MEET Andy Bond, boss of Asda. Lean, angular, knobbly – he looks every inch a
fitness freak. Yeah, says Bond, normally it’s a run every day, but last
weekend it was just a 115-mile cycling race round the Yorkshire countryside.
“Four thousand metres of ascent, 33C temperature, some seriously fit guys. I
did it with my No 2, Dave Cheesewright, and the strategy director . . .”
Here come the hard men from Leeds. Asda, for so long outstripped by Tesco and
Sainsbury, is back on course in the war for supermarket supremacy, and its
executives seem to be taking “lean and mean” to heart.
Do you have to be super-fit to get on? Nah, says Bond, in a blunt East
Midlands accent. Yes, says his body language. He’s perched tautly on the
edge of a sofa in his Leeds office, looking as if he might leap to the floor
at any minute for 20 press-ups.
Asda has always nurtured a sportier top team. Previous bosses Archie Norman
and Allan Leighton liked a kickaround – Bond, chief executive since 2005 but
a long-time Asda man, just takes it further.
With his cropped ginger hair and Toby Jug grin, 42-year-old Bond even looks
like a throwback. Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, he exudes the
happy-to-help, common man touch. Asda bosses walk the floor a lot.
Right now, it seems to be paying off. Nine years since it was bought by
Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest supermarket chain, Asda is sharpening its act
after a period in the doldrums. It is now the fastest growing of the biggest
four supermarkets in Britain. With demand for organic food leading to
accusations of overpricing, and tougher times forecast, Bond sniffs
opportunity.
“Value retailing is as relevant today as it’s ever been,” he says. “Everyone
talks about ‘premium-isation’, and that the days of value are over: well,
baloney. Some people are much richer but a lot aren’t. We are a value
retailer born and bred and always will be.”
He proved it in May, slashing prices on 2,500 items just to welcome in
quarterly sales updates from Tesco and Sainsbury. Tesco’s sales growth
stuttered. Sainsbury is enveloped in bid speculation. Some even think Asda
might be a bidder. No wonder Bond looks alert.
“We know our growth rate slowed before 2004, but in the past couple of years
we have turned a corner. We weren’t listening to our customers as much as we
should have. People expected more organic and premium ranges, and we were
slow to get into dotcom. But we have identified that, and by improving some
of these things, the business has improved.”
Bond, previously head of the supermarket’s George clothes brand, has
reorganised Asda with some severity. About 1,400 management jobs have gone.
He makes a face when I mention the redundancies.
“It was clear the head office had grown too big and too bureaucratic,” he
says, “and we needed more on the shopfloor helping customers. In hindsight,
though, we didn’t do a great job communicating that.”
Old colleagues suggest that Bond has simply taken the business back to basics:
getting footfall by selling food cheaply and efficiently in big box outlets,
strengthening its No 2 position behind the vastly bigger Tesco.
It is still weak in southeast England, and it is still unable to make full use
of the benefits of being owned by Wal-Mart – it could, for example, build
umpteen more outlets if land could be bought and permissions obtained, or
push more quickly into general merchandise. But Bond is bullish.
“I am very keen for Asda to become multi-format but the most important thing
we have had to do is to get existing stores growing well – that’s how you
satisfy customers. I don’t think our customers or our owners want us to put
time into clever ideas when not satisfying consumers.”
That mention of “multi-format” is Bond preempting inevitable criticism.
Wal-Mart’s size has given Asda access to far cheaper goods, especially in
nonfood, but it has also distracted it. In Asda’s stores – bigger but less
numerous than its rivals’ – the excitement of offering the first sub£50 DVD
players meant food was pushed sideways.
There were also stand-alone George stores, and smaller own-brand-only stores
(Asda Essentials), and stores selling general merchandise (Asda Living).
Meanwhile, its rivals have pushed into convenience stores.
“I feel positive about Asda Living, it’s a great channel for growth,” says
Bond. But he has stopped the roll-out of George stores – 12 so far –
“because they are not performing as well as we thought”.
And Asda Essentials – too big to be a convenience store and too small to work
as a superstore – “just didn’t work”, not least because people like branded
goods. He has no plans to start opening convenience stores.
But isn’t it obvious that the in-between size wouldn’t work? He laughs
uneasily. “Well, maybe if you were in our team you could have told us that.”
Former workmates say Bond can be prickly, a symptom of his dogged
determination to get things right. He may also be unused to criticism – he
doesn’t face journalists and analysts as regularly as bosses of quoted
companies.
Bond says he is often “disappointed” by the media’s attitude to Wal-Mart’s
ownership. “Culturally, Asda has actually not changed that much at all.” And
Wal-Mart, he adds, for all its unpopularity with campaigners, does more for
sustainability than any other retail group on the planet. Asda launched its
own “sustainability summit” this year to which all its rivals sent
representatives.
As for Asda’s diversions that haven’t worked: “I do get frustrated about
everyone wanting comment on failure. We should be measured by the number of
successes, not the number of failures.”
Others say Bond inherited a tough situation. Many talented executives had
left, and Wal-Mart’s power was ill-used.
“Asda was always about the cheerful experience of buying bulk food at cheap
prices,” says Richard Baker, formerly chief operating officer at the
supermarket, now chief executive at Alliance Boots. “But the thing about
Andy is he really understands the brand.”
That comes from Bond’s start at Asda, hired by Norman as his marketing
assistant in 1994. Norman says he liked Bond’s determination, and his eye
for detail. “Great retailers have an eye for detail while keeping the big
picture in mind. It’s not so irrelevant that Andy trained as an engineer.”
Born the younger son of a plumber and a nurse, Bond comes from just the kind
of “ordinary, working” family that Asda targets. He attributes his drive to
his one childhood trauma: failing the 11-plus to get into grammar school. He
made it later, transferred from secondary modern school because he excelled
academically, but the fear of failure stuck. “I think failure in your teen
years does make you more driven.”
Bond took a scholarship from British Gas to study gas engineering and joined a
BG supplier, but eventually quit an industry that he could only see
shrinking. He was snapped up by Asda after finishing top of an MBA course at
Cranfield. He was determined to work for Norman, already a corporate star.
Later he caught Leighton’s eye. The former Asda boss, now Post Office
chairman, praises Bond for getting back to “big box” basics, and
reintroducing “some craziness”.
“Get the prices right, get the values right, drive George and away you go,”
says Leighton. The difficulty for Wal-Mart now, he predicts, is how to hang
on to its man.
Bond groans when I bring it up. “Here’s my pat answer: I’m happy doing what I
am doing, but at some point in the future either I am going to move on in
Wal-Mart or leave.I am not going to be here in five years’ time.”
And yes, he has seen the recent share-option package won by his former Asda
colleague Justin King at Sainsbury. And no, he’s not revealing how much he
earns – only that money is not a motivating factor. He drivesa Mini. King
has a Maserati. Enough said.
Leighton laughs when I run that by him. “Money’s never a factor until people
offer you a lot of it,” he says, before adding, “people like Bondy are
hugely attractive to private equity.”
Perhaps Wal-Mart will give Bond the resources to do his own deals. Has he
discussed bidding for Sainsbury? Bond looks aghast. “I’m not telling you
that, I’d be locked up.” Would he? “Look, the more general question is would
we want to grow by acquisition? We are fundamentally constrained by
government regulation. The acquisition of Safeway by Morrisons largely
defined the shape of the industry for the future.”
That sounds like a “maybe”. Bond grins. Others say it’s easy to underestimate
his ambition and ceaseless application. Even in his hours off, he is often
seen setting out from head office with colleagues for yet another run. He
can’t sit still.
Little surprise that the new boss of Waitrose, Mark Price, who is more
generously proportioned, joked recently that it was time for a return to
“chubby” grocers.
“Did he?” asks Bond, looking pensive. “I don’t see any virtue in being chubby.”
Of course not. Lean and mean is still very much a compliment in Yorkshire.
ANDY BOND’S WORKING DAY
THE Asda chief executive wakes at 6am at his Harrogate home and either cycles
into work, car-shares or drives himself. Andy Bond is at his desk in Leeds
by 7.15am.
“I do a few e-mails and look at the sales. Numbers are a mood generator in a
business this size, though I am not going to influence anything day to day.”
Bond says his key tasks are “developing strategy, choosing and evaluating
the top team, and monitoring and controlling delivery of the plan”.
He finishes at 6.30pm. He spends half his week in Leeds, and the other half
split between store visits, meetings with suppliers and overseas travel.
VITAL STATISTICS
Born:March 16, 1965
Marital status:married, with two children
School:The King’s School, Grantham
Universities:Salford, Cranfield
First job:trainee engineer at British Gas
Salary package:undisclosed but estimated at more than £1m
Home:Harrogate
Car:grey Mini Cooper
Favourite book:It’s Not About The Bike, by Lance Armstrong
Favourite music:Robbie Williams, Keane
Favourite film:Carlito’s Way
Favourite gadget:Blackberry Pearl
Last holiday:Majorca
DOWNTIME
ANDY BOND relaxes with serious exercise. “I used to be a competitive
sportsman, doing athletics and rugby. Now I run, I cycle, I go to the gym.
My only real extravagances in life are posh trainers and a posh racing bike.
No, I avoid the tight lycra.”
Otherwise he likes “having a social time” with friends, or taking his children
out. “My son likes Liverpool so we go and see them. We also went to the
cricket recently – six hours in the rain at Headingley waiting for the Test
Match to start. And sometimes we watch the Leeds Tykes play rugby.”
