To boost retail commercial landlords will have to think different.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the weekend (a dangerous move according to some near and dear to me). Though I’ve been thinking beyond anything online and more into the retail realm.

Now I walk through Derry everyday and look at the amount of commercial property that lies empty. I’m not the only one either, Mark Nagurski did an excellent post on the very same subject. I’m looking from another angle.

Commercial landlords desperately and urgently need to rethink their strategies on how they lease out their property.  The idea right now is not to give big long leases but attractive short ones.  Micro shops and pop up shops are the perfect way to occupy empty space.  The idea of pop up shops aren’t new but if you want to have a go at starting up in retail now is a good time to start planning for the Christmas, ahem, rush.

If I were a landlord I’d rather have a place occupied for a shorter period of time than lying empty.  So how about shorter lease times.

6 months?

3 months?

2 months?

4 weeks?

1 week?

2 days?

1 day?

All doable in my eyes.

With a good dollop of marketing (announce the sale to your user base on Facebook, Twitter and uVoucher to increase awareness).  Nothing beats being out on the street and mixing with potential customers.

1. Pick something you can sell

The last thing you want is stock at the end of the sale so you want to pick items that you’ve got a good chance of shifting.  Sounds simple but I’ve seen this sink some companies over the years.

2. Creative thinking on the rent.

Easier with some landlords than others I’m sure (I’ve never tried).  Can you negotiate for free?  Offer a percentage of the revenue you make in your venture.  Free free free, whatever you can get for the least amount.  And only have the premises for the time you really need it.  November through to December 24th, don’t forget an online presence if you can (e-commerce would be better but only if you can really complete the orders).

3. Your brand is everything

Just because it’s a short lease shop doesn’t mean that your brand should suffer.  Without going mad with the money try and get some creative design thing going.  You can find some really cheap printing deals (or even Vistaprint for the ubercheap) to get flyers and all that stuff done.

4. Know your costs

Rent and staff are the big numbers.  The minimum wage is rising to £5.93 (£237.20 a week) in October this year. Goes without saying really but it’s so easy to end up running at a loss.  A better strategy would be not to pay anyone and run it yourself.

There’s a large amount of #JFDI in there I know and it will require some creative thinking from a few parties.  At the end of the day it’s all attainable we just need some creative minds to embrace it.  Who’s first?

Bizcamp Newry: That old guy!

I enjoyed Bizcamp Newry yesterday, though it was a long day for me.  One of the main questions I got of the day was about a gentleman who asked two questions during my Q&A.

1. What time does this finish?

2. I’ve learned nothing from your talk, tell me one thing…..

It was a curve ball, a big one at that.  Like Mary McKenna said to me afterwards (to paraphrase), if you put yourself in those positions of public speaking then you are putting yourself in line for these sorts of response.

There’s a bunch of ways of handling it.  First things first, he is entitled to his own opinion, he is also entitled to his free speech and if he wished to make his opinions known I’m happy with that.

The key here is how to deal with it.  First thing I did was apologise that my talk didn’t meet his expectations. We can’t please everyone at the end of the day and I don’t make it my mission in life to please every person that crosses my path. The risk there is that the same person will expect you to jump high the next time.  One thing if it’s your employer a different thing if it’s a stranger. Secondly I rattled through the slides in my head and reassured myself that the slides did their job.

I answered his questions in the best way I could and confirmed that he was accepting of the answers.  At the end of the day I can’t do much more than that.  Once happy I moved on. From there everything seemed easier.

Sometimes these things come to test us, how do we and how should we respond can be two different things. I could have torn his head off but that would have been the wrong thing to do.  There are days a talk will go well and there are days we can stand up there and stumble on our feet in a grand manner.  It’s all part of the learning experience, we can choose to take something from it and move on or let it fester and cause us pain.

“The Stage”, a platform that commands your attention is a strange place to stand.  In Hebrew times it was used as a place of judgement and in Greek times it was a place for entertainment.  Now the stage is both of these things combined.  You can entertain but if you don’t meet the expectations of those you intend to communicate to then expect the judgement to return at a rapid rate of knots.

With 25 years of standing on stages with a bass guitar around my neck I’ve had my fair share of audient responses.  My favourite is still, “I thought you were shit”, which is fine but it looks like the other 4,999 people there thought it was good.

Bizcamp Newry Slides

Bizcamp Newry was a great success. For those who were asking, or are interested, in the slides you can download them now.

More talking for February

Following the positive feedback from my talk at BarcampDerry I’ll be doing more talking in February.

• Bizcamp Newry – Saturday 6th February at Southern Regional College, Newry.
• Bizcamp Belfast – Saturday 20th February at the Black Box, Belfast

I’ll be talking on (I think) a few stories about starting up and mobile startup in Northern Ireland, where to go and who to talk to. All good fun as far as I’m concerned.