Weller shockwaves

Yesterday was all about two of retail’s (shamefully few) leading women, although aside from their sex its hard to imagine two more different individuals than Jacqueline Gold and Sara Weller. Our stories about Ann Summers’ ‘Your S&M’ campaign, and its subsequent withdrawl, were among our most read of the year so far. Rather than recount the saga, all the day’s excitement is on my twitter feed. But suffice to say both sides got what they wanted by the end of the day: M&S got the campaign withdrawn, Ann Summers got oodles of free publicity.

Now onto Argos, and the sad news that Sara Weller is stepping down due to health issues. Sara is well-liked, and I’m sure many in retail would join all of us at Retail Week in wishing her the very best for her future non-executive career and with her health.

Argos has been finding the going tough, although I gather from George, who went along to the press conference yesterday, that Home Retail’s group boss Terry Duddy was pretty upbeat and said that Argos outperformed Tesco in general merchandise and has been gaining share againt the supermarkets. Argos is a very well-run business which is a pioneer when it comes to multichannel, but while Weller, Duddy and co have done a good job of trying to hold back the tide, it’s a very challenged model.

Despite Tesco’s blip this week, the long term trend is still going to be towards the grocers growing their share of the market in GM, If you want to buy a cheap kettle or toaster, there’s not much reason to detour to Argos - which remains one of the less enjoyable retail experiences you can have - when you can buy it while you’re in the supermarket anyway. I expect Terry will want to steady the ship for a while, but then might bring in someone who will be a bit more radical in their thinking about what the Argos of the future looks like.