Give customers the benefit of the doubt
Local shops handle a lot of cash and need to do this well to keep shoppers happy. I stopped off to fill my scooter with petrol yesterday and after ...more
Collected blog posts about Money
Local retailers must realise that the internet is a game-changer
The internet will change the way that you operate your local shop and there is little to be gained from fighting this. A requirement for UK retaile ...more
Reasons to be cheerful in the magazines sector
The release of the six-monthly consumer magazine circulation results from the ABC certainly isn’t welcomed with open arms like it once was. Five yea ...more
Shoppers not in recession
Local shops should be benchmarking their sales performance against a 2% rise in shoppers' spending, analysis of recent data suggests. There has bee ...more
Supply chain news you should listen to
Last week's announcement by Wal-Mart that it had set up a partnership with Li & Fung is big news. Perhaps not for UK corner shops today. But read ...more
The iPad: how will Apple’s latest gadget affect sales from your store?
Wow. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, says that his new company's new iPad device is "extraordinary", and if you take time to look at his launch p ...more
Britain edges out of recession, but is the worst really over?
So, today we "officially" moved out of recession. The economy grew by 0.1% in the last quarter of 2009, the Office of National Statistics announced to ...more
Are bread and milk your bread and butter?
Steve Fox, retail sales director at the wholesaler Booker, has put down a marker for what he thinks is important for local shops to focus on in 2010. ...more
First Quench closures reveal reasons for property optimism
For owners of independent local shops and operators of regional groups, the property benchmark provided by Christie + Co, the business agents, is ...more
Don’t get caught by VAT trap
The VAT rate returned to 17.5% on January 1st 2010 and for most C-Stores this means around 1,000 lines that need to be repriced. As with everything we ...more
