John’s Blog

Over recent months I have been promoting the fact that “Pop Up” retailing is one of the major trends of the future. In the last month things seem to be popping up everywhere. I was in Ireland and went to a “Pop Up” park in Dublin. The community had build a park for three months […]

One of the themes for this month’s blog is Sense. Prof Jason Castro from Bates College and Chuka Chemnubhotla from the University of Pittsburgh released their research on Human Senses last month. They found that the human can only sense 10 types of smell. Fragrance Woody Fruity (non-citrus) Chemical Minty Sweet Popcorn Lemon Pungent Decay

There are a number of books that I am reading at present. Michael Shuman’s is one of them. I am passionate about promoting and developing local business and therefore this a book caught my eye. It takes a different approach to most and provides advice on how local business can get capital to develop their

As many of you will be aware one of my most poplar workshop is “Get rid of salespeople and develop day makers”. I was therefore fascinated to read the 2013 American Express service study that was released in September. This study took an interesting approach. It looked at the “feel good” factor and what made

In August, I presented my Ghost Town, Clone Town, Home Town presentation in Boddington, a rural town in Western Australia. The aim of this presentation is to work with small business in the community to address the needs of the consumer. This is a small town and many of the retailers are not using social

When I was in Chicago last month I met up with Kurt Fromherz from Connecticut. I have known Kurt for many years and he is one of the innovators in retail marketing. He identified, like me, that loyalty clubs are still an essential marketing tool, but consumers do not want their wallets and purses filled

Pinterest may have only appeared in 2010, but it is one of the most valuable tools for retailers. It reached over 45 million consumers in the month of July (2013) in the USA alone. A report in USA Today on 22 August 2013 by Jefferson Graham showed that it is being taken up rapidly by

As a consultant most of my time has been spent in store making sure that sales are optimised in the store. That is still a key element for success, but the up and coming need for many retailers revolves around delivery to their home. Customers used to be happy that they would have to wait

Jason is a subscriber to this newsletter and the Qantas magazine had this new book as a must read in their in-flight magazine in August. This is an excellent book and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Many of us are focused on the retail aspects of our business and we miss the importance of sourcing

This is the topic of one of my presentations at present. Think about what is usual and what is unusual. In the last few weeks we have had a major social media driven business buy the Washington Post…who saw that coming? Plus the launch of AmazonFresh, a same day delivery service launch on the west