Is John Lewis the next Department store to face problems?

[Ifailed]

profits down by 99% for the past 6 months & that includes Waitrose, so presumably the Dept Store side of things made a loss.

Are we seeing the final demise of Department Stores in the UK?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45506322

I didn't know they had Capita running customer service.
Explains why it got a bit shit.

Life long fan of waitrose and I don't shop there now unless I'm desperate.

Lost customer service excellence I'm afraid I had humdinger in there with staff member literally running up to me about something when I was with toddler. Accosting me left me reeling. Unsatisfactory chat with manager and head office about it.
So I decided to draw line under it. Do sainsburys and ocado. Sainsbury are very very good I find on giving me points for things I already buy.

I have built up 50 quid on nectar quite easily this year due to all promotions

Oh yes!! Who made that descion to put capita in.that's probably the death knell.

The staff are not really partners at all. Maybe that used to be the case a long time ago but as someone who worked for them for over 5 years, I can tell you it's s clever marketing tool.

They've just finished a re-branding and expansion/refit programme which will have been hugely expensive. There's likely been some creative accounting to get the costs for that into the current numbers - that way they'll only end up with one lot of 'bad' numbers, before profits go back up again.

I don't think JL is going anywhere for a while yet. They seem to have a dedicated fan base (middle-class, middle-aged, lots of disposable income) and do a wide range of brands across all departments. And of course they probably make most of their money at Christmas.

I was surprised HoF went under before Debenhams. Their beauty hall was good and they stocked some decent brands. Debenhams own brands seem of very poor quality and very dated. I can't remember the last time I shopped in there.

I was really excited when my town got a John Lewis a couple of years ago.

I avoid it now though. It's totally sterile and chronically understaffed. I've lost count of the times I've stood for ages at one of the beauty concessions waiting to buy a lipstick or whatever, and then just walked away with my money still in my pocket.

The cafe is disgusting and I've had service in there that's been indifferent bordering on rude.

And that's leaving aside the debacle when I bought a fitted kitchen from them...

I have a waitrose, Sainsbury's and lidl all within a 10 min drive. The staff in waitrose are without doubt the worst, they chat amongst themselves and are slow and can be quite rude, they have to really work at the rudeness as all I'm doing is trying to shop! Yesterday dd came up to me with a drink as I was packing and the woman on the till actually tutted! Hadn't even paid yet.

Sainsbury's and lidl staff are always lovely.

According to the FT, 40% of JL's sales are now on-line, which rather highlights the demise of their bricks & mortar stores importance in their income stream, it's now just 23% of the groups total sales.

Personally I think department stores are doomed. The original model was brilliant - pull everything into one space and people only have to visit one place - they will also see other things they want and buy.

They were basically proto-Amazon.

Then Amazon et al came along. They can do it faster, cheaper and from a faceless box on the outskirts of Swindon where rent is pennies. With automatic picking they can be run on skeleton crew. All of a sudden the department store model and raison d'etre is aped by something bigger, cheaper and arguably better.

I'm rapidly approaching middle age, I have a stable job and good disposable income. Very few brand loyalties...yet. Basically a department stores wet dream.

I last went into a department store 6 months ago because I spilt pasta down my shirt before a client meeting and needed a new one fast. Other than that they deliver no better service than Amazon at a price premium I don't want to pay and have to travel to achieve. Why would I do that? I also dont shop as a hobby - I have other things to do.

Where does that leave the high Street? Personally I think it's a great time for independents. The only things that get me to town are:

A) specialist shops where I need advice as well as a product and/or sell a selection of products not easily traced or stocked in one place online.

B) places that require my physical presence - eating out, haircuts, tattoos etc.

A department store fulfills none of those. Independent shops often fulfill A) and I am willing to travel distance to visit one.

This is a very unscientific sample of one, but I have a distinct feeling I'm not alone.

John Lewis have just opened a branch in Westfield.

There’s a new John Lewis store opening in Cheltenham next month

My mother needs oxygen when I tell her that I’ve spent £350 on a coat

So do I - phone the ambulance.

That’s a quarter of my monthly take-home pay. I run a house and bring up two kids on that.

I was going to say what sleepinginyourflowerbed said, sounds like they have plans in place to ride through it at the moment. I love JL for their basics furniture range, always good quality and value. Better than Ikea for sure.

I wondered when the first ‘poor me’ thread hijacker would arrive.

I’m sorry for your troubles, Hope, but you must know that some people buy £350 coats, right? So what was the point of your intervention? If it was to solicit sympathy you could maybe start a different thread.

The context is, if you were a department store-type retailer, would you focus on the people who were willing and able to spend more or the sub-section of older people who only want cheap things? BHS did the latter, and look what happened to them. It doesn’t mean that nobody should buy or sell cheap things. It means that for a department store operator like John Lewis, one business model tends to work better than the other. Isn’t Mike Ashley talking about turning HoF into ‘the Harrods of the high street’?

I know they have a never knowingly undersold policy but it's too freaking expensive. I did once find an item that met all their policy conditions (an item I wanted to buy too!) but when I raised it with them their refusal to do anything about it until it had been "validated" meant I left the shop walked about 10 minutes to the other shop and bought it there as well as spending about £15 on other miscellaneous items.

I have a relative who is a partner at JL and I'm more worried about them than the shop tbh.

I used to go to John Lewis several times a week and spent a fortune over the years. They lost me when they decided to make their stores look like industrial units with dim lighting.

They also scaled right down on the haberdashery and sewing fabrics, which grieves me, and now their customer service has gone to the dogs.

Our local one rarely has more than a handful of customers even in the cosmetics department, which in other local department stores are always teeming with folk.

It is not just about John Lewis, though, is it? Waitrose brings in huge revenue as there are far more stores.

They have been hit by the discounters, such as ALDI, Lidl. People aren't as snobby as they were and are not afraid to say they love a bargain.

Unfortunately, my local Lidl wouldn't sustain a family shop. It hasn't got the range or quality and am strictly a basket shopper there. I would liken it more to the pound shop. Trouble is, if you don't use the bigger stores where you do get quality and choice, the Lidls of the world is all we'll be left with.

Just because a purchase was made online doesn’t mean that the shops aren’t needed. I’ve spent a couple of grand this year on furniture and electricals at JL, and although it may show up in their annual report as an online purchase there were a lot of visits to the shop to see things in the flesh and chat to helpful assistants before I came back home to place my order (I may even have sat in the cafe with a free coffee while placing the order on my phone).

Yes, we were told the washing machine we’d chosen (in the shop) was only available as an online order.

They also scaled right down on the haberdashery and sewing fabrics

It's things like this which raise more questions than they answer ... Alders used to have quite a good haberdashery offering. Then they went, and you'd think Debenhams, HoF and JL would have capitalised on that by ramping up their offerings, rather than simultaneously shrinking them (although I am aware it's a getting-more-niche-by-the-day market).

Reminds me in the 80s that petrol companies told us they had to raise prices "to remain competitive" .

Once again, needed some decent coat hanging loops - Amazoned and delivered within 3 days after a series of blank looks in stores.

I agree about the sterility of the revamped and new stores.

What Biggreygoose said. Last few times I've been in I've been completely disappointed.

The internet makes it so much easier. I am not traipsing into town and paying $$$ for parking on the off chance I might find something I like if I am clothes shopping. I'll buy a bunch of stuff online (know straightaway whether it's in stock), try it on in the comfort of my own home, being able to see if it works with everything else in my wardrobe, and post it back (usually for free) if I don't like it. The only thing that I feel I have to go into a shop for is children's shoes, and when I tried to do that for school shoes 2 weeks before term started, the selection was abysmal.

Waitrose is ventured into for the odd thing I can't get in Tesco or Aldi; I've even started buying Chinese groceries from Amazon, when previously I would have gone into one of the specialised shops.

And you know what? It's inifintely better for me than having to go someplace.

NotAnotherJaffaCake

You'll be saying you prefer email over telephone next !

JL is too expensive and there is never enough staff to help, same as M & S.