Jeff Bezos Steps Down As Amazon Boss

 

Bezos steps down from Amazon on Monday - exactly 27 years after he founded it. In that time he has developed a series of unusual leadership principles - which some argue are the backbone of his success. Others believe they speak to everything that is wrong with Big Tech. Talk to anyone who's ever worked at Amazon, and you don't have to wait long before you hear the phrase "customer obsession".  Jeff Bezos is a business visionary - a man with singular focus who has created a legendary work philosophy and a company worth almost $1.8trn (£1.3tn). Bezos likes small teams. He has a rule to keep meetings productive: make sure you can feed the whole group with two pizzas. He hates PowerPoint presentations, preferring instead written memos for executives to discuss. To avoid dominant personalities having too much sway, he'll sometimes go round each person at a meeting, asking how they feel about a question. But like him or loathe him, Bezos has proved an extremely bright and able leader - someone who has changed the way companies around the world operate. His plan is to now focus on other projects, like his space exploration company Blue Origin, but will remain the e-commerce company’s executive chairman and largest shareholder. 

Bezos Steps Down

John Lewis To Build Houses

 

John Lewis has announced plans to move into the residential property market by building 10,000 homes for rental over the next few years. The department store chain said it wanted to address the national housing shortage and support local communities. It said the plans would give the firm a stable, long-term income, as well as providing new job opportunities. Tenants will have the choice of renting fully furnished with John Lewis products or using their own. "As a business driven by social purpose, we have big ambitions for moving into property rental," said Nina Bhatia, executive director of strategy and commercial development for the John Lewis Partnership. She added that the move "plays to our strength as a trusted brand known for strong service". The first John Lewis homes are planned for south-east England, but the partnership said it believed there were opportunities across the country. The announcement comes as John Lewis's traditional department store retail business has come under increasing pressure from the decline of UK High Streets and the rise of an increasingly competitive online market. Since Dame Sharon White took over as boss in February 2020, the chain has closed about a third of its stores, leaving it with 35.

John Lewis Homes

Sainsburys Stop Selling CDs & DVDs

Supermarket giant Sainsbury's says it has decided to stop selling CDs and DVDs as streaming services take their toll on sales of the products. A spokesperson said Sainsbury's customers increasingly went for music and films online instead of buying the shiny silver discs. The firm said sales were being phased out, although it would continue to sell vinyl records in some stores. CD sales have shrunk in the past decade but were still worth £115m last year. Other big supermarkets show no sign of following Sainsbury's lead, with larger branches of Tesco, Asda and Morrisons still stocking a range of CDs and DVDs. "Our customers increasingly go online for entertainment, so earlier this year we took the decision to gradually phase out the sale of DVDs and CDs, so that we can dedicate extra space to food and popular products like clothing and homewares," Sainsbury's said. The decision is another sign that the CD, once the dominant means of buying and selling recorded music, is long past its heyday.

CD Sales

Gap Shuts Up Shops

 

US fashion giant Gap has confirmed it plans to close all its 81 stores in the UK and Ireland and go online-only. The firm said it would close all its stores "in a phased manner" between the end of August and the end of September. This includes 19 stores that were already scheduled to close in July as their leases were expiring. The company has not disclosed how many employees the closures will affect, but will shortly start a consultation process with the staff. The firm said it was "not exiting the UK market" and would continue to offer a web-based store when all the shops had closed. A Gap spokesperson said the decision followed a strategic review of its European business. As a result, Gap is also looking to offload its stores in France and Italy. Gap was a big hit when it first opened in the UK back in 1987, famous for its hoodies and sweatshirts. But in recent years, it has struggled to stay relevant, resorting to prolific discounting to pull shoppers in. That left Gap in a weak position to withstand the turmoil of a global pandemic. Gap blamed what it described as market dynamics - in other words, the huge shift to internet shopping. Retail experts say the closure is because Gap failed to keep up with the competition by not offering enough variety or being as cheap as competitors such as Primark.

GAP

Poundland Prices

 

About 10% of Poundland products are no longer priced at £1, the discount retailer has said. Poundland moved away from pricing everything at £1 in 2017 and now sells some items between 50p and £10 to take on rivals such as B&M and Wilko. Its owner Pepco said sales continued to grow in the past six months despite the Covid pandemic.The last 30 years had shown discounting thrived following any economic crisis. Poundland has 917 UK and Ireland stores. Pepco, which recently listed on the Warsaw stock exchange, said total revenue across the business was up 4.4% to €2bn (£1.7bn), with pre-tax profits in the period up from €64m (£55m) to €96m. However, group like-for-like revenue declined 2.1% after weeks lost to Covid-related store closures. The group's shares were priced at 40 zlotys (£7.5) when it floated, and were trading at more than 47 zlotys on Thursday.

Poundland

Alexa Challenge Alexa

 

Parents of children called Alexa say their daughters are being bullied because it is the same name that Amazon uses for its virtual assistant. Some have even changed their child's name because they say the barrage of Alexa jokes is "relentless". They are calling on Amazon to change the default wake word for its devices to a non-human name. Amazon says it is "saddened" by these accounts, and that alternative wake words are available. There are more than 4,000 people called Alexa aged under 25 in the UK. The problem, which has attracted complaints since Alexa's launch in 2014, is not confined to the UK. The problem, which has attracted complaints since Alexa's launch in 2014, is not confined to the UK. Lauren Johnson, from Massachusetts, USA, has started a campaign called Alexa is a Human. Since Amazon's Alexa devices were introduced in the UK in 2016, the popularity of the name has dramatically fallen. Then it was the 167th most popular baby name in England and Wales, but by 2019 it was 920th.

Alexa