What are some of the issues you face as a business over the Christmas period?
Like most retailers, Christmas is a major contributor to our end of year results so we need to make sure we ace it. Getting our product mix right is critical and we work hard to make sure we don't run out of our main stock lines.
We always take on summer staff, so product and procedural training is important but finding time to train new staff is difficult when everyone is flat out. We tend to throw new staff into our gift wrapping stations and only unleash them on the general public when they know what they're talking about.
How do you make sure you get those stock and staff issues sorted?
We plan ahead. Luckily we've been doing this for long enough that we have plenty of sales data to analyse and we tend to make our Christmas buying decisions earlier each year. These days buying for Christmas starts around September, though we lock in some of the Champagne and other lines we import much earlier than that.
Staff-wise we try to employ the same students each summer. After a couple of seasons they're a real asset and it's always sad when we lose them to 'real' jobs later on.
What preparation are you doing in terms of your marketing given it's such a critical time of year for your sales?
Standing out from competitors is really important and we're more focussed on exclusive brands than we used to be - especially at Christmas time. Despite all the buzz about social media, email is still our primary marketing driver. We use Twitter and Facebook to reinforce our messages and direct people to our email database, and our Facebook spend will go up in November and December. We use Facebook for brand awareness and we work hard to convert Facebook fans to email subscribers.
