Your Success In the Retail Business (Collection)

Appendix III. Street time

This is a day we run as part of our training programs—normally we obviously try to dress it up a bit with all sorts of important words such as “structured,” “energizing,” and “experiential.” Clients like that sort of guff for some reason. Between you and me: This exercise is about going shopping. It’s good fun when done with a group, and it always uncovers loads of ideas and gets people thinking creatively. It can be quite shocking—I’ve had a number of top retailers give the feedback that they hadn’t really seen shops as customers see them in years.

What do we do?

Ideally run it with six people and do it near a main street or a shopping center. Give each of the delegates twenty dollars and a list of five stores they ...