As the 'global economic downturn' - God I hate that phrase - has hit UK retailers hard, it's been fascinating for me to look on from the inside of a beauty powerhouse down on their fiscal luck. You'd be forgiven for thinking it would be the nitty gritty of recession business management from which I'd been garnering useful learnings, but it's been with a somewhat more cynical eye that I've been watching the company operate. It all started way back in December last year. As the MD's back was really beginning to be pushed against the profit level wall by superiors, in a glorious bout of management hypocrisy she had the gall to ban my drinking of filter coffee (as if I'd drink instant) as a cost reduction measure. She failed to remember that later that week I'd be taking delivery of her new top spec X5 at Park Lane BMW. Which leads me rather nicely into my second Yuletide Top Ten...
Top Ten Company Money Squanderings of 2009
1.) Our fleet of Mercs, Jags, Beamers and Audis most of which lose the company further cash as
they pay people way over the odds on their pence per mile reimbursements.
2.) Our averagely plush office is located in a ludicrously exclusive part of London. We could sell it for circa £25m and get some cheap office space in W1 but perhaps that idea will come up with the next bout of redundancies
3.) Bjorn
4.) Bjorn's already well-charted pillaging of cash on ill-conceived, poorly executed advertising campaigns
5.) The spelling mistake. A whole range of products went into production before someone had to point out a spelling mistake on the packaging. I'd estimate the rerun cost spiralled way above $100k, yet still nobody got the sack!
6.) Our new website. The same dyslexic responsible for squandering #5 also waxed over $50k this year on a new website. Which looks shit and doesn't work.
7.) Our air con system. Our crack team of engineers visit so often we now catch up about the football whilst I'm smoking. Nobody had the system serviced since 2002 so we now spend God-only-knows how much attempting to make it pump out an appropriate temperature of air to the season.
8.) The US PR department. Out of touch, incompetent, completely off brand. And fat.
9.) French retail operations. The ultimate in loss making business but the gloriousness of French employment law leaves us struggling to fire anyone. Damnit I love the French.
10.) The monthly courier bill. We pay way over the odds largely because I really like our courier guys and it's their livelihood. The bill isn't helped by me sending personal items across the city; but it has on one occasion helped me avoid that horrible post-break-up meeting to exchange items.
