British retailer Marks & Spencer reportedly has sold its Lifestore concept – which included one store that was opened and closed and two others that never opened – to Ilva, a Danish furniture retailer, for the equivalent of $66.8 million (US).
When the concept was unveiled back in May 2003, M&S said that Lifestore was designed to be a chain of stand-alone home-and-housewares stores. The first – and it ended up, only – unit featured a two-story house inside the store that featured the store’s products in context, showing how they would be used by consumers. And, M&S promised, a new designer would redesign the house every year in order to keep it fresh and state-of-the-art.
When the concept was unveiled back in May 2003, M&S said that Lifestore was designed to be a chain of stand-alone home-and-housewares stores. The first – and it ended up, only – unit featured a two-story house inside the store that featured the store’s products in context, showing how they would be used by consumers. And, M&S promised, a new designer would redesign the house every year in order to keep it fresh and state-of-the-art.
- KC's View:
-
Even now, it actually sounds like a pretty good idea. But even good ideas sometimes don’t work, if only because of bad timing, bad execution, bad personnel – or all of the above.
The trick, it seems to us, is to now allow failure and/or competitive setbacks to dampen one’s enthusiasm for progressive ideas. Easy to say, hard to do…but, in our estimation, critical for leadership that transcends the mundane bounds of management.
