Just as a written commitment means that you are more likely to deliver on your promises, so too for independent shopkeepers joining a symbol group means that you are more likely to work in a disciplined way with your wholesale supplier. In the past three years the symbol group independent has performed better and the idea of affiliation has become more appealing as the spread of the excellent Tesco Express format has changed the competitive position in the battle for local shoppers. In a perverse way, the spread of Express has helped define what a good symbol group shop should look like, how it should work and has motivated the owners of local shops to aim higher and demand more of themselves and their staff.
“Twenty years ago I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift,” says Jeff Bezos in his most recent letter to shareholders. A blink later and he points out that the company has grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to 230,000 now. But his ambition is the same. “We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness and risk-acceptance mentality that is normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.” Amazon is great at disruption because of its customers focus and the fact that the internet means it needs none (or very few) people between its warehouses and the shopper. The threat of Prime, its membership service, is the biggest challenge facing the UK retail market and the wholesale market by extension. It is both a direct threat and an indirect threat in that is inspiring countless numbers of othe...
Comments
Post a Comment