Tuesday 22 January 2013

Rose Delivery

OCADO Share GraphSo, Sir Stuart Rose, a much respected retailer is going to be chairman of Ocado. This has been allied to rumours of A takeover of the Ocado business by M&S.

Now M&S is in trouble on the clothing side but its food business is going quite strong and has been for years. As far as I can see it does a great job in selling to wealthy empty nesters who don't need to make big meals anymore but still want to eat nice food.

How that matches with Ocado is beyond me. Ocado is a slow motion car crash of a business. I am a keen user, as I am of all companies who want to serve me so well that they lose money hand over fist; it always makes me feel satisfied knowing they are going that extra mile (over the cliff...) for me.

The Ocado shareprice since its float is disaster zone and their weird attempts at raising cash last year are ample demonstration of this companies many woes - the main one being that it is much better to have mutiple channels to market and that it is trying to compete in one of our most competitive sectors as a new entrant where size is everything!

If M&S make a bid then I am clearly living in the wrong universe....

2 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

Occado were about 11% up on 2012, which isn't bad at all. Remember 2012 was a low for everyone with the snow so everyone should be about 5-8% up even if they only open the doors.

Waitrose was so e 18% up and JLG had a great Xmas. There are some reports that Waitrose home delivery was 68% up.

Can't find where I saw that now, but even if it was just 18%. It would be a massive worry for Occado. All those Waitrose' are in the south east heartlands.

roym said...

do m&s just want the logistics side of ocado for their own grocery delivery? i thought m&s only do party type stuff onlince