Julia has been in retail for over 35 years. Having started her career at The Arcadia Group and latterly Tesco she went on to be CEO of figleaves.com, took Blacks Leisure through a sale process as CEO and consumer brand Antler Luggage through a turnaround also as CEO. With her team she founded the Florence and Fred brand at Tesco in 1999, they then took the brand overseas to Central Europe and Asia. Julia has brought her skills as a brand builder and retailer to most of the businesses she has been involved with. She is a keen supporter of women in business and believes strongly in equality and team building. In the last few years, she has been keen to champion the need for good technology in retail businesses.

Two years ago Julia created a business called Rey House, which is working on addressing the issue around the fit of clothes for women over the age of 40. Only 8.2% of the British Population can easily find clothes to fit *Kantar Sept 2022. The causations of why clothes do not fit is contributing to high returns rates, land fill, unworn clothes in wardrobes, unnecessary inventory levels, brand damage and low morale amongst customers. Rey House is now using AI and Big Data to tackle this upstream at the very beginning of the value chain, in order to help reduce the retail industries carbon footprint and improve the customer experience