Offload was the word du jour for hacks turning in their copy covering the sale of Tesco Opticians to Vision Express last week.
The propensity for parochialism when it comes to Tesco was simply too great for reporters to ignore. Tesco, which once accounted for one in every seven pounds spent in UK shops, was front and centre of the story. Like a slightly leaky hot air balloon the supermarket has been jettisoning restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, garden centres and all other manner of businesses. This has been in an effort to both shore up its finances in the wake of accounting difficulties and to concentrate on its knitting ahead of its proposed merger with cash and carry colossus Booker.
So is it simply Tesco Opticians’ turn to face the music?
On recent past form, Vision Express and Tesco Opticians make for strange bedfellows, but let’s rewind a little and that pejorative offload may be a little premature.
Tesco, globally, still accounts for 78 million shopping trips per week, it is finding a second wind after its accounting fiasco and has a UK market share approaching 30%.
Vision Express’s parent GrandVision has 6,500 practices around the world in 44 countries and Vision Express has already reinvented itself in the eyes of consumers in the UK and has successfully swallowed three regional chains.
We don’t know if Vision Express can become a store within a store in 200 Tesco outlets, we don’t know if it wants to. We don’t know how VE’s high end brands will fit into a Tesco offering or what their licensors will think of that.
What we do know is the tectonic plates of UK optics are shifting and Vision Express doesn’t intend to weather the changes to come in its current form.