Shopping Trends
For the concluding part of this series, Paul Smith spoke to Scott Jones, MD of North Shields-based 4Play, and Private Shops boss Mike Wallace about what changes they were making to their businesses during these uncertain times...
Although 4Play is a clothing brand it also operates a licensed store in Sunderland and it was in his role as store owner that I asked boss Scott Jones if his retail business had been affected by the downturn in the economy.
“The North East has definitely been hit hard by the recession,” he told me. “Harder than many other parts of the country I think. It was quite a poor area anyway even before the credit crisis hit. People are saving their money because - obviously - sex products are classed as luxuries, not necessities. What we’ve done to respond is to look around quite widely at the competition and beat them on price. I personally feel price matching is pretty pointless - we try to beat prices, not just match them. Another important thing is we always have offers on, and we update them regularly. Monthly offers and shorter-lived ones that are changed every couple of weeks or so. As a licensed store we’re limited to what we can put in the windows but changing displays have helped too. We’ve two large windows so we have the room to show certain
shop is different, but all - licensed and ace the challenge of adapting to a rapidly changing market.
promotional lines. Recently we’ve had a lot of focus on shoes. We put three pairs in the window and we got a lot of enquiries and interest off the back of them, plus sales! You have to hook people. That’s what it’s all about. Once you’ve got them in, that’s half the battle really. Even in this day and age, for licensed stores, there’s still a stigma. But if you can coax them in, customers will still buy.” Maintaining sales was only part of the story, I suggested, and asked Jones if he’d looked at reducing costs such as rents. He replied: “We’re in the very fortunate position of owning the shop’s building, so there’s no landlord to negotiate with. The licence fee, on the other hand, is a big issue. It’s about £5,500 here, which for the yearly visit we get, seems ridiculous. I’m always appealing it. I’ve just appealed it again and got a £600 reduction, but I’m still not happy with that. Realistically, for the time it costs them, £2,000 is closer to the mark. You can get an alcohol licence in this area for less than a thousand pounds... I know £5,500 might sound low compared to the £20,000 some people in London pay, but councils take advantage of an industry still seen as an easy target
when there’s no longer the money in it there once was. I’m going to keep battling away to get the licence lowered. I’ll take it as far as I have to, because of the principle. I can afford the fee they’re asking, but they aren’t meant to make councils money, they should only cover costs. Speaking of the council, the local government cuts are hitting the North East hard too. A lot of employment up here relies on government-funded bodies of one sort or another, so when those jobs vanish it just makes a bad situation worse. It doesn’t help that my shop’s located in a particularly poor area. The employment rate isn’t as good as it is in other parts of the North East.” Since the global depression is depressing, I enquired, does that mean porn and other sex products are ‘feel good’ purchases? Nodding, Jones responded: “When you treat yourself to anything you don’t need, it’s going to be for its cheer-up value, and porn, toys and playwear are always going to fall into that category. A lady might prefer to get herself a vibrator rather than a new top, when she might have bought both in the past. While DVD sales still cover the licence fee and more, we’ve changed the shop a lot from the store it was when we took it over. Then it was known pretty much just for films, but as they’ve become easier to get over the Internet we’ve seen a downturn in DVD sales. “We’ve given other products - I mentioned shoes - much more focus and space within the shop. Lingerie and toys are the bigger part of that but the lingerie has to be the right product. If it’s highly priced, it just doesn’t sell here. That’s the key reason we moved into manufacturing lingerie ourselves as by the time we added a fair mark-up onto what we were paying for other people’s, it just wasn’t selling. With the toys, we’ve seen continuous growth, with rabbits being our particular strength. We also sell a lot of pills - the herbal ones - and room aromas. We charge £25 for a film and that’s a lot of money when you can see clips - or whole films - on the Internet for free. When the competition is giving the product away, that’s always going to drive prices down. Thank God for rabbits!” I asked how he intended to maximise sales across the board in future. With aspirations well beyond the 4Play shop, he answered: “Our plan for the rest of this year and next year is to push our website hard. The single shop we have is only ever going to create so much revenue and I think we’re basically at that level now, so we’re looking to expand, and that means
either another store somewhere else - which is a big investment - or do what a lot of people do, and do well, and sell mail order toys and lingerie via the website. We promote it through the shop and had it revamped a few weeks ago -
ilove4play.co.uk. When I first started in this industry, I did my homework and if you type ‘sex toy’ into Google, the number of sites that come up is unbelievable. Where you are in those lists depends how much money you want to throw at it. Anyone could be at the top if they’ve got millions of pounds to spend on it. The returns can warrant it though. I know some of the UK firms are very profitable even with all they money they spend on AdWords. If I can get 10% of the adult population of the North East spending on my website, that would make me a very happy man. There are one and a half million people in the area and we advertise the site via the shop and local papers, plus I plan to get a billboard this year. We also advertise through other search engines but not Google - we could easily spend a thousand pounds a week to keep us on the front page, but each day we might only be high up for a few hours until someone else pays to go to the top and we’re knocked down the page. It’s a funny old industry.
“At the end of the day, you can change the window all you like, and put flyers through doors, but it’s difficult to change those old-fashioned impressions of what a sex shop is all about. I still hear people say they expect to see it full of old men in raincoats and until that impression is swept away, there’s always going to be a large element of society who’ll not come through the door. Keep in mind that the 4Play shop in North Shields is maybe 50 foot long by 25 foot wide, fitting it out cost £50,000 and it got the full five stars from the ETO Mystery Shopper. Spending that much was a personal thing as, realistically, if I had spent £10,000, it wouldn’t have been too detrimental to sales. As a licensed shop, the look is not as important as it is in an unlicensed shop.”
Given that, I asked if he were looking to open a second shop tomorrow, would he go the unlicensed route? It seemed not as he told me: “I’ve heard of so many people doing unlicensed stores and selling lingerie with a small selection of toys, and it not working out. That’s back to the lingerie situation again. It’s down to the margins. You need to carry a good range - and I mean a proper, all sizes, all colours, all designs range - for it to work. And when I say
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Erotic Trade Only June 2011
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