Help The High Street, Mr Darling

By any standards, my shop is a small business, yet because the rateable value is very high (the new level being £27,000), there's no business rate relief for us, even after the Budget increase in the qualification level. I find it hard to imagine the kind of high street shop that would have a rateable value of under £6000 and therefore gain business rates relief- a tiny newsagent in a deprived part of Liverpool perhaps.
Ironically, if we were to concentrate only on our online business, we could rent a smaller unit on an out-of-town industrial estate and would very likely be able to qualify for rates relief. Yet it's the high street that needs help. Perhaps square footage or turnover would provide better criteria for defining a small business.

Post Online Or In The Letter Box?

Just when we got our email lists building up, we found we needed a blog. Just as we managed to get in the habit of writing one of those a week, we found we had to have a Facebook page. Panting to keep up with that, we're now told we need to Tweet as well. Your Life Your Style has started a Facebook page and begun to Tweet @yourlifeyour (damn these characetr limitations!).

It's right to embrace new channels of communication but we all have limited resources and it's important to decide what is going to give you the best return on your time. A few hundred devoted Facebook fans or Twitter followers will be worth a great deal as they will be the leaders that spread the word.

That's the good news. However they will expect it to be worth their while signing up and they will also tell you and everybody else when your business has done something wrong. Consequently you have to be reasonably confident that not only are there enough people out there wanting to sign up (how big is your email list?) but you or someone has the time to write regularly and respond to criticism and queries. All the time without neglecting those tools that are already working for you, like the email list or, dare I say it, your blog. Best to do one thing well than many badly.

Each medium has its own demands so you will need to research carefully what, for example, Twitter followers or Facebook fans are expecting from your communications. A Facebook page may be a forum for debate and tips whereas Twitter may be best for the latest news. Neither may be right for a constant barrage of hard selling. 

All businesses must develop or die. So you have to try new things. However some experiments will fail. Most of us can afford to wait for the trailblazers to do the groundwork and then jump on the bandwagon of the proven successes. 

The converse is that just because something has been around a while, it doesn't mean it's dead. We're not footballers who dirch their wives for the latest model.  Even though a customer could get an email and order online, some people still prefer the size, feel and portability of a letter in the post or to buy in person so they can see who and what they're dealing with. Don't ignore them just because a bright, shiny, new plaything comes along.

Why Competition Can Be Anti-Competitive

The private sector is often praised because it is about choice. This is because capitalism encourages enterprise and competition. The problem is, it's in the nature of competition to want to wipe out your competitors. Hence the need to control the free market through mechanisms like the Monopolies Commission.

I sympathise with media companies who cannot gain traction because of Sky and BBC's dominance. Businesses like our shop find Google's virtual monopoly of search presents a problem because if we want our website to be found, we have to play by Google rules or not play at all. State monopolies are even worse as we saw in the moribund communist economies of cold war period. Even cuddly John Lewis with their third way model of employee ownership make life difficult for smaller retailers (and which shops aren't smaller than them?) because of the way they stamp on any competition by always matching prices.

The difficulty of dealing with a monopoly reminds me of the time my wife and I stayed in the Everglades. We were miles from any other habitation and there was one restaurant. Our lunch was close to inedible so we complained vociferously, "That meal was awful." Followed quickly by "Table for two for tonight please."

Does The Internet Kill Creativity?

Many of the novelists who contributed to The Guardian newspaper's Writing Tips recommended turning off internet access. I can understand why. The constant stream of emails, RSS feeds, Google Alerts, Facebook postings, Tweets and all the rest makes it difficult to concentrate. Of course many will claim they can still write their novels, essays, features, advertising copy or whatever while the world babbles on in the background but I am pretty sure brains work better if they don't have to keep picking up the, er, the... where was I?... oh yes, thread of a thought.
I've resolved to turn off my internet access for a couple of hours a day, starting now. OK, in 10 minutes. Well, maybe half an hour...

Bad People Can Write Good Copy

I always delete spam emails without a second thought but the Subjcet Line of one the other day did catch my eye. One of the abilities I most admire is being able to write good advertising copy- finding the right words presented in the best way to get a positive response from the targeted audience.  So let me deconstruct the Subject Line of this spam email: "I sexual Russian blond, want to see, come closer".

To start with, it has the authentic 'foreign' phrasing that someone not totally familiar with English might use. You can almost hear the sexy Russian accent. Then there's the choice of words. "Sexual", as opposed to the more predictable "sexy", implies the sender is actually wanting sex rather than simply offering it. "Russian" is the nationality currently most associated with women who are keen to offer sexual liaisons. And of course she couldn't be anything other than a "blond", it's a hair colour perennially associated with sexiness but it keeps the description at a fun level instead of going for more potentially offputting explicit sexual attributes. 

So, having got the target's attention, we move on to getting the interest- "Want to see". Not a question, more an assumption intended to get you nodding in agreement.

Finally the call to action- "Come closer". In practice, this means 'click on the email' (then open a virus infected attachment or go to a website where we'll extract money or identity data from you). But by using this metaphor, the writer has created something far more powerful, evoking the memory of past experiences and that frisson of excitement when an intimate friend has wanted to get to know you on a more physical level. No-one but an idiot would even consider opening the email but that clever copy might just be enough to persuade the aforesaid idiot to click.

I deleted it, being neither the target market nor an idiot. If only such copywriting skill was being used for the power of good.

Flybe Leave Me Wanting

It just seems like tales of poor service from big companies just keep on coming. I booked some airline tickets with Flybe. I really dislike Flybe because, like RyanAir, they charge you for usingyour credit/debit card but I had no choice because I needed to go from Southampton to Perpignan. When I received the confirmation they suggested I might like to hire a car from their partners Avis. So I clicked on the link and entered my details including flight arrival 3.20 Saturday, only to find the Avis office at Perpignan Airport closes at 2.30 (remember when they used to try harder?). The words right hand and left hand come to mind.

Hotel's Reputation Goes Down the Toilet

There are always two paths you can take- the one that wins customers and the one that loses them.

After queuing for 20 minutes to check in at The St Johns Hotel (part of the Principal Hayley group) in Solihull because there was only one receptionist, my wife and I were finally issued with our key cards. When we got to the room, I unlocked the door and my wife went in first to be greeted by a man sitting on the toilet! She screamed, he looked shocked and we beat a hasty retreat. How could we have been given a room that was already occupied? The receptionist was very apologetic but we never got a satisfactory explanation.

I think if I’d been the receptionist I would have told the manager what had happened so s/he didn’t find out first from the guest. As the manager, I would have personally apologised to all concerned and given some compensation for what was a hugely embarrassing experience. That would have turned a memorable story into one that reflected well on the hotel. As a footnote, we were given our own room eventually so we didn’t have to share- and Solihull is very nice.

The PR In Front Is Not Toyota

It's one of the basic rules of PR that if you’ve got a problem you admit everything, apologise and get on with fixing it preferably with generous compensation. Excuses, delays or, perish the thought, cover ups are always a mistake. Hard to believe then that a company as clever and experienced as Toyota could make such a mess of dealing with the technical problems with their cars.

At Your Life Your Style we needed to make some apologies just before Christmas. A couple of our deliveries went astray in the great freeze. As soon as customers informed us of the problem, we apologised and sent replacements along with a refund of the carriage cost and a small gift.

I like the way shops like Waitrose and M&S give you a refund and a replacement if you find something wrong with their food. Not so good was the service at Boots in Romsey last Sunday when I was waiting at the medicines counter. A pharmacist was busy nearby sorting prescriptions which I assumed he couldn’t leave unattended. An assistant at the next counter was involved in a long transaction. When she’d finished she came over only to say she wasn’t authorised to sell medicines. She went to get another assistant.

When I complained that I’d been waiting over five minutes, the new assistant said ‘You could have shouted or told the pharmacist.’ An astonishing response that assumed I knew the first assistant couldn’t serve me, that the pharmacist wouldn’t call someone without needing to be nudged and that I would want to be shouting ‘Shop!’ ‘Sorry’ was the one thing she wasn’t.

Would You Sell £25,000 Solar Panels To An 82 Year Old ?

Even the noblest of causes offers cynics an opportunity for gain. And its supporters aren't always as noble as the cause. Green issues are a case in point. There's a whole green industry anxious to exploit our desire to help the planet and save on energy costs.
Solar panels seem like a great way to avoid wasting the earth's natural resources. So far so good, but if you've got solar panels to sell, you'll want to appeal to more than altruism. So what about good old fashioned greed?  Suggest the customer can save money as well as the planet and the sale is assured. Even if they'll never save enough to pay for the huge cost of the panels.
One sales rep recently tried to sell top of the range panels to an 82 year old I know. The kind of panels that generate electricity, enough to cover your own use and leave some over to sell to an electricity company. Only £25,000 (which is already £9000 more than the highest price I could find on the web). Even on the salesman's own figures, it would take 20 years to pay back the cost, let alone the lost interest on savings. Remember he's talking to an 82 year old.
Then there's scientists so desperate to prove their case that they massage the figures and eco warriors who fly on private jets to campaign the cause. Yet the fact is, just because there will always be unscrupulous or stupid people who attach themselves to a cause, it doesn't make the cause unworthy. Just as a few fanatics are being used to discredit a whole religion, so we should be aware that climate change sceptics will use any bad behaviour by 'greens' to create doubt about the need to take action on damage to the environment.
Having been in marketing for much of my life, I'm aware that, because of some unethical types, there's an assumption on many people's parts that marketing is about lying, saying anything to sell your product. My own experience is that marketing is about finding a truth within the product that will connect it to the potential purchaser.Add to which, you can't build a longterm reputation on lies. The problem with environmentalists being discredited by a few bad apples is that it doesn't just affect a few sales, it could damage all our futures.

Designer Dressed Steiff Bears Auction

Steiff Teddy Bears have become one of the most popular items at Your Life Your Style since we introduced them last year, so I thought you might be interested in an auction of Steiffs dressed by top fashion designers. Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney, Betty Jackson and Lulu Guinness are among many whose designer bears will be benefitting Living Paintings, a charity who have designed a touch and sound system to bring picture to life those who cannot see.
The auction is at the V & A in London on 25 February 2010. For more details visit Living Paintings.

Is Packaging Your Guilty Pleasure?

We’ve just got in a bunch of lovely new Dora Designs products at Your Life Your Style. Nestled among the Dalmatian draught excluder, the poodle doorstop, the monkey bookends and curled cat paperweight are some new e-leather animal doorstops. E-Leather is a new eco-friendly kind of leather reconstituted from offcuts.

It set me thinking about how we’re all (well, most of us) guilty these days about the effect something we enjoy may have on the environment. It could be driving a car or buying imported vegetables. My own secret pleasure is packaging. For instance, I once bought a pair of Ted Baker underpants just because they came in a box with a lid that was held by a magnet. Most underpants seem to come in some kind of cardboard box even though we all know they could be piled up loose on a table.

My wife got some GHD hair straighteners. I don’t know if they really the best money can buy but their packaging certainly is. I am normally very good at recycling my packaging but I confess I can’t bring myself to throw that particular box away.

Maybe we always need the excitement of doing something wrong. People used to get a secret pleasure from looking at porn but that’s pretty open nowadays. Is packaging  porn for the 21^st century?

Recession. What Recession?

You may wonder how British retailers including my shop Your Life Your Style can be celebrating a record Christmas in the midst of the worst recession since the Second World War? I don't find it surprising. I was marketing a theatre during the 90s recession and ticket sales boomed. Similarly West End theatres boasted record takings last year.

I believe the reason is most people aren't directly affected by a recession. As long as they still have a job, they may even be better off because of lower interest rates on their debts. In troubled economic times, people are wary about the future so they avoid big payments that may increase their debts or reduce their savings, such as holidays or cars, but they still want the pleasure of spending on themselves so they go shopping or treat themselves to day outings. A retail or leisure business blaming the recession for poor figures probably needs to look a little harder for other reasons.


I think we got a false impression about the effect of the recession because of Christmas 2008 when, in the immediate aftermath of the financial collapse, shops started panic discounting. A number of businesses like Woolworth and MFI went bust but these were weak businesses that would have gone anyway. The usual suspects like wrong products, weak marketing, bad location and the threat of online are much more likely to be responsible for poor performance.

Sale Away

The Sales seem to be over pretty quickly this year. Helped no doubt by the Big Freeze, we at Your Life Your Style found that the bargain hunters had dried up by the first week in January and most of our sales were once again full priced gifts and accessories.

We prefer the John Lewis 'clearance' approach, genuinely selling off stock cheaply that we have too much of. I don't like the cynical exploitation of a genuine need favoured by some retailers who buy stock specially for a Sale.
Either way, I imagine Sales did as well for other retailers as for us this year because unlike last year there was very little of the pre-Christmas panic discounting going on and consumers were probably wanting to get their purchases done before VAT went up.

Draught Excluder Sales Boom In Big Freeze

As my mother said to me when I was a little boy and down in the dumps, 'When one door closes, another one opens.' Actually she said, 'When one door closes, another one slams in  your face' but then she always had a good dose of Yorkshire cynicism.
Here's another saying my mother favoured: 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket'. Good business advice. It's true that when things go wrong, there is usually an opportunity you hadn't noticed before because you were too busy with things going right. But a shrewd business person will prepare for the bad days. When I was a clothing retailer, I sold t-shirts on hot days and lined jackets when it was cold, wide brimmed hats when it was sunny and wellington boots when it rained.

These last few days our shop in Winchester has suffered from the Big Freeze and everybody not venturing out onto the slippery roads and pavements. On the other hand our Your Life Your Style website has been doing a roaring trade in Dora Designs animal draught excluders. So much so that our total turnover is actually well up on the same time last year.
'Every cloud has a silver lining' as my mother no doubt would have said.

Smiling Vacuum Cleans Up

When you’re involved in a small business like Your Life Your Style, you find yourself doing all sorts of tasks you previously left to others. I’ve had to become a bookkeeper, a sign maker, a decorator and, every so often, a cleaner. 

Vacuuming isn't the most exciting job but what makes it a bit more enjoyable for me is our vacuum cleaner. He's called Henry, he's bright red and he has a lovely smiling face. When he follows me around, it's like having a friendly faithful pet. He certainly cheers me up in the morning but that wouldn't be more than clever marketing by Numatic if he wasn't also the best vacuum cleaner we've ever had.

Pudsey Bear And The Unlimited Appeal of Steiff

Until we started selling Steiff teddy bears, I have to admit they had completely passed under my radar. Now I love these beautifully made toys and their appealing faces and I see references to them everywhere. The other day I read that E H Shepherd’s original drawing of Winnie the Pooh was based on the bear that belonged to A A Milne’s son- and was made by Steiff.

                                  

Amazingly, although he’s been around for 24 years, Steiff have never produced a Pudsey Bear. Until now. This year a Steiff Pudsey made of yellow mohair will be available in a Limited Edition of 2009 pieces, complete with buttoned ear tag. He costs £150 but could be worth a great deal more in a few years time. £30 from each sale goes to the BBC's Children In Need appeal for disadvantaged children.

We’re expecting him in just by the end of November but he can be ordered inadvance from the Your Life Your Style website.

Delivering The Goods

Like Amazon and others, we've switched frrom the Post Office to private couriers to ship our online and phone orders. We're very impressed so far with the service we're receiving from Fastway. It's a fairly new network of independent franchisees who each have their own area in which they collect and deliver. At present they cover about 70% of the country and they offer an excellent price and service.
It looked like the postal strikes would be a blow to our business but we find we're saving on delivery costs as well as having a service that picks up from our door. It's a shame that a dispute about the unprofitable door-to-door delivery service which clearly is in need of reform but not necessarily in the ways proposed by the management should damage the profitable part of the Post Office business.

If Don't Ask, You Don't Sell

I never cease to be amazed by my wife Julia and my sister-in-law Wendy's ability to sell to customers in the Your Life Your Style shop. They never force themselves or a product but, by an apparently simple process of making contact ('hello'), offering to help, listening carefully to the customer's needs and being able to match products to those requirements, they sell far more than any pushy or passive salesperson.

Carbon Footprint Made By Slipper

At our shop Your Life Your Style, we're very excited by the arrival of new products from Moore And Moore of Devon.
We're selling their slippers and hot water bottles (including some that come with soft toys for children), all handmade in incredibly soft faux fur. You can turn the central heating down and still feel warm as toast. What a luxurious way to reduce your carbon footprint.
And if you want to do even more to save on your heating, we have Dora Designs' gorgeous animal draught excluders.

The Last Post

I've always thought it was a marvellous thing that you can post a letter and the Royal Mail will deliver it to someone's letter box anywhere in the country probably the next day for a flat rate.
But since I've been involved in a business that relies on sending parcels I have quite a different impression of the mail service. Many of the packages we send are under 2Kg and therefore qualify to be sent as a £4.41 Standard Parcel. Anything heavier, it's cheaper to send by courier. Firms like DHL, UPS and the Fastway all offer not only a better price but also collect from the door and track the parcels with a barcode.
Now strikes have meant that we can't rely on the Royal Mail at all. Online customers of Your Life Your Style expect a reliable speedy service. So it was perfect timing when Fastway arrived at our door with a service that is cheaper than Royal Mail even for smaller packages- and they come into the shop to collect, thus avoiding a long wait in a Post Offic queue. Of course, the Royal Mail will also collect- provided you spend over £15,000 a year with them or are willing to pay £500 per annum!
It seems symptomatic of state owned businesses- or indeed any companies that have grown complacent on lack of competition- that the Royal Mail's management and workers live in a past where enterprise and efficiency are way down the list of priorities compared with, say, resisting change.
The Royal Mail should look at the example of Fastway where franchisees are 100% committed to giving a good service because they have a stake in the business.