Wednesday was a big day for Mick Murphy, John Lewis delivery driver and partner for 25 years.
Wednesday was a big day for Mick Murphy. The John Lewis delivery driver, a partner for 25 years, was chosen to reveal this year’s bonus in front of the TV cameras and the whooping and hollering of hundreds of fellow partners gathered in the Oxford Street store. He didn’t disappoint them, and thanks to the careful management of expectations by the Partnerships spinmeisters, when Mick revealed the figure was 18%, it brought the house down.
And why not? After all, it’s a nice distraction from the horrible trading that everyone, John Lewis not excepted, is experiencing. It also emphasises the point of difference that makes John Lewis somewhere people want to work.
Out of what was a highly conservative organisation the modern Partnership has grown into a model of progressive retailing, but one that is also utterly ruthless when it comes to taking on its rivals.
The essence of what has been achieved by the transformation that began with Sir Stuart Hampson and has continued on Charlie Mayfield’s watch has been to combine the best traditions of the Partnership - quality, personal service, Never Knowingly Undersold, corporate responsibility - with cutting-edge thinking when it comes to marketing, store formats and, above all, multichannel.
That hasn’t been a painless process, as the vociferous letters from partners in The Gazette every week show. But it’s working, and even now when the department stores are struggling to match last year’s numbers, it will still be doing better than most competitors.
What the market should be interested in is how much growth potential the Partnership still has. Unlike most mature UK retailers, John Lewis and Waitrose have huge swathes of the country they don’t yet cover with stores.
John Lewis only has 32 stores but the fledgling at Home format could double that number. Waitrose too is nowhere near comprehensive UK coverage. But by far the biggest opportunity lies in online. If the two businesses worked together online to maximise the potential of each others’ customer bases, the benefits could be enormous.
Both brands are now looking abroad, but whether the unique trust that John Lewis and Waitrose have among UK shoppers can translate successfully to global markets is debatable. The web could be the solution, for John Lewis at least, but selling products that are generally available elsewhere in markets where the brands aren’t understood won’t be a game-changer. The real opportunities for the Partnership are closer to home.
Visit retail-week.com/blog today to read Tim’s Retail Day blog, and follow him on Twitter @timdanaher
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