Risks of 'catching' 'em young….?

News that a five-year-old boy has won a defamation case against Lidl, when wrongly accused of stealing a pack of crisps, makes apprehending 'shrinkers' more of a judgement call…
Incremental sales required to recover the loss of a 50p pack of crisps for a retailer on 2% net profit are £25.
However, getting it wrong can mean that extra sales of €375,000 are needed when the court awards €7,500 ex costs….
Have a great lidl weekend, from the Namnews Team!

Sure about the £1 in your pocket, really, really sure?

Daily Mail

According to reports in the Daily Mail and Telegraph, the Treasury have announced that there are £41m fake £1 coins in Britain – meaning one in every 36 in circulation is of no value…
The level of fake coins is getting worse. This is Money reported in September 2008 that one in 50 was a fake and last year Treasury figures suggested one in 40 were fake.
Small shopkeepers, including 'Pound shops' can suffer from accepting a fake £1 coin as they are not refunded by the bank if they attempt to deposit them with their daily takings.

The real issue is consumer confidence; already concerned about value reduction, if authenticity is challenged, then the only answer may be to remint the lot…

Or perhaps a shot of inflation to shift attention and usage to the £2 coin, and incentivise Pound shops to offer 3-for-2?

Degrees of theft?

(Pic showing 'thief-links' at Target)

News that police have told shopkeepers not to report thefts of goods less than £20 betray police misunderstanding of how retailing works.

A theft of £20, from a retailer making 2.5% net profit means incremental sales of £800 to recover the loss.

In other words, the same thing as telling householders not to trouble them with reports of burglaries of less than £800 a time…

Have a DIY-security weekend, from the Namnews Team!

Hotel foot-shooting for the unwary....

Most of us in this business have a reflex-suspicion of hotel charging procedures born out of first-hand experience. However, few of us realise that hotels are simply trying to provide stimuli for new substitute technologies such as
- Excess rates for phoning from bedrooms drove the early stages of mobile phones
- Ditto for bedroom broadband and the growth of dongle sales
The latest faux pas is a £14/day/laptop for BB/wifi workshop delegates in a conference room!
An opportunity for a provider to bundle a sensible package-rate?
Or for hotels to saturate the building with free access, and thereby fill the public areas with coffee drinking, snacking NAMs and other 'word-of-mouth' compulsive networkers, at a cost to the hotel of less than £100 per month?

Brighton shopping district gets new security patrols?

News that security patrols in a shopping district have been appointed to replace the recently liquidated previous provider, illustrates a double whammy indicator of the double-dip recession..namely increased financial pressures on service providers, and growth in local crime to match growing unemployment.

Incidentally, Brighton is an obvious leading indicator, having been once described by Keith Waterhouse as having the air of a town that is perpetually helping the police with their enquiries….

Have a watchful weekend, from the Namnews Team!

Ville, the shopping trolley bike!

Surely a must for NAMs/KAMs needing a car-less way of fetching essential top-up weekend requisites, combining gentle exercise without incurring the inevitable plastic bag palm-burn of walking shopping home…

Alternatively, just ring Ocado and offer to buy some shares...
More pics 
Have an innovative weekend, from the Namnews Team!

Tesco makes start towards house sales @ £9,999?

News in the Daily Mail that the mass retailer is now selling garden sheds should not be a surprise to Tesco-watchers

Given the fact that even before this 'shopkeeper' began to offer mortgages, the banks' massive own goal precipitated the global financial crisis and offered grocers the banking category on a plate, it should be obvious that Tesco is in the business of eventually selling anything that can be legally sold to shoppers…

'Flat-pack' garden shed sales are merely a starter in a designer-developer-builder-seller housing continuum where traditional suppliers of a category have allowed inefficiencies and over-pricing to offer total non-experts to enter and compete on value for money. This has to be a warning to anyone, supplier or retailer, that no category is safe from exposure to common sense challenge by savvy consumers, or their champions…

And why not?

VAT Rise and the 5s & 9s…

The Chancellor was probably not thinking price-points when announcing the VAT hike to 20%.....!

Impact of VAT rise to 20% on brand retailing at £3.99, inc VAT

RSP inc VAT @ 17.5% = £3.99

Say retail margin          = 25%

                                     = £0.998

i.e. trade price is £2.547, ex VAT
VAT @ 17.5%             = £0.594 i.e. (£3.99/117.5) x 17.5

RSP inc VAT @ 20%   = £4.08 i.e. (£3.99/117.5) x 100 x 1.20

Retailer restores RSP to £3.99, (unless you and the savvy consumer prefer a price hike to £4.49?)

Either the retailer absorbs the loss:

RSP ex VAT @ 20%    = £3.325

i.e. New retail margin  = £0.778 i.e. (£3.325 - £2.547 )

                                     = 23.4%


Or, the retailer demands a cost-price reduction from the supplier to restore the 25% margin:

25% Retail margin on £3.99 ex VAT @ 20% = £0.831 i.e. £3.325 x 0.25

Therefore new trade price                             = £2.494 i.e. £3.325 - £0.831

i.e. a 2.1% reduction in trade price i.e. (£2.547 - £2.4940)/2.547 x 100

Q1: What incremental sales do you need to restore your margins?

Q2: Can you really afford not to be ready for the inevitable negotiation sessions?


(or would you prefer our inhouse NamCalc workshop tailored to your SKUs, competitors and customers, in order to pull the whole team up to speed?)

More on retailer reactions to VAT hike