jim mccarthy one use

If I had a quid for every time some clever-arse journalist asked what a six-pack of Boysenberry Pop-Tarts cost in one of my stores, I’d have enough money to buy, well, some Pop-Tarts.

Except I’d have a penny change now that the CMA has cleared the way for me to pick up 99p Stores as well. Although I suppose I wouldn’t because there’ll be a 1% price delta across the estate… Oh sod it, pricing is clearly going to be one of the issues the IT guys will have to get on to PDQ.

We’re going to have to get our thinking caps on anyway. Obviously we need to keep hitting our price points and I’m thinking of introducing a tier strategy like at those fancy upmarket places - you know, Tesco, Asda and so on.

Poundland will be our exclusive tier for those special occasions when the everyday value of 99p Stores just isn’t quite good enough. But I don’t know yet what we’re going to call our value fascia - and I’m not really sure what the price point will be, although I’m thinking of getting PwC or Deloitte to run some numbers around 97p.

Then we’re going to need to do some work around ranging. We’ll be looking to apply pressure on, you know, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and so on to adjust pack sizes to allow us to maintain our margins. Stands to reason that a 6x25g pack of Marmite Crisps that sells for a quid in Poundland will have to be 6x24-¾g, or maybe 5.94x25g. As for Colgate, well maybe they can just dilute it a bit.

It’ll be Amazing Value for the customer in any case. And we’ve got international expansion plans too. Chappaquiddick, Nickeragua, Doughville. Ha ha.

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