SOAPBOX

TRAIN TO GAIN...

PROFIT

MARK ROBINSON, PARK CAMERAS

We are all aware that the concept of margin in todays photographic marketplace is often no more than wishful thinking and whilst having a moan at your account manager might make you feel a little better, rarely does it result in increasing your overall profi t! Therefore, why not look closer to home when it comes to searching for additional profi t and embrace the opportunities that providing supplementary training to your customers has to offer. Start with the basics. We are fortunate to operate within a sales channel that is still recognised as the best for levels of customer service and product knowledge. Based on this you are more than likely to have

at your disposal expert inhouse knowledge across key brands and core technologies, creating the foundations for meeting the training requirements of your customers. Importantly you need to ensure that you have members of staff that are actually able to impart their own knowledge in a friendly and effective manner; intimidating customers with superior knowledge will lead to any training venture suffering a quick and painful death! But where is the profi t you might ask? Charging an hourly rate is just a starting point in covering the action of taking a member of your team away from the phone or the shop fl oor. By ensuring that the training is aspirational in nature the potential for additional, high margin sales is

MONTHLY

NIGEL MCNAUGHT, UK DIRECTOR PMA DELIVERS HIS MONTHLY COMMENT

Learning from each other - and other industries

The recent PMA show was highlighted by a host of new product launches and some of the best keynote speakers and educational sessions for many years. We can learn from each other - our international colleagues are facing the same scenarios and are fi nding ways to overcome them as the hundreds of speakers at the seminars showed. We can also learn from other specialist non photo retailers and some of these may well now be looking at us in the photo sector and wondering how we fi nd success stories. The independent cycle shop is in many ways like the independent photo shop,

often owned and staffed by enthusiasts, margin being squeezed on the principle purchase and accessory sales all important. So the news that Tesco is to start selling cycles may cause a stir in those specialist stores. On the same track, does the announcement that a video games streaming service called On Live is to be launched in June in USA and, one assumes in the UK shortly after, spell the end for traditional games retailers such as Game and HGV? Will they have to learn to live just on the initial hardware sale and lose the downstream revenue to a games on line company? And will they then

fi nd margins being squeezed even on the consoles so much so that they question whether they want to be in that business? You may be thinking that you’ve been there and got the t-shirt to prove it. So the new PMA TV series featuring Bill McCurry with a host of ideas from his “Idea Exchange” seminars will be of great interest to you. It’s full of ideas about how your peers in the photo stores are coping with the sort of market dynamics that the games and cycle retailers are just about to encounter. To fi nd PMA TV go to the PMA website www. pmai.org.

nmcnaught@pmai.org

PIXEL 03

vast from fi lters to studio

lighting kits. Taking the time to understand and prepare pre-training session is vital and will allow you to effectively weave in subtle soft- sales of products associated with the main focus of the requested training session. As with many concepts, success breeds success. Building in services to your advertising platforms is just as important as mainstream products. Further to this, positive word of mouth as well as a positive approach to the idea will ensure that adopting an inhouse customer training programme just might bring back some precious margin!

> > IND U S T R Y

SNIPPETS

LOVELY WEATHER WE’RE HAVING...

We in the UK are famous for our ability to talk about the weather for hours on end, but how does it affect your business? Do the punters rush in when it drizzles, or do they stay at home in the dry? Do you shift compacts by the dozen in the summer, or are your shoppers out on the beach? We want to know! Answers (not on a postcard) to the usual address...

CONTACTS & CREDITS

EDITOR

l.knight@parkview-publishing.co.uk

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Julie El’Roubi

Tel: 01323 433706

julie.er@parkview-publishing.co.uk

PRODUCTION MANAGER

clare@parkview-publishing.co.uk Ian Trevett

ian.trevett@ntlworld.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Julie El’Roubi

ADVERTISING

Lee Mansfi eld

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lee@pixelmagazine.co.uksimon.s@parkviewmedia.co.uk Rob Collyer

rob@parkview-publishing.co.uk

MANAGING DIRECTOR/ PUBLISHER

lee@pixelmagazine.co.uk

MARKETING DIRECTOR

simon.s@parkviewmedia.co.uk

MEDIA DIRECTOR

Linda Grace

Tel: 01323 433704

ACCOUNTS

caroline.m@parkview-publishing.co.uk

PRINTERS

The Ghyll Print, Heathfi eld, East Sussex

No part of this magazine may be reproduced by photographic, elec- tronic or mechanical means or stored in a retrieval system or republished in any form, without the written permission of the publishers. © 2010

© Copyright 2010 Pixel magazine

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