retail

Retailing is back in management fashion. 'Britain reborn as a nation of shopworkers', headlined The Guardian above an ebullient report of retailers happily adding jobs, while manufacturers carry on 'downsizing'. That's been rechristened 'dumb-sizing' by American critics who have discovered the obvious: that shrinkage isn't growth.

In service industries, expansion equals jobs. That equation has often been forgotten, especially by supermarket chains which strictly rationed headcounts to maintain margins. Customer service, the key to sustainable growth, suffered: managing by numbers is no more creative than painting by them.

But how much of the current wave of retail expansion involves genuine creativity? When retail was last managerially fashionable, in the ill-fated Lawson boom, the chain stores were bursting with new ideas for 'formats' and design. But management flattered to deceive. Overall consumer spending was soaring by 6% annually - so everybody and everything looked good,

The cold light of reality left problems with which some managements (Sears, Burton Group, Laura Ashley) are still struggling. Overall spending, while reasonably buoyant, won't float off retail also-rans. Kwik Save and other laggards will have to create their own success - again, creativity is the issue.

As for the winners, their own past high creativity has given Asda and Tesco - both under new chief executives - tough acts to follow. They have one unhappy example: J. Sainsbury, which has fallen behind its own pace. But Marks & Spencer, with its billion-pound profit, tells a much more encouraging story.

The smaller, all-food High Street store, for instance, was a brilliant innovation, reversing the out-of-town superstore trend. This was thinking 'outside the box', as retailers customarily do at their start. Today a different kind of food retailing - multiple restaurants - shows a plethora of new ideas, from Pret a Manger to Cafe Rouge.

The new pub chains have likewise created rich fortunes out of neglected and unprofitable premises. The future in big-time retailing will belong to those with the most vital and powerful Big Ideas - and despite all the job-creating expansion, new thinking isn't the wave of the present.