bill, focus like many other retailers, isfinding life difficult in the current environment. to what extent are focus's current difficultiesdue to environmental factors and what extent due to the value proposition and merchandisingstrategy? well all of the problems that we've facedin the last 12 months have been created by the current environment.we do have a business that has a fundamental problem with its proposition and that's whywe bought it because we specialise in turnarounds, but we didn't anticipate the worst recessionin living memory when we bought the business, and that has accelerated a decline in ourtop line sales translated into bottom line profit issues which then knocks onto cashflows, which then knocks onto certain liabilities
that you have to deal with. so, we have tosay that everything is really been exasperated by the current environment.you recently tried to change the product range and allocate parts trading floor of pet relatedproducts what other industry changes do you need to make to retain a focus on profitabilityand long term sustainability? oh, an enormous number. the recent changewe did, it was what we call a space optimisation project, which we were taken the number ofitems that we sell, we call the sku's stock keeping units, down from 18, 000 down to 13,000 and that free... and we decided to re-enter the pet care market, because focus had a historyin pets before, in order to get incremental sales in the space that was created, but avery small part of our strategy.
our new strategy on ranging is based on agood better best hierarchy. we will have a entry point products called payless. we willhave better products called world of. we have world of colour, world of lighting, worldof home and world of garden and then we stick a brand on the top wherever necessary. we'retrying to keep things simple, and that architecture will take a number of years to develop andget in place.
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