The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

Welcome back to the final episode of my three-part analysis of the 2021 Resilient Retail Product Business Survey. In the previous two episodes, we’ve had a look at the numbers that the 300 plus respondents submitted, in an effort to find some realistic benchmarks to work against, and we also reviewed how those business owners used marketing to help build their brands and increase their sales. In e...

Welcome back to my analysis of the 2021 Resilient Retail Product Business Survey. Last weeks episode was all about the numbers, and hopefully, you were able to draw inspiration from some of my key takeaways and use the statistics I shared to help you benchmark whereabouts your business currently stands and what you can do to help it grow. In today’s episode, we take a look at one of the most impor...

I’m excited to announce that this episode marks the start of my deep-dive into the long-awaited results of my recent product business survey. There’s a number of reasons I wanted to run a survey, partly to see whether certain patterns had changed since my 2019 study, but namely, it’s because there aren’t many benchmarks out there that convey the true reality of running a product business. It’s eas...

Today’s episode was requested by one of our listeners, and the challenges it speaks to are something we’ve touched on in previous episodes - it’s a question that I’ve heard many times from Small Business Owners - to paraphrase - “How do you make life easier for yourself when you’re wearing so many different hats?” I’ve had many conversations with creatives, makers and retailers, just like you, tha...

Finally, the roadmap for lifting the current (and hopefully final) lockdown in England has been laid out and there’s plenty to review, analyse and dissect. With non-essential businesses being given the green light to reopen on April 12th there’s a lot of things to consider - whether that’s pivoting from online sales to shifting your focus back to your physical store or trying to get your head arou...

A Break-Even Analysis is an indispensable tool for businesses of every shape and size, and reaping its benefits only requires inputting a few simple figures, pulled from your outgoings and income, to help you better understand where your business is and what you need to do to take it forward. I know going over the numbers may not be the most exhilarating part of running your business, but it’s imp...

Firstly, a quick PSA - The Resilient Retail Game Plan has hit 10,000 downloads! Thank you so much to all of you that have, and continue to tune in - your listenership is hugely appreciated! Now, as I discussed back in episode 12, I’m a passionate advocate when it comes to the subject of paying yourself from your creative product business. Whether it’s a monthly allowance, an annual bonus or someth...

The Trading Mentality is an approach that is prevalent within the inner workings of some of the worlds biggest retailers. It’s an ideology that harks back to the days of market stall trading, with the message at its core being to “always be dissatisfied”. This mantra has been used as a tool to motivate businesses to pursue relentless sales growth and to endlessly maximise their profits, which is w...

From eBay to Etsy and Stripe to Paypal, there are a hundred different options when it comes to selling your creative products online and getting paid, and it seems a new sales platform or marketplace pops up every week - so where do you start and how do you know which platform is right for you and your business? In episode 28 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I cover the benefits and pitfalls of...

Postage and packaging is one of those funny issues that you don’t really have to grapple with until you have to do it yourself - but as a creative product business, receiving an item is probably the first experience a customer will have with you and your products, so ensuring that the delivery experience is good, and that you make a good first impression, is almost as important as the product itse...

With a lot of people struggling to juggle life, work, homeschooling, side-hustles, relatives and self-care right now, I want to spend episode 26 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan on my six steps to being more productive. I’m a self-professed productivity nerd and am always looking at ways I can tweak and better manage the needs of my business as well as my own.  The best place to start is to be re...

Facilitated by improvements in technology, we’re seeing a big rise in people starting creative product businesses. With digital services and the ever-increasing reach of the Internet making personal enterprises easier than ever to launch, and in creating an environment in which customers are more confident buying from small and local businesses online, how can you stand out in an increasingly crow...

With rolling lockdowns and forever changing pressures being placed on our time and availability, such as home-schooling and store closures, putting any sort of business plan in place right now might feel a bit hopeless. But, as one of my favourite sayings goes “Plans are useless, planning is priceless”. No matter what the outcome and how things may change, reviewing your goals and ambitions is imp...

Welcome to 2021! The festive period may have come and gone, but we’re not quite done with it yet. As Small Business Owners the Christmas sales season can be the busiest and most profitable time of the year for us, so it’s important to take a look at how things panned out throughout November and December, to review what went well, what added value, and what didn’t, and adapt and implement changes a...

2020…what a mind-boggling year for retail! With a lot of this year’s news and headlines having focused on depressed sales, supply chain challenges, and the collapse of Goliaths such as Debenhams and the Arcadia Group, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this year has been an end-to-end disaster for creative product businesses.  However, research shows that a huge number of small and independent bu...

You may have only just recovered from the Christmas rush but after some well-deserved rest and relaxation, we need to click ‘reset’ on our seasonal sales strategies and ‘snap-back’ to business as normal so that we hit the ground running in January and make sure that our creative products align with the changing needs and desires of our customers as we enter a new year. In this episode of The Resil...

The Christmas sales period, and the likely increase you’ve experienced both in traffic and purchases, might have offered you a brief taster of what it might be like to operate your business at a higher capacity - perhaps you’re now wondering how to take things to the next level? Whether you’ve been in business for a while, with dreams of multi-million-pound success, or are just getting started as...

As a creative product business, the first step to making a sale is driving traffic to your website - but it’s important to recognize that not all traffic is created equal - just like in a physical store, you’ll have people who have arrived at your business with the intention to buy but there’ll also be plenty of people just browsing. So how do you ensure that your website doesn’t become a leaky bu...

2020 has been a year like no other for retail. With the pandemic ongoing and the uncertainty surrounding what a post-lockdown December looks like, consumers are in a bit of a holding pattern, and as small business owners, we have to expect the unexpected. We will see a Black Friday boom or will there be more in-person purchasing once lockdown is lifted?  With everything so up in the air I want to...

In my many years of experience working for and dealing with creative product businesses, and of the many tactics and strategies people use to shift their products, I’ve found that stock clearance is one of the most misunderstood and misused. Stale stock traps money in your business, takes up valuable space, and can be a drain on you mentally - so how do you deal with stock that’s not performing? I...

As a creative product business owner, the run-up to Christmas can be stressful. There’s so much to do, plan, consider, and manage and it’s all too easy to become overwhelmed and lose focus during this important selling period. In episode 16 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I want to focus on mindset and give you my best advice on how to come out on the other side of the holidays with a successfu...

It’s easy to get overwhelmed in the hectic run-up to Christmas. As the winter months run away with us, it can sometimes feel like you’re constantly on the back foot trying to put an ad-hoc Xmas strategy together, and that was before you had a global pandemic and a national lockdown to contend with. So, in episode 15 of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I want to go through a couple of points that wi...

Though you might be feeling deflated and frustrated upon hearing the news that we’re in for a new month-long lockdown, we have the advantage of having gone through this once already and can use the benefit of that experience to get prepared for the challenges ahead. Christmas isn’t canceled, I believe it’s all to play for - so, in this special bonus episode of The Resilient Retail Game Plan, I’ll...

As a creative product business, there are many ways that you can get products in front of potential customers, and it’s thanks to the ever-growing reach and growth of technology that digital marketplaces have become a major component of the shopping process. From ‘Amazon’ to ‘Not On The High Street’ and from ‘Etsy’ to ‘eBay’, third-party marketplaces appear to offer a lot of advantages in the form...

Todays episode is a little bit different -  a little bit of a rant, if you like! Starting a business is often a minefield in terms of your self belief and it’s very easy to get seduced by a lot of the quick-fix messaging that we’re exposed to on social media. We’ve all seen them - the Facebook ads promising you a roadmap to a six-figure business, promoted content that claims to guarantee you eye-w...