The Mary Portas Guide to Successful Retailing

After long fighting the independent retailers’ corner, Mary has lent her expertise to a series of master classes designed to benefit them directly.

Developed in conjunction with Skillsmart Retail and delivered exclusively through the National Skills Academy for Retail’s skills shops, the Mary Portas Guide to Successful Retailing will give a unique insight into improving independent retail businesses and includes Mary’s advice on essential elements such as visual merchandising, marketing, buying, finance and the all-important vision for the store.

Covering every stage of creating and running a successful business, each module has an invaluable set of hints and tips to improve performance.

These include:

• My shop, my future
  Building, mobilising and maintaining a vision for the business
• Retail finance and business planning
  Understanding the key financial factors driving the business and what impact they have; how to keep track of howwell the business is doing; get a grip on the cash; and what to do when things aren’t going to plan
• Buying for your customer
  Buying the products that will attract and keep your customers as well as delivering profit
• Selling and service skills
  How to stand out from the crowd and use the customer service experience to bring more cash through the tills
• Merchandising, display and windows
  Creating desire and the wow factor to set the shop apart from the rest
• Marketing for more customers
  How to spread the word about the business without spending the earth
• You and your team
  Developing both the management and store team to create a forward looking, successful business

The Mary Portas Guide to Successful Retailing will only be available through the National Skills Academy for Retail, which delivers consistent, high-quality training for retail businesses, their employees and future workforce through a network of quality-marked retail skills shops. This network runs through shopping centres and high streets across the country and offers a host of services, including business support for retailers of all sizes and in any location, a consistent national approach for retail training and the provision of authoritative labour market intelligence.

To find out more, visit www.nsaforretail.com

To register your interest in the Mary Portas Guide to Successful Retailing, send your details to maryportas@nsaforretail.com or call the hotline number 08449 670272.