SLR Young Retailer of the Year Girish Jeeva has enjoyed a spectacular start to his career as an independent retailer with sales in his Premier store more than doubling to £60k a week in his first year.
By Antony Begley
Despite only being in his late 20s, Glasgow Premier retailer Girish Jeeva already has plenty of experience under his belt in the local retailing sector – so it should come as little surprise that his latest venture, a Premier store in the Barmulloch area of the city, should have proven to be a runaway success – but the scale of that success surprises even Girish.
“When we first took over this store in 2021, it was pretty run down and we had built our business plan around building sales to £30k a week in the first year – and we would have been perfectly happy with that – but we’ve actually hit £55k to £60k a week in under a year, so we’re both surprised and delighted! Over the Christmas period we hit £62k, which was fantastic.”
The 2,000sq ft store sits in a heavily residential area in the north-east of Glasgow and as soon as Girish first saw it, he knew it had potential, even if it would require some serious investment to unleash that potential.
“I had worked for my uncle for a few years, running two of his stores which were part of MFG,” he explains. “So I had done my apprenticeship, if you like, and I understood every aspect of how to run a store from ordering and staffing to ranging and merchandising. A few years back I decided I wanted have a go on my own with own business. I also wanted to be an entrepreneur and a businessman, and I felt ready for the challenge.”
His first steps into running his own company saw him take over a small store on London Road in the east end of the city, aged just 25. This was the perfect venue for him to hone his skills, learn the ropes of running a store of his own and develop his thoughts for the future.
“It was a pretty tired store when I took it over,” he says. “It had been closed for a couple of years, so I had to tidy it up then pretty much start building a shopper base from scratch. But I stuck at it, and I worked hard and we managed to get the turnover up from just £5k a week to £15k a week, and I realised that I was ready to take the next step. I had built up some confidence and I was ready to look for a bigger store.”
As luck would have it, he learned that a family friend with a bigger store in Barmulloch was retiring, so he moved quickly and decisively.
“At around 2,000sq ft it was big enough to give me scope for all the big ideas and plans I had,” he says. “I had been visiting stores and reading trade magazines and generally just keeping up with the latest trends, so I was itching to get started.”
That was back in November 2021 and, having closed the deal, he promptly shut the store down for a month for a full-scale, top-to-bottom, back-to-front refit.
“In the end I spent £370k on it, which is a lot of money, but I knew what I wanted, and I was prepared to spend whatever it took to bring my dream to life,” he recalls. “I visited about 20 different stores across all the fascia groups and other types of stores but by far the best I saw was Premier. I took so many ideas from stores like Premier Singh’s in Sheffield, and I knew I could make my store special.”
It turns out that he was absolutely correct on that front. Premier Barmulloch is a special store that brings together the very best of current Premier thinking as well as adding in a liberal dose of Girish’s own creativity.
“I like the creative side of the business,” he laughs. “And doing the refit was great fun. I worked closely with the team from Premier and we managed to fit in everything I wanted, everything I thought the local community needed.”
Despite having a small Post Office almost next door and a Nisa Local only a few hundred metres away, Girish was undaunted and set about creating a store that had something for everyone.
“The store was a Best One and about 30 years out of date when I took it on,” he says. “It had virtually nothing in the way of services or a range that was appropriate for modern shoppers.”
That all changed last January when the refit rendered the store unrecognisable and no opportunity was missed.
“One the most successful changes was the implementation of a Refresh@Premier zone with Fanta and Coke Freeze, Tango Ice Blast, Jolly Rancher Fizzy, Hershey’s, Costa and Snowshock. The success of that small part of the store is astonishing. We can sell 150 cups a day on a good day and we average about 80. The zone brings in between £4k to £5k a week.”
A new vaping zone has been similarly successful. “We used to have a little bit of vape before but we only did about £300 a week,” says Girish. “So we created a Vape Zone on the shopfloor that shoppers could browse at their leisure. These days we’re doing £6k or £7k a week on vaping sales, mostly disposables like Elf Bars, Geek Bars, Lost Mary and the latest big hit, Crystal Bars.”
Despite being in a solidly working-class area, Girish was confident that fresh and chilled had some major scope for growth, so he doubled the size of the fresh and chilled refrigerated section to 14m and it’s now doing £6k to £7k a week.
“Lots of people told me fresh and chilled wouldn’t sell in this store, but it’s actually my third-biggest category behind alcohol and tobacco – so I think I got that call right,” he says with a smile.
Similarly, he had a hunch that the resurgent frozen category would be important for his shoppers, so he created a huge 12.5m frozen zone and, lo and behold, sales are flying.
“We sell a lot of frozen,” comments Girish. “We do the Premier Frozen Deals and those definitely help, and we also run the Premier Meal Deal as well as all the Premier promotions.”
Alcohol is Girish’s biggest category by sales value, which explains the 22.5m of space dedicated to all things alcoholic, including 10m of refrigerated space for chilled beers, ciders, wines and RTDs. Recently, he has added a further 1.5m for multipack alcohol in response to demand. There’s also an eye-catching backlit spirits gantry behind the three tills which helps drive high-value impulse sales.
Unsurprisingly, soft drinks, crisps and confectionery have been allocated a lot of space in the store, particularly large format and multipack products.
“We sell a lot of soft drinks, crisps and confectionery,” explains Girish. “Particularly bigger packs and multipacks. That’s what’s really driving the growth at the moment. We used to order around 20 cases of soft drinks every three or four days, for example. Now I’m ordering 30 cases a day!”
Something that may come as a surprise is that grocery is a very important category in the store, the fifth-biggest category of all in fact.
“We try to have a kind of mini-supermarket offer,” says Girish. “We try to carry a bit of everything so that our shoppers can get everything they need all in one place, which might explain the success of the grocery category.”
The store also sources a range of bakery and butchery products from smaller Scottish and local companies to help support the local economy and offer a point of difference. “We use Stuart’s Bakers and Colin & Son butchers,” he says. “The quality is great, they deliver when I want, and the shoppers love the products.”
Girish also says that the Jack’s own-brand range is performing strongly, helping to deliver “reliable value and quality to shoppers who really need great value at the moment”.
A modest man, however, Girish doesn’t believe he’s performing any miracles here, as he explains: “We’re just trying to give our shoppers what they want – great value and a great range. If we get the range right, the prices right and the promotions right, we won’t be far away.”
With almost a year under his belt at the store and having targeted £30k a week in the first year, Girish is a happy man who is certainly looking forward to 2023. “We’re regularly hitting £55k to £60k a week and we think there is still scope for more growth. We think we can get to £70k a week.”
One opportunity that might help him achieve that aim was the introduction of a home delivery service with Snappy Shopper eight months or so ago.
“We knew that home delivery was another important opportunity,” says Girish. “We were only doing £500 a week at the start but that’s up to £10k to £12k a week now and there’s still plenty of room for growth. We have six local drivers and have two or three on at any one point in time. They keep the delivery fee and we pay the fuel. It’s simple but it works and we’re doing around 60 to 70 deliveries a day during the week and about 400 to 425 in total every week, but it’s rising every week.”
As for the future? “I’m staying 100% focused on the store for the time being,” concludes Girish. “We’re still investing in it, and we still want to unleash all its potential. But I will start having a look for more stores when the time comes.”
