Argos catalogue resists the digital revolution

Digital shopping marches inexorably on, turning the traditional retail model on its head. But amid the changes, one emblem of old remains - the Argos catalogue.

The move to new digital formats helped Home Retail Group, owner of the Argos and Homebase chains, increase underlying pre-tax profit by 14 per cent in the year to end-February. But John Walden, the chief executive who has led the transformation, has admitted that the catalogue was hanging around for longer than he had expected.

Argos has pledged to cut the print run by half over the course of its five-year turnround plan, begun two and a half years ago.

"To be honest it has surprised me," Mr Walden said of customer demand for the catalogue. "I would have estimated at the time of the [five-year] plan that it would have dropped off faster, but I'm happy to see it because its something . . . Argos is known for uniquely."

He added: "I may have estimated the decline a little bit faster than it has turned out to be."

The number of catalogues in circulation is already down markedly from its peak about five years ago but Argos is still printing about 10m catalogues, twice a year.

Argos is transforming more stores into digital stores, where the traditional laminated catalogue and pens and paper are replaced by iPads and slick digital display screens. But the retailer admitted that it had had to put some paper catalogues back into stores because customers still wanted to flick through them. Some even used the paper catalogue with a mobile device.

<

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

However, Home Retail is pressing ahead with the closure of a quarter of Homebase stores by 2018.

Mr Walden said the closures were progressing faster than he had expected, with 27 stores - net of openings - shutting in the year to February 28, and a further 35 expected to do so this year. It would also be able to close a warehousing and distribution centre.

The comments came as pre-tax profit before goodwill amortisation and exceptional items rose from £115.4m to £132.1.

Pre-tax profit rose from £71.2m to £93.8m. An unchanged final dividend of 2.8p makes a total for the year of 3.8p from 3.3p last time.

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation