Over the last two weeks, London has been basking in the joy of an enthralling, efficient, friendly and successful Olympic Games. The UK Government has been taking advantage of the influx of leading business and political heads for the London Olympics by hosting a series of industry days. Today was the turn of retail, food [...]
Posts under ‘Tesco’
Thinking small about the big picture
No-one ever claimed that pursuing an international growth strategy was an easy path. In recent weeks there have been a growing number of retailers who can testify to that having found themselves in the spotlight for the varying degrees of success of failure in their international businesses. In the UK, the number one retailer, Tesco, [...]
End of an era, start of a new
Today is a pretty significant day for not just UK retailing but international retailing too. After 14 years at the helm, Tesco’s chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy stepped down today. Just as with a monarchy, the mantra could be “the king is dead, long live the king” because Tesco has handled its succession planning extremely [...]
A question of leadership
Its been a week where the topic of leadership and leadership style has kept bubbling up. This began with an event I attended that was hosted by executive search firm, Gundersen Partners. The evening event centred around a panel discussion on the theme of “Brands, retailers, consumers - who’s running fastest?”. Behind this theme was [...]
The mood we’re in
Around the world, retailers are getting understandably nervous. We’re now well and truly into the count-down towards the critical Christmas season for many countries. After the year we have been having, a good or bad season could literally make or break a number of retailers. The mood in recent weeks seems to have shifted from [...]
India’s step change
Today saw the opening of the annual India Retail Forum here in Mumbai. And its already been a fascinating few hours, for no other reason than to listen to a business sector that appears chastened and shocked still by the downturn that affected them since the collapse of Lehmans exactly a year ago. Many retailers around the world enjoyed [...]
Getting back to basics
Retailers everywhere will be focussed more than ever before on the next seven weeks of trading. Rarely can there have been a more crucial Christmas and Holiday trading period – for retailers right around the globe. And for suppliers too. Much has been already written about the dramatic collapse in toy orders with China, the [...]
Rising to challenge
What a difference six months can make! From the close of the 2008 World Retail Congress to today, retailers right around the world find themselves facing a full-blown economic hurricane. Some economists say we haven’t seen conditions like this since the Wall Street Crash but in truth, we’ve never witnessed anything exactly like this because [...]
