Category Archives: Terrific Retail Insights

Having done more to assist Coles and Woolworths to break into pharmacy in Australia than any PR campaign the big two could ever have mounted, the Pharmacy Guild’s botched deal with Blackmores in late 2011 is having more immediate repercussions. These are likely to cause further pain well beyond pharmacy to other areas of the…

Particularly if you hail from or have spent time in the UK you will be familiar with these two iconic retail brands. You will also be aware that through complacency and arrogance at senior management level (remember for many year M&S wouldn’t accept any credit card but their own) in the late 1990s Marks and…

Check out this virtual fitting room set up in a Topshop store. Click on Virtual fitting room to view a brief video clip as customers stand in front of a screen with the entire store’s merchandise at their disposal. Is this coming to a store near you? Jurek Leon is a storyteller, trainer and coach…

Remember denim jackets, excess flannel, and when smoking while strolling through the shopping centre was the norm? For a flashback, check out this project exploring hundreds of photos of malls across America from 1989. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rumur/malls-across-america Jurek Leon is a storyteller, trainer and coach who presents courses and addresses seminars on word of mouth marketing, motivation,…

A LUSH store can break even in as little as three months. Why? Because their customers grow their business for them. Wouldn't that be great? Read this fascinating article about the continued success of Lush in tough times then answer the questions posed by Jeanne Bliss at her blog on the Lessons from Lush. Jurek…

I have four young grandchildren who are the light of my life. Aged from 3 to 9 they all love coming to Granny and Grandad’s house, playing games, baking in the kitchen, spending hours exhausting us in the swimming pool – “Look at me Grandad” – and being read stores. Yes, I am thrilled that…

How often do you hear retailers saying, ‘Christmas is starting later for us every year’? It happened again last year, didn’t it? “No wonder. It’s because there has been a breakdown in trust”, says retail observer Martin Butler author of, ‘The Art of Being Chosen – Secrets of success from the giants of retail’. He…

Empowerment is a trendy word these days though it’s one I don’t really understand. People are making decisions in their life outside of work all the time. Most of them don’t need to be ‘empowered’ they just need insecure senior managers, HR people and the like to stop disempowering them. In far too many retail…

“Giving a discount is as old as retail itself. Unquestionably effective, hardly differentiating,” explains Martin Butler in his new book ‘The Art of Being Chosen – Secrets of success from the giants of retail’ So, I loved this discounting idea with a difference from his interview with Bijou Kurien former head of the Watch and…

Way back in the early 1990’s with her astonishingly successful Expanding the Sale program, renowned Melbourne based retail consultant Hilary Kahn www.feelgoodguide.biz first demonstrated to me the value of displaying an average sale measurement chart for the team showing: a) Average sale figure for this day/week last year. b) Budget figure for this day/week this…