Up the aisles of retail

By MARK STORY

Retail's evolution into an employer of qualified staff, says advocate Chris Malpas, is helping to make the industry a career destination of choice.

Friends and family were a little shocked when former All Black Robin Brooke hung up his footy boots to cut cabbages, pack meats and work the checkout as a supermarket management trainee. Like many people, what they couldn't see, recalls Brooke, was the career path that retail now offers.

What attracted him was the opportunity to eventually run his own supermarket. With retail success being so prescriptive these days, he says it's hard to see how overall systems operate. But the more you understand how the industry works, the more compelling retail as a business model becomes.

Brooke is fascinated by the chain of activity required to get product from the manufacturer through to the end user. He equates running a supermarket to a circus act spinning plates. But instead of juggling, he's using established systems to manage a potent cocktail of fresh food and people.

"In any given day I'm watching turnover, managing the wage budget for over 100 staff, buying stock, checking cleanliness and lighting," says Brooke, owner/operator of the Milford New World supermarket.

Chris Malpas, CEO with the Retail ITO, says Brooke is indicative of many people who regard retail as a career destination, not just filler-in work until a "real job" turns up. Over the past 10 years the Retail ITO has worked hard to establish a clear career structure for retail through three levels of qualifications. These include: Entry, supervisory and management level National Certificates in Retail.

"These certificates, together with in-house training and development programmes - including graduate training run by many large retail chains - has spurred a growing awareness that there's more to retail than working in a shop."

Malpas admits the shop-floor remains the biggest barrier to attracting people into retail. But Nick Robinson (24), trainee supermarket manager, says the perception that retail is a last resort job is changing.

"Five years ago when I told people I worked at a supermarket they'd chuckle. These days they can see a clear career path," says Robinson.

Having concluded that the Bachelor of Arts degree he was contemplating would only prepare him for the dole queue, Rutherford opted for butchery apprenticeship. Instead of leaving university with a huge debt and no work experience, he wanted to get a trade and a promise of fulltime work.

"While I plan to stay in butchery for now, long-term I can see myself running my own retail business."

It was the opportunity to get solid experience in such a broad range of business disciplines that led recent AUT business studies graduate Katie Rutherford (23) to take a job as the Hamilton store manager for the Trade Aid retail chain.

As a business graduate, Rutherford had no shortage of employment offers. But few provided the immediate opportunity to bring key business skills - managing staff, buying stock and managing the books - together simultaneously.

She says being qualified makes it a lot easier to step into a role further up the chain. For Rutherford the biggest lesson so far has been managing staff.

"Having to manage people is really honing my leadership skills. I'm not sure what my next career step will be. But the breadth of what I'm learning will complement marketing, HR or a future head office position."

Far from being a drag, Rutherford believes direct contact with customers is an ideal way to get cheap market research. As for suggestions that the pay in retail stinks, Rutherford says she gets paid well for what she does. Malpas claims the competitiveness of salaries within retail is now taking a lot of people by surprise.

In fact, he says it's not uncommon for young people running stores to be earning $80,000 salaries. What this reflects, he adds, is the evolution of retail from the "corner shop" era into big businesses driven by corporate disciplines like merchandising, branding, and customer service.

So where's the hot space in retail right now? Beyond good front-line staff, Mike Millar, director of Retailworld Resourcing, says there's a strong demand for buyers, store management and technology sales specialists. He says school leavers should recognise that front-counter jobs offer a good grounding for career development in retail.

"With retailers tending to promote from within, frontline sales experience can often fast-track promotion into management," says Millar.

"Students who have been brainwashed to go to university should recognise that retail now offers the opportunity to get a wage and a qualification at the same time."