David Parkin on who is to blame for Morrisons’ woes and getting a dressing down

WHO should carry the can for Morrisons’ poor Christmas sales?

These days the retail world is like Premier League football – deliver bad results over a few weeks and you are out on your ear.

What they also have in common is the pay offs that retail executives and football managers receive when they get the sack means they get well paid for success and failure.

Commentators appear to think the man to blame is the current chief executive of Bradford-based Morrisons, Dalton Phillips.

But should he really carry the can for dire festive sales which saw it experience a 5.6% fall in sales in the six weeks to January 5?

It appears that Morrisons is losing out because it is so far behind its rivals in both online sales and home delivery and convenience stores.

These days, in the retail world you are nothing unless you can claim to be ‘multi-channel’.

It has only just started piloting home delivery in the Midlands this month and hopes to roll that out to cover half the country by the end of this year.

Equally in convenience stores you could argue it is even further behind its rivals, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda. Tesco has 2,000 of them, Sainsbury’s opened its 594th convenience store this week, now giving it more smaller format shops than big supermarkets, while Asda, which did an about-turn on convenience stores back in 2010, took the plunge by buying Danish retailer Netto’s 193 UK stores for £778m.

That leaves Morrisons looking a bit like the worst runner in the Olympic 5000m qualifying race who gets lapped by the faster competitors half way through.

So it is well off the pace in convenience and online. Unfortunately the increasingly promiscuous British shopper no longer keeps loyal to one supermarket chain, having more than just night stands with foreign arrivals like Aldi and Lidl.

Even the Co-op had a good Christmas. (I don’t think they serve the kind of Christmas gifts that former Co-op Bank chairman Paul Flowers would stuff in his stocking.)

So Morrisons is having a pretty unhappy time. But does that mean it is time to ditch CEO Dalton Phillips after four years?

He may have to take the flak from unhappy shareholders but I would suggest it is his predecessor, Marc Bolland, who should really take the blame.

Bolland only had the role for three years. The former Heineken executive is a marketing man through and through and so when the bigger Marks & Spencer brand came calling he disappeared off to Baker Street quicker than Dr Watson.

Bolland resisted the online and convenience store approach while he ran Morrisons, and there are plenty of people at its Bradford HQ who don’t have much good to say about him.

Ironically it is food sales that is keeping him in his current job at Marks & Sparks – clothing sales have been abysmal on his watch and show no signs of recovery.

Would you buy a £799 suit or £235 pair of shoes from M&S?

One of our readers suggested Morrisons could do worse than bring back Sir Ken. But he was always against the supermarket chain diversifying from its core food offering, and this probably rubbed off on Bolland, who I hear is a pretty arrogant individual.

But you just can’t ignore convenience and online, consumer habits are changing and retailers must change with them.

According to IGD, the industry body, the value of the convenience sector will grow from £35.6bn in 2013 to £46.2bn by 2018.

Dalton Phillips has taken a £200m gamble with Morrisons’ distribution deal with Ocado.

Will that pay off?

Retail insiders suggest he overpaid. Did he need to shell out that much or would it have been better to buy a fleet of vans, base them at larger stores and then get in a load of pickers to put the orders together instore overnight?

I think Phillips has another 12 months before shareholders’ trigger fingers get twitchy. His online strategy needs to be given time to deliver, whether there is enough time is the issue.

As for Marc Bolland, perhaps he shouldn’t invest in too many £799 M&S suits – unless they are for job interviews.

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I VISITED the chief executive of a major Yorkshire firm this week and when I walked through the entrance was greeted by a receptionist who barked at me: “Your collar is up, sort it out, you look scruffy.”

When I walked into the CEO’s office, I said to him: “Your receptionist has just given me a right rollicking for looking scruffy.”

“I’m not surprised, she terrifies me,” he admitted.

It’s nice to know who is running Yorkshire’s companies.