At last month’s NOPEX show in London, Health Stores UK brought together three indie health stores and asked them to share their top tips on how specialist health stores can empower their businesses and truly stand out on their local high streets.
For the session – chaired by our Head of Business Development, Dave Christie – the association assembled an expert panel made up of Joanne Hill (Amaranth), Melanie Beard (Best Health Food Shop) and Harriet Dean-Orange (Harriet’s of Hove).
Top tips for thriving in challenging times
Dave first asked the panel what each of them had done to try to mitigate the business pressures currently facing all indie retailers (stagnating retail spend, slow to recover footfall, the threat from online and so on).
For Joanne, it was about establishing her beauty and wellness focused store as a destination. “We’ve known for a long time that you have to do much more than just open your doors and expect people to come in. So, we’ve added treatment rooms, we do functional testing and create lots of customer appointments – so, come rain or shine, we know people will come through the door. It really makes a difference – not least because we’ll obviously get product sales off the back of the consultations. The consultations and treatments are not our biggest source of revenue, but they really help build loyalty and strengthen relationships.”
Mel explained how the experience of Covid had shown the importance – and opportunity – of being a community shop. “We learned a lot from that difficult and sad period. We learned to let go of things that just weren’t working. We learned about the value in diversifying, trying out different ideas – like clinic rooms. But more than anything, we learned how important it is to be more than just another shop. We discovered that we can offer so much to our community, and that that is where our real value is.”
Diversification has been important too for Harriet’s of Hove. Harriet explained: “Expanding on what we can offer our customers has been really important. Offering more than just a transactional experience has also opened up all sorts of possibilities. We’re also becoming a regular venue for events, too. And when someone comes in for, say, a composting workshop or a wellbeing class, they’re often people who’ve never been into the store before.”
“EXPANDING ON WHAT WE CAN OFFER OUR CUSTOMERS HAS BEEN REALLY IMPORTANT. OFFERING MORE THAN JUST A TRANSACTIONAL EXPERIENCE HAS ALSO OPENED UP ALL SORTS OF POSSIBILITIES.
Harriet’s also has an e-cargo bike for local deliveries and has been busy hooking up with other like-minded businesses. “We now sell to dental practices, restaurants and other local shops who want to use sustainable cleaning products and not constantly buy from Amazon”.
Getting the best results from the brands you work with
Next, Dave asked the retail panel about how they work with the brands they stock to optimise business opportunities, manage expectations (on both sides) and ensure that the brands’ values are as closely aligned as possible to the store’s.
Harriet had advice for store owners who suffer from ‘child in sweet shop’ syndrome, when brands come calling with new products and latest offers. “Basically, If you find yourself overspending and getting a bit excited, find someone else to do it. My assistant manager, my sister in law too, is someone I can fully trust in this respect. So, if you find you’re losing sight of what is good business, then getting somebody else in to say ‘calm down’ is quite helpful. You do need to be focussed and business minded in that moment, just from a time management point of view.
“But in our case we are really guided so much by our values. We are essentially a plastic-free store, and we’re a vegan store. So that’s two big ticks. If you don’t align with that as a supplier, we’re probably going to go with the plethora of other suppliers who are. So just really making sure you stick to your main ethos, and then that will help you sift through.
Mel agreed: “It’s about sticking your guns because you know your customers, and ultimately, you know what works and what doesn’t. The only thing I would would add in regards to suppliers is we that are trying more to move away from buying through wholesalers, and going direct instead. Just because we feel we get more support, get better offerings, and the reps will come in and do demonstrations and taste testings and things like that. So if you are going to get a product that you’re taking a bit of a chance on, at least with something like that you’re giving it the best chance – and you might even get it on sale or return.”
“IT’S ABOUT STICKING YOUR GUNS BECAUSE YOU KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS, AND ULTIMATELY, YOU KNOW WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T”
Joanne said she always aims to apply strict criteria on what the store stocks. “We’ve got nutritionists in the store, so we’re very much focused on ingredients. I’ll be considering the ethics of the company, trying to understand a bit more about them. But then there’s the commercials as well. What are the margins going to be like? Will I be able to buy in smaller quantities initially, to see how a product goes? If I can avoid tying up a lot of cash, that gives me more flexibility.”
Building your team’s knowledge base – how to fit staff training into a busy store schedule
High quality, knowledgeable customer service really marks out health stores from the big high street retailers. Maintaining and building your team’s knowledge base requires regular staff training. Dave wanted hear the retailers’ advice on how to fit this into a busy business schedule.
Joanne said that when most team members are part time, allocating training time effectively can be a challenge – especially when customers need serving. “Some of the best things that have worked for us in the past have been when our bigger suppliers have staged an evening event. They can be really effective because you get real focus and learning tends to be more efficient. We also try to get brands to come into store to do bespoke training sessions. Sometimes we’ll get out of the store and do the session in a coffees shop.”
Harriet said she believes the roots of knowledgeable and proactive staff can often often be traced back to a thorough recruitment process. “If at the recruitment stage you take on staff that already broadly know the ilk of your customers and the products, and the area that we’re working in, you’ve given yourself a head start. So I think making sure that you’ve got people that are going to be engaged from the start, and who will go that little bit extra just makes training that bit easier – because your team is already receptive.
“We find all the mandatory food safety and health and safety stuff works really nicely online. People get paid at home, sit down with cup of tea and work through the nitty gritty, laborious mandatory stuff. But then again, group sessions done in store is often where knowledge is better absorbed. So it’s a mix.”
To e- or not to e-?
How do our retailers feel about e-commerce. Is out a vital part of the overall retail offer, or is a website and add on or a useful extra ‘shop window’? Dave wanted to know.
Harriet said that while she does sell online and offer click and collect, website sales are not a major focus. “It’s a time intensive thing and the profit you’d make from sending a tin of soap to Scotland – well, it’s not very much! It’s a nice thing to have available at Christmas, but for us it’s much more about selling via our cargo bike to local people who can’t access the store themselves, or people buying in bulk.
For the Best Health Food Shop it was a similar picture, said Mel. “It ticks over for us, but the risk is that it takes us away from what is our core business, and that’s bricks and motor retailing. Although there is some demand for click and collect, most people enjoy and want the experience of coming into the store. We’ve never really set out to be an all singing, or dancing e-commerce business.”
For Amaranth, the approach was very different in this respect. “We have a full online store, a full e-commerce store. We rebuilt it and re-platformed it in the middle of the pandemic when our city centre store was closed. Probably 50% of our overall sales are through supplements and remedies, so they’re quite easy to post.
“WE OFFER A SERVICE ONLINE WHERE PEOPLE CAN BOOK A FREE HEALTH REVIEW. SO WE’VE GOT CUSTOMERS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. BUT I ALSO FIND THAT FOR US THE WEBSITE IS VERY POSITIVE IN TERMS OF BRINGING PEOPLE IN STORE”
“We offer a service online where people can book a free health review. So we’ve got customers all over the country. But I also find that for us the website is very positive in terms of bringing people in store. Every day we get someone who comes in and says, oh, I saw that online. But the one thing I would say is it’s more than a full time job on its own. We’ve got, maybe, 30 bands listed on our site. Maintaining price changes for all those brands and managing stock levels is a lot of work. But for us, the site is our biggest marketing tool and we are on it all the time. So it brings more than just the online sales.”
Dave’s takeaway was that, just as in any other part of your retail offer, a website needs to come with a sense of purpose – a true business reason for being online.
The Amazon threat? – turn it into an opportunity!
In the Q&A session, Finn Murray (from the Hopsack in Dublin) wanted to know how the retailers regarded the increasing retail dominance of Amazon. Was the online giant directly hitting sales of independent health food retailers?
Mel suggested Amazon was less of a problem, than being undercut online by the brands she stocks in store. “You do get the odd customer that will come come in and say, ‘I can get this for that price on Amazon’. And you’re like, okay, but actually I’m not Amazon! But I tend to find that most people are coming for the experience. They want to talk to a person about a supplement, they actively want to support the local high street. A far bigger issue for us is the brand selling on Amazon cheaper than we’ can buy it for. That is a problem. It leads to some quite stern conversations. We’ll push for price matching, which brands don’t like, but will do sometimes, because they want an in store presence.”
Harriet agreed: “Sometimes when I’m talking to the brands, I do think ‘don’t forget who got you there’. It is the small stores, the ones that took a chance on you. The ones who were cheerleading for you before you got big. So it does feel a little bit sore when the big brands do undercut you, and quite frankly, it just makes you look a bit silly with your pricing.
“WE ALMOST INVITE THAT AMAZON COMMENT OR COMPARISON, BECAUSE IT MEANS THAT WE CAN REALLY SHOWCASE AND SHOW OFF ABOUT THE WAY WE’RE DOING THINGS AND WHY SPENDING ONE OR TWO POUNDS MORE ON A CERTAIN PRODUCT WITH US IS WORTH IT FOR EVERYONE”
“But I will say in regards to Amazon, we have way more people coming into the store as a sort of protest against Amazon. And you’re sort of like, yes, you’re my people! Come in and chat to me about it. And, actually, we welcome the conversation when people come in and say, well, I can get that cheaper on Amazon. I’ll ask who’s missing out? Who isn’t being paid correctly, how are they charging less. It opens up a valuable conversation. So we almost invite that Amazon comment or comparison, because it means that we can really showcase and show off about the way we’re doing things and why spending one or two pounds more on a certain product with us is worth it for everyone.”
