Cornwall Retail Network

Falmouth Traders Window design evening Invite

2008-07-24T07:32:59+01:00

Learning Champions

2008-07-14T14:28:31+01:00

Please find below a downloadable PDF file with all the information you will need about the Cornwall Retail Skills learning Champion Course. If you do want to talk anything over or find out more, please contact me on the address or number below. alternatively you can email me jclake@cornwall-learning-partnership.org

Gans gorhemmynnadow a'n gwella

Jo Lake Cornwall Retail Skills Co-ordinator The Lodge Trevenson Road Pool Redruth Cornwall TR15 3RD M: 07737772181
Download crs_champs_info.pdf

Task and finish group minutes and presentation

2008-07-02T07:54:08+01:00

Dear all

Please find attached the minutes from the last meeting and also Ian's presentation. I have also posted these on the blog www.cornwallretailnetwork.typepad.com

Also I am working on a Podcast of Ian's presentation, I will try and get this posted on the blog by the end of next week.

Jo

Gans gorhemmynnadow a'n gwella

Jo Lake Cornwall Retail Skills Co-ordinator The Lodge Trevenson Road Pool Redruth Cornwall TR15 3RD M: 07737772181
Download cornwall_retail_skills_compatible_version.ppt

Download minutes_tf_june_2008a.pdf

Agenda 25th June 2008

2008-06-17T09:09:05+01:00

You can download the meetings agenda here. Please confirm your attendance via this link

http://www.doodle.ch/w3a34d3e89mx86ks on the moodle mailer. Thanks Jo Lake.
Download meeting_25th_june_2008_2pm_lsc_offices_truro.doc

CRS Convergence Package

2008-06-09T13:02:46+01:00

Please find details of our convergence package here in PDF form.
Download crs_convergence_groups_v1.pdf

2008-05-28T15:09:35+01:00

Where's all our money going Mr Prime minister?

Well it's a pretty miserable end to May, I'm in trousers and shoes, and I'm cold and that suggests to me that its not very warm. I'm hoping that all those half term holidayers are finding some interesting things inside to spend their money on, because if the fuel prices increase any more they will all be stuck - if not from lack of fuel then from all the blockading lorries!

Its not only fuel that's hitting the pocket of the consumer, food prices are at a 14 year high, and are currently rising at more than three times the rate of inflation, the sale of house hold goods has taken a 1.9% nosedive, its largest fall since 2005, co-op are on a mission to sell their unwanted Somerfield stores, and despite this M&S profits are soaring?!

I'm not entirely sure where the government are going with tax since the department of the man that is married to Cherie, either he got it all wrong or the Scotsman has serious problems, but what effect is this really having on our small retail outlets and our businesses? Why don't you let me know??

all that glitters...

2008-04-29T23:27:35+01:00

As I'm sitting here, watching this evenings BBC News, with all its faults, and unapparent bias, I'm left wondering what clout as consumers, customers as voters we really have. I try not to watch the end of news broadcasts because I know that they are constructed so that the last thing we see as viewers is something light hearted, humorous, distracting just as the character of Boris Johnson is currently suggesting. What I do try and remember is what came first, the fact that the housing market is in somewhat of a collapse, the fact that a very strange man kept his daughter locked in a seller for the last 24 years, which I really don't want to think about, the fact that a 19 year old with a very privileged education is up on terrorism charges... Where ever you look and what ever news you watch, none of it is remotely helpful to us at our island end of this country. Apart from the housing market, perhaps the most important thing to us and our industry currently are the increase in fuel prices. £1.28 pence for a litre of diesel, and how do we respond as a country? A few of us blockade london. That's it. But surely fuel costs means something to us, something to our cost prices, something to our shopping budgets, something to our survival budgets. Doesn't it?
But perhaps our ethically minded actions also follow through to the european money that currently services our area. Several people today reminded me that although we as a sector try to encourage retailers to get involved in our projects so that we can say, 'yes this is what the industry want', some of our boundaries are already made before we have had a chance to mould them. As a sector, and as a business we can blame who we like, the LSC, (Learning and Skills Council), our local politicians, our public sector representatives, perhaps even those who so proactively state that they represent the sector, from people like me, right through to the likes of the FSB and our local chambers. But who ever we blame, these parameters are already set. So perhaps our real bug bearing lies with the current government who say and therefore actively pursue the line that NVQ training is what our current workforce need. Of course we could shout about the impracticalities of this, until we are blue in the face, but it won't change the current goal posts, or gain us any time in the process. Neither will it change the fact that there are certain things that are crucial and imperative to individual businesses, such as health and safety and employment law; things all businesses need to keep abreast of regardless of cost, if they want to continue trading within the remits of the law. And yes, as businesses they need to take responsibility for providing time and money for these essential things, thins that make their businesses work, otherwise they fail to compete and we fail to comply to plan and to trade as we should do.
What we can do currently, and easily, or perhaps not so proactively, jugging by our current active reaction to things like fuel prices, is consider our future. Who are we going to employ, how are we going to get them, keep them, encourage them to work harder and smarter; how are we going to invest in our current work pool? As a county and as an industry we have a transient workforce, one day you have a sales assistant, the next day, he or she is someone else's receptionist, the next day, the same person is another companies PA. We want skills to be transferable, we want a better work pool from where we can fish for the strongest and biggest swimmers, or at the very least, catch ourselves a few tiddlers that we can bring on, and nurture into full sized sharks...
So to get back to the news, which has I must admit, been some what diminished by the weather, and other such conundrums, there is always a bigger picture. There are those things we react to, those that we remember and the majority of which we simply raise our eyebrows at and comment to ourselves or our partners, about the current predictable behavior of our government and the 9 billion pounds profit that shell and its counterpart made out of our hard earned cash in the last financial year. But we do nothing about it. One vote is much the same as another these days, we swap one bad government, leader, proposal, project for another without voice, so by the time we think about saying, "what about us", we are always, just a little to late, to make a difference.

The Future of retail thanks to You Tube

2008-04-17T15:41:17+01:00

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Carparking

2008-04-15T13:54:35+01:00

I'm just enjoying the first real spat of late spring weather and funny enough, I'm thinking about shopping! This time garden furniture, with a new Homebase store in Bodmin, and neighbors to think about its probably time I got some fencing and do the whole thing properly. This interestingly enough brings me onto car parks. If I go to homebase, I can park for free, if I go to Asda, not only can I park for free, but they send a little bus around to pick me up and take me home, for free. If I go to Trago Mills in a pure moment of insanity, then it also costs me nothing to park, although all these places might well cost me something in terms of my stress levels when they are busy. So its interesting to note that all these large stores provide free parking, while if I want to visit my small independent shops, it costs me £4.00 for over two hours in Truro, and in most other places several pounds for the day, even Daymar Bay costs me £3 to visit the beach - but then we aren't a nation that expect something for nothing - are we? So imagine my surprise last week when I visited Liskeard, to discover that if I park for one hour, it costs me £0.10 pence, yes thats right TEN PENCE!!!! and even better, if I live locally I can get a card, and it costs me £0.05 pence, FIVE PENCE, for one hour!! As I wondered into the town, feeling exceptionally smug, and considerably richer than I would have been other wise, I found myself being pleasantly surprised, and not because several lads were taking it upon them selves to tell everyone in ear shot, how awful Liskeard was, but because the provision of offers was fantastic. I found the little coffee shop where I had a meeting delightful, even though, I had to walk back up the road to the cash point because they didn't take cards, - where incidental my intake of cash was more than enough to pay for lunch, and buy me some fresh scollop's from the local fish shop. Some pickled eggs, Cornish chocolate, a fair trade local shopping bag, and some Cornish goats cheese, receiving all purchases with a smile - and to top it all off, two tigers feet! My all time favorite pastries, normally as far as I was aware only available from a tiny bakery in Lostwithiel, where they are always sold out - they really are that good, so I hope you can keep a secret otherwise my chances for purchases will be further reduced! As I walked back to the car, I realised that instead of putting £4 into the council's pot, I had actually put my four pounds and some extra back into the towns local economy. For every £10 that is spent locally, its worth £24 to the local economy. That means that I was worth at least £48.00 to the local economy, on that day, and all because I only paid ten pence for the car park. Makes you think, doesn't it!

Backwards in comming forwards

2008-03-31T12:20:35+01:00

Having just returned from a few sun packed mellow weeks in Tunisia, I'm relieved to discover that my mail box is not quite full to over flowing and that the weather is not quite as white as the overseas British post might like its ex-pats to expect. Its been an interesting few weeks, learning how to barter with taxi drivers and local tradesmen for goods, after getting used to the fact that if you look western, or European, everyone wants to "make you good price". More than often a "good price" is based on where your from, the strength of our pound leads most salesmen to think that charging quadruple local prices for items is acceptable, after all, "8 dinnias is the cost of a sandwich" here, over there, it is probably at least a few days work. But every things relative, and if you argue, which is perhaps all part of the experience you tend to pay what you think things are worth, rather than, what the locals think your worth. Its an interesting concept for buying and selling. Sometimes as a customer I feel undervalued by retailers or shop floor managers, in-fact sometimes, I don't even get a buy your leave from who ever is manning the store, in Tunisia, it was the complete opposite, people fell over themselves to communicate, barter, swap, attract attention to themselves and their products, even if most of the time what they were selling was somewhat antiquated, the cajoling and shouting was never any less or enthusiastic. However, shopping in Tunisia is not recommended to those with a gentle disposition, as you will get ram roded into buying things that you don't want for ridiculous prices. What struck me most, is the seemingly complete contrast between both countries. Several English people in our hotel, grouped together every day to complain about one thing or another, mainly the lack of infrastructure, the nothing to do line that we often hear as an excuse for teenage behavior seemed to apply here to very 'grown up' groups of visitors. It got me thinking about how spoiled we are, both in terms of the simple things that we take for granted, and for those endless entertainment channels, both inside and outside our own front rooms that serve to keep us amused. Here everyone shops, we absent mindlessly rely on food chains, delivery and supply chains to bring us what we want when we want it. We have the infrastructure to support this and we rely on this to get buy in our 24hour lifestyles. We have intensive farming, appropriate health and safety procedures; for example you wouldn't see builders working in flip flops, or people mixing cement by hand, or hauling bricks up hundreds of feet on a bit of string, or road workers working without barriers or lights or speed restrictions. Nor would we see a single man with a hoe working acres of land, or rubbish and rubble dumped any old how throughout our roads and green areas. Saying that, our current infrastructure has taken years to build and establish, our jobs currently afford us the lifestyle we have and our religions don't impinge on us as perhaps we perceive they might do in countries like Tunisia, which is predominantly Muslim. And we also might like to take into consideration, that if we hopped over the boarder to Libya, you can fill up a two litre diesel car for the equivalent of about 25 pence. In a way, Tunisia has the best of both worlds. Its economy is supported by the influx of foreign visitors, giving local people the chance to double if not triple their weekly wage. Its food is locally produced, organic, fresh and affordable, something concerned consumers in the UK can pay through the nose for. While fuel is cheap, and cars are abundant throughout the larger cities, in rural areas, transport is still the good old horse and cart, safer for the environment, and retailers are salesmen, who not only sell through their own locally established trade routes, from soil to table, and manufacture to shop floor, but know how to drive a bargain and communicate effectively, if sometimes over zealously to consumers. It makes me wonder, if that in being more advanced, in trading at higher prices and allowing technology to simplify all our lives, we as consumers find ourselves striving for the sort of service and relationships that my parents had with the local butcher, tailor and farmer, the sort of consumer lifestyle that the Tunisians have that we as such a well developed country might regard as backward, and indeed I heard that many times over my fresh eggs, tomato's and bread at breakfast, where a large man often complained, " I came here for a relaxing time, they are about 50 years behind here man, their's no Bacon, and I even have to keep my finger on the toaster. I'm gonna go to Tesco's when I get back and send them one...."