John Lewis scraps staff bonus again despite tripling profit March 13, 2025 The John Lewis Partnership has scrapped its staff bonus for the third year in a row despite a near-tripling in profit. The company, which owns both John Lewis and Waitrose, told markets this morning that profit before tax increased from £42m to £126m over the 52 weeks to 25 January. Overall sales rose three per [...]
Concern for British high street deepens with flat February sales February 28, 2025 Online shopping drove retail sales in February, offsetting flat in-store sales on the high street. In-store sales were lower in real terms in February, meaning that actual sales volumes shrank year on year, according to accountancy and business advisory firm BDO. Total like-for-like sales grew by 2.3 per cent in February. Retailers faced particularly challenging [...]
Ocado: Shares slump as double-digit growth fails to offset losses February 27, 2025 Tech and grocery platform Ocado has reported another year of losses despite a strong performance in its online delivery arm. Its share price fell by more than 13 per cent in early trades. Overall revenue rose by 14.1 per cent to reach £3.1bn in the year ended December 1. Lucy Rumbold, equity research analyst at [...]
Hammerson: Bicester Village sale hits earnings February 26, 2025 British shopping centre giant Hammerson has reported a drop in earnings due to the impact of portfolio sales despite an overall rise in rents and occupancy. Despite higher rents across its portfolio, Hammerson’s rental income fell to £189m during the year, down nine per cent year on year. Hammerson attributed this to the impact of [...]
New Look closes all stores in the Republic of Ireland February 21, 2025 High street fashion giant New Look will fully exit the Republic of Ireland, putting all of its workers in the country at risk of redundancy. The retailer’s Irish arm, which employs about 347 people, has entered into redundancy following years of losses at the high street chain. The privately-owned company said it has had to [...]
Burberry set to re-enter the FTSE 100 in March reshuffle February 20, 2025 Burberry looks set to re-enter the FTSE 100 in March after its shares doubled since their lows in September. The luxury brand fell out of the FTSE 100 in its September quarterly reshuffle last year after its share price dropped nearly 75 per cent in 16 months. However, glimmers of hope for a luxury rebound, [...]
Kurt Geiger sold to New York’s Steve Madden for £289m February 13, 2025 Private equity firm Cinven has announced the sale of Kurt Geiger to shoe brand Steve Madden for £289m. Cinven bought the footwear and accessories brand in 2015 for £245m, and has since greatly expanded the business in the US. In America alone, sales surged by 58.7 per cent to over £110m from February to September [...]
Dunelm chief steps down after guiding firm through transformation and Covid February 11, 2025 Dunelm’s chief executive Nick Wilkinson will step down after seven years after leading the company through a strategic change, digitalisation, and the pandemic. Wilkinson will remain at FTSE-listed Dunelm until a successor is appointed. Sales at Dunelm have been consistently rising over the past few years as its personalised, relatively low-cost homewares go down well [...]
Hyper-personalisation: Has AI finally made retail’s ‘holy grail’ possible? February 8, 2025 Hyper-personalisation has long been the holy grail of retail: to recreate the customer experience of a local, everyone-knows-your-name store on a global scale. Now, with the combination of data tracking, AI and our ever-increasing tendency to consume online content, genuinely personally-tailored ads are just about within touching distance. These ads, introduced in their earliest form [...]
Tesco considers franchise of axed Post Office branches February 6, 2025 Tesco has shown an interest in acquiring a number of axed Post Office branches as part of a franchise model, according to reports. Post Office chairman Nigel Railton told a group of MPs earlier this week that the UK’s biggest grocer had expressed interest in the 108-site Crown Post Office network, according to Sky News. [...]