Co-operative reveals £80m earnings hit from ‘malicious’ cyber attack
The Co-operative Group has revealed it slumped to a half-year loss after taking an earnings hit of around £80 million from a “malicious” cyber attack in April.
The retailer said it tumbled to a £75 million underlying pre-tax loss for the six months to July 5, down from profits of £3 million a year ago as the hack took its toll.
We popped into our local Co-op a few days ago and as usual only one checkout was open but we didn't have to wait long as nobody in front of us was buying much.
We don't know how it keeps going - never busy, never any problem with crowded aisles, isn't cheap and sells very little that isn't available in any of the major supermarkets.
Our Co-op is handy, plonked as it is in the centre of town, so maybe that's what keeps it going, but the customers do look old.
Our Co-op is handy, plonked as it is in the centre of town, so maybe that's what keeps it going, but the customers do look old.
9 comments:
I think thats their business model, try and locate stores in places where they have a localised monopoly, particularly of the elderly and those who don't have cars.
A small market town near me only had a co-op, so if you didn't drive or fancy hauling bags of shopping on and off a bus from the supermarkets in the next town a few miles away it was the only food store in town. Then Aldi popped up and put in planning for a store on the edge of town. The planners were minded to refuse it, but the locals were so hacked off with the co-op a load of them turned up at the planning committee meeting and demanded that it be passed because they wanted it, as it would be far cheaper than the co-op. And amazingly the committee listened and gave permission for a new Aldi store. Then the co-op got involved, they actually went to court to demand this permission be overturned because of some minor infringement of planning rules. Which case they eventually won, and forced Aldi to go through the rigmarole of making a whole new application. All of which took a year or more, during which time the co-op continued to enjoy their monopoly.
But Aldi have the last laugh, they got their store eventually, its now trading and the co-op is a ghost town.
Great job, Mossad. Hit these antisemitic companies where it hurts ie bottom line.
We use the Co-op because it's handy, their bread is better than any other supermarket bread we've tried, and (for one year at least) their green grapes were easily the best we could find. They also used to sell a wonderful Speck - ham from the South Tyrol. Alas, no longer.
And one Xmas they did save our bacon, as it were, by still having a stock of decent smoked salmon when everyone else was sold out. But since then Aldi has arrived and its smoked salmon is decent too.
Our local CO-OP 'superstore' was in a state of managed decline. More and more of its floorspace was rented out to other businesses or just sealed off, and the food shelves carried less and less. They also carried copies of the Morning Star newspaper but I expect that was a correlation rather than a cause of the decline.
I suspect that the store was 'too big' for their localised monopoly strategy.
I have to admit they do a pretty decent job out in the islands, where they are frequently the only decent shop, sometimes the only shop at all. They manage to stay reasonably well-stocked despite the ongoing ferry debacles. Sometimes you can even get fresh fruit and veg!
Is this the firm who went Woke and almost broke?
When I was a boy a story would crop up occasionally about the manager of "the store" - as it was called - being rude to one of his shop assistants. Hence my father's advice "Never work for The Workers. M & S wouldn't allow anyone to treat their wee lassies so badly."
Sobers - something similar may have happened in Bakewell, although I don't know the details. The Bakewell Co-op seems to be surviving well enough though, perhaps because Aldi is a little way out of town. Maybe central locations for Co-op stores arose from its connection with the Labour party.
Anon - when we visited the Co-op, they were plugging their app. No thanks.
dearieme - we used to buy smoked salmon fillets from the Co-op but they stopped supplying them. We used to buy bread too, but the loaves we preferred weren't always there. Now we just pick up odds and ends if we happen to be going into town
DJ - our Co-op has closed some space formerly used for electrical goods after trying to rent it out. It's probably too big for casual shopping anyway. It's a pity in some ways because an uncrowded supermarket has its attractions.
Peter - we find some Co-op stores are quite a bit better than others for some reason. One we could walk to near a caravan site at Minehead would keep us going for the week, but we've come across others we didn't bother with after one visit.
James - I think so, went public about a decision to stop buying from Israel I believe.
dearieme - good advice, M & S used to have a very solid reputation.
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