John’s Blog

9 out of 10 Australians prefer to buy locally made products (Ref: Eloise Keating Smart Company 06/1/2016) According to all the surveys coming out, locally made, is increasing in popularity. Local is very much being used more in conversation, but what is “local”? According to the dictionary, local means “existing in or belonging to the […]

Keeping up with what is happening in the garden retail category is confusing at present. One report was published just before the Chelsea Flower Show based on work done by the RHS which showed that in the UK Millennials and Gen X were not gardening due to the lack of guidance from their parents. As

As a consultant to retailers for over 40 years I have to admit one of my sins. I was pro adding music into the retail environment. As human beings we hate silence and if we do experience silence we start making some sort of noise…silence is deafening. As consumers we hate going into silent empty

Marketing continues to get more complicated as new social media marketing tools continue to be developed and the consumer becomes more acquainted and confident with social media. The challenge for many business owners is to keep up with a more demanding consumer, the answer may be to go back to basics and get “on your

It is your first time in a new country, the culture is different, the currency is different, they do not speak your language and you have to give a business talk to a professional audience. Many speakers been in this situation and often panic sets in. How are you going to impress this audience or

J Schwanke, of uBloom, is one of the trend setters. His latest newsletter, Trend Synthesis talks about the four trends he sees being developed in 2016. These trends are what he calls… Distraction. This is where bright colours are used to attract the eye in a world where there is a lot of competition. He

Retailing is constantly changing and so is how we sell. I remember my early workshops training team members to sell product, we would do a session where we would get workshop participants to identify the features of the products and then convert them to the benefits of the product. We would then develop role play

I often talk about impulse selling in my presentations. It is something that is important to all retailers and a way of increasing the average sale per customer. In January, Plyush Sharma, a Professor at Curtin University in Western Australia, released a research paper on impulse selling. His research reveals that impulse buying is based

In December there was a fascinating article in The Daily Mail in the UK about the look of retirement homes in the future. This article discussed the ‘Home Farm” concept where the home a was part of a farm complex with vertical and horizontal food gardens as part of the package. The homes are built

As retailers we need to be in-tune with our female Millennial consumers. For some this is easy, whilst for others it is more difficult. I was therefore interested to read an article in the November edition of “Speaker”, written by Frances Rios and entitled “What Women Want.” According to Frances… 91% of women say advertisers