Roger Holmes is hooked on hangers. The man charged with returning Marks and Spencer (M&S) to its glory days has a whole team of people looking into the issue of the expandable types that display women's trousers.
In the wake of the latest upheavals at M&S, hangers might sound like an irrelevance. But they are representative of one of the biggest problems facing the group, according to Mr Holmes - poor in-store merchandising.
M&S, it appears, has hangers that were designed to be thin, so they packed together more easily for delivery and more products could fit on each rack. The problem is that they make trousers look horrible - particularly those for the more generously proportioned - because they stretch the waist.
Mr Holmes - the former Woolworths executive who was put in charge of UK retailing at M&S at the start of this year - wants a hanger with all the efficiencies of the old style, but that makes the trousers look more attractive.
In its heyday, when products seemed to walk off its shelves, M&S did not have to worry about such matters, being the dominant force on the high street. Now, of course, things are different. The group announced last week that it was axeing almost 4,400 jobs and most of its overseas operations to focus on the UK. However, the Republic is unlikely to be affected.
It is more than two years since the group's troubles first emerged. Yet, despite two changes at the top, various strategic shake-ups and the millions of pounds spent on consultants, clothing sales remain dire.
As it announced the restructuring, the group brought forward its trading statement, which showed that recent sales of clothing, footwear, gifts and home furnishings had fallen almost 7 per cent. With gifts and home furnishings performing strongly, analysts think the figure hides a double-digit decline in clothing sales.
So Mr Holmes has his hands full. His prescription, outlined last week, is to regain the loyalty of M&S's core customers by delivering significant improvement in product appeal, availability and value.
The presentation was long on consultant-speak, short on concrete details, and inevitably overshadowed by the job losses and store closures. What detail there was concerned a move away from clothing.
But to most people that is just a side-show. The long-overdue initiatives launched last week will be for nothing if M&S fails to turn round its core clothing ranges - women's wear in particular. In fact, if sales continue to fall, the moves on property in particular will probably do more harm than good.
Mr Holmes admits this. "The business will be more operationally geared and any upside will come through more quickly," he says. "Of course, there's a direct consequence to that if the business were to go the other way. But we are not in any way putting the business at risk."
He, however, will not have to worry about that too much. M&S has wisely split the focus of its management team in two.
Luc Vandevelde, executive chairman, will oversee the corporate restructuring along with Robert Colvill, the finance director due to retire this summer but who has agreed to stay until the end of the year. They will be helped by David Norgrove, the strategy director.
Mr Holmes, meanwhile, will be free to focus on the UK with the help of Alison Reed, currently finance director for UK operations, who was this week named as the successor to Mr Colvill.
Mr Holmes said there were several ways to achieve his aim in clothing - better design, lower prices, improvements to availability, a focus on aspirational quality and an overhaul of the marketing and advertising strategy.
But at the core is a promise to merchandise goods better instore. Mr Holmes thinks that in the wall-to-wall bad publicity of the past few years, many people have forgotten that M&S is still the top shopping choice for many consumers.
Merchandising improvements will come in a number of ways - other than the hangers. Firstly, there are ambitious plans for store refurbishments.
The group's last attempts at dressing up its high-street portfolio were not hugely successful. Sales in the concept stores did not fare as badly as those in the old-style outlets, but the figures remained stubbornly in negative territory.
Mr Holmes is convinced he has hit on a better way. He will be going around one of two new concept stores where he says M&S has taken the best from its last attempt, merged it with new ideas, and achieved better results for substantially less money.
In the first wave, M&S spent £60 million refitting 25 stores. The two trials will run for a month before a final decision is taken, but Mr Holmes is confident he can transform 100 stores this year for £84 million.
Next comes segmentation. M&S will become more like an own-brand department store, with clothing sold in "lifestyle" ranges. The days when all women's trousers were ranked together en masse will be gone.
Instead, "traditional" customers will find their pleated skirts next to their gold-button blazers. The "classically stylish" will find stretch denim jeans alongside plain white shirts and roll-neck sweaters. The "fashion" segment will feature hipster jeans with cropped tops and leather jackets. The young, of course, are supposed to head for Mr Davies' discreet space within stores, while the Autograph designer fashions will remain.
How long, therefore, before customers will really notice the difference? Mr Holmes is not as keen on deadlines as his boss. Mr Vandevelde famously promised firm signs of recovery within two years of his appointment - giving him less than a year before investors might demand his head.
The Belgian former food retailer also promised a number of sign-posts to recovery along the way - a good Christmas last year, great spring clothing - all of which failed to live up to their billing.
All Mr Holmes would say was that the first real signs of his involvement would not be visible until the autumn. He is, of course, also backing his boss.
"What we have announced this week is a major programme," he said. "But I think our customers and investors have a right to expect to see evidence of improvement over the original period, which Luc clearly set out."
Not too long to wait, then.