Can we please clog up the roads with yet more traffic

 Flicking through the Evening Standard ES Magazine on Friday highlighted the level of brainless and selfishness that unfortunately pervades the capital. The magazine has a regular Q&A section called ‘My London’ and this week it featured WBA World Heavyweight boxing champion David Haye who reckons if he was Mayor for the day he would abandon the congestion…

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Morrisons faces online dilemma

When Dalton Philips steps into the role of chief executive of Morrisons (having joined from Loblaw) on Monday he will soon be hit with questions about when he plans to lauch an online store. City analysts and the media all know that Morrisons stands alone in failing to capitalise on the internet. Philips: ready to convince the board to launch online…

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Another nail in retail’s coffin?

The announcement this week of an investment of £2.5 million in online furniture selling business Made.com sounds like little for retailers to worry about. It’s an online start-up and it’s a trifling amount. But this might be a mistake because the investors putting in the cash are Lastminute.com co-founder and mydeco.com  founder Brent Hoberman and the less well known…

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Sam Smiths Boots out Branded Snacks

Esoteric brewer and pub owner Sam Smiths has finally removed the last branded products from its boozers with all its bagged snacks now entirely own-label. This might not sound like earth shattering news but it makes Sam Smiths a rarity in the market as I doubt many other pub operators or retailers would have the…

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Olympics are Massive Opportunity for Retailers

It might be more than two years away but retailers should at least be looking to get their heads around the 2012 Olympic Games because it represents a one-off opportunity to bag a chunky amount of extra sales. Attending this week’s 2012 Opportunites for Retailers conference was an interesting experience if only for the statistics it threw up. Just consider the…

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Yet another retail survey reveals nothing

Surveys, don’t you just love ’em. Don’t ask me what is going through consumers’ minds when they answer the various surveys and questionnaires thrust in front of them. To use an old IT phrase, the general rule with most seems to be ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’. The latest to roll off the dubious-surveys press is…

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Uncertainty at Games Workshop Group

It seemed rather strange that Games Workshop Group should have ruled itself out of the competition to win the ‘Turnaround of the Year’ category in the annual Plc awards run by the FT, having been shortlisted. The thing to conclude from this is that its management did not want to win because it did not believe the…

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Retailers’ appetite for smaller stores grows

For many years the focus in retail has been skewed to ever larger stores located out-of-town and many operators have been unwilling to dirty their hands operating smaller units on, god forbid, the high street. Some retailers like Asda have publicly stated their aversion to opening smaller, convenience type stores, in town centres because they…

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Who’d be a buyer of online retailer Figleaves?

For a company that has a ‘For Sale’ sign atop its virtual store, the chief executive of Figleaves wasn’t really selling the business particularly well to the audience at the Retail Week Conference. Julia Reynolds was keen to stress that anybody can sell other people’s brands, which is largely what Figleaves does, and this made…

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