THE HUB RETAIL RECRUITMENT’S MONTHLY NEWS ROUND

Yes, it’s the July news round already. Only 4 more until Christmas!!! It’s certainly feeling a bit Autumnal at the moment, but let’s hope August bucks up and we get back to summertime. Our pics for this month’s stories are: We’re buying more food; Tesco picks up the axe again; MySale is up up and away; UK economy isn’t doomed; Charges to be dropped.

We’re buying more food: As we’ve been reporting in our blogs recently, the downturn in food sales has been worrying. But now they’ve bounced back – by 3.9%, which is the biggest growth in 4 years. Why the turnaround? The hot weather mainly, so sales of ice cream were up by 34%, and suncream by 40% – we can concur, because we certainly hit the ice cream chillers ourselves! The German retailers continue to have the highest sales – Lidl at 19.4% and Aldi at 17.9%. However, Tesco’s share of the market has increased, mainly because of strong online sales which can only get stronger with its announcement of same day delivery. But talking of Tesco…see the next article.

https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2017/07/supermarket-sales-see-best-growth-since-2013/

Tesco picks up the axe again: Since he took over as the new CEO, Dave Lewis has certainly started to turn Tesco around. However, there have been heavy human costs, with job losses now amounting to over 17,000. The latest announcement is that 25% of jobs at its head office in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire will go – that’s 1200 jobs. And this is hot on the heels of last week’s announcement that 1100 call centre jobs will be axed. Add that to the previous job cuts, and the total is 17,300. Apparently Mr Lewis has a nickname – Drastic Dave. Whilst amusing, we wonder, has he gone too far, and if the business is doing better, won’t he be needing those jobs again? We’ll be keeping a watch, that’s for sure.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/06/28/tesco-axe-quarter-jobs-head-office/

MySale is up up and away: Its sales are up by a whopping 58%. The Australian online flash retailer – which joined up with Sports Direct last year – is doing very well according to these numbers. And apparently it’s not stopping at joining forces with Sports Direct – it’s in talks with another retailer to see if a partnership might work. It’s not saying which retailer, so it’ll be interesting to see who it is, if it does happen. In case MySale is new to you, it offers fashion, accessories, home, and beauty products at discount – have a look at MySale.co.uk

https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2017/07/mysale-earnings-skyrocket-58/

UK economy isn’t doomed: If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you’ll know that we’ve refused to join the doom and gloom club over the UK economy. Rather, we’ve been watching with interest, and reporting accordingly. So it’s good that last week we had a lower than expected rise in inflation, and this week, although it’s a slowdown, the UK economy did grow slightly by 0.3%. So that’s 2 really major pluses, rather than negatives. Although it’s up only slightly from the previous quarter, and it’s certainly lower than last year, when you look at the graph in this article, you’ll feel grateful we’re nowhere near where things were a few years ago. We were delighted that the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in reporting on the latest figure, said that the increase was partially due to the film industry. With great British films around at the moment such as Dunkirk, we’re not surprised.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40726833

Charges to be dropped: Not criminal ones! It’s the charges that were introduced four years ago, for bringing a claim to an Employment Tribunal. Claims have dropped by nearly 80% over those four years, as people couldn’t risk paying the £1200 charge and then losing their case.  The Government had already said that, if the Supreme Court’s decision was that the charges were unconstitutional, it would repay everyone that had bought a claim and had to pay to do so. Of course, what it can’t do is compensate those people who would have bought a claim but couldn’t afford to do so. Let’s not lose sight of why the charges were introduced in the first place – to stop malicious and weak cases being bought. What’s the solution to that? We certainly don’t have one, but perhaps you have – let us know if you do.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/26/union-supreme-court-fees-unfair-dismissal-claims

Well, that’s our round up of the stories that caught our eye in July. We hope you found something of interest. Do come back next week when we’ll have our weekly news snippets for you to look over. Until then, enjoy the final days of July – and here’s to a warm and sunny August.