In just two weeks, on August 25, Marta Álvarez will attend her first shareholders meeting as president of El Corte Inglés. The board, which was appointed in office last July, replacing Jesús Nuño de la Rosa, faces on this occasion a much less tense meeting than last year , when his cousin and former group president, Dimas Gimeno , had just been dismissed.

Like the rest of the commerce sector, El Corte Inglés faces major challenges: the restructuring of spaces (because an area that was profitable 10 years ago now does not have to be ...) and also business, unifying Some. Selling the least profitable centers (it has 95 spaces valued at 1,500 million euros for sale) or divesting in what no longer gives money is one of the short-term objectives.

AMAZON, TO THE ACECHO

On the commercial level, El Corte Inglés is more expensive with the threat of Amazon, which has greatly weakened the model of a large physical store. The online giant is not so much a competitor of Inditex (it sells clothes, but not fashion), nor of the supermarket chains (it distributes food but has no physical store and will never compete in close proximity with a supermarket). Who really competes with is the department store, because both groups sell variety and their model is more similar. Until now the Spanish chain has been able to accept the stake, improving its online delivery service and almost approaching the times of the American giant, which delivers in less than two hours.

DIGITALIZATION

Digitization is, therefore, one of the biggest challenges for the chain. Dimas Gimeno laid the foundations to achieve a true onmicanal strategy in which customers can buy in a physical store or online in the same conditions of quality of service.

This has led to increased online billing, which grew in 2018 by 19%. In addition, as with other sectors of commerce, the English Court is also reinventing its concept of physical space, expanding its offer of restoration in most centers and incorporating new beauty, sports, consulting services ...

DEBT

The department store group should not lose sight of the results. In recent years he has managed to reduce his debt thanks to the divestments he has made and has been increasing his income for five years after the years of crisis he went through.

In 2018, it invoiced 15,783 million euros, 1.1% more. One of Marta Álvarez's challenges is precisely to reduce debt to 2,000 million.

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