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I recently sat through a meeting that put me in a trance. The objective was unclear, it was poorly facilitated, and packed with too much information. As I looked around the room, I observed that everyone looked exhausted, unmotivated, and disengaged. The meeting leader had not conveyed a cohesive story and had failed to deliver on the objective of the meeting. Poorly led meetings occur at epidemic levels, which is why 90% of people daydream during these sessions Most attendees are not present, are working on other projects, or not engaging in the discussion at hand. When attention starts to drift, the meeting has already failed.

Meetings are among the most universally accepted time wasters in the modern workplace. Almost everyone can recall a time when they walked out of a meeting and thought “please just shoot me an email next time.” According to a survey of almost 200 senior executives conducted by Steven Rogelberg of the University of North Carolina, 71% of meetings are “unproductive and ineffective,” while a similar number felt meetings kept them from doing necessary work Most people say they normally do other work during meetings and of those who aren’t, many are checked out and …

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Success at the Shelf in the U.K.: Advice from a Buyer to Brands

If you are considering entering the U.K. market, there are several things you should know about doing business with retailers there. Recently, RangeMe published a blog post on understanding the British consumer, focusing on overarching trends across the country’s retail landscape. In this post, We’ll get a buyer’s in-the-trenches perspective on some important items for brands to consider when looking to get on the shelves in the U.K.

Peter Mudahy is the CEO of Pak Cosmetics (pictured to the right), one of the largest multicultural beauty retailers in the U.K., with 27 stores and a thriving e-commerce business. As a RangeMe member who has participated in more than two dozen ECRM and ECRM Europe sessions, he has a ton of experience engaging with global suppliers looking to enter the U.K. market (In fact, he’s at the ECRM Europe Beauty Sessions meeting with global suppliers as I write this.)

I sat with Mudahy virtually for an hour-long discussion to pick his brain for advice to suppliers looking to do business with U.K. retailers. The following are some insights I gleaned from our conversation. 

Pak Cosmetics CEO meeting with suppliers at ECRM Europe’s Beauty Session Pak Cosmetics CEO meeting with suppliers at
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Funding 101: What to Know to Maximize Cash Flow for Online Business

You’ve heard the stories: “I got started with just $ 800.” or “Oh, you need at least $ 10,000 to successfully start an e-commerce business.” While the stories may vary, they all share one truth: You need funding to achieve long-term success for your online business. How do you know where to start? 

There are a variety of types of funding, each appropriate for different points along your e-commerce journey. While this list is a comprehensive view of the different types of funding, there are a variety of times and uses for each type. Remember: Nobody knows your business better than you and no two businesses are the same, so make the decisions that work best for your brand, based on the data you have on hand.

All Online Businesses Can Benefit from Funding

As a business grows, it’s only natural that it needs more cash flow. More sales results in the need for more inventory. More inventory means a larger warehouse or increased logistics setup. A larger warehouse means more staff. It’s an endless cycle that means only good things for your business.

However, without funding at the right time, you could actually be harming your business’s growth. The …

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Starting a business can be one of the most rewarding experiences of someone’s life, and the satisfaction that comes with owning a successful business can be life-changing. It isn’t all easy, but seeing your labor bear fruit can be worth the effort.

Starting a retail business, in particular, is one of the most popular small business concepts and can be highly profitable if done correctly. Fashions and trends change, markets shift, but one thing remains true: people will always want or need to buy products, and a customer-focused retail operation can empower people to find the products that are going to improve their lives regardless of the current trends.

Simply put, a retail business is one that sources, aggregates, and then sells goods or services directly to consumers. The specific goods or services are what make your retail business unique and can include anything from products in a small convenience store to a major department store, high fashion boutique, or an online business. The goal of the business, whatever the product, is to generate profit from selling the products and services offered. Retailers are rewarded with growth, profit, and repeat business if they are able to provide their customers with …

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Before you launch your brand in the United Kingdom, it’s important to know what’s going on in today’s U.K. retail market as it may differ from the markets your brand currently has a presence in. Whether the British market is familiar territory or completely new, here’s a deep dive into understanding the U.K.’s marketplace, retailers, and how your brand can understand a new set of consumers.

Understanding the U.K. retail market

Over half of the £456bn industry is dominated by supermarkets, presenting a lot of opportunity for food and beverage brands looking to expand into the U.K. market. For years, the “big four” retailers have been Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, and Morrisons, but discount supermarkets like Aldi are quickly expanding in the market. Now that Aldi is outperforming Morrisons in terms of the country’s grocery market share, the “big four” are no more.

As we’re seeing in many countries, rising costs due to inflation are changing consumer behavior and the U.K. market is no exception. Inflation of grocery prices is up 14.4%, causing consumers to gravitate even more towards private label or store-owned brands over name brands to cut down their weekly spending costs. It comes as no surprise that the …

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One of the most persistent trends of the last 30 years of CPG marketing has been SKU (Stock-Keeping Unit) proliferation – the addition of more products and a variety of products based on changes to the market, such as adding several new flavors of a top-selling beverage. However, this trend is coming to an end. 

Over the next five years, we will see a contraction in the number of SKUs in the typical food retail store, driven by several factors: retailers’ desire to free space for more service-intensive, higher-margin products; the need to use space more efficiently with faster turning, more popular items; and to reduce supply chain and store labor costs.

The reduction will be concentrated in the 20 or so large categories containing the most SKUs with duplicate attributes, such as those stocking 60 SKUs of vanilla ice cream or 30 SKUs of blueberry yogurt. A shopper seeking vanilla ice cream or blueberry yogurt simply does not need this many options.

As the person who literally wrote the initial efficient item assortment protocol for the CPG industry as part of the development of category management in 1994, I can assure you that retailers can provide adequate attribute choices …

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