Special - Brian Wiseman of Present Company RE T A IL
In his column this month, Brian advises on overcoming adversity Brian Wiseman
in the hallowed pages of Gifts Today that consumer behaviour might really start to change when petrol / diesel prices ap- proached £1.60 per litre. Could it be? Menaced by grotesquely bloated
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high street rents on ludicrously onerous leases, retailers large and small are queuing up to get out. Here at Present Company, our Landlord has clearly been consulting the crystal ball and has received a chilling vision of the future. So, with barely two and a half years remaining of our lease, we have received an off er too good to be true to encourage our continued tenure. If we commit to a further fi ve-year term now, we will be granted a six-month rent-free holiday. Great idea? Er, actually, no. T e Landlord will off er the same terms to all tenants who have a lease expiring within the next fi ve years or so. Anyone silly
16 gifts today
was intrigued by the suggestion that smaller shops may be enjoy- ing an upswing in trade and that high streets may be celebrating a resurgence of footfall. I have long been advancing my theory
We are having a fairly rough ride right now with a few pleasant surprises thrown in.
enough to sign up will run the gauntlet of a rent review instead of a lease renewal and hence upward only terms. No thanks! So farewell cheque guarantee
scheme, I doubt you’ll be greatly missed. Assuming that no retailer in the land is daft enough to still accept cheques, I’ll not trouble to remind you that the worthy cheque card ends its life on 30 June. Readers of my advanced years will remember life before the scheme when customers simply wrote their name and address on the reverse of a cheque and that worked perfectly well until it bounced. Us retailers blame the weather
for every sales disappointment. Easter sales took a dip along with the hardy sun worshippers on Brighton beach. We threw in the towel with the chocolate Easter eggs in unprecedented fashion on Saturday morning by half pricing the lot. And even that drastic action didn’t clear the residue by closing time. But it would be too easy for me to simply join the howls of anguish that the home and gift trade is suff ering a dreadful downturn. We had a shockingly bad week in mid March, a pretty decent Mothers Day, a poor Easter undoubtedly distracted by heat wave and a few very good furniture sales. And in a time when we are told that the consumer is more promiscuous than ever in his or her shopping choices, I am very touched by the surprising loyalty shown to us by many customers. We are having a fairly rough ride
right now with a few pleasant surprises thrown in. I reckon I’m something of a veteran of recessions [even if the latest GDP stats tell us that UK plc is back in growth] and I have a few snippets of advice which may be found in my forthcoming book “Recession? How to clean up and book a million pounds worth of orders in the fi rst hour of Spring Fair!” [published by Harpic and Plonker at £89.99 fl accid back edition]. Don’t even think of eroding your
margins. So you give the stuff away, earn nothing, and then you can’t aff ord to restock either cos’ the prices have all gone up! Don’t do it! Don’t stop paying your suppliers. Not
only does it upset them but also they tend to remember it. In fact, many of them have people called credit controllers who are specially trained to remember. Plus, us retailers need good suppliers just as much as we need good customers. Pay your suppliers, but take that discount and pay with your credit card. Do your suppliers have a laugh by charging to take your card? I bet they wouldn’t expect you to charge them extra if they came to your shop. Don’t accept cards? T eir margins don’t allow it? Nonsense! T ere are plenty out there who will take your card payment without surcharge. “I’ve run out of all my best sellers, so they will just have to buy something else,” says the demoralised retailer. Look, this is how it works in the home and gift trade; the margins should be very healthy, but we all have to carry a lot of stock. T at’s the way it is. For those of you who are having a
bad time, please try not to let it all grind you down. Demoralisation simply feeds on itself. I’ve been there, things turned so bad in 1993 that I bought T e Bankruptcy Association book. It never came to that. We moved the shop and Present Company was born again.
Brian Wiseman has owned home and gift shop Present Company in Burgess Hill, West Sussex for 24 years. Brian’s wife Louise is buyer – upon hearing of our Landlord’s generous off er, she merely uttered a hoot of derision and an expletive.
brian_presentco@yahoo.co.uk
Picture shows, “Brian Wiseman with some of Present Company’s jewellery.”
Brian Wiseman on staying alive
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