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OVER THE
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BY DAVID ROBERTSON OF JP POZZI, ELGIN AND BUCKIE.
“I’m A Retailer Get Me Out Of Below: It’s a jungle out there in the retail sphere.
Hereeeeee” The month of November is peppered by a number of traditions. In the States there’s Thanksgiving, worldwide we have Movember (when men sport all kinds of dodgy taches for charity) and for the 21st year in a row, Ant and Dec take to the jungle/castle for the ‘I’m a celebrity’ TV series. Now whether you love or hate the show with its bugs, trials, cold showers and revealing conversations you can’t miss it as the camp’s shenighans are all over the newspapers, radio and TV.
Switching on to see Ant and Dec make their debut on this year’s inaugural episode got me thinking that actually the retail game is a bit like ‘I am a celeb!’- though without the red dungarees and blue t-shirt. Every day we launch ourselves into different scenarios, making sure we interact with different people and trying somehow to make sure we ‘win’ enough money to put food on our table. Often we have to swallow unpleasant things, whether it is price increases, damages or just generally dealing with difficult members of staff or the public to get through the day. Now, while running your own business may not be as easy as eating a camel’s testicle or a fish’s eye I am not sure that any of us signed up for quite the amount of challenges we have faced over the last 24 months. While this column will be published in December I am penning it on 21 November, the first night of ‘I am a Celeb 2021’. It is the day after our Christmas lights were switched on locally and a day where I have thought long and hard about retail and the challenges we all face. I usually love the Christmas lights as they lift the town from the dark early nights and somehow darker mornings, but today they have not given me that same sense of optimism. I feel like i am locked in that dark box in the jungle floor, waiting for the critters to 20
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
be put in. The fear of not knowing really what the next few weeks until Christmas will bring and the need for me to see it through to the end is very real. It really is a sense of the unknown. Will the locals support us? What do they want to buy this year? Will the expected bounce of a proper Christmas really happen? Have people re-evaluated what and how they spend? Will people send as many Christmas cards? November is usually the run up month where we are all gearing up for that last big festive push. Normally it is the culmination of a year of ordering, planning, sorting and soon after all the stock has arrived we suss the early winners and order more if needed. We normally would have had all our Christmas stock out for two maybe three months by now but with deliveries and stock Above right: Having to undertake difficult tasks in retail is like forcing yourself to eat crickets! Below: Ant and Dec are all revved up for this year’s I’m a Celebrity series.
situations as they are we are still receiving cards and gifts deliveries! Never have I seen a situation like it! What it has done though is allow different products to come to the fore. It’s a bit like the reaction to the quiet or lesserknown celebrity in the camp, if you give them a little time to shine, people warm to them. In our case this year Ling’s boxed Christmas cards and Tracks charity cards have sold really well, receiving a warm welcome from our customers. Ling used to be a fave in our stores, but we have rested it for a number of years, so it is great to see customers respond so positively. Just as the public fall in and out of love with celebs it is the same in store with products. Each year we all try to find that ‘next big thing’ and make sure we have the ‘on trend’ products, but this has been problematic due to the lack of trade shows and therefore very little physical hands-on experience with the product.