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The bar at Vanilla is "entirely done in eyeball-searing white". Hidden underneath an anonymous office block, the  trendy London meeting place is accessed via entryphone and subterranean staircase, like some illegal drinking den, the reviewer for the Independent newspaper noted. It was the perfect space for leading wholesaler Palmer & Harvey to launch its 30th Pro-retail exhibition, which takes place on April 24 and 25 this year and will include a dedicated future zone, showcasing upcoming trends for independent retailers. Seeing Vanilla was part of the attraction of coming to the event for Pindar Cheema, a Coventry retailer, who was wowed by the ideas showcased in an exclusive preview of the future zone. It gets you thinking about what shoppers are looking for, he says. Martyn Ward, commercial director of Palmer & Harvey, demonstrated how mobile technology might drive sales by inviting leading suppliers and retailers at the launch to take part in a simple text ...

Just three days before Christmas the Times published a spread under the headline: "Domination on the edge of town: crisis aids the march of the supermarkets". This weekend, the Financial Times said: "End of space race. Tesco change marks turning point for UK food retailing". The truth will be somewhere between the two stories. In December, experts were telling the Times that the scramble for grocery space would run and run. One reason for this was because local authorities in deprived areas believed the supermarket brands would create jobs (a claim disputed by the Association of Convenience Stores based on its analysis of supermarkets' own figures). Leading City retail analyst Dave McCarthy warned for most of 2011 that the supermarkets had got their sums wrong. While opening new space made sense for each group separately, the collective volume of space would cut like-for-like sales in both value and volume terms. Think of it this way. You have a shop with...

"How we interact at a local level is really important to us, and that's why we've launched these local Facebook pages," Stephen Quinn, chief marketing officer of Wal-Mart US, tells Fortune magazine. The full article http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/14/news/companies/walmart_stephen_quinn_leadership.fortune/index.htm  is well worth a read. Mr Quinn explains that retailing is fundamentally a local business. His marketing team has to work out how to build local communities around its 3,500 US stores. For local shopkeepers the challenge is clear. In 2012 you need to think about how you represent your shop on Facebook and similar social media and through the internet. As an exercise, go to Google and enter the word groceries and the name of your town or village. I did it for my village and One Stop came top. I did it for where I work and Sainsbury Local came top. "Our goal is to integrate into the things that are happening in a local commun...