Dunelm steady under Wharton

It is almost a year to the day that former Halfords’ finance director Nick Wharton was hired as Dunelm’s new chief executive. It was a significant move – for Wharton, it was his first chief executive role, and he was swapping petrol caps and brake pads for cushions and bedspreads. For Dunelm it was the first time it had picked someone outside the Adderley family to run the business.

Wharton joined a well-oiled machine at Dunelm, so the City fully expects him to keep up the pace of growing sales and profits. He has succeeded so far, after this week reporting pre-tax profit up 7.7% to £52.2m and like-for-likes ahead 1.1% in the 26 weeks to December 31.

Wharton has been overseeing the continued roll-out of the retailer’s superstores, but has quite rightly also cited multichannel as one of his main focuses. He led the launch of reserve-and-collect in stores in November and the launch of a mobile transactional site last month. Multichannel now accounts for 2% of revenues.

More good news came in the appointment of outgoing Pets at Home boss Matt Davies as a non-executive. The hire was quite a coup, and will further bolster Dunelm as it continues to chime with consumers’ flight to value.

Thorntons’ future not so sweet

A business at the other end of the scale is struggling chocolatier Thorntons, which has been undertaking drastic restructuring including the shedding of more than third of its 579 stores. The City will want to see evidence that the turnaround strategy is improving the bottom line when it issues interims next week. At its update last month, Thorntons warned of “continued weakness” in the market in 2012.

But not all chocolatiers are experiencing this weakness. Life is sweeter for Hotel Chocolat, which has opened the first of a new format in Covent Garden that plays on the fun of eating chocolate. Perhaps Thorntons should follow its rival’s recipe.