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OVER THE COUNTER
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The Chapel Independent card and gift retailer, David Robertson, coowner of JP Pozzi in Scotland, highlights the parallels between marriage and running your own business. As I write this column I am literally a month away from one of life’s major events. No, not the opening of another store or the picking up of an award, but the event of tying the knot! Yes, at the grand old age of 45 I will finally cross the line and get married after previously being engaged once or maybe twice! I have been very lucky to have shared three distinct stages of my life with three exceptional women, and the reason I was not married previously was because of me, not them. Why now? Well quite simply I have changed and I am with someone who really understands me and the way I am in terms of
my work and things I love to do. Having someone that understands is very important. With things as tough as they are you need someone to not let you get totally caught up in the whirlwind of Clintons for sale, Links going bankrupt, Mike Ashley closing all House of Fraser stores, or worst of all, the possibility of Pizza Express going under… and that was all in one week! Business, as I have said many times, is all consuming. In the bustle of it all you tend to lose focus of what is really important, and friends that have ‘normal’ jobs will never understand the buzz or indeed pressure of 22
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
making a living and paying your mortgage from a business that you have created. You could be an artist, a publisher, a retailer or in fact the window cleaner, what you do is irrelevant, being your own boss and in love with your business is one of the most challenging relationships you will ever enter. Spend too much time with it and other things suffer. Not enough time and the chances of it surviving and thriving lessen. Take time away and you feel guilty. Do something else and you feel like you are cheating on your true love. In fact, running and making your own business a success is no doubt as challenging as making a marriage work. Neither of them is guaranteed, and the failure rate is interesting. The latest figures from 2017 show around 42% of marriages end in divorce, while around 30% of new businesses fail in the first two years and approximately 50% in the first five years. So if you were looking at those odds I am not sure you would take the bet, but many do and of course statistics can only tell you so much. One of the key things that is helping the divorce rate actually fall is that people are getting married later in life and are often living together first. In this respect they are investigating the market and deciding if this is really where they want to be and that it will work for them.
Times and life, are a-changing One of the problems of business is that no matter how much you research or look at things it can change. Retail is changing beyond all belief. We now hear that there are 10% less people visiting the High Street than seven years ago.
Top: Marriage and running your own business are very similar. Above: In a few weeks David will be tying the knot. A card from Louise Tiler. Below left: Pizza Express has made losses for the last two years as its operating profits were offset by high interest payments on its £1.1bn debt pile. Below: Selfridges in Oxford Street is soon to open a three screen cinema instore.
Shopping and the traditional Saturday visits to the town centre are disappearing. My mum’s friend went to visit her daughter and grandkids. She got all ready on the Saturday to head into the main city to find all her family in their PJ’s on various devices. She was told, “Granny we don’t go to shops anymore”, and this is indicative of what is happening. Yet, when retail is done well it can pay off, although these days it’s all about the experience - whether online or in store.