nickshanagher

Recently there has been a lot of analysis of what makes some casual dining outlets successful while others fail. Convenience store operators - especially those with food-to-go - should pay attention. While these secrets may look simple, operationally simple things often turn out to be difficult to deliver. So don't scoff. Secret 1: Put plenty of cheese on a takeaway pizza as it retains heat well. Secret 2: Chinese and Indian meals take time to prepare and are not well designed for takeaway. Secret 3: Pizzas and burgers have ingredients that can be bulk bought and the average school leaver can be trained to make them. Secret 4: You need to reinvent the value of meals in the minds of consumers if you want to be successful. Secret 5: Sometimes you are not in the food business. For example, coffee shops may sell expensive coffee but they rent cheap meeting space.

A friend who worked for a large UK homewares retailer was saying that the company regularly kept a line of sofas on display priced at £1,000 for two months a year solely so they could sell the sofa at a sale price of £500 for the other 10 months. The twist to her story was describing what happened when a company-employed mystery shopper came in and enquired about the sofa when it was at the higher price point and was told by a member of staff that if they waited two weeks they may find that it was in the sale. Afterwards, the company criticised its team at the store for their behaviour, saying they should not have drawn the lower price available two weeks away to the "customer's" attention. On Tuesday, the banks in England agreed to stop charging holidaymakers who pay for foreign currency with their debit cards a 2.5 per cent fee for essentially using their own cash. Foreign currency providers also agreed to better market "0 per cent" deals that are n...

"Business is a fantastic technique for someone from a modest background, with minimal education, to improve their life and get ahead, says Luke Johnson in his book Start It Up. His publishers describe Johnson as “Britain’s busiest tycoon, with a personal fortune estimated at £120 million” and he believes in people with get up and go and that small business owners contribute a great deal to the UK economy. Start It Up, published by Portfolio Penguin, price £12.99, is aimed at inspiring and guiding budding entrepreneurs. How old are such entrepreneurs? Read the book and you realise Johnson has the 50 plus age group just as much in mind as people in their 20s. Independent shopkeepers will find this book useful for two reasons. You can compare your strengths and weaknesses with those described by Johnson. And you can learn about the people you do business with, what motivates them and what they may be thinking. It is organised into seven parts and each part is sub divided into short e...

There is a scene towards the end of the Hurt Locker where the hero (or antihero) is back home in the US from his job defusing bombs in Iraq and he is standing in a massive supermarket shed dwarfed by thousands of packs of cereal boxes and unable to make up his mind which one he wants to buy. The outcome, he goes back to work in Afghanistan risking his life solving tricky wiring problems. Perhaps sadly for me, I was more worried about the poor quality of the product display. It was obviously not a real store - there was no attempt at point of sale, no differentiation. Perhaps the hero could have used his decision making skills to inject a bit of order into the cereal display? However, some manufacturers may be there ahead of him. The FT says Unilever has cuts 40 per cent of its stock keeping units in the UK, armed with the view that 95 per cent of net revenues are generated by 60 per cent of SKUs. This statistical analysis from the Boston Consulting Group appears to be simi...

The final of three poaches from Vanessa Friedman's FT interview with Mickey Drexler, chief executive of J Crew, is on his views about brand values. His company is looking for a store in London because a store "really articulates what the brand is. It's an emotional, visual experience in a way a catalogue or website is not." How good is your store at making an emotional and visual connection with local shoppers? How much better than a web site are you? Remember, if you are selling a commodity, Tesco will win every time. Remember also that good customer service takes in the emotional and visual connection. Check how clean your floor is, how welcoming your door mat.

Vanessa Friedman of the FT says there were two reasons why Mickey Drexler helped clothes retailer J Crew to sales of $1.7billion in his eight years with the company (previously he took Gap from $400 million to $14 billion in 18 years). First, he saw the opportunity to raise the style quality and move to where there was a "lot of white space" between very cheap clothes and designer. Second, he "took a page from Brooks Brothers' book and it was a high margin, high profit page: you don't pay wholesale. Because if you pay wholesale you have two problems: one, discounters - you always have to drop your prices; and two, margin. Say something costs you $50 to make. You mark it up to $150 for wholesale. The retailers mark it up 2.2 or 2.3 times, which is standard. You can't undersell them, so you have to sell your sweater for $350. But if you are the only retailer, you sell it for $150." Two questions for local retailers: Where is the white space for you?...

"Wherever I go I always ask what the bestseller is," says Mickey Drexler, chief executive of J Crew, the US preppy clothes company he has headed since 2003. Meeting Vanessa Friedman, fashion editor of the FT, for lunch, Mr Drexler explains that when he dined at the Wolseley in London he asked and was told 1) wiener schnitzel and 2) cobb salad. He ate the second. For pizza, the answer is always Margherita and this was the case at Pulino's in New York where he dined with Ms Friedman. In ice cream it is always chocolate and vanilla. In cookies it is chocolate chip and then oatmeal raisin. "I tell this to my team when we go out together: you need the Margherita! People like consistency. Whether it's a store or a restaurant, they want to come in and see what you are famous for." J Crew's top sellers are: 1) the Jackie sweater, 2) the Café capri and for men the prewashed shirt. What is it you are famous for?

On-line retailing still requires great customer service, Nick Robertson, chief executive of ASOS, told retail employers at a Skillsmart Retail seminar this week. Set up before the rise of social media (Facebook and Twitter and YouTube), ASOS has expanded internationally on the back of customer demand. It had no plans to launch in Australia but has huge sales there because social media helped shoppers to find ASOS. A key measure of customer satisfaction for on-line businesses is to measure the number of shopper contacts to orders. For ASOS this trends between 25 per cent and 30 per cent (which means a shopper asks a question about every fourth sale). Heavy snow in the UK last year caused this to spike over 40 per cent. Distribution problems caused it to spike over 35 per cent. Customer contact is driven by email. The call centre will only call back if the first two emails fail to solve the problem. Most emails are questions about colours and sizes which are easi...

Get out and mingle, venture capitalist and FT columnist Luke Johnson advised business people in a column last month. While he targeted his remarks at people sat behind desks, they are equally valid for business leaders who stand behind a counter. Local retailers need to visit other shops and see what they are doing. In addition, they should attend trade shows and conferences to meet other people and share ideas and know-how. They should also think about going somewhere new to refresh their minds. With this idea in my head, I toured the Speciality and Fine Food Fair in London’s Olympia last month – now incorporating Chocolatefair. The organisers have already announced that more than 8,300 people visited the show, now in its 12th year, at which more than 550 businesses exhibited. While the fair is targeted at fine food outlets, there is plenty for local c-store operators to learn and the first thing is about selling. What is great about this show is that most of the stands are run ...

There are two things to learn from this fruit and vegetable display at Paul Cheema's Coventry, UK, local shop. The first is about benchmarking how shoppers use your store. The fruit and vegetable display is at the back of the shop. It looks fantastic. Every time I have visited it has looked fantastic. Paul says this is because fruit and vegetables were at the core of what his father sold when he originally opened the shop, that his father is good at displaying fresh produce and that he is proud of how good it looks. So what happens to the shopper who has strolled past the long aisle of fresh meat and dairy and then they come across the fruit and vegetable display and decide to buy? They can because the Cheemas have left them some baskets to use. They happily shop and go to the tillpoints to pay. However, the trick is that the baskets are unique to this point in the store. They are the only ones of this size. So every week the Cheemas get to work out how many shoppers were tem...

Mark Twain once said that "the best kind of experience is other people's". He was right, says Pino Tedesco, a business leader from Australia and one of 60 to contribute to a book just issued in the UK. One of Mr Tedesco's success secrets is to rent a hero. When times are hard, seek advice and ask yourself what would my hero do? If problems look too difficult to solve, ask yourself what Steve Jobs would do. Or Nelson Mandela. Another contributor, Jon Clarke, who runs 360 Business Marketing, a UK company, says: "Succeed by being remarkable and ignore the doom merchants". He advises businesses to "go where the customers are: the places where they source products or solutions to problems." Next to this, I scrawled in big letters: HOW? If you are a local shop, you cannot pick up your shop and move it to where the customers are. But the question is still relevant. If your shoppers are shopping somewhere else, you need to go there and find out what ...

The Newsagents Federation is calling for the newspaper and magazine industry to be referred to the Competition Commission and will be heartened by the views expressed by Baroness Kingsmill, a former deputy chair of the Commission, in the latest issue of Management Today. "All markets require regulation," she writes. "Market forces are red in tooth and claw and, unregulated, will lead to the survival of the fittest monopolist." Regulators usually restrict their findings to considerations of pure consumer benefits, which are "thought to be synonymous with the public interest". However, Lady Kingsmill argues that there are clear distinctions to the interests of consumers and of citizens. She also says that regulators had fettered themselves. Under the Fair Trading Act 1973 they could have been taking into account criteria such as the distribution of employment and enterprise around the UK - or environmental issues. In more than 20 cases she took part in t...

Half of all fish caught in the North Sea are thrown back overboard DEAD it says on the front page of celebrity chef’s Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s campaign website to change European laws governing this industry. After a visit to one of his restaurants last year when I left my email address I was invited to sign up as a supporter last year. Now more that 755,000 people have. I did so without having to think hard because I had seen his Chicken Out campaign in 2008 and agreed with its objectives. This campaign has changed the way that people shop, Mr Fearnley Whittingstall claims. I believe he is correct and all c-store operators who stock any chicken – or fish – need to be aware of the provenance of the food they sell. You may disagree. I have visited some great shops where people aspire only to cheap extruded snacks and cheap beer. But as a c-store retailer you need to understand your market positioning: what your shop stands for and what it does not. If you agree with this then...

The City analysts cannot make up their minds as to whether the supermarkets' investment in convenience stores is a good thing or not. The FT in a Monday analysis piece suggests that "Grocers count cost of smaller outlets". It is a clever headline. Obviously they are managing their costs. But also they are measuring the impact on their bottom line. There are several issues. If you sell 399 chicken dinners and have one left over, the cost model is very different from a shop where you sell nine chicken dinners and have one left over. If your 60,000 square foot hypermarket is sited where land is cheap and rates low, the cost of storing those dinners will be cheaper  than in a 3,000 square foot store in a city centre. How do the grocers try to manage the costs: 1. By clustering c-stores close together so you only need one truck to do deliveries 2. By tailoring what the stores offer to local demand and getting the stock levels correct 3. By trying to persuade shoppe...

The job of retail analysts is to advise investors on where to place their money and their views underpin much of the media coverage of the retail sector. In the wake of the latest Asda income tracker figures that show disposable incomes falling by 6 per cent in July, Dave McCarthy of Evolution Securities said that a tough era lies ahead for the UK food retailers, "for which the industry is not well prepared". In the UK, retailers have benefited from like-for-like sales growth which has driven the way that companies have funded their business models. Many stores are taking less cash than a year ago and facing real increases in costs, says Mr McCarthy. The result is a profits squeeze. The managers of Tesco, Sainsbury, Morrisons and Asda have benefited from two dynamics for a long time. In the past two decades, one has always been underperforming. As they are all doing the same, suppliers will find less need to pay to shift their sales around an "undifferentiated pack...

This photograph from Malcolms Stores, a Costcutter shop in Tile Hill, Coventry, shows how strong a soft drinks display can be - complete with meal deals covering breakfast and lunch. Enjoy the attention to detail and the adjacencies.

Originally published in May but given to me in a free taster issue handed out last week, the Economist has formed the view that supermarket-bashing is "elitist and muddle-headed". Its target is the Tesco bashing where the opening of a new outlet coincides with the closure of local shops. The political response from David Cameron and Ed Miliband was to "bring back the bustle to our high streets" and "people think the character of their local high street is being changed and they have no power against big corporations" respectively. What will happen? Nothing suggests the Economist, pointing out that the Competition Commission found in 2008 that the grocery market represented a good deal for consumers. The business magazine goes on to question how new the problem is, pointing to research from Surrey and Exeter universities that shows that as far back as 1939 chain stores and co-ops controlled half the market (up to two thirds today). And it shows that...

McDonald's is the best fast food operator in the world, details published in the September 5 issue of Fortune show. As part of a feature on chief executive Jim Skinner, the US business magazine lists the annual sales per store achieved by 10 leading fast food companies. The list is: McDonald's       $2.4m Applebee's        $2.3m Wendy's            $1.4m Taco Bell           $1.2m Burger King      $1.2m KFC                 $1.1m Starbucks          $800k Pizza Hut           $700k Dunkin' Donuts  $600k Subway             $400k These figures...

'We don't have it in stock but I can order it for you!' The words that are the death knell for small bookshops, according to Harry Mount, writing in the FT. He points out that thanks to Amazon he can order it himself and the book will be delivered straight to his door. Mr Mount's article is entitled: Shed no tears for the death of the old bookshop. He is confident that book shops may survive but only if they get the emotional pitch correct. They need to provide a quiet yet communal atmosphere in which shoppers can sift through ideas. It all sounds a bit fancy but the magazine retailer has something to learn. What Mr Mount describes is the commoditisation of buying books. In my local bookshop, when I ask for a book that they don't have, they suggest that they can order it for me. That means I must remember to come back. It also means if their wholesaler is out-of-stock then there will be more delays. I have never said yes. But what might make me say yes? This w...

I was sent this photograph of a display at Caltex, an Australian c-store chain, by him!, the UK shopping insights company. What him! wanted to draw to people's attention was the idea of including a healthier option in food-to-go. What I think UK retailers will like is the way the meal occasion is presented - grouping products together to meet a shoppers need state. I know many retailers think they have this cracked but once you see it done really well - and many UK shopkeepers are doing it better than as shown here - you realise most people are just playing lip service to the concept. More importantly, the same applies to presenting food for later - quick meal solutions next to drinks and desserts.

The Sun's execellent City page, otherwise known as the "page you can trust", unveiled the High Noon headline this week after some stinking results posted by the Co-op. It quoted Peter Marks, its chief executive, as having said that people were cutting back on food for the first time in his working life. "Co-op profits dive triggers panic," suggested the Sun. But so too did the resignation of Steve Jobs, Heineken's announcement of sales falls in the first half of its current financial year, and any number of other corporate events. In a sense the Co-op's pain should be welcome as it confirms the story that the Kantar Worldpanel sales estimates have been telling us every month - the Co-op is losing market share. Local shopkeepers collectively are doing better than the Co-op, which means its 3.6 per cent like-for-like fall in sales (at a time when grocery inflation is nearly 5 per cent) should be your bottom end benchmark. Our village is served by a Co-...

There is a well known rule of retailing that the longer you get people to spend in your shop the more they will buy. One of the reasons that supermarkets put fruit and vegetables up front is because it slows people down, ensuring that they reach the more profitable central aisles packed with processed foods in a better state of mind to browse and buy more. Tesco's announcement that it was testing free wi-fi in store was being trumpted by its marketing machine as a way to help shoppers price compare using the phones. However, it might also help fill their shops with students and school children who cannot afford to surf the internet on their pay-as-you-go mobile phones. As many local retailers know, there is a fine line to keeping shoppers in store longer so that they spend more and in having people killing time blocking your floor space. Magazine browsers in particular get a bad press. However, it is still an area to watch. If it works, you may have to respond in kind.

Analysis of Fresh and Easy - Tesco's loss making foray into the US grocery market - is a great place for local shopkeepers to go in terms of understanding what Tesco believes makes local shops tick. Interviewed this summer, Tim Mason, chief executive of Fresh and Easy, told the FT that shoppers were telling him that you're certainly easy but you don't seem to be that fresh. His response is to rejig how the stock is displayed. Flowers are moving to the entrance. The freed space will be filled with in-store bakery products. Fresh coffee to take away will be added. In areas of strength, such as fruit and vegetables, more needs to be made of the products in store. Health and beauty will get less space and own-label food more. What to learn? First, that despite all its know-how and the research it put into the launch of Fresh & Easy, Tesco made lots of mistakes. In an attempt to keep costs down, it failed to sell its Fresh message. As many independent retailers know, g...

Earlier this month, the FT profiled Moni Varma, founder of Veetee Rice, for its entrepreneur column. As an immigrant from Malawi, Mr Varma's journey to success in the UK will have obvious resonance for many south Asian shop owners. Mr Varma has built a public profile on the back of a successful track record as a supplier to the multiple supermarkets and more recently through developing his own brand Dine In range. Late last year he joined the chairman of Asda in signing a letter to the Daily Telegraph supporting the government's "cuts" to public spending ("cuts" is in inverted commas because total spending is still going up, just more slowly than previously planned). Interviewed by Jon Snow of Channel Four, he said his optimism in creating new jobs and investing in the Dine In range was fuelled by the downturn because people were going to be eating in more frequently. Mr Snow challenged Mr Varma's view that the private sector could kick start the e...

In a business diary column in the FT, Laura Tenison, head of the 40 outlet strong JoJo Mamn Bébé children's and maternity clothing company, offers two thoughts that will be resonant for local store owners. First, on the subject of competing with the supermarkets (niche businesses have to, too!). "Sometimes I get emails asking why we don't put Disney characters on our sleepsuits. Yes, they might sell. But what would be the difference between us and the supermarket? If you are a niche business...you have to think long term." Second, on the subject of bank finance. "In July 2008, the world changed. We had planned to open eight stores that year, but managed only two because the banks refused to extend our working capital facility, even though our gearing was extremely low for a growing retailer." A great many company owners understand this second point. Banks are only really happy to lend you money when you don't need to borrow. The moment you need to ...

While there is lots of turmoil in the grocery market, local shopkeepers can be optimistic that the billions spent by the big four on new shops is not taking sales from them. On the other hand, trading remains tough and will continue so for some time. Data collected by industry observers like Kantar Worldpanel and AC Nielsen is released monthly and provides a useful benchmark for local store owners. But you have to keep watching the numbers as they are not as dramatic as you may think. The big message from the Kantar team is that grocery inflation is running at 5.2 per cent but sales are only up by 3.8 per cent. While the big winners in its August analysis are the discounters - Aldi and Lidl - it estimates the sales rise at symbols and independents is 13.4 per cent across the 12 weeks to 7 August. However, if you average the market share positions for 13 Kantar reports to smooth out seasonal fluctuations, you find that Asda has lost 0.3 per cent market share and Sainsbury...

On a visit to the Midlands and mid Wales last week I stopped in on a number of local shops ranging from the very good to the OK. What was interesting was to contrast the expectations that are created by a good high street location. In both towns in Wales the architecture of the shops to the streets was great. The windows of some were great. But the investment stopped at the front door. In one shop, a newsagent, they had a fantastic display at eye level when you walked in and on it was displayed some magazines that I cannot recall. The shop had a really interesting layout that created a lot of shelf space and three aisles at an angle in around 500 square feet of floor space. But there was no spark. The Spar shop around the corner was OK. An alternative shop selling healthy foods looked interesting but very dark. The same three shops also appeared in another town, with similar results. Except in this case, the Spar, run by Tates, had very high spec lighting on its vegetables and goo...

It is shocking to see pictures of retailers being attacked and their staff being barricaded into their shops for their own safety. The only comment I can make is one of sympathy with those who find themselves in the path of these yobs. Rav Garcha tweeted the following comment very late last night; "Please all if u have a business stay away do not get involved. We were hit 4 times while we were in repairing damage." There is not much I can add to that comment at this time. Keep safe. This insane behaviour must end soon.

Like arch-rival Unilever the previous week, Procter & Gamble told investors that consumers had accepted the range of price increases that it had introduced because of the rising costs of raw materials. In summary, its results for the fourth quarter included 8 per cent sales growth of which 3 per cent was from price rises. In a conference call to chief executive Bob McDonald, one analyst asked about how the company might respond to a low single digit growth environment in developed countries [like the UK]. He said they had two strategies. One was to keep on investing in research and development and to develop new categories. The other, if no growth was possible, was to keep its costs under control so that it hit its profit targets. What is clear is only two areas are not under threat of spending cuts - research and development, and advertising. One of Mr McDonald's concerns is if competitors do not raise prices. They were watching markets closely to see if they had to resp...

While hacking may have put Rupert Murdoch into an unpleasant spotlight last month, the analysis of the direction of his business empire offers some uncomfortable truths for independent retailers who sell newspapers - which is most local shop owners in the grocery market. Mr Murdoch has been very successful and retailers need to acknowledge that over the past 40 years he has made them a lot of money, particularly in the UK, through his investment in and vision for national newspapers. A chart in the FT provided an interesting commentary on the development of Mr Murdoch's company. In 1980, newspapers and magazines accounted for 90 per cent of his revenues. In 1990, they accounted for 71 per cent. In 2000, they accounted for 45 per cent. In 2010, 11 per cent. In part, the decline is explained by the expansion of his companies into broadcast TV, cable networks and films. In 1990 they were worth 1 per cent, 0 per cent and 8 per cent of his business respectively. In 2000, they were w...

In February this year two UBS economists argued that food might become a political issue in the first world as commodity prices put pressure on household budgets and the UK at that time seemed to them to be the country most at risk. Shoppers, they argued, based their understanding of inflation on the increases in high frequency purchases and their model suggested that prices of processed foods in the UK were rising 2.5% higher than they should be compared to the US, France and Germany. This might focus the attention of politicians. Six months later, the food industry seems to have been let off by the energy industry - with rises in petrol, gas and electricity prices making the headlines. However, the impact of the squeeze on consumer purchasing power is still being watched carefully. In comments to the FT this summer, Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, said his company needed to be very close to the consumer and needed to offer them more choice at different price points ...

Last Friday I visited my local Aldi for the first time and it was a dispiriting experience. Wide aisles, half empty shelves, a scattering of customers, few staff, and bizarre space planning. This is not the future of retailing. Most of the shoppers there were seeking to buy as much protein as possible for the smallest possible price. Earlier, I had visited BUYology, which occupied a former DIY shed near the centre of Reading. There were plenty of bargains, including multipacks of Walkers crisps for 35p - all marked OOD or out of date. "Zoom in on microscopic prices," it says. In the City pages of the FT there is much admiration for Poundland, which with 347 UK stores, almost one for every day of the year, is now planning to open six Dealz shops in Ireland - avoiding the Euroland name that the FT had taken a shine to! "But," it warns " the company is also losing its fixed price promise, and with that goes some of the simplicity that helps to bring the punt...

When disruption to the newspaper market caused by the closure of the News of the World was making headlines last week, a few managing directors were saying to me that we should all be worrying about the financial crisis gripping the Eurozone. They may have a point but they are wrong if they think that the closure of the NotW is not an important moment for local shops. Newspapers are a major footfall driver for independent shops. Whether it is customers that you deliver to or ones who come to your shop, you need to hold on to them. It is obvious why retaining customers is so important. But shopkeepers also need to note that most are likely to have less money to spend that they did a year ago. The Asda income tracker shows the average family has £9 a week less money to spend than it did a year ago.  What is causing this? Higher taxes and higher energy prices. How long will disposable incomes fall? For at least another year, most analysts say. "The outlook for the UK remains po...

There are many sources of grocery market data compiled in different ways. Kantar Worldpanel uses till roll receipts from 25,000 households, chosen to reflect the demographic make up of the UK. It also measures the prices of 75,000 products to form a view of grocery inflation. It publishes numbers every month and the latest figures for the 12 week to 10 July show that the market is picking up - which contrasts with many market views. However, it also says that grocery inflation has risen, from 4.6 per cent to 4.8 per cent. It now says it is likely this will reach 5 per cent this year. A month ago, it was not of this opinion. The reason for this change of view is that a small number of categories are seeing very high price rises. "This is putting extra pressure on shoppers' budgets," it says. "We expect the market to slow in the coming months." Kantar Worldpanel points out that Aldi and Lidl are growing and Waitrose is growing. The growth, it says, is coming...

On 20 June Paul Cheema told me how sales were: two good weeks, one OK week and one bad week. On Monday this week, Dalton Philips, chief executive of Morrisons, briefed journalists that this was a national trend, with grocery shopping being pushed towards the beginning of the month. What is Morrisions doing? It is concentrating its marketing on the period between the 27th of the month and the end of the month. What is Morrisons seeing? Big sales in week one and lower sales in weeks two, three and four. Shoppers are fillng their pantries and then trying to last the month. Mr Philips said the trend was evident everywhere outside London. The average household budget is £100 lighter each month due to higher VAT, fuel and other utility costs. Shoppers are looking for value Local shops need to watch for two things. One, the timing of supplier promotions. Two, if shoppers are going once a month to the superstore, can they win them for more top up purchases. Think about your buying patt...

When we received the press release from James Murdoch's corporte affairs team my first thought was that it must be a hoax - the News of the World is to close after Sunday. What will replace it? Something must. We shall see. However it is worthwhile recording some of James Murdoch's words: "When I tell people why I am proud to be part of News Corporation, I say that our commitment to journalism and a free press is one of the things that sets us apart." "The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself." "The News of the World is 168 years old...it is read by more people than any other English language newspaper...it has a proud history of fighting crime, exposing wrong-doing and regularly setting the news agenda for the nation." I don't know James Murdoch and I did not hear him speak these words but they are fine words and add to the dramatic intesity of this moment. Printed ne...

I was asked by Emma Spencer to draw retailers attention to the Newsagents' Helper page on Facebook and I am happy to do so. The page is open to UK news retailers and is strong on humour and sharing frustrations about the behaviour of shoppers and the failings of suppliers. Amid the general chatter there are some very strong items about issues, such as a post about how an epos system was sold or a post about a spate of armed robberies. What I like are the posts about when something great happens, such as when a customer switches his Saturday newspaper order to the i but insists on being charged what he was charged before because he does not want the retailer to lose out. Where I think retailers have to be careful is when they blog about frustrations. There is a danger that you can fall into the trap of sharing your frustrations on line and projecting a negative world view. While it may be frustrating that your shoppers go to Tesco, it is also a fact of life. The solution is to...

Barry Gardiner MP turned out to support his constituent Mahendra Jadeja at a north London business seminar this week and told retailers they were on the right track. "To get the nation going again we need business to talk to business," he said. "Think, create and innovate is the model for business. Think what your offer is, produce it and work to that pattern. "Never think you have got the model. Constantly refine. The product that you were proud to present yesterday and last year should not be today's. Today's has to be better." This is all good stuff but it is what you want to hear from a consultant and not from your MP. What you need your MP to do is listen. Instead Mr Gardiner rushed off and missed the next speaker, from Philip Morris, who spelled out the regulatory risks threatening local shopkeepers. Interestingly, Eoin Dardis started off by accepting that regulation was appropriate. "tobacco is a dangerous, addictive substance that need...

Walmart will be playing catch-up to the lifestyle dynamics of today and tomorrow, versus creating them, Jimmy Wright, a former senior executive, told the FT this week. After two years of falling sales, the paper ran a feature questioning if the era of the superstore was coming to an end. Its US stores have reached their potential. Shoppers are buying smaller quantities and expect promotions. The price of petrol means shoppers don't want to drive so far. Smaller stores in more accessible locations are winning sales. The story should be familiar to UK local shop owners. Flipped around, the story is one of opportunity for independent shops, especially those working in partnership with switched-on wholesale suppliers. But the real significance of the FT story is that in the board rooms of major packaged goods companies they will be reading that the day of big box retailers may be drawing to a close. They will be reviewing their strategies and hopefully working out how they c...

The backdrop to my visit to Paul Cheema and his family at their Costcutter in Coventry last week was a deathly drumbeat from the supermarkets as weak trading conditions continued for another month. "How are you finding things," Paul asked me. I said that during January and February, retailers had been saying sales were very tough. during March and April, independents had been more positive. While the Cheema family is achieving sales growth he advised that the pattern was good week, good week, OK week, very bad week. What he is finding is that shoppers are running out of money, which is why week four is so quiet. While I was at his shop, trading was brisk. What are the supermarkets saying? "I have been doing groceries for 28 years now...and this is the toughest it has ever been for consumers," says Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury. "If you look forward...we see this persisting for the rest of the year." His like-for-like sales in the first qu...

Jeff Pearce was just about to pull the steel shutters down at the front of his store when he noticed a young girl sitting on the ground with a blanket around her shoulders. It was 24 December and cold and Jeff was looking forward to two days off with his family before the sale started at 9am on 27 December. "Are you all right," he asked her. "I'll be all right if you've got a black pair of size 10, leather pants for just £1," she said. Jeff's first thought was that the Liverpool Echo had printed the wrong date for the start of his sale. His small shop in Church Street was doing OK and Jeff thought it could do better, hence the £1 leather pants offer. As an independent retailer, he was experimenting with marketing. He could not believe this girl was planning to spend two days camped outside his shop. He suggested that she could go home. She declined. Later that night, after talking with his family, he decided to drive by to see if she was still t...

Walking towards Kings Cross station last Friday evening, I decided to buy a lottery ticket as part of my Plan Z for improving my life. The c-store was inviting, with no door, clear windows and a clear landing strip to the counter. Two people were behind the counter, one standing by the lottery machine and another by the till. Neither looked at me. I stood at the counter and they continued to ignore me. I pulled out two pound coins and put them on the counter. They continued to ignore me. I waited for what felt like a minute but was probably only 10 to 15 seconds and then picked up the money and left the shop. One called "Sir" as I recrossed the threshold to the street. What went wrong? As they are immediately next door to at least three c-stores of similar standard, it cannot be that they have too much business. Perhaps they each thought that the other staff member would serve me. I reckoned that I would pass another Camelot outlet on my journey home. The lottery as com...

Read through Sainsbury's annual report and you can find some good statistics to use in checking how your shop or shops is/are doing. One figure I like is measuring sales per square foot. For Sainsbury in 2010/11 it was £20.04 (including VAT, for which is has made adjustments). If you have a 400 square foot shop, then you would need to be selling just more than £8,000 a week to match them. A thousand square feet and it is just more than £20,000. But Sainsbury also publishes its figures for the past five years that show it has moved from £19.30 up to a peak of £20.42 in 2009/10. Meaning its sales fell by 1.9 per cent in the latest year but are up by 5.8 per cent across five years. But remember, this is an average across 934 outlets in the latest year and 788 five years ago so its best shops will be doing much better. And its worst...perhaps they will be on the market? At the same time its sales area has risen by 21.6 per cent to just more than 19.1 million square feet. Obviou...

IGD senior business analyst David Shukri has struck a warm note in his latest briefing on the conveninence industry as regards the performance of independent shops. Combing through the data, which is widely used by major packaged goods companies in planning their route to market in the UK, Mr Shukri observes that average sales per store increased across all segments of conveninence in 2010 "showing that those who remain...are becoming more efficient and effective operators." For the first time, the non-affiilated retail sector gets a warm review, with the IGD noting that is still accounts for 20 per cent of sales (more than the multiples). However the stars are the symbol group operators, with sales up 9.2 per cent in the past year, which highlights "how compelling their offer is, both for unaffiliated independent retailers and the shoppers they serve." The impact of Waitrose and Morrisions will be a further emphasis on fresh food, suggests Mr Shukri. Overal...

Some back of a fag packet analysis of the IGD's latest sales figures suggest that the average symbol group shop operating in the UK will turnover £14,862 a week this year, up 6 per cent. For the average non-affiliated independent shop the turnover is expected to rise 2 per cent to £6,454. Combining the two estimates gives you a proxy for the average independent local store of £10,213, up 5.9 per cent. The IGD estimates show that both forecourts and co-operative outlets are losing market share in the £32.4 billion market. While multiples are increasing share by 8.1 per cent, symbol groups still top the chart with 9.2 per cent growth. The independent sector grew sales by £953 million - in cash terms two-and-a-half times more than the c-stores owned by multiple grocers.

It is a tricky business to keep on top of what the numbers of stores belonging to each symbol group mean. At one level, it could mean that head offices are able to negotiate better deals because they have more shops taking part in promotions. At another, it could mean that more local retailers are choosing one group over another as it is delivering more to their bottom lines. It could be fashion. It could be an exercise in badging for vanity. However, now that the IGD has updated its annual figures, Booker's Premier symbol group has overtaken Spar UK to top the chart with a 15.9 per cent of outlet numbers versus 15.7 per cent. Bestway takes third spot with a Best-one/Best-in share of 13.8 per cent, followed by Lifestyle from Landmark at 12.9 per cent. Londis has dropped to an 11.0 per cent share and Costcutter to a 9.5 per cent share. Mace has grown to a 5.3 per cent share and Nisa to a 4.8 per cent share. Overall, there are 16,288 symbol group stores, up 2.9 per cent on the ...