New Edcon CEO Bernard Brookes has given himself two years to turn around the ailing retailer. "I will be disappointed if in the next two years we have not been able to reinvigorate the divisional brands at Edcon, get more customer-focused and be a more serious competitor to some of the players in the South African market," said Brookes this week in his first interview since his appointment was announced in July.Brookes, who spent nine years at the helm of one of Australia's leading clothing retailers, Myer, and 24 years at Woolworths in Australia, said he was more than prepared to tackle the challenges at Edcon. He has taken over from Jürgen Schreiber, who has joined Canadian-based Rexall Health.Brookes said he would focus on getting the group's stores to be more productive rather than increasing trading space.story_article_left1"No longer is the plan to roll out increased square metreage, but rather to increase the productivity of the existing stores."I think the land-grab period is over. We must worry about productivity [rather] than about expanding retail space," he said.His other priorities include striking a better balance between Edcon's in-house fashion brands and international brands.In the past two years, Edcon has introduced more than 10 international brands at Edgars, including Lucky Brand, Tom Tailor, Dune, Mango, Forever New and Topshop.Meanwhile, competitors Mr Price, Woolworths and Foschini have strengthened their private label brands."I believe the brands that we bought into are aspirational brands and some do better than others," said Brookes."My plan is to rebalance because we have very aspirational brands in our stores such as Dr Martens and Tom Tailor, but we also draw strength from our unique brands such as Kelso."The plan is to treat in-house brands as genuine brands in the marketplace rather than merely as labels.Brookes is aware of just how tough the competition is from other local retailers."The business has been under attack from other good local retailers such as Mr Price, Woolworths and Foschini."They were all good groups and would hold their own worldwide, he said.Brookes will be weighing up whether Edcon will relist on the stock market or sell some assets. "Anything, everything and nothing can happen at this stage," he said."This is something that we will have to first share with our shareholders."Second, anything about a listing or selling can be on the agenda if the timing is good for shareholders and customers."Changes at Edcon stores such as Edgars, Jet Mart, Jet, Legit and Boardmans will include customers being listened to.The focus will be on building a strong online business and growing customer loyalty through a reward system.story_article_right2Doing more of the same thing "will get us more of the same. We need significant and sizable changes to the [business] model," Brookes said."I have always believed that the answers in repairing any company come with prioritising customers rather than focusing on the 'shiny-pants' executives," the 56-year-old retail veteran said.Edcon opened its first, flagship Edgars store in Joubert Street in Johannesburg in 1929 and has since grown the number of stores to 1500 in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.Once the crown jewel of South African retail, Edcon has battled in the past few years to halt a loss of market share and has had difficulties in dealing with its R22.6-billion debt. The debt was born out of the group's buyout by Bain Capital for R25-billion in 2007.The dramatic change in South Africa's credit landscape has eaten into Edcon's sales.Its credit sales slowed to 42% from 46.5% of all sales in the first quarter of 2015. Brookes said retailers had no choice but to learn to live with the fact that customers now preferred cash to debt."We have to become better retailers in selling more on a cash basis. We now live in very different times and it is happening all over the world."magwazan@sundaytimes.co.za..