7 minute read
retail Interview: Penny Black
Bringing
Greetings Today caught up with Jo Marwaha, product manager for Reta award-winner Penny Black, which has two shops in Glasgow
Can you tell us a little about the shops? We started with a Post Office with typical convenience retail on the outskirts of the city and the idea to establish a brand that rethinks your run-of-the mill Post Office retail was borne from that.
We all have an expectation of what a store attached to a Post Office looks like in our mind’s eye, and we wanted to turn that on its head.
We took over and moved to a main branch Post Office in the affluent West End of Glasgow. The new site is a double-fronted large Victorian Glasgow tenement building and so we wanted to keep the local/heritage aspect of that as we developed the brand ‘Penny Black’ (the first British postage stamp) and the eventual product offering.
This flagship store is opposite Glasgow Botanic Gardens and so attracts tourists and day trippers as well as locals. We’re fortunate to also be near Glasgow University and so service that community too. A few years after this store opened we established our second in the city centre using the same model.
The Post Office in each store drives daily footfall, even on the quietest of winter days, but now our retail store is a big draw also for our customers and we see people coming in only for retail rather than Post Office only or both.
Congrats on your RETAS award (Best
Independent Greeting Card Retailer in Scotland), What do you think makes you stand out? The compliment we always get from customers in-store is that our selection of cards is unique. We work very hard to curate the Penny Black brand as one that brings something different to the high street, and certainly that has kept our customers coming back to us again and again for almost eight years! ‘Different’ doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s weird and wonderful things, it means that you can, for example, get products designed and made by small independent businesses that sit alongside bigger brands to deliver an offering that allows a customer to buy for any and many occasions at once. A customer feels like they’ve seen a variety of options. We’re lucky to have a big floorplan where over half is dedicated to greeting cards in each store to facilitate the size of the offering. Tell us about your ethical/ sustainable stance. We want customers to feel that we’ve done our job by sourcing ethical and sustainable products so they can feel and do good when they shop. So over the past few years the way we purchase, consume and operate as a business has evolved as the world and our industries have. The greeting card industry is really at the forefront of change in terms of sustainability but change has been slower in others and so we’ve had to change suppliers in some cases. For us, we also have a responsibility to move on from the way our industry has done things in the past that may have been harmful not only to the environment but to communities not represented visually or in business, and so we have actively sourced product from underrepresented communities or product that captures the diversity of the population we serve. We’re continuing to improve product curation all the time based on these values.
How do you source products? New products are sourced by research online - via social media (for example) - and from trade shows. We don’t tend to visit all the trade shows, rather picking a couple a year that work for us in terms of seasonal purchasing and the shows that have an offering more suited to independent businesses.
What is your selection criteria? First and foremost for me it is all about the visuals and if it fits with our brand aesthetic. Other key considerations are the ethics and sustainability of the product i.e. where it’s made, by whom and how it gets to the UK. I can tell very quickly if a product or brand isn’t going to work for us based on the answers to these questions. Then, ultimately, it’s cost!
How is trading for you at the moment? Our understanding of trade is being rewritten constantly at the moment as the high street finds its feet postpandemic. Things have returned largely to pre–pandemic levels for retail, which is reassuring, but every day is a school day! How do you get word out there? With a Post Office in each store, word of mouth and our online presence is crucial to letting customers know where we are and what services we provide the community. Big drivers for retail are social media (@ pennyblackgla) and for our website pennyblack.co.uk, online ads. With a small team, it’s a constant work in progress to tame the social media beasts!
You sell both online and in store. Explain how that works. Our new website launched just before the pandemic started so we got to ride that wave alongside everyone else! Marketing for websites is wildly expensive so we’ve taken on a lot of that work ourselves, which has paid off in terms of return per purchase. The things that set us apart - based on customer reviews - is same-day dispatch. That’s where having a Post Office in our stores really comes into its own! Most often customers receive their delivery the very next day, which is appealing for repeat custom. Also reviewed highly is our excellent customer service, quality of product and product selection. Our physical stores continue for now to drive more card sales than online.
Have you seen the average cost of your products go up - and if so how have you dealt with it? We have seen the wholesale cost of most products go up in the past 12 months. Ultimately that cost has had to be passed onto the consumer as with most other areas of life currently, and we as a business absorb the rise in cost of all the other running-a-business expenses. Your shops are dog friendly. How does that work for you? Being dog friendly is essential for us as both our stores are in Glasgow neighbourhoods, so people are often out and about with their dogs. They know we’re dog friendly so we get people in just for a browse with their pups, not necessarily with an errand in mind. We have dog treats, a water bowl at the door and staff who love dogs so it creates a nice engagement with customers. I think overall the convenience for customers is a big plus.
Is there anything you haven’t been able to source that you would like to find? I’m always on the lookout for something I haven’t seen before, particularly in a market that sees plagiarism so often. A publisher that nails all the ages, occasions and relations would be a dream! It’s so tricky to hit the right note across the board. What challenges have you faced over the past few months? Predicting customer behaviour I think has been the biggest challenge recently as we all work out what we want life to be like post-pandemic. That affects how much stock we hold for seasons, staffing and a whole host of other areas of business. We’re feeling positive about the Winter season though as patterns emerge from Spring seasons. What brands have been particularly popular with If you could choose the cards people your customers? sent you - which would you choose Our main greeting card brand Woodmansterne remains very popular for us as well as many smaller to receive for Christmas or birthday or other special occasion? publishers such as Raspberry Blossom, Cath Tate, Petra Boase, Nineteen Seventy Three, Ohh Deer, and My friends loathe buying me cards! I love local Scottish publishers such as Claire Barclay Draws and Eat Haggis. Gift wrap wise, our main supplier to receive cards by brands I don’t know is Gift Wrap UK, which supplies Stewo product, which does very well for us alongside smaller brands but if I had to pick from one of our current suppliers, we’ve recently started stocking such as Paper Mirchi and again Nineteen Seventy Three brands. Miss Bespoke Papercuts and I think they are beautiful and unique.
