view from the shop floor


their Bluetooth active mobile phone will receive a message. We can say “Hi welcome to Poplars” and then give details of today’s special offers. We are also in the process of installing WiFi into the Learning Zone and our restaurant. It would appear that students can’t learn anything unless they are plugged in to the web and our customers need access to their emails 24-hours a day. I wonder if our restaurant will be the new to place to work from home for some of our regulars. We will be putting a time limit on free access and removing all power points to avoid trailing cables as trip hazards. Finally, E-learning for our employees presents some incredible opportunities. I’ve been talking with a select group of suppliers about producing a series of short online tutorials for our staff to gain even greater product knowledge. Work is also well underway to determine next year’s selling prices. For us, the rise in VAT to 20 per cent will inevitably mean price rises. We’ve looked long and hard at our position and we simply cannot afford to absorb the increase. It’s a shame to lose so many price points and it will take us all some time to get used to the new rate. The cost prices for garden furniture and BBQ’s next year have risen considerably and we are going to see some very large increases in selling prices, which is certain to affect consumer buying and demand. Customers will simply trade down or just not purchase. I can guarantee that price checking will take place like never before. Most purchases will be considered rather than on impulse and I’m expecting to receive more requests for price matching than ever before. I fear that we will become an


even bigger shop window for the internet; customers will try the product with us and then go and find the cheapest deal online. If this does happen and continues for a year or two then retailers will simply refuse to stock those products that are offered much cheaper online. In the long run this cannot be good for retailers, manufacturers or online traders. Is there anything we can


collectively do about it? Perhaps manufacturers will develop different brands for retailers and online traders. If manufacturers introduce a facility for retailers to brand


Garden & Hardware News 9


products as their own then price comparisons will become much harder for end users. Alternatively retailers will simply boycott manufacturers who supply online traders. It’s certainly an issue to consider and one we should be discussing as an industry. The Agricultural Wages Board has finally gone. To be honest it had no relevance to us once the National Minimum Wage was introduced. We stopped using the AWB rates 10 years ago. I see the National Minimum Wage is set to rise again in October, to another 2.2 per cent for adult workers. What happened to the governments call for a freeze on wages? Furthermore how do I explain to my employees why some of our unskilled and less experienced employees along with most of our young employees will be receiving a pay rise but our skilled, trained and experienced employees may not? I also see the new pension rules looming on the horizon. It looks like there will be a legal requirement for


all workers to contribute into their pension funds from 2012 (depending on the size of the employer) and that we, the employer, will have to contribute 3 per cent of each employee’s earnings too. With this added cost looming it seems the chance of any staff wage increases over the next couple of years is extremely unlikely.


Who do we blame for our current economic mess? The bankers of course. Our business bank, with whom the business has held accounts with since 1901, has just written to me with their proposal to triple my bank charges for 2011. It seems loyalty counts for nothing and unsurprisingly we are now


looking for a new bank. I take it this as a sign of things to come and we are about to feel the big squeeze. Our costs are going to increase: wages and pensions; the cost of the goods we sell; the services we need to run our businesses. Our selling prices are being forced upwards as a result of higher cost prices and the change to VAT which will inevitably have an impact on demand. Things could get pretty tough and uncomfortable for a couple of years. It’s time to tighten your belts. I will certainly be devoting some time to looking at all of our costs yet again to see what we can reduce further and what we should cut out altogether. ■


“With the rise in VAT we will become an even bigger shop window for the internet. If this does happen retailers will simply refuse to stock those products that are offered much cheaper online. It’s an issue we should be discussing as an industry.“


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