i htought it was just me who use dto liek it but now no longer find much to like
extracts form business pages here:
"In an attempt to fight back Next will spend about £16 million, or £40 per sq ft, on modernising the top 10 per cent of its store portfolio, which account for 25 per cent of sales, starting with a store on Oxford Street in London.
Other initiatives include trimming the range of items on sale at Next’s stores to make shopping easier and give greater prominence to bestselling products.
Mr Wolfson said: “We can see things that we can do but we are broadly happy with the ranges.”
He added that the changes to the fashion ranges would only improve sales by 2 per cent to 3 per cent at best.
Next will test new new products, such as cosmetics, gold jewellery and large electrical goods, which would be sold through Next Directory.
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But while it has been opening a lot of new stores, many of its existing ones are starting to look tired.
The shopping experience has got worse over the past two years, claims one leading competitor. “They have massively increased the density of the stores. It is bloody hard to get a buggy round. And the stores are visually polluted. What am I supposed to buy? What are the key looks? What should I be wearing?” he said.
Wolfson appears to recognise at least some of the problems. In the coming weeks Next will open a new trial store. Eight will be opened by August, and if the trial is a success, Wolfson plans to roll out elements into “key stores”.
Marks & Spencer, under Stuart Rose, has won back its position as Britain’s largest clothing retailer and has begun to regain market share.
Next has certainly benefited from the turmoil at M&S over the past decade. Between 1998 and 2003 M&S’s market share fell from 13% to 11.1%. Next raised its market share over the same period from 3.9% to 6.8%.
Now M&S is hitting back. It has better products, a new head of womenswear and a hugely successful advertising campaign starring Twiggy, the model who is a 1960s icon.
But Rose and his team are not the only people making life difficult for Next. “If it were just an M&S recovery that Next had to worry about, we think it could cope,” said Whitehead.
But Next also has to compete with River Island, the privately owned retailer. According to research by Deutsche Bank, 19.5% of Next customers also shop at River Island (only M&S attracts more of them — 29.5%). Profits at River Island rose by more than 50% to over £120m last year, defying the slowdown on the high street.
New Look — another key competitor — is also expanding aggressively as the group’s private-equity owners package it up for a float on the stock market later this year or early next.