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Major drinks maker Diageo says it is sticking by its premium brands - such as Johnny Walker whisky - despite City pressure to focus on value alcohol brands. A chart in the FT shows the brands at the top and the bottom are doing OK. Cue the death of the middle articles. It was only six months ago that the City was pressing supermarkets to drop their premium own label brands and suggesting that Waitrose, the up-market grocer, was in trouble. A week ago, both premium own label and Waitrose were back in fashion. For local retailers, the premium brands that matter are those that they can move in sufficient volume to generate a good cash margin. If you hear this noise from the City, ignore it. Visiting your local cash and carry and looking at the shelves to see what is moving and what is not is a better bellwether.

My 17 year-old son returned from a rock festival this week wearing a wristband proudly declaring him 0ver 18. He explained how easy it had been to use someone else's ID to get the identification and said it was ironic that he had not needed to show the over 18 band when buying alcohol. Today, Scottish retailer Abdul Qadar is complaining that public authorities are asking people to lie about their age when making test purchases. What trading standards officers may be forgetting is that the fact that retailers invest in a business premises and trade consistently from it make their job much, much easier. The alternative, a world of markets and itinerant traders, will be far harder to police. Mr Qadar's sense of injustice is fair. Those retailers, like Mr Qadar, who value their investment will seek to trade legally and will not sell alcohol to people under the age of 18. Asking children to lie about their age to local traders is a slander on all retailers.

The clever thing about Tesco advertising is that it does not say we are number one or we are the biggest. Instead it tells the shopper that everything we do is for you. Its latest TV ad tells viewers that it is giving double clubcard points if you buy bananas, cheese and so on. The music is homely, perhaps traditional, perhaps something your granny would know. There is no video, just a set of stills like the local ads that run at your cinema. The promise is cleverly weighted so that the viewer is not being asked to come in-store to get something specific, just to expect value. Other executions may promise low prices but not this latest campaign. Local retailers will not be able to afford television campaigns. Even if they could, experts would say that they will get a smaller return. The advertising is about keeping Tesco shoppers loyal, keeping its market share. Your job is to think about the promises and how you can make them to your shoppers. Your tools are your in-store signa...

I read a good post (http://www.newsagencyblog.com.au/2009/08/28/what-do-newsagents-charge-for-faxing.html) asking what price local shops charge for providing a fax service. The blogger had attached a photograph of his sign with his prices on it. What struck me was the message on the sign. "You drop, we fax," it said. "Pressed for time, drop your documents with us and we'll do it for you at no extra charge." That is a message that will persuade most shoppers that you want to give them good value, even if they stay to do the copying or faxing themselves.

Another thing to measure is the percentage of sales each department generates in your shop. A typical breakdown could be grocery food, grocery non food, fresh and chilled, alcohol, tobacco, news and services (lottery etc). Grocery food could be broken down into snacks, confectionery and so on. At the same time measure the percentage of profit each department generates. From this you will see which parts of the business are providing you with cash profit and these are the areas that you need to focus on. Work on your strengths first, then your weaknesses. If you are not already doing this start by analysing each month. If it helps you change things, then think about doing it weekly. You should also remember to communicate the outcome of your findings. Tell your staff which departments are doing well and where to focus their attention.

In a retail business one of the key measures is staff costs and how you organise your rotas to optimise profitability. Optimise here means to make the most money you can without compromising on the quality of the work that you provide your staff or the quality of the products and services that you provide to shoppers. The calculation is simple. Put down your sales total (excluding from services) and then divide it by the hours that you are open. To add up the staff cost calculate the number of hours worked by each staff member multiplied by their hourly rate plus taxes; add these together and divide by the hours that you are open. Then divide the hourly revenues by the hourly staff cost and measure this percentage. If you set a target to reduce the percentage staff costs, look at the jobs that you need people to do and when the quiet times are in the shop. Moving restocking to times when the shop is not busy is an obvious area for savings. Your staff payroll is an investment and y...

In spring and autumn UK magazine publishers issue their ABC figures, which show how many copies they sell through the retail channel. This provides retailers with a great opportunity to benchmark their sales by comparing their sales figures with those achieved nationally. While one reason for doing this is to change your order, another is to find out more about the people visiting your shop. Steve Denham in his blog ( http://cherilynstores.blogspot.com/2009/08/reflecting-on-retail-newsagents-best.html ) says he uses the industry figures to "confirm the point of difference" his shoppers need. He simply divides the total sale by the number of UK magazine outlets, say 55,000, and then checks how much more or less of every copy he sells than the average shop. He believes he has an older, more affluent and conservative base of shoppers. The magazine sales figures confirm this. Try it for your shop.

Earlier this year I attended a seminar that explained the success secrets behind Primi, a South African restaurant that is famous for generating the highest profit per square foot in shopping malls. The outcome for me is that I now look at restaurants to spot all the things that people do right and wrong. Last night, my mother took a big family party out to a mid-market chain pizza restaurant and in our 45 minute wait after sitting down before our drinks were served we could see how a lack of basic organisation meant that the five waiters and three kitchen staff kept on hitting log jams. One of Primi rules is that all the waiting staff walk the whole restaurant all the time and look to serve people straight away - especially those on tables that other waiters have served. Last night, we could see three waiters pretending to be busy while two waiters were hopelessly overworked. This was presumably a result of a random allocation of tables as diners arrived. The manager at the end, apolo...

Some time ago my brother visited a shop which used a marketing product that my company then published called Magazine Guide, which helped independent retailers to promote their shops as destinations for magazine buyers. When he called me to tell me about it, he remarked that he almost missed it because the last thing he expected a local shop to do was to market to him. A little later that year I was in a chemist shop and it had a big stack of shampoo on a gondola end and what looked like a side of a cardboard box sitting behind it. Looking closer at the brown cardboard, the retailer had written details of his special offer on it in faint blue ballpoint pen. It was not easy to read and the overall impact it made was poor. As it was a Saturday morning, I took the time to walk to a multiple retailer four units down the high street to check its price for the shampoo. The local retailer was cheaper and ever since I have wondered why the sign was so poor when the deal was so good. There ...

Reading about how Jack Welch says he ran General Electric, the giant US conglomerate, offers a useful test for local retailers thinking about how to invest in their shops. "Our job is capital allocation - intellectual and financial," he said. "Smell, feel, touch, listen, then allocate. And make mistakes - but we're big enough to make mistakes." As a local retailer you need to manage your financial and personal assets. You need to think hard about new ideas. You need to take risks. But not life threatening ones. Swansea retailer Salaman Rasul says he made several attempts to move into fresh food over his 22 years operating a convenience store. Then a year ago he made a big investment in a chiller, spending £12,500, and it has worked. The chiller keeps the food fresher longer and encourages shoppers to buy his products.

Availability is a term used in the convenience industry to measure whether you have a product (or service) available for a shopper when they seek to purchase it in your shop. Good availability requires an investment of your money (to have the stock), your energy (to monitor stock levels and to match stock to the most common requirements of your shoppers) and your know-how (to stock the products that will make you the most money). In discussing availability with retailers recently I notice that many measured availability differently. They chose to remember the occasions when someone asked for something unusual and they got the product in-store for the customer. In other words, they believed that their advantage in availability was the ability to get stuff that big grocers would not. However, there is a danger that these retailers are missing out on an essential discipline. They pride themselves on fulfilling occasional requests but do not check that they are always stocking the top sell...

There is a problem with local retailers selling cigarettes to children in the UK and the law is framed so that the retailer has to verify the age of the person asking to purchase tobacco products. A rise in the age to 18 has helped reduce the problem but determined children still seem to be able to buy tobacco from some local shops. Sussex retailer Steve Denham is convinced that the reason why so many retailers are still caught making sales by trading standards officers is because they have not implemented simple management processes to ensure their staff challenge potential purchasers who do not look 18. Multiple retailers have introduced schemes like challenge 25, which perhaps tells us the low expectations they have of their staff. However, local retailers should be able to do better. Keeping within the law, both its spirit and letter, should be part of your value system. And values are not tradable. Good local businessess need to have robust processes. Even those retailers who do h...

Research by Ogilvy & Mather suggests that one in five shoppers buys on impulse and the way products are displayed triggers impulse purchases more than any other in-store activity. As manufacturers spend heavily on providing "theatre" to local shops, is there a danger that the shopper can no longer see the product because they have seen the dump bin creative execution in too many other places. Local retailers need to understand what works in their shops and harness this to grow their sales. Use the ideas of the major suppliers to inform and develop your product displays. The opportunity is there but remember that O&M also found that promotional pricing is the least effective way to trigger the impulse buy.

Wrigley's new expensive chewing gum has hit the UK and as it is summer holiday time I was in the company of a big group of teenagers yesterday who were all raving about the gum and its 97p price point. "The flavour really lasts longer," one teenager assured me as his pals looked on in agreement. Who am I to argue? In store last week, my five-year-old was looking for batteries for his torch and picked up a packet of gum suggesting these could be batteries. I mentioned this and the teenagers said the packaging was really cool. If you had asked me last week, the UK chewing gum market seemed pretty crowded before this launch. If you asked me today, I would say the manufacturer has found a niche. My advice to local shopkeepers is to support everything launched by a major manufacturer (provided it fits your store profile) as you have nothing to lose.

A US food researcher wrote recently that when it comes to snacks like crisps people are looking for the product to taste great and when they see that the product has a "better-for-you" positioning, they make the assumption that the taste will have been compromised. Good taste is mostly going to have priority over better-for-you when it comes to impulse purchases. However, this will not stop manufacturers from constantly trying to produce the better-for-you product that tastes great! If taste makes the shoppers happy, then you need to focus your efforts on providing the right products. This does not mean that you ignore the shopper looking for a better-for-you treat but it does mean that in providing for them you must not forget that the essential purpose of a snack is pleasure.

Michael Skapinker has done the hard work of looking at the thinking behind the Food Standards Agency report that finds "no good evidence" that eating organic food would benefit most people. The report is a summary of lots of scientific papers that weeds out the ones with poor science to find a consensus. The consensus is, at present, that there is no evidence to support the health claims of organic food. An issue for local shops is that advocates of organic food are not likely to be swayed by this study and they will still want to buy food they believe to be better for them. So you may still be stocking organic food and having to present it in a way that implies its potential health benefits. As a placebo can often help people feel better, who is to say that buying a nice looking carrot will not make your shopper feel better too! The FSA says that it is niether for nor against organic food and that it is a matter for consumer choice. The people who carried out the rese...

After a short visit to Wales, it is clear that the multiples are colonising where it matters - the sides of car parks in tourist towns. We have three examples of local shops that could do more to win business from tourists. At Montgomery, a town that has 35 of 50 retail units empty, we parked in the attractive high street and walked towards a cafe for a cup of tea. As we reached the door a bell on the town hall clock rang out. "We're closed, it's 4.30," the waitress said, with a smile. She really did look pleased to turn us away. At Trecastle, we stopped at a cafe which was recommended but claimed to be closed Mondays and Tuesdays. "You are open," we said, with delight. "In your ad it said you would be closed." We had a nice late lunch. The owner did not ask where we had seen the ad. Outside Welshpool, we stopped at a farm shop. It was expensive. There was some attractive looking honey. Underneath it said made in New Zealand. So did ...

"Far too many people are held back by their fear that they are not a born salesperson," says Deborah Meaden, the businessperson currently promoting her book on how to run a business. The fear of selling is the fear of being told No. It is the fear of having to push something unwonted on people. It is the fear that a No is a rejection of you. Meaden's solution is to say that if people are as passionate about what they do as they should be "it follows that they can't help but sell their dream to other people". What she recognises is that it is good to look at the "sale" from a different perspective so that what is important is not whether the person liked you or the product but whether they enjoyed the experience of the sale. People like to be asked for their custom because it gives them power, the power to say yes or no. Selling face-to-face requires you to have good knowledge of what you are selling, a belief in your product (or services) and the a...

Supermarket shoppers pay to look at 20 different lines but they only buy one, says Paul Foley, who heads Aldi in the UK. Unlike the big four grocers, his approach is to stock only one type of baked bean. By doing so he can deliver better quality at a lower price. Aldi delivers two benefits to its shoppers, says Foley. First, they save time as they do not have to select products from displays cluttered with brands they don't want. Second, they understand the value proposition and are not taken in by the "cheapest-on-display" measures used by his competitors. Thrifty shoppers from all income levels are visiting Aldi, he says. When the recession is over, they may stay. However, thrifty shoppers from all income levels have always been looking for a bargain. In the 1970s my mother ganged up with her friends and took it in turns to shop at the wholesale markets for fruit and vegetables, meat and fish. The bigger obstacle to the Aldi approach may be that it is impossible to get ...

Domino's takes 5.5% of sales from each franchised site and bills 5% of revenues for a national advertising fund (it also makes a margin on the foodstuffs it sells franchisees). In the pizza business, this works for Dominos and the franchisee. Domino's head office is constantly innovating because its target audience is constantly changing the way it buys food-to-go. For example, moving from phoning up to ordering on-line, which today accounts for 16% of sales and is growing fast. In the US, Dominos was initially successful because it worked out it was in the logistics business and what mattered was delivering pizzas precisely when you said you would. Today, it has to do more to stay ahead in food-to-go.

Some ideas borrowed from Dido Harding, who heads up Sainsbury's Local, the c-store chain. Before talking to an FT journalist she ordered the windows of the store she was visiting to be polished because she wanted them to look perfect. Looking perfect should be the starting point for all shops. With 280 outlets, she needs to support two propositions: one for the neighbourhood shopper and one for the city centre food-to-go shopper. Local shopkeepers will be in the catchment area for one or the other. Check out her stores to see what the differences are. Within the neighbourhood proposition, Dido has three options for upmarket, mid-market and "more challenged" shopper needs. How does this work? Fresh and chilled food at the top? Chicken wings at the bottom? I don't know but it is simply a case of knowing your customers and getting your offer right. And always polish your windows...

In thinking about how shoppers see your shop there are five areas where you control the dialogue: the prices that you charge; the quality of the products that you sell; the quality of the service you will provide; the depth of range and availability that you will provide; and the atmosphere of the shop. All are levers that an independent retailer can use to engage the loyalty of shoppers. In thinking about which are the most important for your shop, you need to think about who your key customers are; the 20% who generate 80% of the profits (note I say profits and not sales). What are they looking for and how do you match your offer to meet their interests? For example, if you have children buying trading cards, how do you make this a great buying experience for them? What other products with high margins will appeal to them? Would you put up a poster in store with a countdown to the launch of a new collection? Would you set up an in-store event so that children could swap cards w...

I was struck recently by two retailers who took part in the Academy in Action project, where executives from leading suppliers visit their stores to discuss what they have got right from the perspective of a shopper and what could be better. Inside both shops looked great, with good displays and ranges. The "shoppers" noted the commitment to customer service and warm welcome. However, the exteriors of both shops were poor: One had a torn canopy; the other a long-damaged fascia. Do shoppers notice? The answer is yes. Think about when you get a present. Think of the care that someone puts into wrapping the gift, personalising it for you. That takes time and effort and magnifies the value of the gift. Think about what it feels like if the gift is unwrapped! There is a simple remedy: walk across the street from your store, close your eyes, imagine you are a visitor, open your eyes and ask yourself would you cross the street to visit that shop.

The pound shop is back in fashion, with widespread media coverage of the success of Poundland, which may be an indicator of a return to thrift by the UK's shoppers. The ability of Poundland, run by c-store pioneer Jim McCarthy, to stock big brands at £1 - its top selling line is Nescafé coffee 100g - "provides a halo effect for the rest of the store". On the face of it, this seems to justify McCarthy's boast that his shop is about amazing value every day. But the shopper always decides what is value and what is not and the heart of pound shops is the ability to provide "useful stuff" like backscratchers, foot long shoe horns and feather dusters that no-one knows the price of. As the Guardian sums up, the shopper may not "actually, you know, need the stuff". The pound price point is having its hour but good retailers know value is a constantly shifting target. You have to keep your offer relevant and fresh and get the price right.