Asda chairman admits supermarket chain 'has slightly lost the plot'

The chairman of Leeds-based supermarket chain Asda has admitted the company’s stores are “not as nice as I’d like them to be” after the firm reported a fall in sales.
Former M&S boss Lord Stuart Rose is leading the business alongside ex-eBay senior vice president Rob Hattrell after co-owner Mohsin Issa stepped back from running Asda in September.

He said Asda will spend £30 million on getting more staff on the shop floor at its more than 1,200 UK outlets.

Lord Rose said: “We’ve slightly lost the plot in terms of giving (customers) what they want on a daily basis.

“If you go and look at our stores, they’re not as nice as I’d like them to be in terms of the experience and the visuals.

“They’re not as good as they should be in terms of the service we give our customers on availability, and we’ve probably lost a bit of sharpness on price.”

He added those are “operational things” which the chain can fix. “It won’t be fixed in short order. But we’re on to it.”
On Friday, Asda reported a 2.5 per cent decline in third quarter revenues, excluding fuel, to £5.3 billion, as sales fell 4.8 per cent versus the same period last year.

The supermarket recently cut 475 head office jobs as part of a major shake-up after the latest change in leadership at the private equity-owned retailer.

Lord Rose said a focus on business transformation efforts have been a factor in issues with customer experiences in shops.
“We have undergone the largest transformation in our history during the last three years – doubling our store footprint, expanding into the strategically important growth markets of convenience and food-to-go, and overhauling our digital capabilities,” he said.

"We have laid solid foundations to drive long term growth, but the unprecedented scale of these changes has absorbed a huge amount of the leadership’s time with a temporary impact on Asda’s customer experience in stores.

“As a key priority, we have been investing further and taking the right decisions to deliver an enhanced and more consistent in-store experience for our customers, as we set out in our Q2 results in August.

“Now it is time to deliver the best possible experience in our stores day-in-day out – and pull out all the stops for customers this Christmas and beyond. I would like to sincerely thank all our colleagues for their hard work and ongoing dedication.”