Today marks a big day in the history of Morrisons as the supermarket chain makes its long-awaited debut in selling groceries online.
It’s a day CEO Dalton Philips in particular has been looking forward to for some time and indeed he will be making one of the first deliveries personally. However as he gazes out the window of the brightly painted yellow Morrisons delivery van he will have far more than the beautiful Warwickshire countryside on his mind.
Online is a box most people accept he had to tick although there is a growing number of naysayers who point to the growth of the online-free discounters as evidence that it is not necessarily the be-all and end-all.
However, assuming the world we live in continues to move online, at some point soon even Aldi and Lidl will have to bite the bullet on this issue as well, and at least Morrisons will have its foot in the door.
But as yesterday’s surprise announcement to the City that its like-for-like sales slumped by 5.6% for the six weeks to 5 January demonstrates, Morrisons has more problems than simply being underrepresented online and in convenience.
Whatever the reason for Morrisons deciding to post its numbers on the same day headline-grabbing Tesco and M&S published their own disappointing numbers, it’s clear to see that Morrisons’ core estate is under-performing.
For me personally this is disappointing – as I have said before Morrisons has had some great ideas over the last four years that have looked to bring something new to the shopping experience.
One can’t help being impressed by stores such as Kirkstall, Camden and Tunbridge Wells, where the senior management have given tours to the assembled press pack and talked enthusiastically about the latest innovations – whether they be the fabled misty veg (now copied by Tesco), selling wine by price rather than country, or listing cheese by strength instead of type.
These stores are filled with vibrant, intelligent and skilled staff whose enthusiasm for the business and the strategy seem to know no bounds. Unfortunately in my experience these standards are not being repeated across the country and in too many stores the strategy is either a watered-down version or just badly implemented.
Debate over whether the fresh format strategy is alienating core Morrisons shoppers is moot when much of the estate is not implementing it at all, while those that have done are not doing so to the same high standards as its flagship stores.
Now that online is here and the retailer has hired a raft of senior dot.com and IT executives in the last year to run it, it’s time for Dalton to get his focus firmly back on the core estate. I still believe this is where the recovery will come from and people will only want to use its online operation if they are impressed by what they see in store.
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