store operations Archives

The 6 Best Retail Strategies for 2022: No.6 Retail People Strategies

People: The shopkeepers of today Select any retail business, and you are most likely to discover a culture of colleague collaboration, trust and respect. However, retail has a chequered history of human resource management and interpersonal approaches, to say the least. Even in the best run businesses today there is still plenty of scope for further innovation and disruption to the traditional personnel models. Overall, there is a growing appreciation-

The 6 Best Retail Strategies for 2022: No.4 Physical Shop Strategies

Physical shops: Places in our hearts & minds COVID was supposed to be the death knoll for physical shops. It was of course immensely damaging and resulted in many shops closing and businesses folding. Customers naturally migrated to digital channels, some permanently and others temporarily. Despite the whole channel being closed, the physical shop, in its best incarnations has already continued to bounce back. Despite everything, it is still the-

The 6 Best Retail Strategies for 2022: No.3 Supply Chain Strategies

Supply Chain Partners: In the same boat together The relationship with suppliers has never been so important. The COVID lockdown exposed the dangers of weak supplier integration, whilst the move to remote digital communications highlighted the opportunities for technology applications across new supply chains. Trust between some suppliers and retailers hit an all-time low as orders were cancelled and payments frozen. The repercussions of such actions will set back the-

Introducing the new book ‘Meaning in the Retail Madness’

How to be an essential retailer Every retailer must now be essential, supporting the emotional lifestyle and well-being of the customer, as well as simply supplying products.‘Meaning in the Retail Madness’ explains how touchpoints have replaced channels, how linear supply chains will become circular, why assortments are increasingly virtual, how physical is turning to local, and why products and shops are not necessarily made for each other anymore.It supplies a-

How Much of your Retail Space should be Allocated to your Staff?

Retail professionals are under extreme pressure to deliver what they always have, but now in a retail landscape that is being transformed by changing customer behaviour and a migration of retail sales to e-commerce, questions that have never had to be faced before are now becoming uncomfortably relevant… I have witnessed some unseemly “scraps” for store square metres in my time between competing categories all trying to get as-

Does your store backroom space show you value your staff?

The Daily Post:- 5th April Does the amount of store gross sqm you dedicate to your staff really show how much you value them? I’ve been visiting stores of a couple of similar retailers in terms of their sector and size of store. They have different market positions but have the commonality that customer service is very important to their proposition and ultimately their conversion and profit. Despite the market positioning-

“The Story of the Old Shop, the New Shop & the Other Shop!”

The Daily Post:- 20th March “The Story of the Old Shop, the New Shop & the Other Shop!” Now the story I’m about to tell is a true story, and its a story about one of the UK’s biggest retailing businesses. They shall remain nameless as their identity is not the issue but to illustrate that improvements are always there even amongst the most seasoned operators. The retail business had in-

“What’s the Real Cost of Retail Store Disciplines?”

The Morning Post:- 17th March “What’s the real cost of retail store discipline” On a benchmarking tour of value retailers this week I found my initial curiosity and enthusiasm slowly but surely drained as I was repeatedly faced with dull store interiors, poor lighting, dirty shelves, torn graphics, display chaos and in some instances such a scarcity of staff that I could have used happily bedded down for a few hours without fear of being-

9th Joy of Retail Spring: VMToolkit to Control Stores

Every retailer is different, and in most cases every store is different, from the obvious variations of culture and taste in an international portfolio, the clear operational issues between directly owned stores and wholesale partners, to the more subtle challenges of different store manager personalities and store personnel attitudes. All this requires retailers to create and apply a wide-range of guidelines, tools and processes to get the very best from-

5th Joy of a Retail Spring – Profit from Queue Management

An effective and efficient queuing strategy has many benefits from minimising abandonment, increasing loss prevention, stimulating incremental impulse sales, loyalty building and customer service engagement. Failure to control and maximise the queuing opportunities means a retailer will never find that “sweet spot” of happy customers willing to queue and engage whilst delivering additional impulse sales what is the “sweat spot” for queue waiting time linked to impulse sales? how do I-