Patrick O'Brien

You need to get the offer growing before you should really be expanding elsewhere because then, you know, the format's working.

But they went further into the high street all through that period.

Well I think it does because really that if you have low operating profits it's very difficult then to invest in the business and you could be locked into a decline.

I mean they managed to get an operating margin I think the highest they managed in the 2010s was 1.7%.

They never got above that.

B&M, for example, in 2019, they made an operating profit of £271 million with a 10% operating margin.

Was that an ouch, Sam, when you heard that 1.7%?

Yeah, they were out as they opened.

They could have shut up and furloughed their staff, but they didn't.

They traded through.

And I think with hindsight, which is a wonderful thing, I think that's a decision that they came to regret.

People were doing very mission-based shopping and they weren't going to the high streets.

They were going to supermarkets or they were going out of town to DIY chains.

And Wilco around that time were also having some real supply chain problems, so the availability wasn't great in their stores either.

It was a really difficult time for them.

Oh yes, no question.

But I think the demise was written in from well, well before COVID and it was to do with how they operated through the 2010s.

But there's no question that with shoppers looking to trade down and looking to save money, a value retailer like Wilco should have been the beneficiary, not the victim.

But one thing that listeners have often asked me is why don't we look at supernatural cases from the past?