nickshanagher

People jump to conclusions often with little evidence to back up their decisions, Daniel Kahneman observes in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. “For some of our most important beliefs we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs,” he writes. Independent retailers must bear this in mind as they read national newspapers. Expect to see all sorts of self-interested story-telling dressed up as truth. Some of this will damage your business. For example, discount retailers are now in fashion. “The more consumers are led to focus on price, the more we benefit,” Roman Heini, joint managing director of Aldi UK told the FT this week. Is it true? I don’t know. You have to make your mind up. Worse. Greens newsagents in the heart of Mayfair has shut its doors. After nearly 20 years of buying his newspapers and magazines there, Tyler Br û lé, the FT’s Fast Lane columnist was forced to shop elsewhere. “This small drama on Marylebone High Street repre...

Abstract: Thoughts on how to influence independent convenience retailers, a disparate audience that is becoming increasingly important for FMCG manufacturers. Combined they are as significant in size as a major multiple, but a tailored approach is needed to reach them as individuals.   Independent convenience stores have a 13% share of the UK grocery market, says the Institute of Grocery Distribution. Sales will rise from £22.2 billion today to £29.4 billion in 2019 at a much faster rate than the grocery market as a whole.   The growth story is driven by changes in how UK shoppers behave and also by the better store standards achieved by most independent retailers. The challenge for FMCG marketers is how to effectively be a part of this growth story. There is so much variability in the way that these shopkeepers operate. They are promiscuous buyers prone to chasing the best price available and from a wide range of suppliers. Even the many distributors, who...

  The US edition of Setting the Table , Danny Meyer’s inspiring guide to success as an independent restaurateur, has a brilliant blue cover with a single saltshaker. The edition I bought does not and that is the only weakness with this useful guide to setting up your first shop, moving from one to two, from two to four, and from four to infinity. The saltshaker is relevant because it is attached to a brilliant story about leadership from Meyer’s early days in the mid-1980s when he had opened his first restaurant and was developing his business style. Pat Cetta, an experienced restaurateur who informally mentored Meyer asked him to clear a table of everything except a saltshaker. He asked: “Where is the saltshaker now”. “Right where you told me in the centre of the table.” “Are you sure it’s where you want it?” I looked closely. The shaker was actually about a quarter of an inch off centre. “Go ahead put it where you really want it.” I moved it very slightly...

The value of UK c-store businesses are near the bottom as a five year pattern of decline looks to have slowed, leading business agent Christie + Co said this week. In its 2013 business outlook, the company said that an 0.9 per cent fall in average sale prices in 2012 compares to the previous year bucked the trend compared to hotels, pubs and restaurants, where it also has a leading market position. Steve Rodell, the director who heads its retail team, suggested reasons for optimism even though the market remains polarised. Both the major supermarket companies and the co-ops are competing strongly for good c-store sites, particularly with petrol attached, and these businesses are getting good prices. Again the south east is strongest but Christie's teams make a good case to look at the profit potential in suburban Manchester, for example. The business outlook report tends to reflect current thinking about the market overall rather than lead thinking but this year Chr...

As you can see from this photograph of PR girl Suzi Price standing in front of the doors, the new fridge freezer (the rooms behind her) at Palmer and Harvey's new Hemel Hempstead distribution depot is very large. Along with a team of trade journalists, I visited the newly refurbished depot last week after a £6.5 million fit out. Julian Streeter, managing director of operations for P&H, explained that this depot was an investment in capacity for growth. Its two depots serving London and the south east of England were reaching capacity. The Hemel Hempstead location to the north west of London was a great fit with his existing network of 14 sites around the UK. Between them they make 48,000 deliveries a week to everyone from Tesco to the local independent c-store. What may concern independent operators in the south east is that Mr Streeter, pictured here in front of the ambient storage in the 168,000 sq ft depot, says that growth in the south east is being led by the multi...

Analysts from ING helped to push the share price of Tesco down 1 per cent on 4 July by suggesting that it has its strategy wrong. Their prognosis is not new. For a couple of years, various analysts have said that Tesco needs to start a price war. What are they looking at? At a price gap between Asda and Tesco, which they say is widening. "We feel that deeper price cuts are the only way to prevent Tesco customers from switching to Asda," ING says. "Ultimately, lower prices should lead to higher volumes, higher sales and higher profits, which in turn can be reinvested in lower prices." ING says that if Tesco continues on its current track it will be unable to convince "Tesco-tired customers" to come back to the store. The analysis is like the rain-laden clouds that have soaked Britain all this summer. It is a known unknown that makes business planning difficult. What investment decisions should a local retailer make? What should your wholesale suppli...

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.

The Institute of Grocery Distribution collaborates with William Reed, the publisher of the Grocer, to count how many shops there are in the UK grocery channel each year. It is an excellent project hampered by a consistent bias against the independent retailer. This year's figures, exclusively published through the Grocer last week, show that the numbers of independent shops in the convenience channel dropped from 35,620 to 35,430 last year, a fall of 0.5 per cent. Within their number, the number of independent shops that chose to be part of a symbol group rose by 3.6 per cent to 15,287 and the number of unaffiliated shops fell by 3.4 per cent to 20,143. The Grocer chooses to describe this as "terminal decline" and says the multiples' growth comes at "the expense of the independents". Of course, writing a couple of hundred words to summarise a market of just under 42,000 outlets means trends have to be sketched with a broad brush. Unfortunately, this us...

“Independents do it better. George likes retail mavericks, the places where the visionaries are still at the wheel”, writes Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy in praise of Retail Superstars, a book from US retail guru George Whalin. Not published in the UK, it took me six months to get Penguin to send me a review copy and it was worth it. If you are an independent retailer who wants to make your business more successful then Retail Superstars is a must read and easy to purchase on Amazon. This is not because the “25 Best Independent Stores in America” are like your shop. It is not because you will find some quick wins to use in your shop. It is not because you will find some secrets that you did not know. On the surface, some of these US shops are just too big. Jungle Jim’s is a 300,000 square foot independent grocers with 150,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) of fresh and packaged foods. Gallery Furniture spends $10 million a year on television advertising. Art Electronics is in ...

"Is it unreasonable to expect the shopkeeper to get off his phone and acknowledge me rather than just stick his hand out for the money?" tweeted the friend of a friend. My friend passed the message on to me, observing: "I saw this tweet today by one of my friends and I thought you might be interested in it. Independents pride themselves on their service, but the experience my friend had below is a common one (certainly in my experience) and not something that happens in the multiples..." There is a mix of good news and bad. The good news is that my friends clearly have high expectations of independent retailers. The bad news is that for shopkeepers who live in their shops, balancing work and phone calls is tricky. Do you have a policy of never serving while on the telephone? Do you stick to it? The place to start is to stand on the other side of the counter and ask yourself as a shopper, what value is being added by the shopkeeper? If there is ample choice o...

It must have been four months since this window was broken in the Tesco Express on Pentonville Road and I simply cannot believe that it has not been fixed. This is the sort of lack of focus that independent shops usually get criticised for. The only purpose in sharing this image is to encourage those independents with high standards who are finding the going tough that they can do better than this.

As industry data appears to show that local shops in the UK are resisting the expansion of the multiple grocers, a possible reason for their success may be contained in an analysis of the problems big banks face written by FT writer Tony Jackson. "Most economic activities work best if people on the ground are free to make decisions," he says. In the world of banks, decision making has been centralised, he argues. As training local people is expensive, the banks prefer to build mathematical models of the world that they can control from the centre. This is why they prefer to invest in mortgages, which can be commoditised, rather than in small businesses, where local knowledge is needed. When the world fails to meet the model, problems arise. This is why banks in the US often do not have proper records of the loans they have made. This is why they cannot tell the difference between someone in a secure job and someone who is just about to be made redundant. "Proper...

Last week, I wrote about the views of one supplier that few newsagents or convenience store retailers were prepared to put the effort into sourcing new products and promoting them to their shoppers. Today, I had the good fortune to walk past Manoj Harji's Hatton News shop in central London, spotting the sign and poster promoting Nando's crisps. I blogged about Mr Harji's shop once before (30 March;'A good proposition') explaining how well merchandised the shop was and friendly. Seeing the Nando's poster I took a quick photo and then caught Manoj's eye in the shop. He was laughing so I went over and introduced myself. He said people often took photos of his shop but rarely introduced themselves. Everything inside was as well presented as the last time I visited. Manoj explained that he had seen the Nando's crisps and thought that the flavours would appeal to his shoppers. So far his hunch has proved correct. Also in his window are a set of posters promoti...

It is great to find an independent retailer who appears to be getting business right and today I stumbled across Hatton Garden News in central London. What caught my eye was a well lit and tidy magazine display. The morning was wet and windy and the shop looked inviting. The shop was carpeted and well merchandised with confectionery, savoury snacks, soft drinks and the lottery. Browsing, I bought a Galaxy bubbles bar that was displayed above a handmade sign that simply said "new". Good lighting, tidy full shelves, understated and friendly service. A welcoming business in a high footfall location. Well done.