The untimely demise of P&H added another significant challenge at Woodlands Local after another month of softer sales and continuing staff issues.
by Antony Begley
It never pays to get too carried away with your successes, as we’ve learned on many occasions at Woodlands Local. So the fact that November was a much tougher month for us after an excellent October should have come as no surprise. Footfall was in general slightly down every week of the month, probably down to a combination of Arctic weather conditions and the prospect of Christmas just around the corner. Footfall was down almost 4% on October, although basket spend was very slightly up.
Similarly, total sales were down almost 3% with alcohol sales in particular suffering a poor month, down almost 5% on October and chilled food, perhaps unsurprisingly given the weather, being down almost 10%. The only highlights of the month were a solid hot food performance, again hardly a surprise in the cold weather, and tobacco up significantly, although partly driven by the budget hike in prices.
So, all in all, not a particularly inspiring month at Woodlands, and that general malaise was exacerbated by losing another member of staff to B&M stores, something we could have really done without under the circumstances – but the lure of permanent day shift proved too strong.
So, it’s recruitment time once more and we already have a new start in place. We probably still need at least another two members for the team to get us back to full strength for the first time in six months.
P&H problems
Then, to round the month off in style, we received a text from Costcutter only hours after rumours of P&H’s demise started to circulate informing us that we wouldn’t be getting any deliveries from them for the rest of the week. While the collapse of P&H has massive implications for many, not least the 2,500 people losing their jobs a month before Christmas, the impact was being felt from day one in stores across Scotland and the rest of the UK, including Woodlands Local.
We get all our fresh, chilled and frozen from Costcutter (delivered by P&H) so the tail end of the last week of November was spent in a flurry of activity trying to get our hands on large quantities of milk and chilled lines at very short notice. Thankfully, the industry seems to have rallied round and we managed to get our local Booker to find us the milk we needed for the weekend as well as a substitute range of lines for the dairy and chiller cabinet.
Costcutter has kept in touch throughout and expects to have plans in place very quickly to ensure deliveries continue but it’s clear that things are set to get worse before they get better.
While it’s hardly Costcutter’s fault, it’s hard to see how this won’t affect their business, with many retailers across the country forced to deal with other suppliers and being tempted with the flood of offers of ‘support’ that have come in from other wholesalers. I can definitely confirm that Woodlands has never been contacted by so many reps in such a short space of time in all the years we’ve owned it!
Delays, delays
The result of all this unplanned upheaval has been a brief postponement of our strategy to re-range and re-lay the entire store. It’s frustrating as we wanted it in place in good time for Christmas – but it looks like it will be a delay of at least a couple of weeks now.
In the meantime, and on a rare positive note, we have started our online training programme with Bolt Learning and all staff are beginning to work their way through our Phase I modules, although rollout of that programme has also been disrupted as the staff rota has had to be amended to cover for our new staffing shortages.
Also taking up time at the moment is our Christmas assault. We’ve decided to go heavy on Christmas this year and have invested in a wide range of festive stock to create a little in-store theatre and try to make Christmas great again. Historically, Christmas at Woodlands hasn’t been the sales fest that it apparently once was in convenience. We’re trying to remedy that by trying to encourage ‘every customer to pick one Christmas item every time they shop’.
A bold goal, no doubt, but a mix of friendly up-selling, affordable Christmas treats at the till-point and an extensive range of value and mid-range confectionery and treats throughout the store and on a dedicated Christmas promotional end have already started bumping basket spend up – so the strategy is already beginning to have some effect. Whether it will be enough to make Christmas great again, only time will tell.
