The map of new shops should not settle the capital debate

## Make the competing investment visible

A map with twelve proposed shops can dominate a board discussion before anyone has compared the commitments behind it. Each pin gives growth a location. It is harder to make eight existing shops look like an equally consequential strategic choice, especially when the work concerns layouts, displays and back-room arrangements rather than a new place on the map. I learned that difficulty when our proposed ₹54 crore opening programme competed with an ₹18.6 crore refurbishment programme. I had helped the opening proposal gather momentum before asking for the existing estate to receive the same quality of argument.

The argument for expansion was credible. We could reach customers outside our trading areas, secure properties that might not remain available and give our teams new responsibility. An existing shop's history does not automatically make it a better destination for capital. That history may describe a tired format in a location whose best years are behind it. I did not want the executive team to turn caution into a substitute for analysis, or to assume that the smaller cheque was the more responsible recommendation merely because it was smaller.

The refurbishment advocates also needed to explain their case in commercial terms. A more attractive shop is not enough. They had to describe how the arrangement affected the ranges customers encountered, where staff spent time and how the work would disrupt trading. Buying and operations had to participate because a property project could improve the room while leaving the assortment problem untouched. I wanted a proposition for those eight shops that could stand alone, rather than a list of maintenance tasks assembled to use whatever capital expansion left behind.

That changed the comparison. We were choosing between different ways to develop the business, not two suppliers' quotations for the same service. The difference between ₹54 crore and ₹18.6 crore did not represent a saving. It represented commitments we would not make at that time, alongside opportunities we would not pursue. Calling it a saving would have made the choice sound easier and more conclusive than it was. It could also have encouraged someone to treat the unused amount as available for another programme without returning to the board's actual decision.

## Keep the rejected opportunity in the account

I recommended refurbishment and accepted responsibility for postponing the larger opening programme. That responsibility included the strongest objection to my recommendation: some prospective sites could be lost. A decision record that preserves only the chosen plan makes later discussion too comfortable. If the business eventually wishes it had entered one of those areas sooner, we should be able to return to the reasons and assumptions we used, rather than imply that nobody had recognised the opportunity. A thoughtful decision can still leave a cost that becomes more visible with time.

The same principle applies to management capacity. Opening and refurbishment both require attention from people who already have a trading business to run. We sequenced the eight-shop work so the executive team could review disruption and coordinate the functions involved. That sequencing did not make disruption disappear. It made the commitment more explicit. I wanted the operators to have room to report an awkward week without feeling that every difficulty would be treated as evidence against the original decision they had been asked to implement.

There is also an ownership question for the CEO. My task was to bring a recommendation that connected the enterprise's interests, not to present a collection of functional preferences and ask directors to assemble the strategy themselves. Finance could explain funding, property could explain the sites, buying could explain range consequences and operations could explain execution. I had to decide what those accounts meant together. The board retained its approval responsibility and could challenge the recommendation. Delegating analysis did not remove my responsibility for the conclusion I placed before it.

Once approved, the programme needed a clear boundary. We did not have authority to spend the difference from the rejected proposal on other attractive projects. Nor could every new layout idea automatically join the eight-shop scope because construction was already under way. That sounds obvious when stated after the event, but capital programmes often gather additional ambitions as colleagues see an opportunity to solve longstanding frustrations. Some additions may deserve approval. They still need their own cost and purpose rather than borrowing consent from the programme that made them convenient to discuss.

## Read the result without inventing a counterfactual

The same eight shops recorded ₹74.2 crore sales and ₹8.1 crore direct store contribution in FY2023. In FY2024 those figures were ₹81.6 crore and ₹9.4 crore. I consider that useful evidence of how the selected estate traded, with the contribution measure explicitly excluding central costs and financing. It would be tempting to put the movement beside ₹18.6 crore and call it the return from refurbishment. Doing so would answer a question the figures alone cannot settle. Assortment, pricing, local demand and other decisions also affected the period.

We did not observe the same eight shops in the same year without refurbishment. Nor did we build the twelve proposed shops and discover their actual results. The rejected opening programme therefore remained a forecast, while the refurbishment programme acquired an operating history. Comparing those two accounts later requires care. Actual experience tends to expose details that were absent from a proposal. A forecast can remain deceptively tidy because it never had to meet the ordinary complications of execution. I do not want the chosen programme punished or praised simply because it became the one we could observe.

This does not mean that directors should suspend judgement until a perfect comparison appears. They should ask whether the programme delivered the work approved, whether trading developed plausibly, what problems remained and how the experience changes the next recommendation. An investment can be worth continuing even when its precise causal contribution is uncertain. Conversely, positive sales movement should not excuse an unexplained cost increase or an operating problem. The uncertainty changes the language and the questions; it does not remove accountability for managing the business.

I now ask for the existing estate to appear earlier in the capital discussion. That does not create a standing preference for refurbishment. At another point, the stronger case may belong to expansion, closure or a different use of funds altogether. The improvement is in the quality of the choice. A map of proposed shops should illustrate a recommendation that has survived comparison, not become the device that decides which form of growth the organisation is allowed to imagine. Ambition belongs in the commitments we can defend, including the opportunities we knowingly leave for another time.