The Eric Musgrave Interview: Soulboy Keith McNichol of Richmond Classics, Bournemouth on why he keeps on keeping on
Keith McNichol is keeping himself busy planning the 40th anniversary celebrations for Richmond Classics, his influential multi-brand store in Bournemouth. Opened on 1st April 1988 – yes, he admits the date can be regarded as very appropriate – it continues as one of the very few survivors of a golden era of strong local indies that has been erased by the recent domination of Flannels in the sector.
The genial self-confessed fashion fanatic has lost none of his zeal for finding new brands for his loyal customers, some of whom now bring their grandkids in to shop with Richmond Classics. In this candid conversation, McNichol is blunt, however, about the difficulties an independent fashion retailer faces due to significant societal and economic changes, plus huge shifts in relationships between brands and their stockists.
McNichol was 30 years old when he opened his business and was able to draw on more than a dozen years’ experience in retailing. He is a retailing lifer. Along with music, fashion is an all-consuming passion which he is now passing on through regular videos on Instagram.
Now selling only menswear, his current brands include Android Homme (footwear), Billionaire Boys Club, Gabicci, Moose Knuckles, Only The Blind and Paul & Shark.
Some of his stories may bring back memories for our Editor-in-Chief, Lauretta Roberts, who was a regular customer of Richmond Classics as she grew up in Dorset.
You’ve been in retailing for a few years now…
My two loves for the past 52 years have been music and fashion. Straight from school I had the choice of working for Beales of Bournemouth, established in 1881, or its rival department store Bobby’s, which was founded in 1915. I thought Beales was a bit old-school for me, so I joined Bobby’s. Surprisingly enough, started in the dress fabrics department before graduating to menswear.
After three or four years, I rebelled and went to work on the beach. Then I decided I better get a proper job again, so I joined Tailors Fashions, a small company with eight branches locally that traded under names like Discus, Gemini and Ashes. They were very early adopters of middle market brands. I was there for 10 years, troubleshooting, going into various branches, improving their environments and displays – and making them a lot of money in the process.
In 1987 the owners decided to close the company and gave me a small amount of money as redundancy or a parting gift. I started helping a friend of mine who had a shop on Richmond Hill in Bournemouth selling American gridiron sportswear and surfwear like Ocean Pacific. I loved the shop because it had a beautiful mezzanine floor. One day I told him I’d like to take the unit from him and he agreed as the American football thing wasn’t working. As it was on Richmond Hill I called it Richmond Classics.
The opening party invitation for the original store, which opened in 1988
What were you selling at the start?
It was a tiny store, around 1,000 square feet including the little mezzanine upstairs. Early doors, it was all American brands and European labels. I went to Le Sentier district in Paris every other week to buy from their cash and carries. The rue de Nazareth was like their Great Portland Street. I brought stuff back in bin liners. They called me Mr. Richmond. I’d buy it, sell it and go back again and again. My problem was that I was being blocked from getting UK-based brands by my local rival John Anthony. Fashion agents then were lazy and they sold to whoever was first with them, not necessarily who was the best store.
Everything changed for me when in 1989 I took out an advertorial in the lads’ mag FHM, which at the time was edited by Mike Soutar, who’s now regularly seen on The Apprentice. I met Mike Soutar recently and he told me I was the first indie to do take out such an ad. We shot my beautiful shop from the mezzanine, aiming down at a table, and I was inundated with calls from agents saying, Do you want to come and see what I’ve got?
By then we were selling very curious, expensive Italian and French shirts from labels like La Garage, CPA and Replay at up to £300. After we appeared in FHM people were calling and going, can I buy that shirt? It was the best thing I ever did because little old me and my tiny shop put Bournemouth on the fashion map.
An Eric Musgrave profile of Richmond Classics in Sportswear International in 1992
The next big boost, Eric, was when you came to interview me in 1992 for a feature in Sportswear International, the most important magazine in Europe for the jeans and casualwear sector. Your photographer Fred Anderson made the shop look brilliant in the double-page spread and suddenly lots of European brands wanted to talk to me too.
You already had a good reputation, which is why I visited you. Although you’ve always retained the Richmond Classics name, you’ve devised a few different concepts over the years…
A big inspiration for me was Ray Bacon, who had a brilliant store in Cardiff called Woodies. That shop showed me what was possible. At Richmond Classics we took the adjacent unit and knocked through. We later added a third unit next door.
In the early 1990s the French denim brands like Chevignon, Liberto, Aviatic and Chipie were in fashion. I did a deal with Steven Peters, the Chipie agent, to open a Chipie shop. As it wasn’t a franchise I also sold other related brands, like Avirex and Diesel. It gave us another point of difference. I’m not bragging, but the stores looked great.
The interior of the former Sussed Out store
Subsequently I had nearby branches such as Sussed Out, which was me plagiarising our friend Mr. Shawn Stüssy. I've had The Lounge of Geeks and Freaks – everyone said to me, you can't call people geeks or freaks. I've had The Fashion Pharmacy, which, again, was mental. These were all reinventions to keep people interested, but Richmond Classics has always been the focal point.
When I opened The Fashion Pharmacy I was challenged by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry to relinquish the word “pharmacy” as I did not administer medicines. At the time Damian Hirst had just opened his Pharmacy restaurant in Notting Hill and the ABPI challenged him too. Damian lost and I won! After I told them I was giving fashion remedies for fashion illnesses I didn’t hear from them again.
I started out with menswear only but added womenswear in the late 1990s when US labels like 7 For All Mankind, Juicy Couture and Ed Hardy were big. We even had a creche in the shop. It all ended around 2017 when Grazia magazine kept telling their readers where they could get cheap high street knock-offs of the hot womenswear brands.
Imagery from The Fashion Pharmacy
What was the local competition like in the early days and what’s your competition now?
My only strong competition at the start was from John Anthony, which had opened in Bournemouth the year before me. (Southwest-based mini chain John Anthony was taken over by Frasers, owner of Flannels, in December 2023 and the fascia disappeared soon after).
As for now, I don't think there is competition anymore. We don't have a level playing field, so competition doesn't exist. The only thing we independents can do is to control our own little space. The big boys have got the ball, they won't give it back, and therefore there's no competition. You can't play without a ball.
As an example, in February Mainline Menswear (another Frasers company) was already on Sale! We’re still waiting for some deliveries and they're on Sale.
Online is competition, I suppose, but I’m not online because we're too weak as an independent and it's too expensive. To put, say, 1,000 garments online, you've got to press them, photograph them, write content about them, and at the end of the season, how much of that stock have we actually sold? And I've paid £20,000 to put it online? I could have saved myself all that money by not being online.
Of course we need presence and a platform. On my Richmond Classics site, it looks like we're the best thing ever because we have sold out of everything! Psychologically, customers are like, Oh my God. we need to get there early.
Who are your customers?
We have people who have been with us for 38 years. They have brought their kids here and now some are bringing their grandkids.
As a retailer, you don't realise how much influence you have on people's lives. It's bizarre. We have started doing regular videos on Instagram. One of them has had more than 38,000 views. The comments we get are amazing. People are remembering shopping with us when they were 12 or 14, telling us we made their life great. They lived and breathed what we were doing.
We revisit brands too. I’ve just rebooked Evisu, which I sold through the 1990s. Young kids aged 18 have been buying pre-loved Evisu to get an appetite and now they're coming to me. In the shop they look like rabbits caught in the headlights because they can't believe the information, the histories I can share. Such things are priceless. When people come to me, it's for a shopping experience.
McNichol outside the current side. His videos draw visitors to the store from far and wide
How is Richmond Classics faring after 38 years?
To be totally honest, it's very, very hard. Right now, footfall has virtually disappeared. Unfortunately, all independents are in the same boat. We've had to change a lot of strategies. We've had to change a lot of brands because they've gone you-know-where for the quick buck. There's no longevity or loyalty from most brands. With some, there is, but a lot of them go direct-to-consumer. Covid destroyed any friendships as such because they realised they could make more money without using us retailers. New brands coming out are also going DTC.
We have to do what we feel is best for our business and for our customers, so we introduce new brands. I go to Pitti Uomo in Florence, I visit the Paris shows. We reinvent. We still have our core and we have the ability to direct customers.
We go out, look and find. (Norwegian outerwear brand) UBR is a prime example. I was doing UBR three years ago when no one knew it. I found it in a multi-brand showroom. I put a coat on and loved it. It’s a beautiful product. I didn’t need to know David Beckham or some football manager wore it. That's the strength of what we do. In the first season we sold 30 coats.
Another prime example of my belief and energy in seeking out brands was the first time I saw (Swiss brand) On Running footwear at Mark Batista’s Jacket Required trade show five or even six years ago. They were only a tiny stand, the size of a shoe box – no pun intended! They had three very ugly styles that were not aesthetically pleasing to the eye, more special needs than style, to be honest. I bought one style in four colours and for six months I couldn’t give those On Running shoes away. Then the Liverpool scallies adopted them and the rest is history.
We no longer work with On as they are now in the likes of JD Sports, but we’ve found a new footwear brand, which has very few accounts and none in the multi-brand sportswear stores. That’s a unique USP these days! People will have to come and see me in Bournemouth to learn what I’m talking about.
I used to go to the US looking for stuff too but now the exchange rate and tariffs have killed that.
How many people do you employ?
The answer is very boring and very simple. Due to our lovely Rachel Reeves (former Chancellor of the Exchequer), I have nowhere near the staff I should have because I can't afford them. We’ve cut our cloth accordingly. I have two floors in my store and every day I have just two staff, including myself. On a Saturday, I have three. In the old days, you needed to double your staff on Saturdays, but Saturdays aren't Saturdays anymore. Wednesday is a Saturday now, or Tuesday is a Saturday now.
Because of our beautiful government and our councils, the town centres are drying up because there's no footfall because no one's working in the cities because none of the businesses are in the cities. Everyone’s working from home. Now we have a situation where no one has any necessity to come into the towns.
I was talking about this to my MP, Jessica Toale (Labour) recently. I told her that the government should increase the tax on online businesses. It would cost Labour nothing and they could use that money to entice businesses back into the cities and towns. This in turn would give money to entice staff to come back into town, as they used to five, or six years ago. They could go for something to eat, go for a drink, go window shopping – except there aren’t the windows to look at now.
If all that came back, which it could very easily, then we'd be happy, and we’d go back to where we were, to have a weekend when people go out to spend money because on Monday to Friday they're working in a working environment they can't get away from.
Does the consumer today have a better time than they had back in 1988?
They certainly have more knowledge. Between 1988 and say 2010 they came to us and said, What should I be buying? What's in fashion? You never hear that now because the kids – and their parents for that matter – have got so much information available to them. They don't need us. It's a different world.
View this post on Instagram
Tell us about your recent videos.
I shied away from social media for a very, very long time because I didn't think it worked. And the people doing it for me weren’t good. Then I met a young guy at the local university who asked to do it. As he didn’t know fashion retail, the first two or three things we did were disastrous, but we worked out how to work together. I am telling the story of Richmond Classics and all my other fascias. As I said, one of them has attracted 38,000 views.
People are identifying with it, which is great. But it's also brought customers to me from other cities. I had a customer the other weekend who said he’d seen the videos and had decided to come to Bournemouth to see me. He spent £2,500 on the day, so the proof is in the pudding.
What have been the highs and lows of 38 years as an independent?
The lowest point was being forced out of my Richmond Hill shops late in 2016. My original landlord from 1988 treated me like a son. When he sold the property the new owner threatened me with a massive dilapidation bill and my lawyer told me to leave. I’ve been at my Westover Road site since spring 2017.
Behind the counter at Richmond Classics
Before then, in the mid-1990s, I was broken into five times in quick succession. I knew who’d done it – they were walking round in my Henri-Lloyd jackets. When I confronted the ringleader it all kicked off in a very big way and the police arrived, but it didn’t happen after that. That’s all part of retail.
Probably my high point was going to Buckingham Palace in 2010 for a reception for fashion industry people, that thanks to you, Eric, including independent retailers. (NB: I was asked by the Home Office for names of indies for some unspecified event.) I ended up chatting to the late queen about Hunter and Barbour as fashion brands. She told me she’d been on a catwalk and laughed. It was quite a high point.
Do you still have a passion for it now you’ve just turned 68?
I haven’t lost my passion for music or for fashion. I’m the main man behind the revival of the Bournemouth Soul & House Weekender (BSH), which ran for four days over the May Bank Holiday Weekend.
Like music, fashion is in my blood and it has been since I was 14 years old. It's all I've ever wanted, it's all I've ever done. I've got friends that play golf, do padel, do this, do that. I don't need to do anything like that because I enjoy what I do. I don't regard it as a job. My son asks me all the time, why are you still doing this, Dad? I say, because I enjoy it. I just got excited about booking Evisu again. When there's no excitement, I'll stop.
