James Durston
- News
The autumn of the patriarch
Dudley Ramsden had the final say on nearly every move made by Nisa-Today's for almost 30 years. That all changed when the Costcutter merger was rejected and, on November 28, he stepped down as executive chairman to take on the less hands-on role...
- News
Employee scams cost stores dear
The talk is of tough times this Christmas for retailers. And to keep the bottom line moving, they're not just being forced to whip up custom by e-mailing people loads of money-off vouchers. They're also having to keep an eye on their staff....
- News
A passage to India delayed, not cancelled
You would have thought Tesco would be hurting. With its aspirations plainly aimed at foreign shores, the news that Wal-Mart has successfully wooed Bharti Enterprises, beating Tesco into India, should have come as a blow. IGD estimates the Indian...
- News
Nobody does it better in terms of range, quality and style Whole Foods Market: the whole package
QWhen a company's CEO takes a pay cut of nearly 100%, it tends to mean one of two things: he's either already wealthy enough or the company's about to go into liquidation. For Whole Foods Market CEO it is clearly not the latter scenario. John...
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Morrisons bows to the inevitable
Morrisons is tiptoeing into the 21st century. The retailer with the famously rudimentary supply chain has announced a plan to shed its supplier-unfriendly image by combining the best of Safeway's and Morrisons' supply chain operations. "We've...
- News
The tug of war for talent
Talent crisis. The term smacks of tabloid hype and doom-mongering. But we really are in the middle of a competitive catastrophe. We've all heard the stats about ground-level staff - 80% of companies claim insufficient training is leading...
- News
Deep discount goes from drab to fab
It's been a long time coming. After years of targeting the low end of the market with the cheapest offers in the most basic stores, Aldi, Lidl and Netto are setting their sights on more well-heeled customers. Aldi will open its first...
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Company Profile More Food
When Caron Howe started baking cakes at her small family-run coffee shop in Chichester in 1992, she could never have known that 14 years later her culinary skills would have snowballed into a £1m-a-year business. Having noted the local...
- News
Profile Revisited
A lot more than salt has crystallised at the family-run Maldon Salt Company since we last spoke to its Essex-based MD Steve Osborne this time last year. A number of plans have come to fruition in the past 12 months, not least the opening...
- News
Breaking the silence
It's been a fine year for Gianni Ciserani. The £30bn Gillette acquisition is almost fully integrated; sales, profits and earnings per share are all well up; earlier this year his Azzurri won the World Cup; and now, as voted for in a poll of our...
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The little guys take on tesco
Our hand was forced. It was nothing personal. But they behaved so badly, we either got into line, accepted it and took a beating, or we stood up to them to make the point that they shouldn't be able to get away with things like this."...
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A chip on his shoulder?
McCain, the world's biggest chip maker, is obviously a follower of the philosophy that the best leaders lead from the front. Nick Vermont, regional CEO of McCain's operations in the UK, Ireland, South Africa and Eastern Europe, has spearheaded...
- News
Tesco maps out supply revolution
Group sourcing has been used for non food lines for a while now, but as Tesco employs the same strategy for some of its grocery lines, should the competition be worried? James Durston reports. They say size isn't everything, it's what...
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From the land of the giants
Unilever's ambitious new depot in Cannock is big - and clever. James Durston reports. Its floor space equals six football pitches. It is high enough to stack seven double decker buses on top of each other, and it has the mind-boggling...
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Tomorrow's supermarket superstars
IGD's Global Retailing 2006 report highlights ten retailers that it claims are the ones to watch this year. James Durston reports. We all know who the biggest grocery retailers in the world are, but what about tomorrow's...
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Showing the high street how it's done
Are the supermarkets doing a better job in non food than the high street? James Durston reports. When the supermarkets first took on the high street in the battle for the non food pound,... ...
- News
P&G: how to stay head & shoulders above the rest
Chris de Lapuente talks to James Durston about the building blocks of P&G's rapid growth: research, innovation and trust. Chris de Lapuente has done eight interviews already today and he looks tired. As president of Procter &...