Shoppers stay home as rates and floods rise but there's a bit of better news for M&S
MARTIN VANDER WEYER Shoppers have spent these past few weeks sheltering from incessant rain, rising interest rates and renewed threats of terrorism. Fueland flood-hit food prices are on an up-trend too, so we must brace ourselves for a spate of High Street gloom. At Marks & Spencer, like-for-like sales were up only 2 per cent in the April–June quarter, compared to a rise of more than 8 per cent in the same quarter of 2006. Still, that was slightly less bad than the stock market expected, and there was one bit of better news for M&S this week: George Davies is thinking of leaving.
Davies was hired in 2001 to create a new range, 'Per Una', to help M&S shed an increasingly frumpy image. He did just that and the group has been duly grateful, buying out his equity interest for £125 million and paying him a bigger bonus than that of chief executive Stuart Rose. Davies's role has gradually reduced to a part-time chairmanship — two of his daughters run Per Una from day to day — but the media still loves him and it's not hard to imagine the collective sigh of relief in the M&S boardroom at the news, given front-page treatment on the eve of the trading statement, that the great designer-entrepreneur is thinking aloud about moving on and starting up another new retail venture of his own.
The creator of Next in the 1980s and the 'George' range of cheap clothing for Asda in the 1990s, Davies is an archetype of the kind of executive referred to in modern management-speak as 'high-maintenance' — the talented but difficult one who requires industrial quantities of ego-soothing to keep him at the peak of his game. From early days with an outfit called Pippa Dee that sold lingerie through home parties, the Davies career has been a rollercoaster from brilliant success to bitter acrimony and back again. At Next he led a retailing revolution and created an enduring brand that many people still wrongly believe is his, nearly two decades after it was wrestled from him by a board that could no longer abide his management style — which involved lots of flying around in helicopters making high-profile appearances and hair-raising acquisitions, but rather less in the way of collegiate consultation. His relations with Asda turned sour too, after its takeover by Wal-Mart, and he has already resigned from M&S once, only to come back three weeks later and cut himself a new deal.
He's also been married three times, and has fought his way back from a brain tumour. He's a maverick and a scrapper, and at 65 he's still the sharp-edged Jack the lad he was when he bought his first suit as a teenager from Jacksons the Tailors in North John Street, Liverpool. 'It took six weeks to make and must have cost me ES,' he recalled in his autobiography. 'It was navy, three-piece, single-breasted with a pin stripe and 16-inch bottoms.' There's a certain genius in that kind of attention to design. You can't help admiring George Davies, but as Stuart Rose would probably confirm, that doesn't mean you'd enjoy working with him Flying Chelsea tractor I'm even more excited about the launch of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner this week than I was (in our online edition) about last week's unveiling of the BMW X5 3.0d, the Chelsea tractor that waves a clean pair of exhaust pipes at Red Ken's punitive top-bracket Congestion Charge. The new mid-sized Boeing jet, whose fuselage is one huge piece of fancy plastic and whose wings are largely carbon fibre, is designed to consume 20 per cent less fuel and make less noise than its predecessors and Airbus rivals, while on the inside it boasts improved air quality, picture windows and, for total passenger serenity, loos that flush in silence. The plane is not due to enter service until next May but has already generated four times more orders than the troubled Airbus A380 superjumbo. Both the Dreamliner and the reengineered X5 illustrate how sophisticated manufacturers are capable of responding to concerns about pollution and potential future scarcities of carbon fuel. The setting of new technical standards by the likes of Boeing and BMW is vastly more significant for the future of the planet than the superficial green-hysteria of events such as last weekend's overhyped and tedious Live Earth concert. How much more useful it would have been if the BBC had sent its cameras to the Boeing factory in Seattle for the day instead of to Wembley: it might even have attracted more viewers.
Taste the difference Unless half the shadow Cabinet were lying horizontal in the shrubbery adjacent to the big tent that was last week's Spectator party, I'd say senior Tory guests were well outnumbered by the new prime minister and his entourage. It helps, of course, that we are now only a step across the corner of St James's Park from the back entrance to Downing Street. But if it were not for the fact that our hospitality is, by tradition, liquid only, I'd be tempted to label this suspiciously high government turnout `the canapé offensive' — in echo of `the prawn cocktail offensive', which was Labour's systematic attempt to win new friends, particularly in the business world, before the 1997 election. Indeed, I'm told Gordon Brown's campaign to reinvent himself as a man we can eat and drink with has already been gathering momentum for some time — and has taken a curious culinary path. A senior City banker tells me that regular invitations to breakfast at No. 11 started to arrive a couple of years ago. At the first of these the Chancellor tucked in with gusto to the full cooked selection, including a lavish helping of black pudding — though my informant could not recall whether it was served recossais, deep-fried in batter. As the series continued, however, the host's choices became noticeably healthier and more restrained — until the last encounter, when the entire greasy platter was waved brusquely away and a large tray of yogurts summoned forward instead. The clunking fist hovered for a moment, then descended purposefully to pick out a tub of Sainsbury's 'Taste the Difference' Turkish Fig. Now you know what to take as a present if you're hoping for a job in the big tent on his side of the park.
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