nickshanagher

My children hate Malcolm Gladwell and they don’t even know him. In his book Outliers, Gladwell proposed that you had to spend 10,000 hours practising something to become an expert. I won’t let them read The Click Moment , a book from Frans Johansson that proposes that luck has just as big a role to play in success – unless you want to be a chess grandmaster, a tennis star or a classical musician. But The Click Moment will make me more sympathetic when they complain about the long work. Maybe they will get lucky early, I think. But I doubt it. Take the story of Ray Preston who found the perfect spot for his independent bookstore in New York. A month after he opened, a major civic project started that diverted foot traffic away from his shop. Ray tried lots of different things to save his shop. He sold his apartment and moved into the stock room to invest in it. But he reached the point when he thought he would go bust in three weeks’ time. I might as well have some fun, h...

I will shortly be blogging on the betterretailing.com website instead of here. Location may be important on the web as it is in retail! Please have a look at the new site and let us know what you think. A few weeks ago I wrote a note about Donald Fisher, who founded The Gap with his wife. Mr Fisher always claimed, says an obituary, to be a property man and not a retailer. His first shop was located not in an established shopping district but between two colleges, it says. A decision that ensured his shop would have footfall, the oxygen of retailing.

The Somerfield shop in my village has started to share co-branding with the Co-op, which bought the chain earlier this year. A pair of workers, one wearing Somerfield attire and one Co-op, hug each other in the bottom left hand side. Co-op point of sale now appears instore, clashing slightly with the fixtures. At the counter I ask the assistant if they are going to have the membership cards. This lady is not hugging anyone. I don't know, she says. They don't tell us anything. Next to this shop we have a One Stop, which is owned by Tesco but not branded in any way, shape or form. They share a car park, which is convenient, and shoppers can quickly walk from one to the other if either is out of stock. This weekend, I was in need of a certain brand of tonic water. The own label in the Co-op was not what I wanted. One-stop only stocked the slimline version. I asked the assistant there if this was always the case. She fixed me with a steely look and answered me by saying th...

With a bricks-and-mortar store, where you locate is a big decision, fixed by your capital investment. On-line, location can be changed at the click of a button. I have the opportunity to move to a new space on the betterretailing site that will be launched later this month. The benefits will be that this blog will appear alongside others that will tackle different aspects of strategy and tactics for local retailers, including a new blog by Steve Denham. It is exciting for me and should help readers find even more good stuff, near at hand. I am also looking forward to coaching from Sam on how to make these short items even more useful, such as embedding links. Just as retailers may benefit from a good mix of footfall driving shops near them, so too on the web. Fingers crossed.