If you don’t produce new products that fail you’re being too timid, says one top manager at UK food and clothing retailer Marks & Spencer, reminding the industry that “innovation is vital”.
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“If the customer leaves you behind you are dead in the water,” trading executive Ian Bentley told a conference for food industry users of cereals held by the Home Grown Cereals Authority in London yesterday (14 March). “Some of those innovations will fail and it’s the price you have to pay. You have to make sure that a culture of blame doesn’t attach to it.”
Marks & Spencer sells all its food under its own brand, which makes finding new product ideas doubly important. “We need to innovate because we don’t have the branded manufacturers delivering the products to our door,” said Bentley, who heads the retailer’s ambient food area. “Some fantastic innovations can bomb because they didn’t chime with customers.” He cited M&S chief executive Stuart Rose who says they need to be half a step ahead of the customer. “If you’re a whole step ahead they may not get it,” he said.
The aim is to make innovation a central part of the company’s way of working. “These ideas aren’t being produced at the category level,” he said. “They’re coming from a strategic view of where the customer is going.”
He insisted that Marks and Spencer did not have premium tiers, but it had been forced to respond to ranges like Tesco’s Finest. “We needed to reinforce our quality brand so we launched our Speciality range,” he said. The company is also in the process of modernising its stores, with changes which include putting black floors in the food areas of its stores and more subtle lighting. “Our intention is to move away from the traditional supermarket feel,” he said.
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By GlobalDataMarks and Spencer is responding to its customers’ environmental concerns, with, for example, a commitment to cut packaging by 25%. “We aim to be carbon neutral in five years,” he said. “We’re putting aeroplane symbols on products where it’s air-freighted in.”
