THE BLOG HAS MOVED

Hi Folks, just to let you know, our blog has moved, and can now be found at:

www.excelretail.com.au/blog

Hope to see you there.

Jim

Critical retail statistics

Hello, and firstly, I’d like to apologise for a long absence; having been involved in an overseas project, and disrupted by the Queensland flooding, the year so far has been a busy one, with spare moments few and far between.

Anyway, I thought I’d like to take a look at some of the statistics commonly used in the retail industry.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they are critical to enable us to measure our business performance, but at the same time, it’s important to view them in context. 

Christmas Eve

Well folks, it’s Christmas Eve again, and 2010 is drawing slowly to a close. All the signs I can see suggest that it has been a good healthy trading period for most retail segments in recent weeks, which is always great news.

My advice is to enjoy Christmas, but don’t relax. This is not the time of year for a retailer to relax. Driving ahead with the marketing for 2011, pushing the sale, if you are having one, to clear stock and reduce any excesses, making room for the new stock which will generate the future profits. Learn from any and all the 2010 mistakes, and look forward with positivity. Remember, talk of tight times brings tight times, so let’s have none of that nonsense. 2011 can and will be a great year, and I wish each and every one of you the very happiest of Christmases, and a very successful new year.

Our business will be changing and moving forward; we’re here to serve the retail world, that’s what floats our boat.

Right, I’m off to make my signature sherry trifle…have a great one folks, and all the best wishes from myself and my team.

Jim Campbell

Employees from HELL

Have you ever walked into a shop and been served by what seems to be the most incompetent person possible?

There’s a gentleman, around sixty, who, to be quite frank, I now think of as a “doddery old man” who works at a hardware store I sometimes visit.  He’s cheerful, smiling, pleasant, probably a wonderful Father and Grandfather, but he is to be avoided at all costs if you go to that store for anything.  

RECRUITMENT, who do you REALLY want?

I was once engaged to take over the recruitment process for a business where the person responsible for recruitment had become ill and left the business suddenly.

Having already advertised the posts, there were several hundred applications, and a first round of interviews from the early applicants had already been done.  Now, inheriting such a process at this stage is never straightforward, because you don’t have a full understanding of what the first interviewer had in mind, or how he felt about the individuals so far interviewed.

Developing your brand

One of the things we often talk about with our clients is the importance of “brand”, and how well you promote it. It may not seem to matter much when you look at, for example, your local grocery store, but the thing about brand is that you recognise it subconsciously. You know what IGA have, what kind of deals you get at Foodworks etc. You recognise their logo without thinking about it when you need to get milk or bread on the way home from work.

Are retailers making sense with their pricing? (UPDATED)

Those who have been reading the blog for a while will know that I am into photography on a hobbyist level.  Some months ago, I bought some new equipment (from Harvey Norman Rockhampton….very pleased with the customer service), and one of those items was a new more powerful flashgun than the one I already had.  A couple of weeks later, I was looking at some pictures and decided that I needed a diffuser for closer pictures to create a more natural lighting effect.  I won’t go into too much detail, but basically that’s a thing you stick over your flash and it softens the light to create a less harsh effect.  I was looking at some other things on eBay at the time, so I checked and found a few examples of what I was looking for:

What’s the issue with training your staff?

I spent three days last week filtering applications for a trainee management position for one of our clients. It was a frustrating few days in some ways, because at the end of it, I felt that none of the interviewees really had all of the key skills we had stated in the advertisements for the position. What was most interesting about this was that a good percentage of the applicants were already in similar jobs with other retailers, which again highlights the lack of quality workplace training in our industry.

At the end of the process, I wasn’t able to

Refunds, Exchanges and Consumer rights

I was speaking with a salesman in a shop the other day, and the conversation came around to warranties. They had recently had a case of a customer who had purchased a camera at a considerable price, with the usual 12 month warranty from the manufacturer. For thirteen months, the chap had used the camera happily without any issues, but then one day he tried to use it and found it had no power, and could not be switched on at all. And so, he turned up back at the shop somewhat disgruntled. After a brief investigation by the staff in the shop involving new batteries and checking for battery corrosion damage etc., they too found that the camera was quite dead. I believe that the conversation went along the lines of

Managing Your People

A few weeks ago, I happened to be in a shop I visit quite regularly, and I have come to know the Manager and some of the staff quite well.  Sometimes if the shop is not too busy I spend a little time there generally chatting about business etc.  It’s a nice well organised shop, clean neat displays, pricing always in place etc., and it’s usually fairly busy too.  From what the store staff say, the owners of the business are quite happy with the levels of business they are achieving.  One thing I always notice though, is that the Manager is always busy; up ladders putting up signs, re-merchandising window displays, and often dealing with customers too.