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OVER THE COUNTER
Take Me Back
To The 80’s Independent card and gift retailer, David Robertson, co-owner of JP Pozzi in Scotland, includes the past hits of the 80s to discuss the retail customers of the future. We are quickly approaching a decade since Woolworths beat it from our high streets and perhaps signalled the start of the demise that we find ourselves in. It seems to be that with every breath we take there is another disaster looming. Last week Patisserie Valerie lurched dangerously close to being another one bites the dust in a long list of 2018 casualties. Names such as Poundworld, Gaucho, Orla Kiely and of course House of Fraser are just a few of the more public casualties, but many more have simply slip slided away. There are of course strong rumours of others livin’ on a prayer and hoping for a good Christmas.
None of us are having sweet dreams at the moment, with our stock rooms bulging and our cashflow seizing up. I often get asked how I keep on top of this. The answer is simple faith in my system, which consists of a daily cashflow, which then feeds into my monthly analysis spread-sheets. This is all run on my phone and shared on the cloud to my many devices. Each day I log on to the bank and feed the numbers thinking, here I go again. Often I sit all night long pouring over the numbers trying to make it all stack up but time after time there are fresh challenges and things that you simply can’t see coming. 26
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Right: ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by the rock band Survivor was the memorable song to Rocky III in 1982. Below left: Patisserie Valerie had a close shave when it nearly went into receivership recently. Below right: The millennials are tech savy.
Efficient as this may seem and sound, it still means that I have sticky situations and have to work through them to come out alive and kicking. I take my responsibility to suppliers and the bank seriously, and the 9 to 5 of my life now seems to be focusing on the running of the business as apposed to actually being in it as much as I once was. In fact, someone who knows me very well, and has seen the many rises and falls in the last however many years, said as much to me recently. She said that my shops missed me. I get that. I get what she meant and I take it as a compliment, but as I write this on a blue Monday, it is not always easy to be able to juggle everything and I am sure you will feel the same way. The reason I write this is because I know many of you feel the same way as I do. Your businesses are your life and they perhaps have become a tainted love, one that you resent as your hard work, effort and dedication don’t return what they once did. You literally can’t relax anymore. The days where everyone wanted to rule the world are over and now survival is the key thing. Retail right now is straight up unpredictable and I keep trying to figure out why. It used to be enough to do the following… that our shops are well stocked,
that our bills are paid, that our staff are happy, that they have their rota (and holidays that never seem to end planned!), that we have got the right mix of product, that we have posted on Instagram, that we have done the VAT and the paperwork, that we have managed to keep a house and have a life where we managed to catch the Bodyguard or Strictly, or whatever other things normal people do who don’t run a small business! And breathe… Running your own business of any size these days is a thriller. You have to have that hunger like a wolf to keep battling away, but even with that constant fight will it be enough? I can almost feel it in the air tonight that this challenge is going to keep getting tougher. There is no chance of any money for nothing anymore, but we can’t give up. The reflex reaction is to try harder, but actually a lot of what we are doing is not wrong it is just that what our customers expect from us is changing.