Profile: Restoring a classic - Beverley Aspinall, Managing director, Fortnum & Mason.(Interview)

For most people, a refurbishment would be the ideal time to remedy nagging irritations, but Fortnum & Mason managing director Beverley Aspinall would not necessarily agree. When architects undertaking a pounds 25m revamp of the Piccadilly store suggested replacing its creaking wooden staircase, she flatly refused.

'I was happy with it - it's part of the charm of the place,' she says. Her decision aptly illustrates the tightrope Aspinall, 49, is walking as she works to reinvigorate the store and make it relevant to shoppers while retaining the heritage on which its appeal rests. Action was certainly needed - sales have been flatlining for years and rising operating costs are continuing to force Fortnum's into the red.

The store has just re-opened, halfway through the refurbishment, for Christmas, having been closed for most of this year. Naturally Christmas is its one of its busiest times, but Aspinall's ultimate challenge, as Fortnum's enters its 300th year, will be to generate sales throughout the remaining 11 months.

Aspinall has a history of revamping famous stores. Last year she oversaw the multimillion-pound redevelopment of the John Lewis Partnership's Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square. Just after the project was completed, she was approached by Fortnum's owners to take up a similar challenge in Piccadilly. Overseeing the building work was no chore to Aspinall. 'I enjoyed the refurbishment process from beginning to end,' she says. 'Going back to being just another managing director didn't seem exciting. Then this job came up.'

Store management was not Aspinall's chosen career - she had joined John Lewis with a different aim 25 years earlier. 'I was 21 and I thought the idea of being a fashion buyer was great - flying around the world, looking at clothes. But when, in my 30s, I came back to work after having children, I realised that I didn't have the time to travel around the world any more, so I went into store management.'

The difference between her old and current employers is striking. 'Just look at this room,' she says. We are in the main boardroom, but its looks more like a dining room in a stately home. Everything is very old and well-cared for but slightly worn, and there is the unshakable feeling that it ...