Three charts showing the challenges facing new Tesco boss Dave Lewis September 1, 2014 New Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis starts his job today, a month earlier than originally anticipated. The supermarket is clearly desperate: on Friday it issued a profit warning saying it expected full-year profits to hit £2.4bn, rather than the £2.8bn expected. The company has been battling against the increasing might of discounters Aldi and Lidl, [...]
Brand Index: Discounters’ customers force top shops to up their game July 16, 2014 For consumers, every little helps, and the tills at Aldi and Lidl are ringing as the German discounters attract new and unlikely customers. YouGov’s mid-year BrandIndex’s Buzz rankings show that Aldi tops the list with Lidl coming in fourth, as consumers keep buying habits forged in the downturn. In our Buzz Metric, a measure of [...]
Bottom Line: Aldi and Lidl are not just for Christmas December 17, 2013 IF, AS the saying goes, the customer is always right, then the future of British grocery shopping could soon start to look very different. In the past three months, one in two of us has been to either Aldi or Lidl – the so-called budget supermarkets that now make up a combined seven per cent of [...]
Sainsbury’s Christmas advert 2014: Storm surrounding marketing seen by turn as epic or disrespectful November 16, 2014 The film had its world premier on Wednesday. Some 8m people have already tuned in to see it and it has split critics down the middle, being described as “a masterpiece”, “grim”, “epic”, and “disrespectful”. It’s not the latest blockbuster movie, but Sainsbury’s two-minute Christmas ad. There was a time, not so very long [...]
Tescopoly fear has proven to be unfounded – Bottom Line September 22, 2014 SEVEN years ago I worked for a charity in Covent Garden. It was a fairly standard office, with us low-level employees popping out every lunchtime to escape the tedium and top up on sustenance. By far the cheapest and most varied selection of grub on offer was to be found in the local Tesco Metro [...]
Tesco beware: Aldi to double UK store count September 11, 2014 Tesco beware – Aldi has set its sights on the UK as a market ripe for growth, and it's backing its expansion plans with £70m. The budget supermarket today announced plans to almost double the number of stores in the UK from 531 to 1,000, and expand its UK headquarters in Atherstone, Warwickshire. The [...]
Dave Lewis’s shopping list: Blueprint for a Tesco turnaround plan October 23, 2014 Another update, another set of gloomy results from Tesco. The pattern is now well established, and yesterday’s weak trading numbers didn’t come as a great surprise. But one thing that did surprise was the apparent lack of a forward strategy. What is new chief executive Dave Lewis going to focus on? The issue of price [...]
Lidl boss eyes 600 new stores December 1, 2013 LIDL’s UK managing director has announced plans to double the discount chain’s number of stores over the coming years. On the growth of Lidl’s 600 current stores Ronny Gottschlich said “If I could have the 1,200 in the next three years, then I would have it in the next three years. But it is clear [...]
Tesco share price timeline: One chart showing the dramatic decline of the supermarket giant December 9, 2014 Since 1919, the rise of Tesco as the dominant supermarket chain has seemed unstoppable. It enjoyed rapid expansion in the 80s and 90s which resulted in a huge market share over the last ten years. This is all now under threat after a series of profit warnings and scandals has cast a bleak shadow over [...]
Philips needs solid numbers if he’s to see through his three-year plan – Bottom Line September 11, 2014 So you’ve had a row with your other half, and the next day, with the ensuing awkwardness still lingering, your eyes drift towards the posh chocolates in Waitrose. Combine ’em with some flowers, you reckon – chuck in a faux-sentimental card and maybe even a two-day break in Bruges – and hey presto, problem solved. [...]