Wednesday 1 February 2012

Retailing Woes

So let me understand this from the recruitment perspective. A global brand want someone to run all of their retailing side, maintaining the image already established (and responsible for healthy profit margins). Naturally, the ideal candidate will have supermarket experience and more recently have run a business selling computers and technology products based on a 'sale', 'half price' strategy and who's international experience is closing overseas operations. Naturally.

Of course the actual reason given for Apple attracting Dixons boss John Browett is his fantastic customer service focus. I certainly can't fault him for having talked about it often enough, but my own personal experience recently was of an inept, unconnected organisation that cannot use its own computer systems and fail to interface with delivery firms correctly. OK, so you don't get so hounded when you go into a store these days as you once did, but he has definitely not got on top of the way the customer should be dealt with in such a company. The staff still don't know any more about what they are 'selling' than they did 5 years ago.

But good luck to Browett and even more so Apple. Will he bring his own ideas to the table and change the translucent white brand into something closer to his 'pallet' mentality, with lots of (fake) 'half price' offers? Or, sit back and do nothing at all, letting the marketing people create a desire and the customers to do the rest. It's a strategy.

Does this mean the Tesco era is over at Dixons? I think Browett's sidekick from that neck of the woods should be being looked at by Argos. They share a demographic, chasing the same customer segment, the range is vast, image low, but it is a real sector and it could be better done. He might be the man to fill that long-standing senior vacancy at Argos, but do the people above have the vision to recognise the kind of change that is required in their business? To date nothing suggests they do.

For Dixon's the departure of someone who clearly hasn't been that interested for quite a while now, presents a real opportunity. Let's see if they grasp it. The Industrial Revolution is so called because of the vast, fundamental changes it introduced. It wasn't called the Industrial Musical Chairs, in which people carry on doing what everyone has always done, but moving chairs occasionally.


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