Connecting…

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

Now the last ball has been kicked in the Premier League football season, it looks like we can really get our teeth stuck into the summer now

Actually, I can tell it’s summer because our Christmas catalogue was back from the printers last week. And it is always a sign of the summer when I see melted chocolate santas in the back of the sales teams’ cars!

Christmas is, of course, a long way off, and I am sure most of you have got other things to think about before then – although I am already preparing for it by arranging a company move to a building more than twice the size of our current premises. I hope our Christmas orders are large enough to pay the rent!

The way the weather is at present, I wonder whether we will see any rain before Christmas. It really has been a remarkably dry spring and there are already warnings of further food inflation because the wheat harvest forecast is getting worse. The price of wheat increases the price of many other food products and we already have rampant food inflation.

Anyway, before this all gets too depressing, I have some more cheery news. At Cotswold Fayre we have identified a need to facilitate groups of independent retailers to get together and talk to each other. We work in a peculiarly isolationist industry with very few opportunities to gather information from others in the sector.

I was amazed recently when talking to a farm shop owner who hadn’t actually visited another farm shop during the past year, let alone talked to another food retailer. This is practically a suicide note. How can we learn and develop our businesses unless we are talking to others?

To this end, I have launched an initiative this year called Cotswold Fayre Connect. These are events in local areas for independent retailers to get together, talk to each other, watch a presentation from an industry expert and network. It is still early days, but we have so far had two events and they have been very well received by those attending. I hope they gather enough momentum so that, eventually, we don’t need to be involved. Watch this space!

Finally this week, I have been watching the shenanigans regarding the Premier League footballer being exposed on Twitter with interest. Not because I am at all bothered about the events, but because I am interested to see, as Twitter develops, what the acceptable guidelines are for using it.

There is still a very small number of independent retailers using Twitter, and this needs to grow. Some questions for further thought: how would you handle a customer that had experienced bad customer service and started to tweet about it? Is it acceptable to contact customers who aren’t paying their bills via a direct tweet on Twitter? And when they still aren’t paying, to do a general tweet? Do we dare mention our competitors on Twitter?

Anyone who has some good answers on this, please do let me know.

Meanwhile have a great week.