Not at The Retail Business Show…

What a shame we are not at The Retail Business Show today. The sudden cancellation of the show and the sad demise of Retail Events means that there is no mainstream retail technology show in this country.

It is easy to follow the fortunes of retailers in the national press or Retail Week. Most operate in a gold fish bowl of having to regularly report sales to the stock market and it hits the head lines. Retail technology companies are much less widely publicised. However, it can only be inferred from the cancellation of the show that suppliers were not queueing to book stands.

In any case, it is not good news for suppliers who lost money, for retailers who wanted to have a look at new technology or simply get together, and anyone who was planning to attend the seminars which Retail Events had worked hard to put together.

Follow the money, follow the staff

And the second largest expenditure for bricks and mortar retailers? Labour (to a large extent e-tailers avoid this).

Many retailers will be looking to reduce staff while keeping profitable stores open and maintaining customer service. How many will simply reduce budgets by the decided amount and leave store managers to sort out reducing the staff? And how scientific will the store managers be at deciding the new rotas?

Reducing staff, especially where sales are more consultative, could have quite a significant impact on sales if the rotas are not carefully matched to when customers are in the stores. A consistent and scientific approach to this across all stores can only be achieved by obtaining sales data and, if possible customer footfall data, and applying some analysis. In most cases this will require some sort of system.

So, there we have it – prediction number 2!

Follow the money, follow the stock

So what are my predictions for technology investment in 2009 among retailers? Clearly it is likely to be much reduced, but what areas are most likely to attract investment? I would say follow the money – the largest expenditure for retailers is stock and with the pound in its weakened condition this will be particularly painful for many retailers.

Merchandise planning will be key and it will be a particular challenge this year as following last year’s plan and tweaking it a bit is unlikely to be sufficient. Budgets may be significantly reduced leaving buyers and merchandisers which hard decisions about how to cut ranges and assortments while still finding those best sellers.

The VAT rate change – still having an impact

Some kind relatives gave me Monsoon vouchers for Christmas so I visited Monsoon recently to spend them. Although an enormous sale was in full swing, I couldn’t find anything I liked and chose a cardigan from their new range. It know it was new stock, just in, because the very helpful and switched-on assistant manning the changing rooms, had not seen the style before. It was priced at £38 but when I came to pay, I was only charged £37.20. Another nice little surprise at the till when the price has been updated on the system but not on the ticket.

Is this helping retailers? I was completely unaware that the price would be reduced at the till so the discount did not come into my thinking at the point where I was deciding to buy it. Is the discount indeed, enough to sway my decision?  Would I have noticed if Monsoon had maintained the £38 price and pocketed the saving?

How will the consumer feel when the ticketing finally catches up with the VAT change (and it must do sometime soon!) and we no longer get these nice little surprises at the till?  How will we then know whether the retailer is passing the saving on? It will be impossible to tell once new ranges come in. Maybe Monsoon is conciously continuing to ticket at 17.5% VAT and charge at 15% VAT so customers know they are getting the saving!

Is it a new requirement for a retailer’s systems to support this form of dual pricing?