IT may have been a good few years since Vera Weisfeld worked in the retail business but even now, she still gets recognised in the street.

 

"People will stop me and say, 'Oh, Mrs Weisfeld, I worked in your such-and-store years ago. People will shake my had and ask my why we gave up the business."

Vera and her husband Gerald were the entrepreneurs behind the hugely popular chain What Everyone Wants, which at its peak had 40 stores and 2,000 employees, and annual revenues in excess of £100 million.

The business was sold for £50 million 24 years ago. The Weisfelds later created the Weisfeld Foundation, which channelled huge sums to local communities and deserving causes.

Last month, in an event at the Glasgow Hilton, Vera was presented with a special award from retailTRUST. Richard Boland, its chief executive, said Vera's "dedicated life, both in retail success and charitable sponsorship, is a fine role model for all of us."

On a table in the Weisfeld home, a granite baronial mansion in Bridge of Weir, the award sits on a table alongside numerous others, like the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce lifetime achievement award.

Vera, asked what these awards mean to her, says: "I'll tell you what they mean to me.

"When we started the business, we only had one unit, a 1,000 square feet in the wrong side of Argyle Street.

"I couldn't get anyone to come and work for us - they weren't going to leave any big multiples, the well-known retailers, to come and work for me.

"At that time we opened on a Saturday and a Sunday. We had a lot of students who came in and worked for us. I sold these kids a dream.

"I told them, if they stayed on and worked for us, they would some day be earning lots of money. It would be one of the best companies to work for."

Vera promoted from within. She taught her employees everything she knew about retail. By the early 1980s, some of her pupils were earning around £100,000 a year.

And by the time of the sale of WEW, some of them - collectively, they were known as 'The Execs' - had graduated to the very top - managing director, buying director, financial director.

"A lot of them are now millionaires in their own right. Elaine Gray sold out for £30 million when she went to Mk One. I trained Ian Grabiner, who's now running the show at Sir Philip Green's Arcadia.

"So these awards," she says, "are good particularly for anyone who wants to come into retail and realise that you can progress."

She says she does miss being involved in day-to-day retail.

"All the time. I felt as if we'd sold our baby [when WEW was sold]. I miss the Glasgow people. It was a fun company."

She once had a DVD made of life within WEW. "All you can see is dancing and singing. You wouldn't think there was a lot of work done.

"You also see the store openings, when people would queue to get into the stores.

"I would never ask the staff to do anything I couldn't do," she adds. "If I saw a van unloading outside our Argyle Street store I would go and loft clothes in.

"I did this right up until the time we sold out. We were ahead of our time in many ways."

She laughs at a memory. "A lot of people would take the WEW bag and put it into a Marks & Spencer bag.

"Now, friends tell me that they got a great perfume from Lidl. It costs just eight pounds and it smells just like Dior.

"So now, people are bragging about going for discounts whereas, when we were discounting, it was a different story.

"We used to say we brought fashion to Glasgow at prices that people could afford."

She sings a line from the old What Every's adverts - 'Who leads the fashion scene in Scotland? What Every Woman Wants.'

"That was sung at every shop opening. Before the ribbon was cut they'd had the customers all singing it."

Internet shopping has become a huge business but Vera thinks that fashion shoppers "are starting to return to preferring to feel the actual fabric.

"Amanda, my 22-year-old grand-daughter, might send away for tops and when they arrive at her door she might not like them.

"People want to touch the fabric and to try before they buy.

"The buyer is so important. We used to say you could teach someone administration, or how to be a great worker, but if you're going out to buy merchandise, you have to have a great eye. Mr Weisfeld was a fantastic buyer.

"I can walk into a shop, even today, and look around it and think the buyer should be sacked.

"When I hear them say they should move things around, or have another re-fit, I always say, 'No, it's just your stock'."

Nor did WEW have the benefit of things like Facebook or Twitter when it came to exciting customer interest in newly-arrived stock.

She remembers the "WEW stores in Glasgow being mobbed at lunchtime afternoons when new stock was being put on display. It was like jungle drums - people would tell their friends that there were new bargains in store."

BMX bikes were sold straight out of the container, so desperate were shoppers to get their hands on them.

WEW's sale left the Weisfelds very well off, but it was just their reward for all those years of hard work. They had all two days off each year - Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

This is your reward, I say - the opulent home and its furnishings.

"Yes," says Vera, "but the Execs are my reward too. I promised them that if we grew, they would grow as well. Mr Weisfeld always paid out excellent bonuses."

Her beloved husband, sadly, is now quite ill. The work of the Weisfeld Foundation has been wound up; Vera talks with pride of all the people and organisations it helped over the years.

Just recently, a cheque for £19,000 was sent to Marie Curie Nurses, and Vera also pledged the same amount for the next three years.

"I'm still giving and still writing cheques, and will do that until there's nothing left.

"I was brought up in a single end in Coatbridge, I was brought up to share, and we have carried on doing that.

"In Argyle Street we used to give staff the purple What Every's bag and an umbrella - the bag would contain a quarter-bottle of whisky and sherry and shortbread, to be given to the pensioners in their streets.

"That was how it all started. As we began doing better, we would go to the churches in our store locations and give them plenty to give away.

"Then we would help out with Christmas parties at orphanages. It went on and on like that."

It got to the point where, in 1989, the Weisfelds were able to give half their profits to charity.

In 1990, however, Vera and Gerald had a brush with death when the DC10 passenger plane they were on over Rio de Janeiro had to make an emergency landing when one of its engines caught fire.

The plane landed safely but it was enough to remind the couple of their mortality. They vowed they would sell off their stores empire and devote their time to helping others. Thus was born the foundation.

She's had a remarkable life, has Vera. She talks with pride about the work she did with Gerald, about the guests - Princess Ann, the Duchess of Cornwall - who have visited Torr Hall for dinner. On a wall there is a photograph of the Weisfelds with Mother Teresa.

Despite it all, Vera has not forgotten her roots, or her days in WEW.

Those moments when her old employees approach her in the street, you suspect, still mean a lot to her.