Barking Mad

john@pramland.co.uk

Star Wars, The Lord Of The Rings, The Godfather. . . what have they all got in common?

Yes, they are all blisteringly good films. Yes, they have highs and lows (Here’s looking at you Godfather Part 3), but most importantly they are trilogies! Don’t start a debate about my inclusion of Star Wars in this list when there’s 9 films. . . I know this, but technically the 9 films are split in to 3 trilogies collectively known by us geeks as the journal of the wills. . . .so there.

Where was I? Oh yes, good things come in threes and this month may I present to you my final chapter. The last piece in the puzzle. For the past two months I have written about the current state of the industry from the perspective of us retailers and last month I tried to offer up a counter to the issues I raised. Both articles generated a buzz I’m pleased to say. I have received messages and emails from numerous retailers both agreeing and questioning my remarks. This has been very welcoming as it means I have an even better understanding of where the industry sits given all the views I’ve assembled.

On the flipside I’ve received some negative feedback from some (and I stress only some) brands. And to those brands that reached out to me I say thank you! It was encouraging to see my words had an impact and that it meant you felt compelled to enter the discussion. Most disappointing was the lack of feedback from some brands, the majority simply choosing to not even acknowledge my comments, comments that are echoed in independent stores nationwide. Does this lack of engagement mean they don’t care? I truly hope not. From the feedback I have had I can tell you the feeling in the industry is VERY strong around the points I raised. Retailers, yes, your retailers are growing more and more fed up of having to compete not only with the local competition and online stores but with you directly! So where does that leave us this month? Well as I said above it leaves us with that awkward final instalment.

I’m going to try and be as pragmatic as I can here and try to draw a line under all this toing and froing based on my own circumstances. In my store I have a good number of brands. Too many? Possibly, yes. To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, “I don’t support half of you half as well as I should like, and I support less than half of you half as well as you deserve”. My point being that the age old 80/20 figure comes in to play. I could lose 3 or 4 brands with zero impact to my bottom line. I would class this as natural wastage, either the customer has changed, the products within the brand have changed or simply it was the wrong brand for the store. I also have some brands that make dealing with them hard, not hard as in hard to call them or get stock, but hard as in hard to earn a living from. Either because they choose to do little about online discounting or because they are competing directly with me on their own website. These brands are the brands I, and we, as an industry need to make a decision on.

The big problem comes when a brand we class as “key” to our business falls into this category. So, the brand is one of your biggest. You spend lots with them, they have a large portion of your shopfloor, but you are either having to constantly discount in order to make a sale or you’re forever matching a promo price on their own site. Worse still you are demoing their products only to be told that the customer wants a colour that is exclusive to their own webstore. I can hand on heart say that I’m not currently in this position with any of our brands – not because I’m a genius but out of simple dumb luck, I guess. If I was and I was faced with making a tough decision to walk away from a brand, I’d let the maths do the talking: Lots of turnover with brand ÷ little or no margin due to discounting = what’s the point?

You can spend £1M a year with a brand but if this earns you next to nothing why sell it? Why give them space on your shopfloor? You will no doubt have items from brands that would love that business and are actively working to ensure those stores that support them are given the tools they need to earn money – all they ask for in return is your time, support and enthusiasm. In my last article I commented on how brands justify selling direct and I said at the time I accept this, but I said I wasn’t happy about it. And do you know what? This hasn’t changed but nor will the behaviour of these brands, and for that I don’t blame them. After all we are all trying to run a business that is profitable. However, we as individuals need to choose if we act upon this –We can’t force them to change so we must make the change ourselves.

Recently a number of brands have started to work on new partnership or “flagship” programmes to encourage and reward those stores that actively work with them in order to better improve business on a mutually beneficial basis, I cannot applaud this enough. Some will say that it creates an us and them amongst stores, it feeds in to the anti-competitive nature which we are all opposed to. In reality what it does is force the retailers hand. Do I want to work with this brand? Do I really want to improve my sales, grow my business and earn good margins, free of pricing issues? It means instead of having xyz of brand X on display I need to downsize in order to give more space to my new partner brand – but if the pay off is actually earning a margin then surely it’s worth it?

As a member of various nursery store groups I see gripes on a regular basis. You’d expect to, right? The problem is I seem to notice the same stores griping or different stores griping about a certain brand on a regular basis. Surely there must be a point where you have to draw a line in the sand? As a member of the AINR I’m proud to say I have a few exclusives, I’m also super confident I can sell them at full rrp with zero risk of having to discount – and that’s why both myself and my team push them. I would never choose to place a product on my shop floor over these if I wasn’t 100% confident on my margin, add to this the fact the exclusives we are lucky enough to have are so sellable. My point being I don’t ever have to gripe about these items so why would I not give them all my effort? The crux of the matter is that the same can be said for many brands too. Come on people, support the brands that want to support you! They’ll thank you for it, you’ll thank them for it and your bank account will thank you both for it!

So, like any good trilogy my story ends, but I’ll have to leave you with a cliffhanger as I don’t have a crystal ball to see into the future. . .or would it be a Palantir? Fingers crossed the plucky, under powered little guys win the day against the all-encompassing, allpowerful overlords. Time will tell if we manage to thwart the nefarious plans of the evil dictatorship trying to ruin our livelihoods. Until this climatic battle happens, I guess we can all go about our business selling as many prams as we can and trying to earn a living.

Until next month – Auf Wiedersehen and power to the uprising!