Spotted this TV star in John Lewis today…!

Sometimes, I think I’m a bit critical of M&S… it’s only because I care. So, today, I thought I’d feature something they’ve done that I really like!

This massive “home” sign is really striking, distinctive, navigationally useful, helps break up the vast store into small attractive areas, displays products well, and is totally on-brand in terms of font and colour scheme. More of this, please!

This is an extra photo to make up for missing a day earlier in the week.

Wendy and I often struggle to be in when deliveries arrive, and also to get to the Post Office to pick things up during working hours. So we’ve started using ByBox, and having parcels delivered to a nearby locker. It is fantastically convenient.

Tonight, we swung by to pick up a parcel delivered yesterday morning. It’s hard to think of any other delivery system that would allow us to collect parcels at 7pm on a Sunday!

ByBox tell me that they will soon enable posting of boxes from the lockers too, which will be brilliant!

I know I’m easily amused, but the little Christmas hat on the Tesco logo did make me smile… it’s quite cute!

This picture shows the Goldcraft jewellers, located within a Morrisons store near me. A jewellers in a supermarket seems a little odd to me – perhaps it did to others, too, explaining why its shutters were down today.

To my eye, this Christmas “tree” – one of several at the Metrocentre – is spectacularly ugly. It isn’t even festive!

It’s supposed to echo the artwork that you can just about see on the right of the photo. But, if anything, the juxtaposition just makes this particular decoration look even cheaper!

After two-and-a-half years of constant use, this happened to my MacBook Pro’s power lead. I’m not sure when it happened, but I noticed it yesterday evening.

And so this morning I paid my second ever visit to the Genius Bar in my local Apple Store, where it was replaced on-the-spot with no questions asked – not even how old it was, or whether it was under warranty, or whether I had AppleCare.

It’s such brilliant service, especially compared to spending £50 on a replacement cable for my last Toshiba laptop after a similar lifespan.

This is Whistlestop. Or to give it its full name, Whistlestop Foodwine. So fast are they moving that they can’t even pause for an “and”.

Whistlestop is the shop right next to the domestic arrivals area at Newcastle airport. It markets itself as ideal for picking up some bread, milk, or other sundries on return from one’s travels. The bizarre thing about this proposition is that in all the time I’ve been a regular user of this airport, I think I’ve only seen it open once. It seems to have absurdly restricted opening hours.

Now forgive me, but I would’ve thought that a shop like this would cash in on, for example, travellers who return on a Sunday night and need supplies for the following morning. Other shops are frequently closed, so this small store could cash in. Except it’s not open.

Which begs the question… what is its market?! It’s been here for years, so it must be doing something right!

You might have read that today M&S reported a £297m drop in profits for the first half of this financial year, with non-food sales particularly suffering (though admittedly improving somewhat towards the end of the period).

Mark Bolland is working on supply logistics, merchandise design and technology (including thousands of iPads) as the solution to these problems. There’s also, of course, the oft-cited problem of the M&S bust of the 1990s – over-diversification, especially of brands – which Mark Bolland is ploughing an awful lot of time and effort into repeating for reasons that frankly baffle me.

But I think there’s a slightly under-discussed problem: the state of the estate. Despite Sir Stuart Rose investing some £2bn in the estate only a handful of years ago, the estate is a mess. Here’s some pictures I took last weekend in the Newcastle flagship store:

The store has broken signs, patched up floors and fitments, the whole works. Note that these are not front-line problems – these are problems caused by poor quality, poorly designed store fittings. This despite going through Mark Bolland’s slightly half-hearted £600m store re-invigoration programme.

At heart, M&S is a premium retailer charging premium prices, which needs a premium retail environment – not shoddy broken fitments and badly scratched floors.

Clearly, the estate isn’t M&S’s biggest problem, but I think it needs further consideration. But then, when you’ve spent £2.6bn on refurbishing the estate in just eight years – the better part of £1m per day – how can anyone possibly convince shareholders that further investment is warranted? Does it start to look like serious mishandling of the original investment?

I don’t have the answers – and, frankly, I’m not convinced Mark Bolland does either. I’m obviously not party to the details, but I don’t think integrated multichannel retailing should be a massive priority – multichannel sales are increasing, but almost half of online orders are collected in store. In fact, if I were Mark Bolland, I would be trying desperately to retain in-store sales where service – M&S’s primary point of difference – is maximised. I’d be worried that one in five sales of men’s suits is online, not celebrating, as it puts customers a click away from, say, Brook Tavener, who compete strongly on price and quality, but without a bricks-and-mortar presence can’t hope to compete on service.

Why isn’t M&S pushing it’s service? If it wants to embrace multichannel, why not do it in a novel way that makes the most of bricks, mortar and service? ASOS famously advertises it’s free returns service, inviting customers to order clothes in a number of sizes and return the ones that don’t fit. Why doesn’t M&S push a similar order-a-range-of-sizes-to-store service, which could be a strong competitor, losing the complexity for the customer of organising parcel drop-offs and pick-ups? It’s a service which is pretty much already available under the current system, but isn’t pushed at all online.

Anyway, this is getting remarkably ranty for photo-a-day. I do hope you’ll forgive me! I’ll be back to normal service tomorrow, I’m sure!

You can consider this photo as being in lieu of one yesterday, since I failed to post one then. This scene just felt appropriate given the news!