Britian’s biggest flooring retailer, Carpetright, has revealed its latest figures, with overall growth dragged down to just 0.8% by a fall in bed sales and its share price dipping in response.
Nothing too remarkable there – except for this bizarre written explanation from Chief Executive Wilf Walsh:
“Total UK like-for-like sales in the period were impacted in the short term by our decision to accelerate the re-ranging activity in our beds business.”
Eh?
Anyone?
Even the FT hasn’t got much of a clue, but has made a wild guess: “We’ll assume that means it got some new beds because the old ones weren’t selling, but we can’t be sure.”
This is definitely worthy of the ‘corporate claptrap’ management writer Lucy Kellaway does such a good job of cataloguing.
It underlines the need to come clean and be clear – especially for a firm whose mission is apparently to make everything easy.
Trying to cover its shortcomings with absurd jargon has only drawn more attention to them, and made the company look ridiculous into the bargain.
