All articles by Nick Bubb – Page 5
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OpinionNick Bubb’s Verdict: Ocado and Waitrose - A doomed marriage?
The increasingly unhappy marriage of Ocado and Waitrose seems set to end in the divorce courts, but can the two sides patch up their differences?
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OpinionNick Bubb’s Verdict: Carphone Warehouse - smartphones, smart management
Carphone Warehouse’s structure over the years has shifted constantly, but founder Charles Dunstone remains a very smart businessman.
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OpinionComment: Nick Bubb on 25 years of dramatic change in retail
Retailing in 25 years time will be very different, but it will change as dramatically as it has in the last 25 years?
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OpinionNick Bubb’s Verdict: WHSmith - Is the time right for a demerger?
The constant mantra at WHSmith has been “Sales down, gross margins up, costs down”, but is it time to split the business up?
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OpinionNick Bubb’s Verdict: The message from Waitrose's Milton Keynes store
Milton Keynes is famous - or infamous - for all its roundabouts, but it is also the location of Waitrose’s latest thinking on store design.
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OpinionNick Bubb’s Verdict: Kingfisher blames the weather, again?
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: “To lose one quarter, Mr Cheshire, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two quarters looks like carelessness.”
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Marks & Spencer - Could a turnaround be on the horizon?
Profits at M&S only seem to have gone backwards since Marc Bolland took over as chief executive, but could a big step forward now be not too far away?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Dixons - If only France and Southern Europe didn't exist
Dixons’ sterling progress in the UK and Nordics continues to be undermined, alas, by poor trading in Southern Europe and its French business Pixmania.
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Sainsbury's - fresh food rather than fresh messages?
With no new news on trading/strategy to impart today with the final results and with the whole world obsessed with speculation that Justin King will soon leave, what would your PR advice have been to Sainsbury’s?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Argos - Luck, or good judgement?
Argos has reversed years of LFL sales declines and been able to capitalise on the tablet PC boom, but was that through luck or good judgement?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Primark - What is the secret of its success?
Expectations were high for today’s Primark interim profits from Associated British Foods (ABF) but they still beat them, with amazing 55% growth. How does Primark do it?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: JD Sports - is Mike Ashley going to finish it off?
Having seen off his other great rival, JJB Sports, Mike Ashley has famously said that he wants to finish off JD Sports as well: so how’s he doing?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Kingfisher - How can it downsize in the UK?
Everybody knows that B&Q has too much space, including Kingfisher’s management, but how do you start to get rid of 27.5m sq ft of it?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Next - Don’t mention the weather?
The standard advice for retailers trying to explain away weak trading is not to blame “the weather”, so why did Next fall into that apparent trap today?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Is Morrisons getting the balance right?
Has Morrisons chief executive Dalton Philips struck the right balance between short-term tactical moves and long-term strategic investments?
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: The John Lewis question is sanity versus vanity
The old adage is that “sales are vanity, profits are sanity”, so has the mighty JLP managed to translate its impressive top-line growth to the bottom-line?
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Will B&Q's UK business go the same way as Ireland?
Kingfisher boss Ian Cheshire is fond of boasting that little Screwfix makes more money than Homebase, but the risk is that one day Screwfix will make more money than B&Q.
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Republic's demise is good for Superdry
If Superdry is the “king” of young fashion brands, its edgier-sounding but weak High Street rival Republic was never going to enter the ranks of the retailing royalty.
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: M&S - the road to Istanbul
So, if you were M&S and wanted to impress the City with your international growth ambitions, what would you do and where would you go?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Asos - From coal to global fashion fulfilment in a generation
Back in 1984, the coal-mining village of Grimethorpe became famous for its violent clashes between the miners and the police. But today it is the peaceful hub of Asos’s global logistics operation.