KEY POINTS:
Fashion designer Denise L'Estrange-Corbet and her daughter Pebbles answer your agonising questions
Q. I started my own retail shop a few years ago, and pride myself on my training and customer service, but am getting really tired of the blatant way other retailers whom I considered friends try to poach my staff.
Denise says: Welcome to the wonderful world of retail. I have had it done to me quite a few times by retailers, and when you mention it to them, which I always do, it's amazing but they say they never did it even when they are standing in your store doing it. I remember one stuttering profusely as he tried to deny it happened. It's just plain rude.
They obviously realise your staff are of a calibre theirs are not. If they do it again, chase them down the street, shrieking accusations of underhandedness.
Pebbles says: How many stores have you been into where the extent of customer service is a glance and a possible lift of the brow? And yet they make money?
If your store is making money from the great staff, then I don't think there is anything you can do considering there is no law against poaching. Otherwise, if you're making money from the products you sell, then train your staff to be typical shop girls who sit, read, eat and moan. That way - the brain drain will stop!
