BIG INTERVIEW
RETAIL rejuvenated
At a time when retail is having a tough time and negative press is much more common than good news, Ryman is a stationery retailer that is doing rather well. This is thanks to a leadership team that is progressive while also holding on to the traditional values of a 126-year-old company
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yman is something of an institution in the British retail space. With a chequered history dating back to 1893, the stationery retailer survived two world wars and considerable political upheaval, many recessions and, in this era of digitisation, the many challenges that the retail sector is facing right now. Long a household name in the UK, the company was propelled further into the limelight when Theo Paphitis, Chairman of Theo Paphitis Retail Group (TPRG) of which Ryman is a part, appeared on reality TV show Dragons’ Den for nine series from 2005 until 2012. Paphitis – flamboyant, charismatic and very much ‘out there’ – is one part of the TPRG and Ryman equation. The other is Group CEO Kypros Kyprianou. Like Paphitis, he’s of Cypriot heritage as well as a huge football fan. But he, by his own admission, is the relatively quiet and shy one, the one sitting in the back of the office crunching the numbers and working on day-to-day strategy and operations. And all of that he does very well, as OPI CEO Steve Hilleard found out when Kyprianou visited OPI’s offices in London in early spring to discuss why this operator is still going strong after all these years.
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OPI: This is the first Big Interview with you, although we featured the company – Ryman – before as part of our chat with Theo Paphitis 11 years ago. How did you end up working for Theo? Kypros Kyprianou: OK, let’s go back to the very beginning. My parents were first-generation migrants from Cyprus. They came over to the UK in the early 1960s and I spent my formative years growing up around very small businesses – that’s what everyone in my family was involved in. I went to school in north London and was a keen footballer, and my dream was to become a professional footballer playing for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. I also had a good careers adviser who told me to by all means do the football, but something else as well. And so I did. I dropped out of football at the age of 16 when I was released
by Tottenham. I tried to get involved at a lower level, but it was too difficult. Instead, I continued school and then went to City University and studied Actuarial Science – in short, it’s a discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in insurance, finance and other industries and professions. After I graduated, I got a job at the Bank of Cyprus, in some way going back to my roots. It wasn’t what I had had in mind when I left university, but I had just got married to my wife Fanoulla, needed the money and actually ended up working there for 15 years. The bank really encouraged me to develop my career at the firm, as it was looking to build a larger business market in the UK. Entrepreneurs like Theo Paphitis were target clients, and the bank wanted to build a team to develop its corporate business – I was the perfect fit. I ended up heading the corporate banking division and that’s how I met Theo – he was one of my customers. He convinced me to work for him as he wanted to strengthen his commercial team. That’s when I moved from banking into retail. Theo was also Chairman of Millwall Football Club at the time, of course, and had taken the club