Only six years on from buying his first store, Girish Jeeva’s relentless drive for perfection has seen him collect a plethora of industry awards and create a cutting-edge store in Barmulloch in Glasgow.
By Antony Begley
It was intended as a throwaway comment but when young Glasgow retailer Girish Jeeva told the judges during our visit for the SLR Awards that he’d “sort of run out of stuff to improve,” it told us everything we needed to know about his passion, his commitment and his dedication to constantly investing in his business.
He also joked that his accountant had urged him to go easy on the spending – but it turns out that’s just not Girish’s approach to business.
It’s no surprise then that he picked up the #ThinkSmart Innovation Award at this year’s SLR Awards. Within 30 seconds of entering the store the judges were already beginning to think they’d found their winner. Premier Girish’s@Barmulloch is a 2,000sq ft exercise in staying on top of all of the latest trends in local retailing and responding to them in very short order.
In no particular order, there’s a beer cave, a Refresh@Premier drinks-to-go zone, a huge vaping unit on the shopfloor, digital shelf-edge labels, self-scan tills, a bespoke loyalty scheme, real-time video-based age verification systems, home delivery and more. The list goes on.
Most recently, Girish is testing an AI-driven theft-prevention system. “It basically monitors the whole store in real-time using video and flags up to staff any suspicious behaviour on the shopfloor,” he explains.
“The team behind the counter get an immediate alert and a screengrab of the suspicious behaviour and an alert is announced over the Tannoy warning shoppers that theft is illegal and that we will prosecute anyone we catch.”
The big question is: does it work? “It’s early days,” he says, “as we’re still in the testing phase but it seems to work very well. We spent a lot of time simulating thefts ourselves and it worked every time, so we’re hopeful it will make a difference.”
Relentless growth
The upshot of all this perfectionism and investment is that the Barmulloch store weekly turnover now regularly tops £70k. “The only downside is that we’re running out of things to improve!” laughs Girish.
It might look like Girish just can’t resist the temptation to buy the newest, shiniest thing on the market – but the numbers suggest very strongly that his approach is working, and in some style.
Take home delivery. He introduced it for the first time about 18 months ago and, working with Snappy Shopper, now does around 500 deliveries a week and generates sales of between £10k and £12k a week on home delivery alone. The success has inspired him to dip into the piggy bank again, buying two fully wrapped and branded cars to make the deliveries.
Then there is the store’s striking vape unit on the shopfloor which is another huge sales driver. “Vape is still huge,” he says. “We can easily do £10k a week or more on vapes alone.”
To put all of this into some sort of context, it’s worth noting that Girish only took this store over in November 2020. Prior to that he only bought his first store, a much smaller unit on London Road in the East End of Glasgow, about six years ago.
It’s a remarkable journey in a very short space of time.
“I started in retail working at my uncle’s petrol stations,” he explains. “I was effectively running his two petrol stations for him and I started thinking about buying my own store. Then, aged 24, I got the opportunity to buy the London Road store. It had been closed for about two years and was quite small at just 800sq ft and it was in need of a lot of work, but I figured that it was a great place to start learning about how to be an independent retailer on my own.”
He decided to “take a punt” and go for it. “I didn’t pay much for it and it only had about £10k of stock but I got stuck in and reinvested every single penny back into more stock and slowly adding new kit like chillers,” he says. “I didn’t take a wage and I just kept my head down and worked hard.”
Within six months he had grown weekly turnover to between £7k and £8k and by the end of the first year he was regularly hitting £12k a week.
“I was very well aware that I wouldn’t be able to keep growing sales forever because it was a small store in an unusual location, but I got it to £15k a week, which I was pretty pleased with under the circumstances,” he recalls. “But I was ambitious.”
Big ideas
So, having proven himself in a small store, he started looking around for one with bigger growth potential. “Firstly, I wanted a bigger store and secondly I wanted one within a more residential area with more chimney pots around it,” he says. After three years of running London Road, he found a store that potentially ticked every box for him.
“I first heard about the Barmulloch store through a family friend,” he explains. “At that point I still didn’t have all that much experience but as soon as I saw the store, I just knew it was the site I needed. From my experiences at London Road I already had a clear vision for Barmulloch, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.”
Girish signed on the dotted line in November 2020. “At the time, Premier was launching a new large concept store model and they asked me if I’d like to be the first in Scotland to implement it – and I jumped at the chance,” he says.
“The store was not in great shape so I knew I’d need to commit substantial investment to bring my vision to life. Was I nervous? Absolutely! But I had faith in my vision and I got lots of support from Booker.”
The first step was a full-scale refit that rendered the store unrecognisable to the substantial local community. “The previous owner had had it for about 30 years and when I bought it, it looked like it hadn’t been refitted since its doors first opened!” laughs Girish. “We closed the store for a full month in January 2021 to let us do the refit then we re-opened in mid-February with a launch party.
“The response from the local community was amazing! They just loved having a top-notch store at the heart of their community and it had a really positive effect on the whole area.”
Prior to Girish taking over, the store was doing around £25k a week. Within four weeks of the refit, sales hit £50k a week.
“We had actually budgeted to hit £50k a week by the end of the first year after the refit, but we hit our target inside a month!” says Girish. “The key elements of the Premier concept – the Refresh@Premier zone, the shopfloor vaping unit, the expanded fresh and chilled section and so on – all worked an absolute treat.”
Despite transforming the store in every sense, Girish’s relentless ambition continued to drive him on, as it does to this day.
“The refit was brilliant and it worked so well, but I’m a bit obsessive by nature and I gradually worked my way around the whole store, tweaking here and there to ensure we were continually improving and progressing. The Premier concept was spot on, but I spent a year just perfecting it for my particular store and customer base. I made so many little changes! I expanded the chilled range, I added more space for crisps and snacks, I changed and moved the counter on three or four occasions, learning every time I made any changes.”
One of the most major changes came in August 2023 when Girish was doing one of his frequent ‘store safaris,’ visiting stores around the UK. “After that tour, I decided to add a standalone beer cave and I also added a self-checkout till,” he comments. “Some of the changes helped cut costs but my primary concern has always been the shopper experience and service quality.”
His many tweaks and improvements were having a positive impact on sales and profits, which might partly explain Girish’s now well-established commitment to continually re-investing in his store. “If I see something that I think will help our in-store team, improve the store itself and enhance the shopper experience, I buy it!” he laughs. “My accountant doesn’t always approve – but he’s not a retailer!”
Taking the best bits
Having run out of things to improve at Barmulloch, Girish turned his attention back to his London Road store. “We knew that it didn’t have the potential of Barmulloch but we wanted to see what we could do in a much smaller store with what we’ve learned at Barmulloch.”
The refit took the best of Barmulloch and condensed it into a space that’s less than half the size. Miraculously, he still managed to find room for a beer cave and a Refresh@Premier zone, as well as a good fresh and chilled range.
“Sales have definitely increased significantly, but we knew it was never going to drive improvements on the scale of Barmulloch,” says Girish. “But I’m glad we did it.”
So what’s next in Girish’s vision? “I think we’ve done most of what we can do in the two stores, although there will always be room for improvement,” he says. “I wouldn’t rule out another store, but to do that I need a bigger team. Building a great team is the hardest thing in retail but I’m lucky because my team is just brilliant. They know exactly what needs to be done and what I expect – and they totally buy into that vision.
“Before I buy another store, I would want the team for the new store already trained and experienced in how we do things before we move them into the new store because I would want it to be perfect from day one.”
That passion for perfection is evident on the walls and shelves of Girish’s office, littered as they are with industry awards and commendations. “My first-ever award was the Young Retailer of the Year Award at the SLR Awards, and it really opened my eyes up to the benefits of entering and winning awards. The most important thing is that it motivates me and my team. Being recognised for doing things well is important to them and it lets them know that they really are doing an outstanding job and makes them feel part of a great team.”
Since that first win, Girish has claimed awards at an array of events and, of course, has just added the SLR #Thinksmart Innovation Award to the collection on his mantelpiece. A very worthy winner with a very bright future ahead of him.
