nickshanagher

If you work for a non-profit organisation, do you give money to charity? is a question raised by Seth Godin. More accurately, he criticised people who worked in the non-profit sector and refused to give money to charity. In fact, he suggested that they would cross the street to avoid giving money to someone collecting for a competing charity. Which set me to thinking about how often I visit local shops and how much money I spend at them - and if they can be an alternative to the major grocers. Which set me to thinking about how often the owners of local shops use other local shops. So far this year, I have visited independent shops on my travels around the UK and close to my office. In my village I do not have the option as Tesco and the Co-op own the two local grocers. I do support my local newsagent but his operation is mostly geared to home delivery. In thinking about reasons why using local shops is a challenge - such as understanding how they are merchandised and whether loca...

There is a statistic from Neilsen that says that 35% of sales by supermarkets this year, measured in pounds, was on promotion. This compares with 26% in 2008. The cost of this activity was shared by the big grocers with their suppliers. Assuming that the buyers for the big stores started out with the best prices and margins, this statistic suggests that their suppliers have had to stump up 34% more money in extra sales support. The impact is likely to a greater than 34% reduction in the suppliers' margin. This seems like good business to many suppliers because they think there is only one game in town, selling to the public through the multiple grocery channel. Selling through independents looks to hard. It looks too difficult to measure. But that does not mean that the independent channel's sales are not measured. Figures from wholesale and cash and carry sales to independent shops compiled by Sales Out show that corner shops are doing better than multiples. The positive...

"Our circulation has gone from 250,000 and falling, to 600,000. The cost of getting each copy to a reader has gone from 30p to 4p. We used to pay newsagents for taking the paper, now they take it for free," Evgeny Lebedev, senior executive director of the Evening Standard, told the FT. I nearly choked on my rice pops! He says he has cut his daily distribution costs from £75,000 to £24,000. Which if he publishes 250 times a year is a £12.8m saving. But whether the sums add up, we may never know. Of more concern to a retailer planning to build a business on selling newspapers is Mr Lebedev's suggestion that this is the future for all newspapers. There may not be many of them if it is! Suppliers should not over-estimate the attractiveness of footfall to local retailers. Footfall does not help the weekly payroll, one Yorkshire retailer told me at CTN World, the trade show last weekend. He was particularly critical of a well-know payment services company, who he said h...

It is a shock to read that Borders UK is on the brink of collapse. The book seller had seemed to revolutionise the UK book market and was widely praised by magazine publishers for the way it displayed their products. However impressive its 45 shops might look, they simply are not working at generating profits. On one side, lots of book sales have moved on line, on the other, the supermarkets have made inroads into the best sellers market. My last visit, only two weeks ago, was a disappointing experience. The two books I went in to find were not available. The bookstore assistant expressed surpise I would be looking for one of the books - Ulysses and Us - in a branch of Borders. I guess that speaks volumes about how a retailer can lose its way. The previous time I was there, with a senior news wholesale executive, he said to me that he did not know how Borders could compete with supermarkets. He said this looking while looking at a magazine category full of browsers. I was surp...

The demise of Woolworths, almost a year ago, freed up some good retail real estate and left some shoppers with nowhere to go. Last week, property consultant CB Richard Ellis, released details of who had acquired the retail space. Discount stores took 39% of the space, supermarkets 26% and fashion operators 18%. On this basis, shoppers obviously went to Woolworths to buy cheap stuff, cheaply priced.

In a weekend newspaper article, Peter Davies, the elected mayor of Doncaster is memorably quoted as saying: "People will not use the buses: they are poor and expensive. People in cars spend more than people on buses, why wouldn't we want them?" At the same time, at the CTN World trade show in London, I was talking to a retailer who explained that her local council kept on making it harder and harder for people to park near her shop. They insisted on residents parking bays in roads that were empty during the day when the residents drove to work. They installed traffic lights which took more kerbside out of use for parking. The free parking that was available was not ample enough to support her high street. Even worse, the council ran buses from the train station to the out of town shopping centre where national retailers predominated and where there was ample free parking. Mr Davies puts his unexpected electoral success down to plain speaking on issues that matter. He...

A local foodservice business has just issued its new price lists. Its solution to the tricky issue of the 1 January VAT price increase? Put up its prices today! Not necessarily a strategy suitable for all businesses but those who can will know that they can.