.’

This independent fashion company was started in 1978 by Renzo Rosso. It is fast growing: Guerard joined seven years ago and in that time turnover has increased tenfold. Her own finance team reflects the multicultural diversity that seems to be the company’s hallmark, with Swedish, Jamaican-English, Irish and, until recently, South African members.

The start of studies

Guerard began her studies in Paris working towards a finance degree at the European Business School. She spent her third year on secondments in the UK and Germany. On graduation she returned to London and after a few months studying dance and choreography at Middlesex University, she decided that to earn some money she would need to fall back on her finance degree.

Guerard took a bookkeeping job, keeping up the dance classes for a few hours a week. By this stage, she could see that dance was not going to be her full-time career. At the same time, she could see that she had ‘a bit more to offer than just bookkeeping skills’. So after two years as an assistant accountant, she set about the business of qualifying. ‘I realised very quickly that, to progress and get the interesting jobs, qualification was a must,’ she said simply.

With a finance degree in hand, Guerard was CIMA-qualified in 18 months. While still a trainee, she moved from a small business information company, Barham (now part of conference group IBC) to the world of luxury goods at Dunhill, where she qualified. From there she moved to Guinness (before it became Diageo) during a period that she described as ‘CV-building’. It seems more likely that she was seeking out a culture that would suit her. She didn’t enjoy working at Guinness: the atmosphere was too corporate and the head office too removed from the business for her liking. ‘I realised that I needed to be more of an operational accountant, rather than one of the corporate boys and girls,’ she said.

Finding fashion

Guerard found her niche at fashion retailer Warehouse, where she was financial controller for three-and-a-half years. From there she was headhunted by Diesel to become FD. The fashion world suits her better than the brewing world, as it is ‘much more interesting, much more exciting and much more cutthroat’.

Diesel was the start of a huge test for Guerard, not least in commitment and endurance, with 12-hour working days commonplace. When she joined, the company had 100 employees in the UK. Now it has 450. The company enjoyed double-digit growth for five years and the UK is the biggest of Diesel’s 22 subsidiaries. The role, too, has evolved. In the beginning her position covered operations, logistics, warehousing, customer services and IT. ‘That’s what happens when you have a small company. You are a bit of a jack-of-all-trades,’ she said.

Fast forecasts

As the company grew, so roles became more specialised. Guerard’s 14-strong finance team now acts as the business intelligence hub for the company, looking after finance and IT. It’s a demanding environment. The managing director, retail and wholesale departments, manufacturing, logistics – all of them need both historical and forward-looking monthly financial information. Guerard has a finance control team focusing on the actuals and a financial planning team coming up with rolling forecasts. Monthly management accounts must be available to Guerard in three working days: the management team in Italy requires them five working days later. In retail, information is everything, and Guerard likes to present forecasts and actuals to the management team as quickly as possible. ‘There is no reason why a managing director or a finance director should wait 10 working days after month end,’ she said.

It’s all about transparency. To achieve fast delivery, the finance team needs to understand how other parts of the business operate. In turn the management team needs to be able to see those operations reflected in the monthly figures. A set of good quality management accounts is what gives a business its predictive powers. ‘Business managers need to be in control,’ said Guerard, ‘and the best department to [give them that ability] is the finance department, because we know that a product that is still stagnating in stock will not sell. We analyse the results and we try to see how the sales are developing. Then we challenge the business managers – ‘are you sure you can sell this?’

Planning ahead

This emphasis on up-to-date business information and controls means that Guerard and her team can protect the business against over-buying or over-stocking. She said that those in her finance planning team – her crystal ball – follow the order books carefully. They look for outlets that are buying repeats, challenging Diesel’s retail managers as to whether they can sell the items, liaising with the company’s stock planners in the UK and at group level.

Credit management is another source of intelligence. By looking at customers’ payment habits, Guerard can help Diesel’s managers to balance their portfolios so that they don’t continue to sell to customers who can’t pay. ‘With fashion, it’s forward sales that matter. Sometimes we take a risk and what we need to assess at all times in the finance department is how much risk we are taking and how we are mitigating the risks,’ she explained.

Keep it simple

As an accountant who likes a hands-on role herself, she wants to ensure her team can communicate effectively with people from all levels of the business. It is essential that the finance team avoids becoming a clique. ‘I tell my team to keep it simple, or our colleagues will not understand us. If we start to talk in our own jargon people will switch off.

‘It is very important that team members see themselves as part of the whole business. I hope they don’t think it’s brainwashing, but I always tell them that if I wanted to be a bean counter I wouldn’t do this job. If they just want to do the routine stuff and not be part of the business then we will not have a strong finance department.’

She likes ambition in other people, but she likes it to be founded on an understanding of how companies operate. ‘I listen to some young part-qualified accountants and they don’t even have an idea about what they want to be. And I would rather have somebody say to me “I want to have my own business” even if they don’t know in which industry. That will grow. They will look for opportunities. When people say “I want your job”, that’s good because they know what they want. Sometimes when you ask people how their current finance department is structured, they don’t know the functions. I find that quite worrying.’

Above all, she likes the sense of involvement that comes from being so plugged in to the whole business. ‘It’s great to see things happening at work and think I’m part of that.’

Source: Liz Loxton, PASS Magazine, April 2005

Visit the case studies page in the careers section of the website.

December 2005