Retailers and political parties have so much in common. Successful retailers such as Simon Wolfson possess an intuitive feel for what customers want: they rarely err.
The same applies to political leaders.
The good ones have a grasp of voter desires and how to deliver.
John Lewis had two powerful attributes....'Partners' who felt ownership and buyers who understood what the customers wanted.
This is no longer the case. The decline started well before White and began under the disastrous £1.2m a year Mayfield. Were it a listed company White would be out on her ear.
The Conservative Party is in the same quandary: it has forgotten what customers want and plays senior management musical chairs. It actually insults its 'customers'.
Whoever thought it a good idea to bring back third raters like Williamson and Shapps?
Simon Heffer once said that the Conservative Party needs a spell out of office to find itself: sadly, he's possibly right.
Heffer is spot on
ReplyDeleteI concur
DeleteThis Peer is a pear. Does he really think it wise to replace Sunak with the likes of EDC and Lari? Barking.......
DeleteOne Starmer is not enough. He needs a team. Surrounded by some dangerous sounding and spouting individuals.
DeleteLari and EDC are the types that the Labour Party seem to be offering up for election. Would you let your son and daughter near them?
DeleteCan you people not go one day without mentioning EDC or Lari? Bloody hell
DeleteThe answer is "NO", 18.02
DeleteThe Dame's mission is to expose those seeking public office to public scrutiny so that residents can form their own opinions. This not to say that the Dame is always right, but she is content if residents think things over
DeleteEDC and Lari have earnt their reputations.
DeleteDear Glorious, Gracious and Good Lady, Dame Hornet
ReplyDeleteSharon White is a Dame. Her husband was the first Head of Budget Responsibility. They are both brilliant Economists. Dame Sharon White is brilliant at identifying where costs need to be stripped out and John Lewis, like any other business, is not immune to that in the current dire situation.
You are right the John Lewis Partnership has been in decline for years. It is not a patch on what it used to be when I started kiting out my first home in the 1980's Quality, Value and Choice par excellence. Their buyers managed to source things that one would not find anywhere else; items that lasted for years. Alas no more!
The JLP has become rather tacky and very common, and that started under call me "Charlie" Mayfield. When I think of how magnificent their Furnishing Fabrics Department used to be - conservative with quality - and how loud and vulgar it is now with strings of mobile hanging from the ceilings. I think the so called "Partners" are up themselves and many are institutionally arrogant.
Their Head of Brand had to leave after only three years in post just before Mayfield retired.
I am afarid John Lewis has had its day. Dame Sharon is not the first top Civil Servant to run the Partnership. The Partnership did well under former Civil Servant, Sir Stuart Hampson in the 1990's.
John Spedan Lewis would turn in his grave.
An excellent summary...so sad. Retail is detail not focusing on stripping out costs. That often means the baby goes out with the bathwater
DeleteI agree. John Lewis's customers like quality and value with traditional service. Things that the JLP did so well for years on end in convivial conservative surroundings. John Lewis in the 1990's had to start advertising: owing to the coming of the internet and to maintain market share. Advertising was something they never, ever, did, instead preferring to build a reputation on customers' word of mouth Progress is so called "progress" but, the good old days, alas no more.
DeleteSainsbury's is another story of a serious decline in British retailing. It was an excellent business until the mid 1990's but, now, it is a dreary place. They used to have excellent products in the 1980's and it was on a par with Waitrose; albeit larger in scale. By 2000, the deterioration was noticeable. I remember Sainbury's going public in the 1970's. How the mighty has fallen! Tesco used to be the poor relative of Sainsbury's in the 1970's
Marks and Spencer was taken to dizzy heights and fantastic profits under Sir Richard Greenbury in the 1980's. As a result of a Boardroom coup, the Board voted to go in purusit of Asian markets to source clothing lines for greater profitability; and by 2000 they had a store full of poor quality merchandise that no one wanted to buy. Many of M&S's British suppliers only worked on Marks and Spencer's contracts and saw their future as being "art and part" of the M&S empire." These businesses had technologists that constantly worked on fabric improvements to interest M&S Buyers, fashion experts who knew what M&S Ladieswear Customers wanted to buy and who were in tune with M&S Buyers; constantly presenting them with samples for M&S Head Office Staff to wear on a trial basis before offering them for sale to customers. These British businesses that were loyal to M&S folded when manufacturing capital left these shores and went to Asia.
M&S knew that if the Ladieswear was right all of their other department's sales would be OK. Women buying clothes for themselves then their husbands socks, underwear and shirts; as well as food.
What a mess British Retailing is in,
What a fabulous and informative thread this is . The collective analysis of what has happened to British retail is spot on ( & not just because l agree with every word of it ). Much better than all that angry shouting elsewhere in the forest .
ReplyDeleteWe know that the Dame's ambitions to direct the Empire are now over and much of her energy has been heroically spent in defending the right . But night it be possible for her to at least protect & restore Peter Jones as a fortress of civilisation ( After all the Crusader knights clung onto their citadels long after the rest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was lost )