This year we have made a very special, one-off award to commemorate and celebrate the life of Jacqueline Gold, who died from breast cancer earlier this month aged 62. 

Jacqueline was one of the most recognisable people in retail, familiar to many far beyond the industry for her leadership of Ann Summers, the family business she transformed after joining as an intern. 

Such was her impact that within 10 years she had become chief executive. Starting from a handful of stores, she built a chain with branches overseas as well as at home, pioneered the famous Ann Summers party direct-selling model and moved from catalogues to omnichannel. Her celebrity and success were such that she even appeared on Desert Island Discs. 

That success was built on the transformation of Ann Summers’ image from a haunt of the raincoat brigade to one that put women first – not just as customers, but in other areas of life including business. 

Gold was awarded a CBE in 2016 for her services to entrepreneurship, women in business and social enterprise. In 2019, she took to the stage at the Retail Week Awards as the Retail Activist of the Year and she was a great supporter of Retail Week’s Be Inspired diversity programme.

Over the course of her life, she inspired others time and again. She showed great courage both in how she lived with the cancer that ultimately took her life and in business, taking on everyone from the Ann Summers board member who told her in the early days that “women aren’t even interested in sex”, through to opponents of her store openings and the government. She won a court victory over the Job Centre’s ban on advertising roles at Ann Summers. 

A prominent presence on social media, Gold once tweeted: “I’ve overcome several challenges in my life and resilience is one of my key characteristics. If you can find some positivity in the obstacles life throws at you, you can survive them, and I think this is what resilience is; and you need it in life and in business.” 

Retail Week editor-in-chief Charlotte Hardie paid tribute to Gold’s contribution to the retail industry. 

She said: “Jacqueline turned Ann Summers into a female institution powered by an unrelenting mission to empower women, with inclusivity in all its forms running through its DNA. 

“She was the driving force behind Retail Week’s Be Inspired diversity programme when she came to us and said we needed to do more to celebrate retail’s female role models for the next generation.  

“She was the very best of role models. She believed that if you step outside of your comfort zone, great things will happen. Determined, resilient, kind, giving of her time, a great storyteller and a great listener.   

“The industry has lost a role model and Retail Week will miss a friend.”