In July this year, Briscoe Group managing director and deputy chairman Rod Duke went on holiday to Turkey with his wife. They had a great time playing golf down the coast, but one of the highlights of their visit was going to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, the well-known retailer says. 

“I thought it was absolutely spectacular,” says Duke, who names Gerry Harvey, of Harvey Norman fame, as one of his influences, a business contact he knew in the ’80s, who really knew how to take over a room. 

Duke arrived in New Zealand from Sydney in 1988 to turn around the business founded in the early 1860s. Duke ending up buying it, then taking it to an IPO in 2001. 

Today, the Briscoe Group has 47 Briscoes Homeware stores and 43 Rebel Sports stores. 

‘Tiny meek little office’

Duke has built a reputation for pulling rabbits out of the hat even when the economy is grim, though he acknowledges the past year has been testing.   

The recipe of his success has been that he is a details man, Forsyth Barr retail analyst Paul Koraua says.  

“Duke’s head office in Morningside, above a Rebel Sports, is a tiny meek little office if you compare it to the castle that is The Warehouse head office on the North Shore in Auckland, and that tells you a lot of what you need to know,” he says. 

“Rod still looks at the inventory that’s being purchased, the way the stores are being laid out, where the stock needs to be at the front of the store or at the back.”  

‘Highly competitive, energised’

It’s all that little detail stuff, that retail excellence, that he’s very, very good at, Koraua says. And his senior leadership has the Duke DNA in them, too, after years of working with him, the analyst says. 

Duke’s argument has always been that you will struggle to make money in NZ retail unless you are number one or two in the market. 

“He’s stuck to the basics; he’s not chasing the latest shiny thing, which is so easy to do in retail,” says Tim Morris, director of food, fast-moving consumer goods and retail at Coriolis Research. “And his owning a big chunk of the business has given it stability.” 

BusinessDesk investigative reporter Garth Bray says of Duke: “He’s a highly competitive and energised leader and super-majority shareholder of Briscoe Group. Others of his age and stage might be preparing an imminent exit,” he adds, but Duke appears combative and driven to “occupy, dominate and defend” his sector. 

'A little bit magic' 

Duke is the winner of the listed company category in the inaugural BusinessDesk CEO Index.  

Our independent panel of judges highlighted his charisma: “Rod Duke is Briscoes. He's been a little bit magic in leading an FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods] business that has weathered and delivered results for shareholders and customers, no matter what the economic context. 

“For decades, he’s provided amazing leadership and backbone in New Zealand,” they added. 

BusinessDesk asked Duke about his experience in dealing with the five criteria in the CEO Index: vision, impact, innovation, resilience, and influence. 

Vision: When it comes to his personal vision for the business, Duke says: “I believe it to be critical that an open, honest, and inclusive environment be established with my team and stakeholders, so we all share the same view.” 

He stresses that his vision is not a multi-year horizon; retail is far too dynamic for that. 

“I like to talk about the present and the near future. I’ll be brutally honest with you: I don’t even do five-year or 10-year budgets. I can give you my view today, but honestly, I could be made to change that view in a week or 10 days.” 

Impact: A long-serving, loyal and goal-oriented leadership team is key to making an impact, Duke says. If you have that, successful, timely execution within the group is the norm.  

He remembers a big impact he and his team made more than 35 years ago, when Briscoes pushed for Sunday trading. 

“We were looking to disrupt the market in New Zealand, to get on the front page of every paper free of charge,” he says. 

Duke got the staff on board, opened stores for six consecutive Sundays, and the Government relented and made it legal. 

“It changed dramatically what people thought of Briscoes,” he says. 

Innovation: Retail is a competitive industry, and remaining static is a lost opportunity, Duke says. There has to be innovation with product, a store’s look and feel, and customer ease of purchase, whether that’s online or click-and-collect. 

A key innovation will be the $130 million distribution centre [DC] Briscoe Group is due to open in April in Drury, South Auckland. Duke describes it as “the most groundbreaking thing for us internally but [one] not seen by the customer or market watcher”. 

“The new DC will change the economics, it’ll change the dynamics, it’ll change the way we treat our logistics, it'll help us in terms of in-stock items,” he says. 

“We get possession of the distribution centre in April next year with full automation by November.  In the very near future you’ll see quite a difference in stores.” 

Resilience: Having a strong and loyal management team in place helps to mitigate crises, of which there have been plenty in retail, from the global financial crisis to covid, Duke says. 

He clearly remembers a harsh lesson a year or two after the company’s IPO in 2001. He was invited by an investment house to do a presentation on his results. 

“I went in there and thought, ‘This is going to be pretty easy. I’ve had a terrific year; they’ll think I’m so clever.’” 

He left the room for a couple of minutes, and when he came back, the stock had dropped by about 50 or 60 cents. 

“I said to one of the analysts, ‘What happened? I just gave my results, which were 36% up.’ They said, ‘Oh, yeah, we had an expectation you were going to be 45% up.’’’ 

That experience taught him the importance of communication and continuous disclosure in a public-company environment. 

“You'd better have your communication between stakeholders and your market watchers and reality pretty close because if there’s any misalignment, you’re going to get crunched.” 

Influence: Duke would like to think his influence as a leader is about being positive and open. 

“No one person has all the good ideas, so it is important to be seen as inclusive.

“Once you've established a serious leadership group, once you've got that, it's very, very important to remember that you are not the vessel of all wisdom.” 

And this experienced retailer, excited about the refresh programme for his stores in the year ahead, has that senior leadership well prepared to carry on for him.  

“The plan beyond me inside this organisation is well set. It’s not widely broadcast but it’s well set. I think you’ve just got to be brutally honest with people,” he says, when it comes to managing succession expectations. 

A good book: The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer by Paul Barry. “I like it because he’s such a character,” Duke says. “He owned Channel Nine, he disliked politicians. There’s a famous YouTube video of Packer in front of a Senate committee and it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”  

Sliding doors: “I know I’ve got the best job in the world for me right now; I don’t know what else I’d do,” Duke says. “But I wouldn’t mind being a chef in a fancy restaurant and doing fancy stuff every night that was new and different. I’ve got a bias towards anything new, different, and innovative.” 

● BusinessDesk will publish a report on the overall winner of the CEO Index on Nov 19.  

● Read more of the BusinessDesk CEO Index here.