The apparel brand’s turnaround is 18 months in. We sat down with its CEO to find out what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what’s harder than she expected.
Fran Millar, CEO of Rapha. (Photo: Tom Griffiths)
Tom Griffiths, supplied by Rapha
In January 2025, I sat down with Rapha’s newly appointed CEO, Fran Millar, after she’d been in the job for about three months. Founder and previous CEO Simon Mottram stepped away from the business in 2021 and hired William Kim as his successor. Kim was brought in as an outsider with impressive experience in luxury fashion and retail – Burberry, Gucci, Abercrombie & Fitch. Unfortunately he lasted less than a year, and after Kim stepped away in 2022, Rapha internally promoted François Convercey and Daniel Blumire as co-CEOs. Blumire left the business shortly after, and the sole leadership position was left to Convercey until Fran Millar was appointed in August 2024.
In that period of multiple leadership changes, Rapha faced increased competition, a pandemic, and what many would say was a loss of focus while trying to expand and appeal to a larger market – all while being newly owned by the Walton Brothers’ investment fund RZC.
It’s been roughly a year and a half since I first spoke with Fran about her vision for Rapha’s future. In this interview, we check in on what she’s been able to do, what’s been more challenging than she anticipated, and where her focus lays now.
As a disclosure, I should mention that I worked for Rapha between 2009 and 2013 and know its history, people, and journey quite intimately.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Wade Wallace: Last time we spoke about this topic was January 2025, at the Tour Down Under. You were very clear-eyed about the problems Rapha faced – a messy brand purpose, potentially disconnected customer discounting habits, community connection. At that point you were mostly in listening mode. Now that you’ve had 18 months in the role, what are some things you can point to that are actually different?
Fran Millar: It’s probably not as much as I would like there to have been, because it’s been a slightly slower process than I anticipated. But that’s always the way.
First and foremost, really understanding what it is we’re trying to get after. The brand had lost its way a little in terms of what it was trying to do strategically. I think “strategic” is always a bit of a dangerous word, but – what is it we’re actually trying to achieve? What’s the important stuff? What are the priorities? We do now know that, and we’ve spent a lot of time making sure we’re clear on what we’re getting after, which ultimately won’t be massively dissimilar to what I said back in January 2025: community. That has remained an absolutely inspiring, encouraging, positive part of the business, and we’ve really started to go after that very hard.
Then product – there was a hugely diverse and broad product range, so how do we bring that down and make it tighter? And then culture: how do you build a business where people feel psychologically safe and are thinking about how to be their best selves at work?
If I was to critique myself, the thing I probably wish I had done more of was prioritise even harder. There was so much to fix that I probably went after too many things in the first instance. It should have been even more laser-like than it was.
WW: Was that a surprise – that you’d inherited more than you thought once you got the lay of the land?
FM: I would always say I knew what I was getting into. But I’m not sure you can ever truly know what you’re getting into – never mind in a business that requires a turnaround. In all challenges, I think you go into it thinking, yeah, I’ve got this, I know what this is going to take. And then inevitably you’re like, oh, this is way harder or way bigger or totally different. So it’s all of those things and more.
WW: Are there any metrics you use to indicate progress, or any of those that have moved?
FM: The big one is obviously the growth of the community and the retention rate. We knew a very surface layer of data when I arrived – the business had probably been better at monitoring it earlier in its life, but that had fallen by the wayside. Now we have really good visibility on why members are signing up, how they’re signing up, how long they’re staying.
Then the other big ones are things like full-price sell-through, which are not very sexy but are the most important metrics we have – making sure we’re moving away from discounting, making sure we’re appealing to customers with new product launches, making sure we’re able to keep a really close eye on desirability and brand heat. Those metrics are heading in the right direction. But the challenge is big, and my ambition around how much growth I could achieve while doing this amount of change was probably a little unrealistic.
WW: When you say “the community” you’re referring to the RCC specifically, correct? You signed some big athletes at the beginning of the year – Kate Courtney, Richie Porte, Romain Bardet, Ian Boswell, and many others. It seems like a deliberate signal, not just about ambassadors but about where Rapha wants to sit culturally. What was the thinking behind it and the statement it made?
Did we do a good job with this story?