England's department stores return – but do they have a future?

The great traditional retail shops of Middle England have bounced back for now. Don’t get too carried away though, says Matthew Lynn

The John Lewis Partnership Plc department store on Oxford Street in London
(Image credit: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Under the hapless leadership of the former high-flying civil servant Sharon White, John Lewis looked to be in terminal decline. In the case of both the department stores and its upmarket grocery chain Waitrose, the retail chain had too many shops, selling the wrong products in the wrong places. At one point, it even looked as if it might have to abandon its treasured workers’ control model and bring in an outside shareholder with the capital necessary to keep it afloat.

Recently, it became clear that all it in fact needed was some tough management by an experienced retail boss. Under its new chairman Jason Tarry, a veteran Tesco executive, it announced a 73% rise in profits to £97 million for the last year and, although there is no sign yet of the staff bonus being restored, it was the best set of results in years. The retailer is selling its stuff under the “never knowingly undersold” slogan again and is using AI to track the prices charged by its main rivals. It has gone back to the basics of retailing and focused on the detail, and that is starting to generate better results.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.