John Lewis Partnership is to update its turnaround strategy as chief executive Nish Kankiwala promises staff the employee-owned business will prioritise retail.
The chief executive told staff he was operating with a “one retail mindset” for the Partnership’s Waitrose and John Lewis business, as well as its financial services and property division.
“At the heart of what we want to do, we want to be a brilliant retailer that delights our customer . . . That is the strategy . . . and that’s what we’re really going to focus on, day in, day out, everywhere we go,” Kankiwala said, according to the Partnership’s internal magazine seen by The Financial Times.
John Lewis partners will be presented with a fuller plan “in January or February”.
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The updated strategy will centre around four pillars — “We will be Distinctively Us, The Partner Difference, Simple and Productive, and Fix the Basics” — which are meant to improve interactions with customers, simplify the Partnership and increase productivity.
Kankiwala told staff: “We don’t really want to be copying somebody else, or being a second version of something . . . the [new] strategy and plan is a partnership plan.
“It’s not a PLC plan or a private equity plan.”
John Lewis Partnership warned in September that its turnaround plan had faced a two-year setback due to “inflationary pressures” as it posted a half-year loss of £57m.
Kankiwala, who joined the business in March as its first chief executive, said the senior team would manage the company “as an independent partnership with greater cash generation, but we will be a partnership”.
His comments come as it was reported chairwoman Dame Sharon White was exploring exploring the possibility of changing the retailer’s mutual structure in March in order to sell a minority stake to raise between £1 billion and £2 billion of new investment.
John Lewis’s back to basics strategy is similar to that being pursued by M&S, which has made notable progress in recent years including returning to the FTSE 100 this year after a four-year absence.
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