Tesco is returning to the US? No, your eyes do not deceive you – the UK’s biggest retailer is making another foray stateside, barely seven months after off-loading its loss-making Fresh & Easy chain.

But this venture is no Fresh & Easy: Tesco’s fashion chain F&F is to open seven franchise stores on the US East Coast, in partnership with the Saudi-owned Retail Group of America, which operates outlets of Monsoon, Accessorize, Cortefiel and others across the US. The Group’s parent company is Fawaz Al Hokair & Co, which already runs F&F stories in Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Georgia, and is about to open the first F&F store in Armenia.

If Tesco has learnt one thing from the painful retrenchment of its international operations in recent years, it’s that partnerships are the way forward, allowing it to dip its toe in new markets and share the risk. Having launched in 2001, F&F now has 43 franchise stores in 10 countries.

Tesco isn’t the only UK retailer looking at overseas opportunities. Asda’s George brand now has nine stores across the Middle East, two in Malta and one in Singapore.

And this month M&S revealed plans to open 250 new stores over three years, including 20 shops in Paris and a big push into India, China, Russia and the Middle East. With international sales rising 4.7% in the last quarter, M&S is obviously chasing growth where it finds it.

But while M&S is setting itself ambitious goals, the expansion of F&F is hardly a return to the days of Tesco planting its flag in foreign soils. Rather it is another plank in its strategy of developing in-house brands – from Finest and Tesco Bank to Blinkbox and Hudl.

Phil Clarke may be hoping that a strong and diverse portfolio of brands will help Tesco plot a path out of the gloom, and certainly the likes of Hudl and Blinkbox suggest it’s not short of ideas. But others will argue that such plans – and schemes like its London-based food-to-go operation – are a sideshow at a time when the supermarket is being beaten consistently on price, losing share, and lacking a finance director.

The problem is that building up such brands to a point at which they make a significant contribution to the top line – or have sufficient value for Tesco to potentially sell on – takes time. And time, if this week’s headlines are to be believed, is not exactly on Mr Clarke’s side.

One thing’s for sure: when Tesco’s full-year results emerge this Wednesday, it won’t be F&F that seizes top billing.

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