Mike Ashley needs a new approach to make House of Fraser anything like Harrods

The Sports Direct founder is a shrewd retailer, but he is undertaking a mammoth task with his new venture

On the Lillywhites website they’re pushing Pierre Cardin t-shirts for £3 a pop.

Now part of Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct empire, Lillywhites was once the sports retailer of choice for the royal family. The famous department store on London’s Piccadilly Circus was known worldwide for supplying anything to do with croquet, cricket, horse riding, polo, rugby and tennis.

Today it’s a temple to discounted designer and football wear. The once famous wooden staircase that went through the floors and the 1920s fittings are invisible amid a welter of signs promising yet more bargains.

In "Ashleyland", Lillywhites has now been joined by the 59 House of Fraser outlets. The boss is promising to turn the beleaguered national chain into a “Harrods of the high street.” Hmmm.

Ashley is a shrewd retailer. Doubtless Lillywhites generates more profits now than it did immediately before he took over. Ashley gave the place a shake, chucked out the stuff that was not selling, installed clobber that would and hey presto! Lillywhites churned out money again.

But it’s not Harrods. Yet arguably, Lillywhites could once lay claim to having been the sporting equivalent of the Knightsbridge luxury retailer.

Ashley’s boast reminds me of when Sir Philip Green and Simon Cowell formed a partnership, and Green said in a phone call when I asked him about it, the new venture would be “bigger than Disney”. I admit, I got swept along in his expansive retailer talk and the newspaper duly led with his claim.

It was when pals rang up inquiring if I was mad, that reality hit home. Disney was vast, they pointed out, and, well, it was Disney, a name historically synonymous with family entertainment across the world. What on earth made Green and Cowell suppose they could replicate and surpass the American powerhouse?

As it happens, Green and Ashley are friends, cut from similar cloth. Sometimes, however, their ambition gets the better of them.

Ashley is not stupid. He owns already Flannels, the designer fashion retailer. He knows how to sell luxury labels.

He could, as has been suggested, put Flannels into House of Fraser, turning over entire floors to its wares. But smart as it is, Flannels is not Harrods.

Of course Ashley may not mean exactly recreating Harrods, in the likes of Grimsby and Doncaster where House of Fraser has branches. There is only one Harrods – albeit with some small airport satellites – and it’s where it’s always been, in the centre of London.

If he means offering the range, beauty of display, and level of service associated with Harrods, that’s possible. But that strength does not come overnight, and it certainly does not arrive with a store group that badly needs cosmetic updating – and to even begin to equal Harrods in appearance would require an investment programme running into hundreds of millions of pounds.

It would require staff – plenty of them – for whom nothing is too small. They would have to exhibit a microscopic attention to detail. And not just in how they show goods, but in how they look, dress and behave.

Manage all that and Ashley may get some way towards achieving his goal. Whether, though, places that possess a House of Fraser are ready to splash their cash on the likes of Prada and Gucci, in amounts that make it worth his while, remains to be seen.

For their part, as well, do the Pradas and Guccis wish to be so widely available? What they’re selling is cachet. That exclusivity, that lustre, quickly falls away if it’s for sale on 59 high streets.

Luxury brands must tread a fine line between making sales and retaining their aura. One that came a cropper by spreading itself too thinly was, as it happens, that very label piled high in Lillywhites: Pierre Cardin. The Italian-French designer – he was born in Italy but grew up in France – pursued a policy of relentless expansion in the late 1980s, licensing his name to all manner of products – some of which bore no relation to the quality, aesthetic and values of the house.

Everywhere you went, seemingly, there was something by Pierre Cardin on sale. The result was that while the label remained profitable, it lost identity and with that, prestige and kudos. Ashley cannot repeat the trick with House of Fraser, to make it imitate Harrods, and neither will labels let him.

The new owner's declared ambition is a case of history repeating itself. In 1985, Mohamed Al-Fayed bought House of Fraser from under the nose of Tiny Rowland, of Lonhro. The two then embarked upon the most vicious feud, which Fayed eventually won. At its heart was not the House of Fraser network but the jewel in the crown: Harrods.

In 1995, Al-Fayed floated House of Fraser and kept Harrods back, putting the store into his family’s private ownership. They went their separate ways – Harrods on to even greater heights and a subsequent sale to Qatar Holdings, the Middle East state's sovereign wealth fund, for £1.5bn. House of Fraser meanwhile, endured a rollercoaster ride, before being rescued from insolvency by Ashley.

Hopefully House of Fraser’s future is secure. But if Ashley really does intend it to become the “Harrods of the high street”, he has got his work cut out. Good luck to him.

Chris Blackhurst is a former editor of The Independent, and director of C|T|F Partners, the campaigns and strategic communications advisory firm.