"Rather than just telling people we have a store full of products, we are selling the idea that hobbies are an enjoyable low-cost way of occupying leisure time", says Chris Crombie, chief executive of HobbyCraft, which supplies knitting and model-making supplies. Newspaper retailers have a sense that they need to do this, as do their suppliers. One of the newspaper industry's problems is too many potential readers focus on what they can get elsewhere for free and too few focus on the value that papers deliver. Shoppers need to be educated and when they are, mostly they like it. Waitrose and John Lewis put educating shoppers at the heart of how they differentiate their offer and it works for them. If they can, newspaper retailers can.
True in part to my New Year resolution, I held a business meeting in an independent coffee shop today just next door to a Starbucks. The cafe was presented well and four staff were busy preparing for the lunchtime rush, at 11am. As my guests were late, I had a half hour overview of footfall on the street outside and in the restaurant. Six customers. Barely enough to form the queue in Starbucks or Pret-a-Manger just down the road. Plus one Italian girl who dropped off her CV. Some people stopped to look at the posters in the window and moved on. The owners seemed quite happy. When I left just after 1215, they were doing brisk trade. However, I have the impression that the business is not working hard enough. It could easily have managed 120 customers between 11 and 12, instead of 12. This is lost profit as the fixed overheads and staff costs are already in place. The owners are clearly busy - perhaps too busy to take time to look at the potential that their cafe has. What shou...
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