Take a trip down south and you can’t avoid the London 2012 Olympics but come back to Scotland and the excitement levels aren’t quite as high for what many Scottish retailers seem to see as ‘England’s Olympics’ – but will they regret not getting involved when it kicks off in earnest?
Graeme Knowles
Nisa retailer, Aberdeen
We’ll be throwing ourselves into it because, whatever way you look at it, it really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I reckon we should all have bit of fun with it. We’ll be having one of the Coca-Cola Enterprises torches coming past the shop a few days before the real one arrives so we’re planning to get involved. We’ve got the local primary school coming to the store, we’ve got loads of goodies to give away like GB gym bags, the staff are all getting dressed up and we’re going to get stuck in. Why not, eh?
Jonathan Seymour
Londis retailer, Fort Augustus
We’re lucky enough to be having the Olympic flame pass right by the front of the store so that should definitely help. Not only that, on the same weekend we’ve got both the big Rockness music festival and the Monster mountain biking competition, so that should really be a bumper sales period for us. The team from Coke have already been in and stuck up posters and bunting and they’re coming back with more POS so there should be a lot going on in the store.
Mandeep Bassi
Best-one retailer, Leith
My store is slap bang in the middle of a housing scheme so we don’t get passing trade – what that means is that any excitement around the Olympics we’re going to have to create ourselves. We’ve tried a few things like some Olympics POS and a model of the Olympic flame in-store to generate a wee bit of enthusiasm, but to be honest the feedback from the customers hasn’t been exactly overwhelming! In fact, we’re having a community barbecue and we’ve had a much better response to that idea!
Scott Graham
McLeish’s retailer, Inverurie
The main problem we’ve got is that the Olympic flame isn’t coming within 50 miles of us so we can’t really build on that. We’ll get involved in using all the Olympics FSDUs and POS from the sponsors like Cadbury and Coca-Cola, which will create a bit of impact in-store, but I’m not really expecting to see an uplift in sales from the Olympics. There will be a bit of a feelgood factor which won’t do any harm but there’s not much evidence up here of Olympics mania so far, other than some Union Jacks.
