Darren Blackhurst doesn't care if her attracts criticism as long as shoppers get low prices, he tells Chloe Ryan


It's a rainy day in Yorkshire and Darren Blackhurst is sitting in a sparse office at Asda's York store with a group of women in their 30s and 40s. The women, who all shop at the store, are comparing notes on family life. How to cope on a tight budget, money-saving cooking tips and fears about the economy all come up as they sip tea and eat biscuits.

Blackhurst is listening intently. As chief merchandising officer, he says his overriding priority is to keep prices as low as possible. "We get criticised for selling a £2 chicken," he says. "But if that means those ladies can serve their family a Sunday roast, it makes a real difference."

It's a strategy that may have endeared Asda to shoppers, but has also placed it in the firing line for the health police, the media and suppliers. If the retailer isn't being taken to task for supposedly promoting binge drinking with its three-for-£10 deals on wine, suppliers are attacking it for using blind e-auctions or introducing the Less is More programme.

Blackhurst is unrepentant. It all comes back to the group of women. One single mum says she pads out meals with vegetables grown in her garden to save money on meat, which she can only afford to buy occasionally in big freezer packs. Another says her family loves fajita meal kits, but they are too expensive to have often. Asda's responsibility is to help these shoppers by leading the way on low prices, says Blackhurst forcefully. "Asda drives down the cost of living. Because we are so aggressive in leading pricing down, other retailers have to react to us."

Of course, he has a fair idea of how they'll react, having joined Asda in 2006 after 18 years at Tesco, latterly as commercial director of Tesco Thailand. The opportunity to play a more integral role at Asda was too good to turn town, he says of his decision to move. "Andy was pulling together a new leadership team and he was explicit he wanted me to be a part of it," he says.

Three years on he still has a lot of respect for Tesco, but feels the culture is not as "caring" as at Asda. He is less flattering still about Morrisons, describing it as "shameful" that CEO Marc Bolland tried to justify Morrisons' variable regional pricing on petrol in a BBC interview. "Why should he dictate which parts of the country have higher or lower prices?" says Blackhurst.

Such forthright opinions have not always gone down well with suppliers and he further incurred their wrath this February when he announced Asda would step up Less is More and strip out up to 30% of SKUs across the board to cut duplicate products and superfluous multiple pack sizes in order to reduce shelf clutter and introduce more local and specialist lines.

Blackhurst reasons that every SKU needs to justify its place on the shelf. "I want us to be challenging brand equity," he says. "If there is brand equity, we will respect that. If we need that brand, we will sell it. But in certain areas we are challenging that and we will continue to challenge it. Is that uncomfortable? Yes, but we are doing this for the right reasons for our customers."

If a supplier wants to challenge a decision, it can, he adds. "We'll listen to them. This is an open process. We are engaging with all suppliers and they all have the same opportunity. It's very, very fair."

Some suppliers would beg to differ. "We suffered from it and they had to bring certain products back anyway," says one, bitterly, of Less is More. Others criticise Asda's decision to bring back e-auctions, criticism that Blackhurst shrugs off. "They speed up the buying process," he says bluntly. "When you put a contract out to tender, meetings with suppliers can take months with an e-auction, you can do it in a matter of days or weeks."

If suppliers find Blackhurst uncompromising, they had better get used to it. At its supplier conference this autumn, he will challenge them to slash the amount of packaging they use. "Our branded supply base needs to start thinking about this more seriously," says Blackhurst. "We've got our own house in order Asda is on target to have reduced its own-label packaging by 30% on 2007 by the end of the year now there needs to be a call to arms with branded suppliers."

Paradoxically, he'd like to see more retail ready packaging. It stops shop staff wasting time unpacking and stacking single items, he explains, pointing to the end of an aisle where a huge merchandisable unit stands crammed full of bags of pasta. "This kind of thing saves millions and millions of pounds, which gets put back into lowering prices," he says. "I am absolutely convinced we can still get a lot out of this."

Blackhurst is adamant that lean thinking leads to low prices. That doesn't mean low quality, however, he insists. He alludes to when he got the job and kitted out his flat entirely in Smartprice products. The knife block broke within a week. He wasn't impressed, and demanded better quality from his buyers for Asda's cheapest range. He is now proud, he says, of the ultra-cheap £5 knife block Asda sells.

He is also proud of its decision in February to scrap bogofs and instead offer thousands of £1 lines. Research for The Grocer revealed that almost one in five products sold for £1 at the beginning of August had actually risen in price, but he maintains Asda sells more items at £1 or less than any other supermarket. "Our customers know they can always come to us to get the best deals." And for the ladies in the focus group in York that is what it's all about.

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