Richer opened his first shop in London in 1978 while still a teenager. Richer Sounds went on to hold a Guinness World Record for the highest sales per square foot of any retailer, achieved from small, cheap, unglamorous premises.
The method was not merchandising. It was an obsessive focus on staff motivation and on customer service in a sector notorious for neither — measured, rewarded, and taken seriously as the actual product.
In 2019 he transferred control of the company into an employee ownership trust, and made payments to staff based on length of service at the time.
He has also written about management practice and campaigned publicly on tax avoidance and on how businesses treat workers.
Customer feedback fed directly into how staff were rewarded. Businesses that say service matters and reward only sales get sales at the expense of service, reliably.
The record was sales per square foot, not sales. Rent is one of the largest fixed costs in retail, and the businesses that win are frequently the ones that need less space rather than the ones that fill more.
He built structured suggestion schemes with real rewards and a duty to respond. The information is free and it is the thing most owners never systematically collect.
Richer Sounds is a specialist retailer in a difficult category, and it has had to shrink its store estate as buying moved online. Excellent service does not exempt a business from a structural change in how people shop.
His outspokenness on tax and employment practice has also made him a divisive figure in business circles, which is a cost he appears content to pay but is a cost nonetheless.
