The manager is on holiday and you are covering in his absence - have you been driving the team hard? You could say that, but when he gets back he’ll say “I trained them well!” But it’s all about strong leadership from the management team. We get everyone trained up - it’s about working as a team so that we all understand what is needed.
The weather has been terrible this summer. How has that affected trade? The summer didn’t ever get started up here! We have had heavy rain, storms, gales, everything. We had a couple of sunny days. But in terms of trade, it’s remained steady. We haven’t dropped sales and all our summer clothes and furniture have been reduced now anyway.
What has become the big focus now that BBQ is out of the way? Back to school is fully launched now and that is selling very well. We’ve got one of the largest clothing ranges in all the Extra stores. I buy clothes for my kids from here. The quality is good, there are some great offers and we get terrific feedback from customers on our prices.
What is the biggest challenge you face on a daily basis? Availability - simply making sure that everything is on shelf at the right time. You have late deliveries, or a supplier might let you down, but you are always aiming to deliver 100% availability to customers, so it’s a challenge. We just ensure our stock controls are happening so the system knows to order products back in. We keep challenging our 20-strong stock control team. They have three hours to do the stock scan.
Our shopper mentioned the car park had plenty of stray trolleys dotted around - is that a problem? We average about 10,000 shoppers a day so there will be a few trolleys where there shouldn’t be from time to time! But our trolley team try and stay on top of it. And it’s not been great weather outside for them recently.
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