nickshanagher

Walkers Max are promoting their grab bags with a 2 for £1 flash in corner shops and I wonder how many retailers have done the maths? My local Best-One is selling these singly at 55p and if he is buying from Bestway he is making a 16p net margin on every bag he sells. However, if he sells two bags together, he makes a net margin of 23p and his profit on return has fallen from 34% to 27.4%. On the Booker web site it lists both the price marked 2 for £1 and the standard 50g products. The recommended retail price for the promotional packs is 57p and for the standard pack is 54p. In the absence of any commentary about possible overriders that are available to local retailers, it does not seem to make much sense to take part in this promotion. Perhaps someone could let me know how it could?

Wow. Steve Jobs says that his new iPad device is "extraordinary" and if you take time to look at his launch presentation on the web you may agree. Will it kill the magazine and newspaper industry? Perhaps not but it will change it! For example, if you are on a journey, devices like this make it easy to watch a movie rather than flick through a magazine. Armed with an iPad are you going to read a book or watch You tube? I reckon the latter. News and views in magazines and papers are key footfall driver for many local shops. The iPad is yet another competitor for shoppers' time. The biggest issue for local retailers is if its launch takes away the attention of publishers on making sure they do a good job for shoppers who like buying news and views from your store.

I was lucky to attend this week's Retail Trust London Ball, which included the final of its Search for a Star talent contest open to everyone working in the UK retail sector, which may be as many as 3 million people. The top four were: Nicola, who won; Victoria; Leanne; and Louise. They were fantastic singers but nervous with it. Each arrived with a back story that demonstrated their willingness to put their hand up and take part and despite nerves to perform in front of a panel that includes pop stars Lis McClarnon and Antony Costa and in front of a gala dinner audience including retail stars such as Sir Phillip Green, Sir Stuart Rose and Theo Paphitis. What is great for the retail industry is that it is showing it is prepared to invest in its people and they are responding. The Search for a Star will run again in 2010 and the challenge for local shops is to see if they can encourage their staff to take part too! While there is a chance that you will lose a great member of staff t

Steve Fox, retail sales director at wholesaler Booker, has put down a marker for what he thinks is important for local shops to focus on in 2010. This week, just as City analysts were fretting over a higher than expected rise in retail prices, Booker has announced a deal to keep the price of bread and milk low until the end of September. "Bread and milk are the two most important products [for] convenience stores," says Mr Fox. "By guaranteeing the price to September, we are giving our customers the confidence that they will be able to offer their shoppers consistent pricing that helps them to compete with the multiples." Consistency is an important word. As a local retailer you need to be able to promise your shoppers that they will always find good value in your shop. As footfall driving categories, you need to have good prices on bread and milk to set the tone for your overall offer. The independent sector needs strong pricing support like this. Think about how e

For owners of independent local shops and operators of regional groups, the property benchmark provided by Christie + Co, the business agents, is a good barometer of their asset values, which are now some 16 per cent below the peak achieved in the last quarter of 2007. In presenting the figure, Chris Day, the company's managing director, suggested that the low point had now been reached. Demand for good retail sites remains strong, as is shown by the company's handling of the First Quench administration. It was retained to market 1,200 sites before Christmas and asked for best and final offers, of which it received more than 3,000. Head of retail Tony Evans reported last week that more than 650 sales had been agreed, mostly to independent operators. "The interest from the independent sector has been fantastic," Mr Evans said. The better sites attracted lots of offers, the best receiving more than 30. Looking into 2010, Mr Evans is optimistic about prospects for indepe

The FT headline spoke volumes in saying "Vouchers flatter Christmas at Tesco" as the UK's top supermarket chain was forced to come clean on the impact that issuing £100m of money-off vouchers to Clubcard members had on its growth. Taking away the £34m extra spend covered by vouchers, its like-for-like growth dropped to 4.1 per cent and behind that achieved by Sainsbury. One analyst told the FT, the fact that less than half of the extra vouchers were used looks disappointing to us. For local shops, the small print needs careful scrutiny. That £34m is money invested by Tesco itself in winning shoppers. It is on top of the extra promotional funds that it has secured from suppliers of big brands. It is on top of the margin it has squeezed out of many suppliers. (One service supplier I spoke to at Christmas said that he had to do 20% more work for Tesco last year to make the same money as the year before!) The PR war from the big supermarkets is being backed up with serio

In a recent issue of Retail Newsagent , Henllan shopkeeper Vanessa Griffiths said that she used the Morrisons and Waitrose web sites to compare their food prices so we can "prove to our customers that we're better value". Shoppers will be doing the same thing. Computing magazine estimates that 90 per cent of sales research will be done on line using either the internet or mobile phones and shoppers will "visit fewer web sites than they would stores if shopping on foot"! In the same article it says that most big retailers predict that on line sales will account for between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of total sales by 2013! (Argos, it says, is already 40% on line.) For local shops, this might be an opportunity as people make fewer trips to retail parks and because people may not go on line to buy goods that cost under £10! But as Vanessa Griffiths shows, it also means that your value is likely to come under increased scrutiny. Perhaps you should check out how yo

Arsene Wenger's views on management were shared by Real Business last year. Footballers up to the age of 20 get by on talent. Then motivation and intelligence become factors and it is the highly motivated players who do the best. "There are very few people - I would say two per cent of the population - who really push themselves," he says. "That's in the genes." Two percent may sound small but it is actually a lot of people. At Newtrade Publishing we are always looking for people who are highly self-motivated and my colleagues who have this attribute are the reason that we can offer good products and services to independent retailers. If you know what to look for, then you will find it. Mr Wenger says his job is to "identify players before they become a name". Local shops should aim to recruit for attitude too!

Earlier this week Sainsbury published some great sales results but chief executive Justin King was quick to add on a warning that "what is going to happen in 2010 is the reality that people feared in 2009". This is consistent with his comments we previously noted in September. What we don't know is why he is talking down the future - because he is planning for lower sales or because it will make his company's performance look better. On the balance of probabilities, it is likely that shoppers will have less money to spend and how they spend it will be important for local shops. For many shoppers, the problem with the big weekly shop is that they buy too much stuff and throw away food. The obvious solution to this is for the shopper to plan ahead and do a better shopping list and stick to it. The alternative is the local convenience store and top up shopping, which requires less planning by the shopper. If you believe you have a good opportunity to pick up sales from t

I spoke to some retailers last year about how worried they were about e-readers, such as Amazon's Kindle, and the impact it would have on their business. Most looked at me blankly. Software company Adobe has now developed AIR, which allows magazine publishers to sell their magazines on to devices like the iPhone. Condé Nast is reportedly going to offer its Wired magazine in the US in this format. At the same time, HP is offering US publishers the ability to print magazines on demand... Who will buy this? Probably your most loyal magazine shoppers, based on my sample size of one. Today, on my train into work, I bumped into a man using an e-reader. His company had invested in them so that staff could review reports. They don't work for that. But he now downloads novels and reads two a week on his reader. Previously, he was buying two a week from a bookshop. What can the owner of a local shop do? Find out who your most loyal magazine customers are and pamper them. Make

Morrisons has a slogan which goes that it is the "food specialist for everyone" and outgoing chief executive Mark Bolland last month told Management Today that every word counted. We're specialists, he said. Everyone is trained and then after three years, trained again. At his Wimbledon store, he took the MT reporter around to meet the experts. A fishmonger was sent away to find a fresh salmon, which was to be filleted in store. The baker said they made most of the 130 varieties of bread in store. His carrots all came from company farms. The neater ones were put in premium bags. The bigger ones in value packs. The broken ones were used as pig feed. "We're the most vertically intergrated of any supermarket," said Mr Bolland. It is what makes Morrisons different. It also does not make sense to the City analysts. It is also not an easy model to copy. Its nearest store to where I live is a long drive away so I know Morrisons only by reputation. What