Finally some good news from recession, people are still having fun as it has been shown since Majestic Wine, Britain's largest wine warehouse chain, today revealed it has seen off the recession after returning to sales growth and reporting better-than-expected profits for the first six months of its financial year. (Times)
I can't stop myself wondering if it is a good thing or if people are just drinking more to forget about what is going on. If wine sales rose while jobs are going down, I think the government should be a little more concern about what is going on. For sure, it is good for Majestic business, but is it really good for everybody? Can people really afford to spend more on alcohol? All the pubs are already full around 5-6 pm around London during the week, if warehouse are selling more, that means people are drinking even more...
I read different articles because I wanted to know if I was the only one thinking about the repercussion on people's health and not only thinking about the profit of a business. I read the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Time, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal as well as the interim results from Majestic Wine company.
The first article is from Reuters. The headline was definitely clear about what the article will cover. The overall article was quite objective and stating facts, but the first paragraph was really interesting. The author showed a little is opinion which is rare from Reuters that normally only state facts. Despite the economic doom and gloom it appears people are still happy to splash out on a drop of the good stuff, with fine wine sales up and online sales soaring- a 24.6% rise which accounted for 9.2% of total retail sales. I think that the journalist did a great job in the first paragraph since its the most important of the article and definately catch the eye, but I think that the article could have been longer and continue in the direction of the author instead of relating basic facts. Overall, it should have talk more about competition, but even though it was relatively short, I liked the fact that it introduced a comment from a shareholder saying that majestic remains well capitalised and well placed for further expansion, which warrants a higher valuation in our view.
After this article, I analysed the Telegraph because its headline was different from the majority of the other articles and attract my curiosity: Majestic Wine chief Steve Lewis shows he has a nose for business. I thought it was a fantastic headline because there was an overtone since when you talk about wine, you often use terms about the smell to describe it. Moreover, the article was quite interesting because it showed how the business was manage instead of simply relating the facts about the growth of profit. Furthermore, the article didn't only stated the good news, it described how the new chief executive Steve Lewis struggle and found new strategies to make Majestic profit from the recession instead of loosing money. The journalist clearly did lots of research and it is from far the best article on the subject. This article was the most accurate and detailed and it gives to the reader the chance to understand more the business strategy of the company success.
Finally, the other articles I considered since it wasn't just relating the facts that were sent by Majestic to the different news papers, is the Guardian. It is one of my favorite newspaper since it is more left-wing and always have some opinions which makes the articles more interesting. Like the Telegraph, the Guardian gives the reader more information about how the company succeed from recession. What I found interesting was that it gave me different info from the Telegraph pushing more on the customer service side by explaining that it was possible to give wine reviews online and that free wine courses were held in stores. Finally, I like the fact that the article gave 2 different opinions from Investec and Altium; one stating that Majestic remains well capitalised and well placed for further expansion while the other was more on the side of caution in modelling sales growth.
To conclude, I think it was a good thing to read different articles on the subject because the majority of them were simply relating numbers and facts. I think that to be completely aware of the situation nobody could have read only one article since it is interesting to know the company's strategy which was only described by two articles. I think though that the journalists should have stated some facts about how it could affect the population. I was sure that The Guardian would have talk about it with is headline stating that in the current climate, it's not the done thing for businesses to be spending as much on booze for corporate entertaining, but stay at home consumers are still splashing out on wine, but no. I just hope that the government will look at it and if the alcohol sales are still rising, that they will do something to aware the people like in Canada that too much alcohol isn't good for anyone.
Sources:
Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2009/nov/16/majestic-wine
Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/profiles/6469958/Majestic-Wine-chief-Steve-Lewis-shows-he-has-a-nose-for-business.html
Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLG37711720091116
http://www.reuters.com/article/bankruptcyNews/idUSLD68866020091116?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=11604&sp=true
I can't stop myself wondering if it is a good thing or if people are just drinking more to forget about what is going on. If wine sales rose while jobs are going down, I think the government should be a little more concern about what is going on. For sure, it is good for Majestic business, but is it really good for everybody? Can people really afford to spend more on alcohol? All the pubs are already full around 5-6 pm around London during the week, if warehouse are selling more, that means people are drinking even more...
I read different articles because I wanted to know if I was the only one thinking about the repercussion on people's health and not only thinking about the profit of a business. I read the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Time, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal as well as the interim results from Majestic Wine company.
The first article is from Reuters. The headline was definitely clear about what the article will cover. The overall article was quite objective and stating facts, but the first paragraph was really interesting. The author showed a little is opinion which is rare from Reuters that normally only state facts. Despite the economic doom and gloom it appears people are still happy to splash out on a drop of the good stuff, with fine wine sales up and online sales soaring- a 24.6% rise which accounted for 9.2% of total retail sales. I think that the journalist did a great job in the first paragraph since its the most important of the article and definately catch the eye, but I think that the article could have been longer and continue in the direction of the author instead of relating basic facts. Overall, it should have talk more about competition, but even though it was relatively short, I liked the fact that it introduced a comment from a shareholder saying that majestic remains well capitalised and well placed for further expansion, which warrants a higher valuation in our view.
After this article, I analysed the Telegraph because its headline was different from the majority of the other articles and attract my curiosity: Majestic Wine chief Steve Lewis shows he has a nose for business. I thought it was a fantastic headline because there was an overtone since when you talk about wine, you often use terms about the smell to describe it. Moreover, the article was quite interesting because it showed how the business was manage instead of simply relating the facts about the growth of profit. Furthermore, the article didn't only stated the good news, it described how the new chief executive Steve Lewis struggle and found new strategies to make Majestic profit from the recession instead of loosing money. The journalist clearly did lots of research and it is from far the best article on the subject. This article was the most accurate and detailed and it gives to the reader the chance to understand more the business strategy of the company success.
Finally, the other articles I considered since it wasn't just relating the facts that were sent by Majestic to the different news papers, is the Guardian. It is one of my favorite newspaper since it is more left-wing and always have some opinions which makes the articles more interesting. Like the Telegraph, the Guardian gives the reader more information about how the company succeed from recession. What I found interesting was that it gave me different info from the Telegraph pushing more on the customer service side by explaining that it was possible to give wine reviews online and that free wine courses were held in stores. Finally, I like the fact that the article gave 2 different opinions from Investec and Altium; one stating that Majestic remains well capitalised and well placed for further expansion while the other was more on the side of caution in modelling sales growth.
To conclude, I think it was a good thing to read different articles on the subject because the majority of them were simply relating numbers and facts. I think that to be completely aware of the situation nobody could have read only one article since it is interesting to know the company's strategy which was only described by two articles. I think though that the journalists should have stated some facts about how it could affect the population. I was sure that The Guardian would have talk about it with is headline stating that in the current climate, it's not the done thing for businesses to be spending as much on booze for corporate entertaining, but stay at home consumers are still splashing out on wine, but no. I just hope that the government will look at it and if the alcohol sales are still rising, that they will do something to aware the people like in Canada that too much alcohol isn't good for anyone.
Sources:
Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2009/nov/16/majestic-wine
Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/profiles/6469958/Majestic-Wine-chief-Steve-Lewis-shows-he-has-a-nose-for-business.html
Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLG37711720091116
http://www.reuters.com/article/bankruptcyNews/idUSLD68866020091116?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=11604&sp=true
No comments:
Post a Comment