Patrick O'Brien

And that's something that, say, Marks & Spencer started to do in about 2016, where it ended up taking the hit and moving out of unprofitable stores.

Well, Wilkinson's, they looked like to me, they were hoping that things were going to get better and just plod on.

But they actually increased their stores throughout the 2010s.

You know, they didn't hold back and decide not to grow further.

They carried on expanding, even though, you know, like for like sales were falling.

Yeah, I can understand it.

I don't think it was executed very well, though.

I mean, there's a number of retailers that would have like a good, better, best strategy where they'd have multiple products of different qualities in the same category.

But with Wilco, I don't think they were strong enough on value.

It wasn't aggressive enough in terms of the pricing.

So it wasn't

The best value that you could get.

They certainly didn't convince in terms of that price perception with their customers.

But it's a controversial thing to do because, of course, at that time, shoppers were looking to trade down and looking to save money.

The mid market was really getting trashed.

And so they, instead of deciding to go with the shopper.

they decided to try to move upwards, away from their target market, really.

I think it is if you've got stores in the right place in the right format.

But what you had was the total sales was pretty much flat through that period, but they kept on adding stores.

So you need to get the organic growth right.