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having spent vast sums of capital in a head long charge in to the new frontier of online retailing the JLP partnership has no choice but to reduce costs in its retail estate as online has failed to deliver sufficient incremental growth to cover the increased costs they now have to bare from online whilst at the same time suffering the effect of seriously decreasing sales in its store estate where pure store sales without online sales are desperate in many stores.

catering in every store has removed all chefs as no food will now be freshly prepared on site. not unusual but JLP will find it much more difficult to achieve the same standard with a menu that no matter what they say will significantly reduce.

stores are now [outside of mens and ladies wear] stocking significantly less choice in every department allowing them to increase the space and therefore depth to less lines which means that less staff are required to ensure the shelves are kept full. this sounds sensible but reducing choice in store is potentially a disaster given that JLP is well known for its wide choice in each department as appoint of difference, testing this in a few stores may not hold the answer to its success estate wide.

the full choice of ranges will however still be available online and shortly if a line is not available in store customers will be able to have the item delivered to review in store. that could end up not only being confusing for the customer but significantly increase the amount of individual product on route which in itself take up the time of less staff in store to find present and place back in to the system .

it is relatively well known that JLP distribution system is struggling with the number of SKUs in stores and online with vast amount of stock moving around with the opportunity to be in the wrong place under a system that does not work well enough given the level of complexity .

the standalone home stores has never really worked well bringing further capital requirement and complexity with customer confusion evident in what they will find in those stores, department stores and online.

there can be no doubt that the JLP partnership entered in to the online race without sufficient consideration to its potential negative impact on the whole business that they are now forced to deal with. staff are of course less than happy that they are paying the price with less jobs and heavily reduced bonuses.