My four criteria: I don't want to work with people I don't like; I don't want to work in a business I either don't like or don't understand; I don't want to work for nothing unless I choose to, and I do a fair amount of that already; and I want to have some fun.

Stuart Rose

I actually think the whole concept of retirement is a bit stupid, so yes, I do want to do something else. There is this strange thing that just because chronologically on a Friday night you have reached a certain age... with all that experience, how can it be that on a Monday morning, you are useless?

Stuart Rose

When my mother died, my father was in a crisis, my sister was in a crisis, everyone was in a crisis. I went round the night my mother was lying in the kitchen, and I organised everything, from the undertaker to the funeral... I looked after everybody, I sorted it all out and I've done so ever since.

Stuart Rose

If you wait for customers to tell you that you need to do something, you're too late. Good business leaders should be half a step ahead of what customers want, i.e. they don't actually quite know they want it. That's what innovation's about. With Plan A, we didn't wait for the consumers to tell us.

Stuart Rose

I want to please every woman, every time.

Stuart Rose

I believe in a uniform for work, but why, because we're men, do we have to be ghettoised into grey suits?

Stuart Rose

I am absolutely a free marketeer and I believe the creation of wealth is a good thing and anyone who doesn't really needs to have their head examined - otherwise where are we going to get the schools, the roads, the universities, the third runway, dare I say it?

Stuart Rose

I'd go mad if I didn't have things to make me laugh.

Stuart Rose

I was the chief executive once, I've been there. My recommendation to anybody is don't go backwards.

Stuart Rose

Customers want good value, but they care more than ever how food and clothing products are made.

Stuart Rose

Most employees want to be involved in a successful business and most employees are happy for people running successful businesses to be paid a reasonable wage and a market rate for it, provided they understand the reason. What they hate most of all is pay for failure.

Stuart Rose

When I got married in my twenties, I had a happy marriage and happy kids but at some point in time I let it go off the rails; I let it go off the rails.

Stuart Rose

I've been an employee all my life. Would I wish, if I could rewind it, to have gone down a different route? Possibly, but I've had a great time. Anyway I'm not ruling it out; I could still buy a business.

Stuart Rose

I am the largest market shareholder of clothing in the U.K. and I am not a destination shop for food. If the clothing market is affected - and it has been - and I hold my market share mathematically, then fine, I am doing no worse than the market is doing, which is exactly the case, but I'm losing revenue.

Stuart Rose

We face a dilemma because although everybody is better off than they've ever been at any time in our history, we've also got the biggest gap between the rich and the poor that we've ever had, and we've potentially got a planet which is going to go bust any day.

Stuart Rose

We've got a bit of growth a bit earlier than expected.

Stuart Rose

I don't believe in retirement.

Stuart Rose

There is a responsibility on all companies to look at the quantum of pay and the relationship between the top and the bottom.

Stuart Rose

Listen, it's not nice to have your mum kill herself, that is difficult. But at the end of the day, it happened a long time ago. My mother was, I hope, not the reason that I have been successful. It's not as simplistic as 'My mum killed herself; I've got to prove myself.' I was very lucky that my parents took an interest in me.

Stuart Rose

I think fashion is the best value way, the most affordable way in the 21st century, that men and women can express their personality.

Stuart Rose

Our world is moving at an ever-accelerating pace, and with the advent of social media, what happens in New York now can be reported across the globe 60 seconds later.

Stuart Rose