January 2007

By John Stanley In the last few weeks a number of events have caused me to focus on 2026. Twenty years into the future. Firstly, Linda and I became grand parents for the first time and this inevitably causes you to look at the future. While we awaited the great event, the �Australian� our national […]

Christmas 2006 has come and gone. Prior to Christmas there were the motivational articles to get your teams to increase sales over the busy period and we have now had the financial reviews on how successful the Yuletide trading was compared to other years, but what were the retail trends this last year and what

By John Stanley I recently read an article that stated that the number of coffee shop brands in the UK had doubled to over 2,500 brand outlets in eight years. I realize we are now in the �coffee culture�, but take Starbucks out of the list and how many retail coffee shop brands can you

By John Stanley On a recent flight to South Africa to work with clients I read Dr Paddi Lund�s excellent new book �The Absolutely Critical Non Essentials� If you have not read it, I recommend you should. For those that do not know Paddi and his story, he is a Dentist based in Brisbane, Queensland.

By John Stanley I know what your thinking, how can a bucket of 12 tomatoes cost $15,000? Nobody would pay such an exhorbitant amount of money for tomatoes! But read on, these tomatoes cost $15,000 Australian dollars. The actual bucket did exist and was located in a small fruit and vegetable shop down the road

This may not shock you, but it surprised me and thank you to Nottingham County Council libraries and the local pub for providing the information ….. let me explain. Nottingham had a major problem, they were finding it difficult to attract youth into their libraries. They found that youth preferred the pub to the library.

By John Stanley In the last few weeks a number of events have caused me to focus on 2026. Twenty years into the future. Firstly, Linda and I became grand parents for the first time and this inevitably causes you to look at the future. While we awaited the great event, the �Australian� our national