Your Chocolate-free Diet Giving You the Hump?
Why not have a break and try Dubai's Al Nassma, the world's first brand of chocolate made with camels' milk?
Camels' milk is seen as healthier than cows' milk, containing five times more vitamin C, less fat, less lactose and more insulin, making it a good option for diabetics and the lactose intolerant, a company spokesman said. With 3,000 camels on its Dubai farm, the company sells chocolates through its farm-shop as well as in luxury hotels and private airlines. It plans to launch an online shopping facility within a month.
Have a hump-free weekend, from the Namnews Team!
Friday, 24 July 2009
A Sporting Chance in Retail?
Suppose Tesco had significant shareholdings in JS, Asda and Morrisons, supplied Morrisons and other retailers, owned Pepsi and Coca Cola, and if the chairman of Tesco had loaned the chairman of Morrisons £1.5m?
Now flip over to the Sporting Goods category…
SportsDirect, the lead player in the sector, has
- 29% of Blacks Leisure
- 13% of JD Sports Fashion
- 4.76% of JJB Sports (recently sold?)
SportsDirect supplies JJB and other retailers
They also own Dunlop and Slazenger brands (Dunlop-Slazenger Ltd)
Finally, the chairman of Sports Direct is at odds with JJB re the timing of a loan of £1.5m he made to the current chairman of JJB.
Watch this space…!!
Now flip over to the Sporting Goods category…
SportsDirect, the lead player in the sector, has
- 29% of Blacks Leisure
- 13% of JD Sports Fashion
- 4.76% of JJB Sports (recently sold?)
SportsDirect supplies JJB and other retailers
They also own Dunlop and Slazenger brands (Dunlop-Slazenger Ltd)
Finally, the chairman of Sports Direct is at odds with JJB re the timing of a loan of £1.5m he made to the current chairman of JJB.
Watch this space…!!
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Making money with passion, and all that jazz…
Jazz, despite its seemingly free-wheeling style, operates to passionately-felt and carefully defined disciplines that provide an essential context for high levels of improvisation and creativity.
It just seems loose...
Some time ago, the tenor-saxophonist, Frank Foster (Count Basie Band), was playing a street concert from the Jazzmobile in Harlem. He called for a blues in b-flat. A young tenor player began to play "out" from the first chorus, playing sounds that had no relationship to the harmonic progression or rhythmic setting. Foster stopped him.
"What are you doing?"
"Just playing what I feel"
"Well feel something in B-flat, motherfucker"
(Source Wynton Marsalis, The Guardian)
In the same way, running a business in the current economic climate requires basic disciplines to encourage and guide highest levels of innovation to ensure survival.
Setting and working within the core discipline of an acceptable level of Return on Capital Employed, allowing sufficient freedom to innovate and improvise with optimum energy, has to provide a basis for survival and growth, even enjoyment, despite the impossible odds.
However, if creative initiatives cause you to ignore the reality of ROCE KPIs, don't be too surprised if someone else reminds you of the basics, passionately...!
It just seems loose...
Some time ago, the tenor-saxophonist, Frank Foster (Count Basie Band), was playing a street concert from the Jazzmobile in Harlem. He called for a blues in b-flat. A young tenor player began to play "out" from the first chorus, playing sounds that had no relationship to the harmonic progression or rhythmic setting. Foster stopped him.
"What are you doing?"
"Just playing what I feel"
"Well feel something in B-flat, motherfucker"
(Source Wynton Marsalis, The Guardian)
In the same way, running a business in the current economic climate requires basic disciplines to encourage and guide highest levels of innovation to ensure survival.
Setting and working within the core discipline of an acceptable level of Return on Capital Employed, allowing sufficient freedom to innovate and improvise with optimum energy, has to provide a basis for survival and growth, even enjoyment, despite the impossible odds.
However, if creative initiatives cause you to ignore the reality of ROCE KPIs, don't be too surprised if someone else reminds you of the basics, passionately...!
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Aldi to apply a 5% Cut In Suppliers' Prices from 1st August 2009 - the knock-on effect
The cost to you: the incremental sales required to restore your cash profit
A supplier making a 10% net profit, needs an incremental sales increase of 100% to restore cash profit.
Two questions:
The value to Aldi: the incremental sales required by Aldi to generate the same benefit via the bottom line:
With gross margins of say 15% on 2008 UK sales of £2.15bn, Aldi could generate £90m, if all suppliers complied.
Assuming a UK net profit margin of 2%, Aldi would need incremental sales of £4.5bn to generate £90m.
Every little helps…
The fall-out for branded goods suppliers
This is not about Aldi. Aldi are simply attempting to raise funds to optimise share growth potential in the current climate. However, a 'one-sided' change in the supply 'contract' is really a fundamental issue that goes to the core of the supplier-retailer ' fair-share' relationship, particularly for their non-branded suppliers (Aldi's relatively few branded products are by definition category leaders, usually limited to 1/2 SKUs and their suppliers have the strength to refuse).
The real problem is that other multiples, already under pressure from Aldi's growing share, could use this move as a precedent, and try to take equivalent steps with their branded suppliers…With more branded choice, the other multiples could afford to lose key brands, replacing them with competitor equivalents…
UK: Aldi Calls On Suppliers For 5% Cut In Prices
The Grocer reports that Aldi is facing a revolt by its suppliers after telling them it will pay 5% less for their products from the end of this month. Suppliers are said to have received a letter from Aldi’s MD of Buying, Tony Baines, telling them it required “a 5% cost reduction on the range of products you supply.” In the report by the trade magazine, one supplier described the tactics as “bullying” with several companies said to be threatening to stop supplying the discounter as a result. Aldi said it deserved better prices because it was offering suppliers increased volumes and a chance to share in its growth. “We are looking to improve our cost base to support our activity and that will benefit all our suppliers,” Baines told The Grocer.
Namnews - Tuesday 14th July 2009
A supplier making a 10% net profit, needs an incremental sales increase of 100% to restore cash profit.
Two questions:
- Is it likely that you could double your Aldi sales?
- What impact would increased scale have on your costs? (say for 10%, 20%, 30% sales increments)
The value to Aldi: the incremental sales required by Aldi to generate the same benefit via the bottom line:
With gross margins of say 15% on 2008 UK sales of £2.15bn, Aldi could generate £90m, if all suppliers complied.
Assuming a UK net profit margin of 2%, Aldi would need incremental sales of £4.5bn to generate £90m.
Every little helps…
The fall-out for branded goods suppliers
This is not about Aldi. Aldi are simply attempting to raise funds to optimise share growth potential in the current climate. However, a 'one-sided' change in the supply 'contract' is really a fundamental issue that goes to the core of the supplier-retailer ' fair-share' relationship, particularly for their non-branded suppliers (Aldi's relatively few branded products are by definition category leaders, usually limited to 1/2 SKUs and their suppliers have the strength to refuse).
The real problem is that other multiples, already under pressure from Aldi's growing share, could use this move as a precedent, and try to take equivalent steps with their branded suppliers…With more branded choice, the other multiples could afford to lose key brands, replacing them with competitor equivalents…
UK: Aldi Calls On Suppliers For 5% Cut In Prices
The Grocer reports that Aldi is facing a revolt by its suppliers after telling them it will pay 5% less for their products from the end of this month. Suppliers are said to have received a letter from Aldi’s MD of Buying, Tony Baines, telling them it required “a 5% cost reduction on the range of products you supply.” In the report by the trade magazine, one supplier described the tactics as “bullying” with several companies said to be threatening to stop supplying the discounter as a result. Aldi said it deserved better prices because it was offering suppliers increased volumes and a chance to share in its growth. “We are looking to improve our cost base to support our activity and that will benefit all our suppliers,” Baines told The Grocer.
Namnews - Tuesday 14th July 2009
Friday, 10 July 2009
" Spotlight on German Retail", a new English Blog by Mike Dawson
Starting this week Lebensmittel Zeitung launched a new English Blog, written by international editor Mike Dawson.
Well worth a visit.
For instance see his interesting interview with Bart Becht, CEO Reckitt Benckiser
If you have any questions/feedback, email Mike at mike.dawson@lz-net.de
Well worth a visit.
For instance see his interesting interview with Bart Becht, CEO Reckitt Benckiser
If you have any questions/feedback, email Mike at mike.dawson@lz-net.de
Thought for Today: “Can we really afford this green legislation?”
‘It’s one of the few good things to come out of this recession,’ says Professor Ian Plimer. ‘People are starting to ask themselves: “Can we really afford this green legislation?”’
Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book Heaven And Earth shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact.
Reading Plimer’s Heaven And Earth is at once an enlightening and terrifying experience. Enlightening because, after 500 pages of heavily annotated prose (the fruit of five years’ research), you are left in no doubt that man’s contribution to the thing they now call ‘climate change’ was, is and probably always will be negligible. Terrifying, because you cannot but be appalled by how much money has been wasted, how much unnecessary regulation drafted because of a ‘problem’ that doesn’t actually exist.
For the rest of this fascinating Spectator interview with Professor Plimer see current issue of the magazine
(worth a thought about how your bottom-line would look without the Green burden….)
Ian Plimer’s Heaven And Earth: Global Warming — the Missing Science is published by Quartet (£25).
Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book Heaven And Earth shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact.
Reading Plimer’s Heaven And Earth is at once an enlightening and terrifying experience. Enlightening because, after 500 pages of heavily annotated prose (the fruit of five years’ research), you are left in no doubt that man’s contribution to the thing they now call ‘climate change’ was, is and probably always will be negligible. Terrifying, because you cannot but be appalled by how much money has been wasted, how much unnecessary regulation drafted because of a ‘problem’ that doesn’t actually exist.
For the rest of this fascinating Spectator interview with Professor Plimer see current issue of the magazine
(worth a thought about how your bottom-line would look without the Green burden….)
Ian Plimer’s Heaven And Earth: Global Warming — the Missing Science is published by Quartet (£25).
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
How the KAM can 'Educate' Supply Chain Colleagues in a recessionary environment
Because of the importance of each supply chain member’s contribution to the total package of consumer satisfaction via the customer, it is essential that the KAM shares customer insight and helps colleagues focus their collective output on meeting consumer, customer and company needs, in harmony.
Given the changes in consumer-shopper need-sets arising from a maturing recession, the KAM as the overall co-ordinator of the company/customer interface, with a deep knowledge (?) of the joint-consumer profile, is in a unique position to help both companies optimise the use of supply chain resources.
The KAM can begin by helping brand colleagues ‘recognise’ their consumer within the in-store traffic flow. This means accessing the growing wealth of consumer buying behaviour insights via loyalty-card data analysis, and encouraging brand managers to integrate the results with their knowledge of consumers’ consumption behaviour. This combination can then be fed back into both ends of the supply chain to provide an enriched view of new consumer needs and a focus for demand management.
By establishing clear criteria and working parameters, and relying upon finely-tuned political sensitivity, the KAM can ensure that other functions are not inadvertently compromised by arrangements made between company/customer partners. Moreover, as company/customer co-ordinator, the KAM can and should ensure that the learnings from these mini-partnerships are shared throughout the company.
Where marketing colleagues are concerned, the KAM needs to develop a deep understanding of the brand, its positioning and consumer profile. In turn, the brand team needs to be persuaded that consumer trust in the brand will not be transferred to the store, and thence to the store brand.
Here the KAM’s knowledge of the decision-making process within both companies can help to ensure that both teams appreciate the value of consumer insight, its importance in enabling differentiation (brand and store) and the need for rapid response to preserve the balance of power.
Within these constraints, suppliers are finding that there still exists sufficient benefit in collaboration with the right partner in the search for increased influence over the joint-consumer in releasing the demand side potential of ECR.
The KAM can be part of that process, but needs to provide and communicate the overall plot......
Given the changes in consumer-shopper need-sets arising from a maturing recession, the KAM as the overall co-ordinator of the company/customer interface, with a deep knowledge (?) of the joint-consumer profile, is in a unique position to help both companies optimise the use of supply chain resources.
The KAM can begin by helping brand colleagues ‘recognise’ their consumer within the in-store traffic flow. This means accessing the growing wealth of consumer buying behaviour insights via loyalty-card data analysis, and encouraging brand managers to integrate the results with their knowledge of consumers’ consumption behaviour. This combination can then be fed back into both ends of the supply chain to provide an enriched view of new consumer needs and a focus for demand management.
By establishing clear criteria and working parameters, and relying upon finely-tuned political sensitivity, the KAM can ensure that other functions are not inadvertently compromised by arrangements made between company/customer partners. Moreover, as company/customer co-ordinator, the KAM can and should ensure that the learnings from these mini-partnerships are shared throughout the company.
Where marketing colleagues are concerned, the KAM needs to develop a deep understanding of the brand, its positioning and consumer profile. In turn, the brand team needs to be persuaded that consumer trust in the brand will not be transferred to the store, and thence to the store brand.
Here the KAM’s knowledge of the decision-making process within both companies can help to ensure that both teams appreciate the value of consumer insight, its importance in enabling differentiation (brand and store) and the need for rapid response to preserve the balance of power.
Within these constraints, suppliers are finding that there still exists sufficient benefit in collaboration with the right partner in the search for increased influence over the joint-consumer in releasing the demand side potential of ECR.
The KAM can be part of that process, but needs to provide and communicate the overall plot......
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
What if the Mults can fill the distressed-gaps?
News that the leading supermarkets are allegedly buying empty high-street shops and pubs for new stores suggests that landlords, the multiples and the Government could have found a politically correct way of growing the multiples' share of trade without being in breach of competition legislation…
Essentially, according to the Observer, Tesco and Asda are committed to opening 2.5m sq. ft. of new space this year, while Sainsbury's wants to add 2.5m sq. ft. - 15% of its floorspace - by March 2011. Morrisons is on track to open 1m sq. ft. by January 2011.
If these increases in retail space are achieved, I believe that the multiples' relative balance of power/share will be relatively unaffected, which means there will be little issue for the Competition authorities.
Meanwhile, landlords will have received a 'good' price for distressed properties, and the government will have avoided a permanent High Street reminder of recession-reality for voters....
And all of this increase in trade concentration at the expense of those inefficient smaller retailers that couldn't stand the pace….with additional competition for those that have 'survived'
Think about it:
The above ambitions add up to 8.5m sq ft and at say 15,000 sq ft per outlet, this means approx 560 additional multiples' stores, maximum.
Time for a couple of what-ifs on a little extra buying power, combined with a little less distribution in niche categories?
Essentially, according to the Observer, Tesco and Asda are committed to opening 2.5m sq. ft. of new space this year, while Sainsbury's wants to add 2.5m sq. ft. - 15% of its floorspace - by March 2011. Morrisons is on track to open 1m sq. ft. by January 2011.
If these increases in retail space are achieved, I believe that the multiples' relative balance of power/share will be relatively unaffected, which means there will be little issue for the Competition authorities.
Meanwhile, landlords will have received a 'good' price for distressed properties, and the government will have avoided a permanent High Street reminder of recession-reality for voters....
And all of this increase in trade concentration at the expense of those inefficient smaller retailers that couldn't stand the pace….with additional competition for those that have 'survived'
Think about it:
The above ambitions add up to 8.5m sq ft and at say 15,000 sq ft per outlet, this means approx 560 additional multiples' stores, maximum.
Time for a couple of what-ifs on a little extra buying power, combined with a little less distribution in niche categories?
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