August

IN THE NEWS

A confidential survey of WHSmith managers obtained by Retail Week revealed that most thought employees’ interests were being sidelined in an attempt to restore the company’s profitability.

Lacoste sued Next for allegedly copying shoe designs. The battle was just one of an increasing number of similar cases across the year, affecting fashion retailers such as Primark, Topshop and Debenhams.

Hamleys’ plans to open its first standalone store outside London were revealed by Retail Week. It was considering four sites in Scotland and the Northwest.

Retail Week launched its Source for Good campaign following attacks on factory standards by critics. Through the campaign, retail’s biggest names defended their role in helping the economies of developing countries.

Marks & Spencer announced that IBM will manage the roll-out of its new store systems in the UK and Ireland over the next three years. IBM will manage the deployment of PCMS’s Beanstore EPoS application, as well as an overhaul of other in-store technology and systems as part of its store modernisation programme.

Topshop joint managing director Karyn Fenn resigned after 19 years at the fashion chain. She had taken over from former brand director Jane Shepherdson when she left just eight months before.

DIY giant Kingfisher held informal discussions with potential joint venture partners in India.

New Look announced that it was to introduce its menswear offer to all UK stores within the next two years.

US clothing retailer Gap put about 10 per cent of its UK store portfolio on the market as the US fashion giant continued to underperform.

Global debt worries created near-hysteria, wiping billions off share prices. Next was particularly hard hit, with its shares dropping about 7 per cent.

House of Fraser revealed it would launch a raft of big-name brands in its stores in the autumn, but warned that it would also toughen supplier terms.

Louis Vuitton signed its first store in a UK shopping centre at Westfield London in White City. The luxury retailer snapped up a 3,000 sq ft store.

STORE OF THE MONTH

M&S Home, Lisburn
Marks & Spencer chose Northern Ireland as the site for a new format – M&S Home.

The Lisburn store, which sits on a retail park, covers 35,000 sq ft and occupies a former Homebase shed. And, once you have admired the tasteful black and plate-glass exterior and entered, there is no sense inside that the store is following normal shed retailing lines.

Instead, the space has been broken up by low partitions, which still allow views across the space, but create a series of roomsets on a domestic scale.
Couple this with impressive monochrome graphics and a restaurant where an Irish breakfast costs£4.95 and you have a very good first outing for a new format.

ON THE MOVE

Sue Tennant assumed the role of chief executive at TJ Hughes. She replaced Robin Dickie, who left in June after a disappointing sales performance.

SRG hired Paul Rivers as financial director from Watches of Switzerland to review the struggling menswear business.

Angela Spindler left her role as managing director of Asda’s£2 billion George business, citing family reasons.

Signet UK commercial director Peter Marshall left the jewellery group, with UK chief executive Rob Anderson assuming responsibility for the foreseeable future.

It never rains but it pours

It may be a very British characteristic to complain about the weather – and even more so for retailers – but 2007’s erratic weather patterns certainly proved to be a cause for complaint for many UK retailers. An early Easter heatwave was followed by summer flooding and then a false cold start to the autumn/winter season.

ScS was one of the first retailers this year to blame the weather for poor like-for-like sales. The furniture retailer said warm temperatures over Easter had put people off visiting its stores and significantly contributed to like-for-likes being down 9 per cent. However, one retailer’s poison is another’s meat – H&M cited warm weather as the driver of a 29 per cent sales increase in March against the previous year.

But fashion was not celebrating for long. It quickly became evident that the summer was to be a washout when May and June brought catastrophic floods. Not even the new fast-fashion and open-to-buy culture was enough to counteract the unseasonable conditions on the high street.

As unrelenting rain fell over the rest of the summer, the clothing chains were not the only ones to be hit; the grocers admitted they too were finding it harder, because there proved to be little appetite for alfresco dining. The DIY and garden centre sectors also found it tough, with the only beneficiaries appearing to be the one-stop-shop department stores.

Climate change was blamed in one disappointing trading announcement after another. Despite an otherwise positive report, Marks & Spencer chief executive Stuart Rose was forced to eat his famous words “weather is for wimps” and admitted that the first quarter had been “very challenging” and “particularly volatile” – in part the result of atrocious weather.

It may be true that there is no such thing as ideal retail weather. However, in 2007, the looming fear that climate change could bring an end to the days of predictable seasons came to life – an especially worrying trend, considering the economic climate for 2008 is looking bleak already.