Tesco's new man Dave Lewis should put customers first
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Version 0 of 1. Looking back to the Sir Terry Leahy era at Tesco, I can break it into two. Early on he spoke with infectious enthusiasm about the business he’d inherited, about giving customers exactly what they wanted, about him and his staff spending time on the shop-floor, listening and learning. Rivals struggled to keep pace with the scale of Tesco’s offering as it tweaked products, adding a new flavouring here, putting it in a different-sized package there. Always, there was a close attention to value and efficiency. Then the mood changed. The chat was of beating rivals, of driving suppliers hard. The touchy-feely aspect seemed to take second place. Customers noticed the shift. They began to feel they did not count as much. They went to warmer places, to comfy Waitrose for quality and to cheeky Aldi and Lidl for price. Somehow Dave Lewis, the new Tesco broom, has to recapture that early mood, and not allow the quest for performance to swamp the ability to innovate and lead the industry. It was disappointing that his first act on his first day in charge yesterday was to have a meeting with Sir Richard Broadbent, the chairman. There will be plenty of time for those, if there have not been several already. Coming from Unilever, Mr Lewis has to understand that retailing is about much more than logistics and production. To do it well requires an understanding of the customer. When Justin King arrived at Sainsbury, the senior team were waiting to greet him at the company HQ. He didn’t turn up. Someone tracked him down and asked if he’d forgotten that he was due to start. No, Mr King replied, he’d been at work since 7am, visiting a store. Mr Lewis could do a lot worse than learn from him. |