Former Tesco man applies retail lessons at Independent News & Media

The china in the Independent News & Media (INM) meeting room where management gave a briefing to journalists yesterday hailed from Waterford Wedgwood – the two companies once shared the same controlling shareholder. But, crockery aside, there is little trace of the Sir Anthony O’Reilly era remaining at Independent House.

INM's biggest shareholder these days is Denis O'Brien and the company is run by an ex-Tesco man, Robert Pitt, with chief financial officer Ryan Preston hailing from the same supermarket group. Both men took up their roles late last year.

At first glance, it might seem like the retail world and the newspaper business have less in common than before. In the age of declining print circulation, newsagents are no longer as important to the distribution of the product. A core element of INM’s business – Independent.ie – neither depends on or even asks consumers to hand over coins or cards.

And yet there are similarities. “Lots of similarities,” Pitt says. “I have to say, first of all, that it’s very exciting to come into this business – I’ve learned an awful lot. But we definitely bring the learnings and experience from retail which are very relevant.”

One of them we might paraphrase as competition forces everybody to up their game. “Retail is a very fast-moving business,” is how Pitt puts it. “It’s about everyday putting your best offer out there and trying to persuade somebody that they should come and read your product, or read your paper.”

There is also no better industry than retail when it comes to valuing the benefit of knowing as much about your customer as can be possibly gleaned from them.

“Understanding the customer – the reader – is very, very important” and the use of data can help “shape” its products and improve their popularity, according to Pitt.

“Of course, there are things that we will always have in our paper because that is the ethos of our paper, the brand of our paper. But there are many other bits that we can shape so that people enjoy the paper an awful lot more.”

In summary: the customer is always right – well, almost always.