Kurt Geiger CEO and internship winner on how the brand’s academy is changing the learning landscape

Joel Anokye has become the first full-time internship recipient of Kurt Geiger’s Business by Design Academy, an initiative the footwear and accessory brand set up last year in order to support young, underrepresented talent in entering the fashion industry. Anokye was one of 20 to take part in the first edition of the educational business course, which brought participants directly under the wing of Kurt Geiger’s own team over the course of a seven-month period.

Now, having seen notable success from the course’s pilot-run, the academy is preparing to venture out on a possible expansion, while further getting ready to welcome a new string of participants for its second edition. The initiative is the offspring of Kurt Geiger’s Kindness Foundation, a non-profit that is now three years old and is in itself a spin off to the brand’s operations during the beginning of the pandemic, when it was dealing with a sudden bankruptcy. “We were not going to go quietly,” the CEO of Kurt Geiger, Neil Clifford, told FashionUnited of the sentiments at the time, when he said charitable giving seemed to be the initial reaction – Kurt Geiger went on to donate thousands of shoes, handbags and gift cards to various institutions.

Two years on, this seemed to have led to a permanent and overarching shift in the brand’s outlook. “We felt that [this time period] had really changed the culture of the company,” Clifford said. “We felt more engagement, our staff turnover had dropped. We felt that we’d done something good and we wanted to maintain that. We wanted to keep ‘kindness’ as a word in our values, next to ‘creativity’ and ‘London’ [where the company is based, ed.]. Those are the things that we all talk about all of the time.”

This began with extending Kurt Geiger’s renewed mindset into its relationship with customers, rewarding loyalty with charitable returns. Yet Kurt Geiger also sought a more concrete way of helping young people break down the barriers of entry into the creative world. Such efforts had already been put into the post-pandemic formation of a 10-person ‘youth council’, made up of individuals who had overcome obstacles to eventually find footing in a creative field. The Kindness Foundation followed, solidifying Kurt Geiger’s plans, and allowing the company a certified space to carry out charitable work under the guidance of an independent board.

The academy attempts to dismantle obstacles in front of education and employment

This, combined with an empty office space (a result of remote working life becoming more popular), a team of on-hand experts to act as full-time mentors and a more financially stable company, led to the creation of the Business by Design Academy, an in-house course dedicated to 18 to 20 years olds that lack the traditional certifications, industry network and monetary resources typically helpful in approaching the fashion industry. Helmed by Sophia Johnson, the structure of the course intentionally aims to propose an alternative and modernised take on education that is mindful of what future employees both need and want, while further setting up a direct line of communication between student and employer.

“It’s not just about designing shoes or working in marketing,” Clifford said. “It’s not as narrow as that. It was about how to balance the reality of art and science, because that’s what kind of company Kurt Geiger is – lots of data, studying, planning and then lots of creativity, design, marketing. Clever companies are the ones that can mix those two things up in a cocktail that means consumers love what we do, and we make a bit of money doing it. We wanted a broad range of lessons, understanding and development for the young people around art and science, so that’s what we did.”

For new intern Jeol Anokye, meanwhile, this expansive coverage of skills was imperative to his experience with the course. “I really wanted to try new things and absorb as much information as possible,” he told FashionUnited. “I developed a strong interest in shoe designing, social media marketing, finance and wholesale, which were entirely new to me.” He added that while he had a general understanding of social media due to his background in content creation, joining the academy allowed him to dive deeper into the technical aspects. “The most important factors I picked up were design, social media marketing and life coaching,” he noted.

Prior to the academy, Anokye had started his own T-shirt business at the age of 16, and while this already gave him a bit of insight into the fashion industry, he recognised that moving from apparel into footwear would bring a “completely different perspective”. “Creating shoes is definitely more challenging than creating T-shirts, but it’s also more rewarding when the project comes together in the end,” he said. “There’s a lot more involvement in terms of construction, materials, stitching, and aesthetics. The real challenge was putting your sketches into digital design softwares, which was also new to me.”

Seven academy participants hired by Kurt Geiger upon graduation

“I had a mentor who guided me through the whole process, especially while working on my first project – the SS25 Pool Slides. Even though I don’t have a background in business or corporate fashion, the team made me feel part of the family and the transition was very smooth. The team gave me space and time to ask for feedback, learn from mistakes and grow,” Anokye said, before adding that the biggest obstacles he overcame “was not believing in [himself] at the beginning of the process”, doubt he was ultimately able to defeat with help from the academy’s team, who he called “accountability partners”.

It was clear that Anokye already came with a drive to be in fashion, and was therefore reflective of what Clifford and the team looked for in a candidate. “We need passion and a love of fashion,” he said when describing the individuals the team seek out. “We need people that you can feel an ambition and a desire to get into this world that we’re in. We can give them skills, knowledge, experience, but it is difficult to teach people passion or ambition. So that’s the sort of person we are looking for.”

This selection process was also proven successful upon the completion of the course, after which a total of seven participants were actually hired by Kurt Geiger in what was an unplanned outcome, with Anokye snapping up one of the spots as the “winning” intern. Bringing these new appointees under the Kurt Geiger name contributes to Clifford’s belief that involving such individuals from the outset will help the company “change for the better”. “The more young people we can employ the better. That will give us an even more loyal workforce, because if you’ve joined us from the bottom, I think you’re going to love us even more,” he said, adding that the dismantling of the traditional employment process was imperative to bringing about real change.

The academy thus far has remained a “London thing”, largely due to infrastructure, yet there are plans to venture internationally through a digitalised iteration of the course. For now, such plans remain US-focused, in line with the North American market outpacing the UK as Kurt Geiger’s biggest financial region. The finer details of the expansion are yet to be determined, with September 2025 currently set as the potential deadline for a digital US launch. The Kindness Foundation, meanwhile, has already established ties in the country, signing with three new local charity partners, news that falls alongside the opening of four new Kurt Geiger stores, further emphasising the US as an important retail market.

From Clifford’s view, the responsibility of Kurt Geiger and the academy also extends further afield. “Retail is the number one employer in the UK, particularly for young people. So we have a big responsibility as a sector to think about how we can help young people, because we get a lot of them and they’re with us before they’ve even figured out what they want to do.” Kurt Geiger further played into its mission of bringing customers into more elements of the business, with the academy being funded through the Kirk Cares customer loyalty scheme, meaning that the more customers shop, the more funding can be injected into the initiative.

In his closing remarks, Clifford concluded: “[The academy] is the most complicated, bold thing that we’ve ever done. But I think the pandemic told us that we must be bold, and do stuff that makes a difference because your customers feel it. And it’s a lovely story for us to be able to stand behind. It’s cool. Government’s can’t do everything. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to have a more modern, engaged and focused approach to employment, teaching and education.”

For Anokye, meanwhile, the experience has opened up new possibilities in terms of his future, with the internship also possibly shaping into a job offer towards its end. When asked what his plans were, he replied: “I’ve always seen myself as a fashion entrepreneur at the end of the day. But for now, I really want to enjoy learning and to absorb every skill that I can. There’s a quote - ‘every teacher is still a learner’ - which I really like. I’m 100 percent dedicated to exploring my own label in the future, but my focus for the next few years is to keep learning, growing and laying my foundations. That’s the most important thing for me right now so that I can confidently say these are the certified skills that I can provide for a business.”