HOW’S YOUR WEEK BEEN... STEVE ARCHER?

RETAILER PROFILE: STEVE ARCHER, PREMIER HIGHTOWN CONVENIENCE STORE, CONGLETON

THIS WEEK, WE CATCH UP WITH CHESHIRE RETAILER STEVE ARCHER, THE FIRST RETAILER TOIMPLEMENT THE NEW JISP APP, TO FIND OUT HOW IT’S WORKING IN-STORE.

HOW’S YOUR WEEK BEEN, STEVE?

It’s been quite positive, mainly because we’re finally starting to see the local area come back to life. We have a big mill and a manufacturing plant near us, as well as a school, a railway station and offices and so on but they’ve all been empty since lockdown. It’s only now that we’re starting to see them start to fill up again, so that should help footfall.

HAS LOCKDOWN BEEN DIFFICULT FOR YOU THEN?

Well, it’s definitely been challenging but at a sales level we can’t complain. From March to May our sales were up 53% on the same period last year, so the store’s been doing well. We’re quite significantly down on footfall but our sales are way up, as is basket spend. It’s great to see the local area coming back to life though. Pre-coronavirus, for example, we would see 30 or 40 commuters in the store in the morning. We have a little coffee and snack bar in the shop, and it was really popular. At lunch we would get countless workies, office staff and school kids. Coronavirus put a prompt end to that, but I hope that things are starting to improve now.

HOW DID YOU COME TO BE THE FIRST RETAILER TO LAUNCH THE JISP APP?

I’m on the Business Development Committee of the NFRN so I became aware of Jisp quite early on and I really liked the look of it, so when they were looking for stores to trial it I was more than happy to do so.

WHAT DOES JISP DO FOR YOU?

The thing I liked about it, apart from the fantastic pricing, was that it didn’t involve much work at all for the retailer. It allowed me to set up a home delivery service very quickly, a click and collect service and a scan and go service pretty much overnight with a minimum of fuss.

WERE YOU DOING HOME DELIVERY BEFORE YOU STARTED WITH JISP?

We’ve long done home news delivery. When coronavirus kicked in we picked up over 60 new accounts in a matter of days with no marketing. Probably 30% of my demographic is over-60s and it’s a reasonably affluent area. We now deliver to about 250 customers a day and we realised that we might as well start trying to tack on deliveries of other products. It was a pretty basic offer but it was growing. Jisp let us take home delivery to the next level, as well as adding a click and collect service. We’ve also recently added the scan and go solution and when footfall starts to get back to more normal levels I can see that being very popular. It also lets me compete with the likes of Sainsbury’s by offering what I think is an even better solution.

HOW EASY WAS SET JISP UP?

You have to remember that I was a trial store, a bit of a guinea pig. So when we first set it up we had to provide Jisp with a list of the products we wanted to sell via home delivery or click and collect. We settled on about 500 to 600 lines and we had to

provide Jisp with the barcodes and prices. That took me – or to be more accurate, my wife! – a day or so, then Jisp added pack shots, pack sizes and so on. It was done in a couple of days. Now Jisp has its own product file and new retailers joining can literally be up and selling within an hour. All retailers have to do is choose the products they want from the file Jisp hold and they’re off and running. As the guinea pig, it took us a little bit longer but it was no problem at all.

HOW DID IT WORK WITH SCAN AND GO?

Obviously with scan and go you need every product in your store to be in the app but Jisp did a great job of sorting that out by basically getting hold of my PLOF, the Premier one, and adding it into the system so that every product I stock will scan on the app. They hold all the product photographs, pack sizes, barcodes and the like so it’s very slick and it’s one of the things that makes working with them a pleasure. It’s all very intuitive and quick and easy to use, even for someone like me who’s not exactly a techie!

DOES THE APP NEED MUCH WORK ON AN ONGOING BASIS?

No, it runs merrily along and powers home delivery, click and collect and scan and go. We’ve recently been trying out the promotions capabilities though, to communicate the best of our three-weekly Premier promotions. Again, Jisp pulls them all into the back office and all I have to do is click the promotions I want to use on the app and they appear. It only costs £1 a week but I can see that being a powerful tool.

HOW ARE THE HOME DELIVERY AND CLICK AND COLLECT SERVICES PERFORMING?

We saw an instant impact with the home delivery side, adding around 20 deliveries a week in no time. It’s still growing but it will take time until things get back to something a little more normal. We’re at that stage where we need to grow volume so that we can commit to taking on a full-time driver and perhaps get a little van. Click and collect has also been hugely popular. The fact that customers can pay at the till with cash or by card, or they can even pay via the Jisp app, means that they can have as much or as little interaction with staff as they want. We get a lot of mums with screaming kids who love it because they get a message telling them when to collect and they can be literally in and back out in just a few seconds.

AND NO SERVICE CHARGE ON PAYMENTS?

That’s right. One of the nicer touches with Jisp is that they don’t pass the service charges on for payments made through the app, so it suits us fine if shoppers prefer to pay through the app. We do maybe 300 to 350 credit or debit card transaction a day in the store and all those little charges certainly add up.

HAVE YOU BEEN RUNNING THE WEEKLY QUIZZES ON THE APP?

Yes, we run them every Sunday and they are surprisingly popular. We offer some little prizes, but I think shoppers just do it because they like the quiz! It’s really popular and generates engagement with the store and again, we don’t have to do anything. Jisp do it all for us.

SO IT’S BEEN A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE ALL ROUND?

Very much so. It’s obviously a very difficult time to be doing new things but I think Jisp can help us be ready for when life returns to normal. I think the scan and go technology is a real game-changer and when footfall returns it will be massive asset for us. I can only see the delivery and click and collect side growing too. The team at Jisp are just great to work with too. Very responsive and proactive and friendly and nothing is too much effort.

AND THE STORE IS STILL DOING WELL GENERALLY?

We’ve been up by more than 50% on last year’s numbers and we’ve got a really good sales mix, so margins are decent. We did 23.7% GP last year and I expect that to grow this year. We’re not over reliant on tobacco, which is less than 20% of the turnover and we do well in categories like fresh and chilled, which is about 15% of sales, newspapers (10-12%) and we’ve seen alcohol grow strongly in the last few months. It means we’re not over reliant on very low margin categories.

GOOD TIMES AHEAD THEN?

I certainly hope so! If we can grow our footfall as the area returns to normal but retain that basket spend and leverage everything that Jisp allows us to offer our customers – and the sun keeps shining – there could be a decent few months ahead of us.