Next (like the Duchess of Cambridge) will imminently celebrate its 40th birthday, and part of its success can be attributed to the fact it has been steadfastly courting the same customers since its launch.

“There are too many places selling low cost, low quality and even tatty clothes,” said director George Davies, the day the brand opened the doors of its first branch in Leeds in February 1982. Selling only womenswear and with a focus on consumers outside London, Next did well immediately, and by the end of the decade, had hundreds of stores around Britain offering menswear, children’s clothes and interiors, as well as a thriving catalogue business.

Next wanted to be a safe pair of hands: a place where sizes remained the same year after year, collections didn’t suddenly go on sale and the fit was consistently good. It is no coincidence that most graduates coming into the workforce for about a decade bought their first suit from Next.

Much of this consistency is due to the work of one man. Next CEO, Lord Simon Wolfson, has been described as having one of the most brilliant business minds in Britain and his insights into what consumers actually want are consistently accurate.

Wolfson’s rise was meteoric. After graduating from Cambridge University in 1991, he joined Next’s Kensington branch as a sales consultant and within a decade was CEO – at just 33 years old. His father was the former chairman of the company and eyebrows were raised – although given Wolfson has delivered an estimated 1,973 per cent return for shareholders, perhaps nepotism isn’t always a bad thing…