Cornwall Retail Network

all that glitters...

As I'm sitting here, watching this evenings BBC News, with all its faults, and unapparent bias, I'm left wondering what clout as consumers, customers as voters we really have. I try not to watch the end of news broadcasts because I know that they are constructed so that the last thing we see as viewers is something light hearted, humorous, distracting just as the character of Boris Johnson is currently suggesting. What I do try and remember is what came first, the fact that the housing market is in somewhat of a collapse, the fact that a very strange man kept his daughter locked in a seller for the last 24 years, which I really don't want to think about, the fact that a 19 year old with a very privileged education is up on terrorism charges... Where ever you look and what ever news you watch, none of it is remotely helpful to us at our island end of this country. Apart from the housing market, perhaps the most important thing to us and our industry currently are the increase in fuel prices. £1.28 pence for a litre of diesel, and how do we respond as a country? A few of us blockade london. That's it. But surely fuel costs means something to us, something to our cost prices, something to our shopping budgets, something to our survival budgets. Doesn't it?
But perhaps our ethically minded actions also follow through to the european money that currently services our area. Several people today reminded me that although we as a sector try to encourage retailers to get involved in our projects so that we can say, 'yes this is what the industry want', some of our boundaries are already made before we have had a chance to mould them. As a sector, and as a business we can blame who we like, the LSC, (Learning and Skills Council), our local politicians, our public sector representatives, perhaps even those who so proactively state that they represent the sector, from people like me, right through to the likes of the FSB and our local chambers. But who ever we blame, these parameters are already set. So perhaps our real bug bearing lies with the current government who say and therefore actively pursue the line that NVQ training is what our current workforce need. Of course we could shout about the impracticalities of this, until we are blue in the face, but it won't change the current goal posts, or gain us any time in the process. Neither will it change the fact that there are certain things that are crucial and imperative to individual businesses, such as health and safety and employment law; things all businesses need to keep abreast of regardless of cost, if they want to continue trading within the remits of the law. And yes, as businesses they need to take responsibility for providing time and money for these essential things, thins that make their businesses work, otherwise they fail to compete and we fail to comply to plan and to trade as we should do.
What we can do currently, and easily, or perhaps not so proactively, jugging by our current active reaction to things like fuel prices, is consider our future. Who are we going to employ, how are we going to get them, keep them, encourage them to work harder and smarter; how are we going to invest in our current work pool? As a county and as an industry we have a transient workforce, one day you have a sales assistant, the next day, he or she is someone else's receptionist, the next day, the same person is another companies PA. We want skills to be transferable, we want a better work pool from where we can fish for the strongest and biggest swimmers, or at the very least, catch ourselves a few tiddlers that we can bring on, and nurture into full sized sharks...
So to get back to the news, which has I must admit, been some what diminished by the weather, and other such conundrums, there is always a bigger picture. There are those things we react to, those that we remember and the majority of which we simply raise our eyebrows at and comment to ourselves or our partners, about the current predictable behavior of our government and the 9 billion pounds profit that shell and its counterpart made out of our hard earned cash in the last financial year. But we do nothing about it. One vote is much the same as another these days, we swap one bad government, leader, proposal, project for another without voice, so by the time we think about saying, "what about us", we are always, just a little to late, to make a difference.

The Future of retail thanks to You Tube

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Carparking

I'm just enjoying the first real spat of late spring weather and funny enough, I'm thinking about shopping!  This time garden furniture, with a new Homebase store in Bodmin, and neighbors to think about its probably time I got some fencing and do the whole thing properly.  This interestingly enough brings me onto car parks.  If I go to homebase, I can park for free, if I go to Asda, not only can I park for free, but they send a little bus around to pick me up and take me home, for free.  If I go to Trago Mills in a pure moment of insanity, then it also costs me nothing to park, although all these places might well cost me something in terms of my stress levels when they are busy.  So its interesting to note that all these large stores provide free parking, while if I want to visit my small independent shops, it costs me £4.00 for over two hours in Truro, and in most other places several pounds for the day, even Daymar Bay costs me £3 to visit the beach - but then we aren't a nation that expect something for nothing - are we? So imagine my surprise last week when I visited Liskeard, to discover that if I park for one hour, it costs me £0.10 pence, yes thats right TEN PENCE!!!! and even better, if I live locally I can get a card, and it costs me £0.05 pence, FIVE PENCE, for one hour!!  As I wondered into the town, feeling exceptionally smug, and considerably richer than I would have been other wise, I found myself being pleasantly surprised, and not because several lads were taking it upon them selves to tell everyone in ear shot, how awful Liskeard was, but because the provision of offers was fantastic.  I found the little coffee shop where I had a meeting delightful, even though, I had to walk back up the road to the cash point because they didn't take cards, - where incidental my intake of cash was more than enough to pay for lunch, and buy me some fresh scollop's from the local fish shop.  Some pickled eggs, Cornish chocolate, a fair trade local shopping bag, and some Cornish goats cheese, receiving all purchases with a smile - and to top it all off, two tigers feet!  My all time favorite pastries, normally as far as I was aware only available from a tiny bakery in Lostwithiel, where they are always sold out - they really are that good, so I hope you can keep a secret otherwise my chances for purchases will be further reduced!  As I walked back to the car, I realised that instead of putting £4 into the council's pot, I had actually put my four pounds and some extra back into the towns local economy.  For every £10 that is spent locally, its worth £24 to the local economy.  That means that I was worth at least £48.00 to the local economy, on that day, and all because I only paid ten pence for the car park.  Makes you think, doesn't it!

Backwards in comming forwards

Having just returned from a few sun packed mellow weeks in Tunisia, I'm relieved to discover that my mail box is not quite full to over flowing and that the weather is not quite as white as the overseas British post might like its ex-pats to expect.  Its been an interesting few weeks, learning how to barter with taxi drivers and local tradesmen for goods, after getting used to the fact that if you look western, or European, everyone wants to "make you good price".  More than often a "good price" is based on where your from, the strength of our pound leads most salesmen to think that charging quadruple local prices for items is acceptable, after all, "8 dinnias is the cost of a sandwich" here, over there, it is probably at least a few days work.  But every things relative, and if you argue, which is perhaps all part of the experience you tend to pay what you think things are worth, rather than, what the locals think your worth.  Its an interesting concept for buying and selling.  Sometimes as a customer I feel undervalued by retailers or shop floor managers, in-fact sometimes, I don't even get a buy your leave from who ever is manning the store, in Tunisia, it was the complete opposite, people fell over themselves to communicate, barter, swap, attract attention to themselves and their products, even if most of the time what they were selling was somewhat antiquated, the cajoling and shouting was never any less or enthusiastic.  However, shopping in Tunisia is not recommended to those with a gentle disposition, as you will get ram roded into buying things that you don't want for ridiculous prices.  What struck me most, is the seemingly complete contrast between both countries.  Several English people in our hotel, grouped together every day to complain about one thing or another, mainly the lack of infrastructure, the nothing to do line that we often hear as an excuse for teenage behavior seemed to apply here to very 'grown up' groups of visitors.  It got me thinking about how spoiled we are, both in terms of the simple things that we take for granted, and for those endless entertainment channels, both inside and outside our own front rooms that serve to keep us amused.  Here everyone shops, we absent mindlessly rely on food chains, delivery and supply chains to bring us what we want when we want it.  We have the infrastructure to support this and we rely on this to get buy in our 24hour lifestyles.  We have intensive farming, appropriate health and safety procedures; for example you wouldn't see builders working in flip flops, or people mixing cement by hand, or hauling bricks up hundreds of feet on a bit of string, or road workers working without barriers or lights or speed restrictions.  Nor would we see a single man with a hoe working acres of land, or rubbish and rubble dumped any old how throughout our roads and green areas.  Saying that, our current infrastructure has taken years to build and establish, our jobs currently afford us the lifestyle we have and our religions don't impinge on us as perhaps we perceive they might do in countries like Tunisia, which is predominantly Muslim.  And we also might like to take into consideration, that if we hopped over the boarder to Libya, you can fill up a two litre diesel car for the equivalent of about 25 pence.  In a way, Tunisia has the best of both worlds.  Its economy is supported by the influx of foreign visitors, giving local people the chance to double if not triple their weekly wage.  Its food is locally produced, organic, fresh and affordable, something concerned consumers in the UK can pay through the nose for.  While fuel is cheap, and cars are abundant throughout the larger cities, in rural areas, transport is still the good old horse and cart, safer for the environment, and retailers are salesmen, who not only sell through their own locally established trade routes, from soil to table, and manufacture to shop floor, but know how to drive a bargain and communicate effectively, if sometimes over zealously to consumers.  It makes me wonder, if that in being more advanced, in trading at higher prices and allowing technology to simplify all our lives, we as consumers find ourselves striving for the sort of service and relationships that my parents had with the local butcher, tailor and farmer, the sort of consumer lifestyle that the Tunisians have that we as such a well developed country might regard as backward, and indeed I heard that many times over my fresh eggs, tomato's and bread at breakfast, where a large man often complained, " I came here for a relaxing time, they are about 50 years behind here man, their's no Bacon, and I even have to keep my finger on the toaster.  I'm gonna go to Tesco's when I get back and send them one...."   

Agenda and information for the Task and Finish Group March 2008

Download convergence_pilot_area_criteria.doc

Has it been that long?

I've just checked the stat page for my blog and noticed that its accessed on average 7.03 times per day. I think thats a lot! and I'm pleased. But I really did or should appologise for my lack of blogging over the last month. Its been so hectic here and I really have been running around left right and centre trying to get things done. Currently there is an immensely annoying man with a chain saw, endeavoring to do something to his side of the 12ft high garden hedge, while I appreciate his enthusiasm (I won't be getting up there) I really could do with some peace and quite, to at least think about what I'm doing this afternoon, and on current analysis, with chain saws, an incessant ringing phone and a stream of unanswered emails with the current top of the list reading "new weight management classes", I'm not entirely sure that anything this afternoon will be of much worth to the continuation of blogging or anything else for that matter....
And perhaps this is the problem, noise. There is always a new story, craze, or hype in the media, that runs through the businesses world, half the time there is so much media noise its hard to see where the real messages stop and start. But the recent announcement by the prime-minister to scrap our favoured plastic carriers, cannot have escaped our hearing, and while it may have come no surprise to those of us who have already spent out on purchasing sustainable shopping bags, we are more likely to add to the noise momentum by mouthing "I told you so" to our husbands, partners, wives or girl friends as we pat ourselves on the back for our forward sightedness. While the unassuming consumer who has perhaps always felt that stores like Lidals have been somewhat behind the times in their lack of bag usage, will now have to begin to look at the ways that they carry, hold, move and collect their shopping. Perhaps even harder will be the blow on those retailers who have just reordered or stocked up on this years supplies of branded bags, and likewise will no doubt prove a challenge to the companies currently producing 'carriers' to become more environmentally friendly. Part of me wonders if it was really necessary for technology to take us around in circles and I'm sure that lots of you will remember the shopping bags your mothers had, with separate compartments for meat, milk and veg, all within the same reusable bag, that often lasted for life. I wonder if in a few years time some scientist will measure the impact that several billion tones of plastic in landfill has had on our future and will relay some depressing figure masked in some type of noise that lets the next generation know exactly what a mess our generation have left as a legacy.
And its with a somewhat sober mind I come to think about convergence. This months Business Cornwall mag has on its front cover "counting on convergence". You can I think look at this in two ways, are we counting on convergence to leave a legacy of self? or are we counting on convergence to help our economy, our businesses and our workers work better, harder and smarter for the good of future generations, and perhaps as this is our last chance, my generation too. I haven't I hasten to mention read the article yet, but I get the feeling that less is more, is where this round of European money is coming from, less small projects more things that will only increase our 'knowledge based economy' as a point of reference from the Lisbon agenda. And yes there are different strands, in fact here there are four, one of which, all 13 sectors will fit, helping our businesses and in this case retail invest in skills training and development that is demand led. But behind all the noise, and promise, what is it really that we are aiming for? Is scrapping plastic bags going to save the planet? In isolation no, is convergence going to 'save' Cornwall in terms of our underperforming economy, remembering the reason that we qualify for convergence is not because we are a small county but because our GVA is less than 75% of the EU average. Probably not in the way we would expect it too. I guess what I'm trying, poorly, to get at is that it is very easy to push things aside, add another sheet to the already mounting paper trail, procrastinate about the use of bags and plastic, rejoice because the region, once again, is several million pounds richer, and claim that this is the answer to all our problems... and while we are talking and suggesting and waiting for businesses to come and demand of us, suddenly the program is finished the pots empty and we are back at the beginning with a different set of noisy interruptions filling evaluation forms and account sheets.... This is our chance to demonstrate and bring about a new culture of learning, if only we can find the right types of noise and the right medium for dispersal to tell businesses all about it.....

When the sun comes out....

Its always a bit of chore to get up and start your day on those cold winter mornings, feeling your way across a cold floor in bare feet to reach the bathroom, pulling faces at yourself as you look in the mirror, wondering what you could have possibly done last night to look half as bad as you do this morning, and finally getting dressed and into the kitchen for that life saving mug of tea to be met by the dark, damp mornings that resemble winter.... Thankfully, we have had a run of the most beautiful weather I can remember for February, and yes this is still February! Not to mention a run of fairly lucky breaks with the surf conditions, and perhaps its not every year that Valentines day falls in the midst of all these other joyous things. But I know that when the sun shines at any time of year it puts me in the mood for picnics, and perhaps a little romance, here and there.
In the retail world valentines day is up there with Halloween, Christmas and Easter, because for some reason, under the constraints of social pressure and all in the name of 'love', we splash out on cards, chocolate, perfume, dinners, flowers, romantic keep sakes and other such gifts to give to our loved one on the 14th of February. I must admit, that currently I'm rather disorganised, I have no card, no flowers ordered, no sweet verse to whisper into my other half's ear, and to be honest I'm not quite sure that such flamboyant displays are where I'm at with my romantic inclinations! I'm more of a disconcerting client, I want something a little different this year, and the next, and I'm gauging that unless I use a little creative flair, there won't be much on the market to satisfy my needs. Maybe that's a hole in the valentines market? or maybe its a suggestion that my romantic ideas are a little off the beaten track. What ever the conclusion, I'm still not getting serviced by the industry, customers won't necessarily have the time to look for you, or the something a little bit different you might have in mind, I certainly don't, what I want is someone to do that for me.
So if tomorrow, I'm a little empty handed, I will probably run to the garage, get a quick card and some flowers, a bar of Galaxy and a bike magazine and present my little offering, in some sort of red wrapping and be done for this year, but if there is anyone else like me who could have spent a small fortune on something different but didn't know where to look, well I guess that 's the markets fault. Lets hope next year retail moves on a little from the red ribboned 'I Love You', and puts a little romance back into valentines day....

UCP and Retail

Download newsletter_retail_01_08_pdf.pdf

A little bit of Winter Sun

Having spent the last few months pontificating about holidays, I find myself wondering as I seem to every month about the quality of what’s on offer and the ability of those in the ‘know’ to deliver something that is suitable for their clients.

Yesterday, amongst doing several other things, which were far more successful, like the redesign of the blog, which I hope all regular readers will like, I went to the travel agent, something I have never done before, in the hope of at least getting some good advice about a holiday.  I’m always a little suspicious of travel agents, because I’m not your typical tourist or holiday maker.  I’ve spent a considerable amount of time traveling around without the back up of bags of cash, and I like the real, in all the meanings of the word, of people and places.  Put simply that probably equates to a travel agents idea of a night mare customer, someone who is not just going to by a package holiday with a pool, bar and nightlife, which may be a miss conception of that type of holiday on my part, and if so I appologise, but I hope you catch my drift.

Anyway, what actually happened was the agent talked specifically to my partner, who was asking all the questions, while I sat at the desk making excuses for why I disliked this or the timing was wrong, or that place wasn’t warm enough.  Give the agent her due, she was fairly helpful and tried to be pleasant, but of course we are traveling in prime time, due to the Easter holidays, and things would be expensive and plane seats would be in demand….. A holiday to the canaries, for the price of a holiday to the

Caribbean

does not inspire me, or my pocket, but it did get me thinking about transactions.

What is it that a customer service person and I’m talking here about any one in a customer facing role, weather that be a gym instructor, a bank manager, a super market till operator or a train ticket conductor, what is it that they actually sell?  Is it a ticket or a mortgage, or is it themselves?  Part of me thinks that one of the reasons that I didn’t get enthused about any of the offers the travel agent put on the table, was because I didn’t believe that she really felt anything about any of the places she was discussing, and I knew that as far as holidays go we would have extremely different tastes.  If I had gone to buy a shirt from, Cult Clothing for example, or more locally from one of the small independents like Front Room, I would have received an honest opinion from the staff there about what would suit me, not what would suit them.  This is part of their service and also part of their success. I value their opinion, even though their personal tastes are probably different, I appreciate as do they that I am the buyer and they are the facilitator.

Holidays are a very individual buy, and therefore perhaps require a very individual sell and good facilitation.  Car sales men perhaps have the edge on this, working hard to give the customer specifically what they want, perhaps some times edging on the verge of what they perceive customers might want, but still holding the ball park for facilitating sales.  I wonder sometimes when I’m doing my rounds and visiting towns and I see shops closing down, and prime retail locations with empty premises, whether the reason they are no longer in existence was because they had forgotten how to, or perhaps never perceived that us shoppers are fickle, and need to be coaxed out of our money.  I still need a holiday, I’m still a potential buyer, but am I really looking for a specific package, or just someone with the ability to sell me one. 

January... The dilemma of the Apple Mac.

I’m sitting in Starbucks, with a cup of luke warm tea, watching the world go by, deciding that this has not been my best ever visit to the world famous coffee house emporium.  There are a few suits huddled over an empty table in the corner, but the majority of visitors are shoppers and taking a presumptions stereotypical gamble, I bet the rest of the blue haired rabble with pants clearly visible and trousers half way around their posteriors, who just happen to be reading ‘The Guardian’, are students.  I’m trying to write this by hand, which apart from being remissible of my own student days, is proving quite a challenge, as my hand doesn’t seem to work as fast as my thought process, or as smoothly as I would like due to the cramp penetrating through my index finger, but that’s another story and hardly worth the type space.

As I’m sitting here, I can’t help think that even though the shops are advertising huge discounts, 40-50% in some places, the shopping centre is somewhat deserted for the time of year.  I’ve just visited the Mac Shop, with a few bit of plastic burning holes in my very shallow pockets, I’ve been drooling over the white and black slickness, that is completely representative of the apple brand, and I’m trying, quite mindfully, to decide whether to be sensible with the little bit of money I have and pay off a few bills, or take the plunge and buy what will probably, no undoubtedly be the best tool, the best addition to my life, since my significant other became significant.

Perhaps everyone like me is being a little cautious with their cash and are thinking the same.  Have I actually got it, do I want to spend it, should I really spend it on other things?  The answer?  Well I expect its dependant on self restraint.  But it also lies in the hands of the shop assistant.  Last time and to be truthful the first time I have visited the Exeter shopping centre, it was to look at Apple Mac’s, slightly obsessive, especially as it was just a few days before Christmas, but very necessary.  If I had been greeted with the same interest, enthusiasm, respect and knowledge this morning, I would now be sitting in Starbucks several hundred pounds worse off.  As it is, I find myself wondering if a Mac is really a necessity. 

Traders and retailers alike are already reporting under trading over the festive period, and I’m eagerly awaiting results on the January Sales this year, but I wonder what Apple would say to discover that perhaps it is their staff rather than their product, which ultimately lets them down, and how many other shoppers are getting wise to the fact that they are important and do command a high level of service and care. 

So I go back to musing, drifting around Starbucks, nursing the cold tea, wishing for a little bit of consistency in the world, at the same time, feeling rather glad that I’ve still got a little bit of cash in reserve for dog food.