Friday 28 June 2013

'Making do' with existing space: the Tesco-Sports Direct space-partnership…

Sports Direct is in advanced talks to take excess space in some of Tesco’s biggest stores, possibly via the Mezzanine floors. Sports Direct would be able to benefit from the customer traffic to Tesco, and allow the grocery multiple to shed space to a non-competing retailer.

As you know, Tesco is already reducing floor-space. A 120,000 sq. ft. store in Stockton-on-Tees, for example, is to be reduced to 80,000 sq. ft. by installing a gym on the store’s mezzanine floor, and a children’s play area on the ground floor.

They are already comfortable with the Sports Direct connection (see the Czech Republic, where Tesco cut the size of a hypermarket from 80,000 sq. ft. to 50,000 sq. ft., with Sports Direct taking the bulk of the excess space).

Retailing being a pragmatic model, Tesco realises that a 100,000 sq. ft. store represents space overcapacity. Reasons are irrelevant. In the ‘here and now’ retailing is about alternative use or going bust, with retail margins too low to allow any other options. Tesco’s willingness to consider complementary space-partners, rather than plough on regardless, has to be the right attitude. The rest is detail…

Imaginative NAMs, particularly those in multi-channel categories, already see the potential of collaborative promotions involving Tesco’s space-partners. For instance the scope for healthfood/sports supplements joint-initiatives is a no-brainer…

The real opportunity
But the real creativity is in seeing that this space-partnership is not about ‘making-do’ with a large store problem. With care, this idea can be rolled out into Tesco’s other formats, via complementary partners in many other categories, all realising synergies in existing store traffic.

As always, change of this nature can represent threats and opportunities for suppliers. This means that any categories/brands that are currently ‘space-fillers’ become ‘de-listable’ as Tesco develops its space-partnership model, and, paradoxically ‘needs more space’ as the idea develops…. However, those NAMs that can go to Tesco with creative linkages involving complementary routes to consumer, and even suggestions for possible space-partnerships, have to represent added-value for both retailers…

In other words, it is time for a really fundamental review of what your brand  represents to your consumers, in their preferred shopping environment, in the context of the Tesco space-partnership concept, remembering that all creativity is simply the linking of two old ideas that have not been combined before….

No comments: