The Independent Achievers Academy (IAA) is a free business development programme for independent retailers.
It is designed to help engaged independent retailers to grow their sales and profits through benchmarking and expert advice. It is built on the small, simple, smart things which, when done consistently over time, produce results. The benchmarks and advice are shaped by top retailers and leading suppliers to give you a success model you can trust.
Retailing success depends on repeating the simple stuff. The difference between someone who makes a lot of money from their shop and someone who just gets by is often a result of the processes that they use. Benchmarking results in an in-depth report on how you are performing and compare with others across the country. You are also in with a chance of an independent assessor coming into your shop to analyse your strengths and opportunities to improve which could ultimately end in national recognition for your shop.
If you took part this year, great! You should have your benchmark report by now, we hope you found it useful and have learnt something new about your business! If for any reason you haven’t received your report, please email us and we’ll resend it.
Benchmarking your shop will give you an in-depth report on how you’re performing, and compare your shop with others across the country. We’ve split retail into 12 key disciplines to help make it easier for you to understand where you’re doing a good job and what areas there are to grow your sales and profits.
Is your store one of the Independent Achievers Academy Top 100 stores? Local retailers benchmarked their businesses across 12 key disciplines and were visited by our assessment partners for an in-store assessment to understand how they can better serve their communities. To see the IAA Top 100 shops for 2018 map, click here.
Click here to see who walked away with the highest recognition in the 12 core categories - as well as the overall best shop - of the IAA at the Gala Dinner on November 29.
Three months after visiting Seelan Thambirajah’s Premier in Bedford with Martyn Parkinson, from category partner Booker Wholesale, we find out how community engagement has helped improve the performance of his shop
Following on from our visit in April to retailer Mukesh Patel’s Simply Local in Malvern with category partner Imperial Tobacco, we find out how he has improved while continuing to retail responsibly
In April, Sandeep Hegde, from category partner Procter & Gamble, visited Ian Lewis at his shop in Minster Lovell to advise him on staff development and building a strong team. We catch up with Ian to find out how he got on
In March, Peter Johnson from Post Office joined Kam and Dalbir Nijjer at their shop in Meriden, West Midlands, to look at how they could improve their customer service. Three months on, we look at how they have progressed
Download the definitive 'how to' guide for your store.
Benchmark your shop and get examples of how leading retailers have succeeded across the 12 key categories of independent convenience retail
