The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

Facilitated by improvements in technology, we’re seeing a big rise in people starting creative product businesses. With digital services and the ever-increasing reach of the Internet making personal enterprises easier than ever to launch, and in creating an environment in which customers are more confident buying from small and local businesses online, how can you stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace and find success in 2021?

In episode 25 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I want to revisit some of my most useful tips and re-share some of my most enduring small business mantras to help you and your businesses grow this year.

We’ll review ‘Knowing Your Niche’ and set about defining what it is that you offer that is uniquely ‘you’ and distinguishable from your competitors. We’ll discuss how to get clear about who your customers are, where your products fit into their lifestyles, their expectations and how we’re not really selling products but solving customers problems. And we’ll cover the growing importance of sharing your story and connecting with your customer base in order to create long-lasting relationships between them and you and your products.

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With rolling lockdowns and forever changing pressures being placed on our time and availability, such as home-schooling and store closures, putting any sort of business plan in place right now might feel a bit hopeless.

But, as one of my favourite sayings goes “Plans are useless, planning is priceless”. No matter what the outcome and how things may change, reviewing your goals and ambitions is imperative for you, at the very least, to get an idea of what you actually want for you and your business going forward.

In episode 24 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I want to take you through my personal Planning Process and help you use SWOT Analysis and SMART objectives to build a robust set of goals that will help you map out your sales and stock plans for the year ahead and beyond.

We’ll look at using a SWOT Analysis to give yourself and your business the equivalent of an annual review, to figure out where things currently stand. I’ll ask you where you want you and your business to be in the future and what success looks and feels like to you. And we’ll use SMART objectives to take your newly-formed hopes and goals and make sure they’re specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. 

A goal without a plan is just a wish. By following my planning process and implementing these developmental tools we can get closer to making those plans, and the growth of you and your business, a reality.

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Welcome to 2021! The festive period may have come and gone, but we’re not quite done with it yet. As Small Business Owners the Christmas sales season can be the busiest and most profitable time of the year for us, so it’s important to take a look at how things panned out throughout November and December, to review what went well, what added value, and what didn’t, and adapt and implement changes accordingly. In episode 23 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, we’ll use SWOT Analysis to identify your business's strengths, weaknesses, and possible opportunities and threats. From looking at your sales figures and celebrating bestsellers to reviewing supplier and courier relationships and your audience's engagement with your marketing, we’ll cover everything you need to consider when strategizing for the new year so that you can continue to grow your sales and to surprise and delight your customers throughout 2021 into next Christmas.

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2020…what a mind-boggling year for retail! With a lot of this year’s news and headlines having focused on depressed sales, supply chain challenges, and the collapse of Goliaths such as Debenhams and the Arcadia Group, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this year has been an end-to-end disaster for creative product businesses. 

However, research shows that a huge number of small and independent businesses have had a good, if not great 2020, thanks to changing trends, evolving technology, and consumer attitudes that in part have been accelerated by the pandemic.

In episode 22 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I’ll review the ups and downs of 2020 and how they each inform my predictions for 2021. We’ll look at how large scale supply chains struggled under shifts in spending whilst small businesses were able to pivot and adapt, and how continued growth in online purchasing hasn’t negated the increases we’ve seen in people shopping locally. I’ll also discuss how the improvements in tech are continually lowering the barrier for entry for small businesses to get up and running and how connecting to your customers through personalization and conscious consumer choices should be at the heart of your creative product offerings.

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You may have only just recovered from the Christmas rush but after some well-deserved rest and relaxation, we need to click ‘reset’ on our seasonal sales strategies and ‘snap-back’ to business as normal so that we hit the ground running in January and make sure that our creative products align with the changing needs and desires of our customers as we enter a new year. In this episode of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I want to give you 5 areas of your business that you can review so that you’re sitting pretty for a (fingers crossed) better and brighter year as a business owner in 2021. I’ll discuss the importance of shifting or storing seasonal stock to make way for a refreshed range of “New Year, New You” products; we’ll cover switching your Christmas-focused messaging and website information back to a standard setup, and we’ll also look at the value to your mental health of decluttering your workspace and going over your finances.

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The Christmas sales period, and the likely increase you’ve experienced both in traffic and purchases, might have offered you a brief taster of what it might be like to operate your business at a higher capacity - perhaps you’re now wondering how to take things to the next level?

Whether you’ve been in business for a while, with dreams of multi-million-pound success, or are just getting started as an entrepreneurial hobbyist, it’s important to have an idea of how to manage greater demands on you and your business without getting overwhelmed and losing sight of what’s important.

So, it’s in episode 20 of the Resilient Retail Game Plan that we’re going to look at breaking down the components that contribute to the growth stage of your business, the many challenges you may encounter, and how best to adapt to the changing demands of your business and it’s customers.

We’ll start by taking a look at the motivations behind your decision to start a business and what you want its future to look like as well as reviewing the importance of how your business is structured and how to identify where pinch points and bottlenecks may be choking off your progress.

Delegating responsibility, understanding your numbers, and having a product strategy in place also all inform the shape of your growing business, so I’ll also be asking you how well you know you and your business - the more you understand and improve the processes, workflows and structuring at work within your business, the more streamlined and easily it can grow.

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As a creative product business, the first step to making a sale is driving traffic to your website - but it’s important to recognize that not all traffic is created equal - just like in a physical store, you’ll have people who have arrived at your business with the intention to buy but there’ll also be plenty of people just browsing. So how do you ensure that your website doesn’t become a leaky bucket of looky-loos that aren’t converting to customers?  In Episode 19 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I want to give you what I like to call my ‘Basic Hygiene’ regime for creative product businesses. Covering Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the power of Email Marketing, we’ll take a look at the importance of implementing searchable keywords and discuss how your previous customers are your most likely source of future purchases. From content marketing in the form of blogs and podcasts to building brand awareness through collaborations and well-strategized PR, we’ll also look at how diversifying your use of audience engagement tools is essential to attracting the right customers and showcasing your products. 

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2020 has been a year like no other for retail. With the pandemic ongoing and the uncertainty surrounding what a post-lockdown December looks like, consumers are in a bit of a holding pattern, and as small business owners, we have to expect the unexpected. We will see a Black Friday boom or will there be more in-person purchasing once lockdown is lifted?  With everything so up in the air I want to spend episode 18 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan looking at what current research indicates about the festive selling period and how you can use my five key takeaways to be as prepared as possible when it comes to securing your customers Christmas spending this year. We’ll look at the increase in online traffic for both purchases and gift research and the importance of putting your best foot forward when it comes to building your business’s digital presence; we’ll look at trends in spending across demographics and how, positively, the piece of the purchasing pie being given to small businesses is actually growing; and we’ll also cover the key purchase drivers of protecting, connecting and distracting and how you can leverage those themes to best market and share your products with your customers.

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In my many years of experience working for and dealing with creative product businesses, and of the many tactics and strategies people use to shift their products, I’ve found that stock clearance is one of the most misunderstood and misused. Stale stock traps money in your business, takes up valuable space, and can be a drain on you mentally - so how do you deal with stock that’s not performing?

In episode 17 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I want to give you my five top tips on how to have a sale. We’ll analyze your stock and look at how to plan a few short and sharp clearance events across key periods in the retail calendar; we’ll take a look at your messaging and how changing things up and being bold will get your customers ‘adding to basket’; and we’ll also discuss plotting out a promotional plan and the importance of meeting the legal requirements when it comes to offering discounts.  

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As a creative product business owner, the run-up to Christmas can be stressful. There’s so much to do, plan, consider, and manage and it’s all too easy to become overwhelmed and lose focus during this important selling period.

In episode 16 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I want to focus on mindset and give you my best advice on how to come out on the other side of the holidays with a successful sales season and your sanity. 

We’ll look at how everything ultimately comes down to prioritizing and time management - from asking for help and getting adequate rest to creating a ‘To Don’t’ list and putting RGAs (Revenue-Generating Activities) and 'Brown Bananas' at the forefront of your Xmas selling strategy. With the Coronavirus pandemic and state of the economy casting so much uncertainty over this key part of the year for retail businesses, I also go over the importance of looking after ourselves through acts of self-care and how we can support each other by looking to our communities both inside and out of the business world.

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