Hanging on the Telephone? 29. January 2009 paul.bentham@robinsons-uk.com Behind the Scenes (0) UPDATE: As of 9:40 this morning (30th Jan), our phone lines are back on! Our Call Centre team are now ready and waiting to hear from you. We offer our sincere apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this failure, caused by a traffic accident in our local area. This being a technical matter, experience tells us that services may still take time to stabilise. If you continue to experience any difficulties on any of our telephone lines, please contact customer.service@robinsons-uk.com and we'll take the appropriate action. Thanks for your patience. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ If you've been trying to call us this week, wondering why we haven't picked up, don't worry - we're still here! On Tuesday afternoon, a car crashed into one of those metal cabinets you often see by the side of the road, a telephone substation which just happened to contain the circuitry that carries all our telephone lines. Despite repeated assurances that the service will be resumed, we are still unable to make or receive external calls from our Head Office and Call Centre in Bryn. Furthermore, as we operate the lines to our stores from here, this outage also affects the lines at Ashton and at Cannock. Please bear with us while we wait for service to return. We are naturally as keen to return to normal connectivity as you are. We appreciate that this situation has been caused by an accident but we are increasingly frustrated by the network operator's continuing difficulties in returning the service to normal. It would be churlish to name them, but let's just say that we won't be buying any train or airline tickets from them anytime soon! I promise that we'll do all we can to get make our phones available to take you call. In the words of Blondie (now touring again, according to their website), I'll leave you with these words for now: Oh why can't we talk again Oh why can't we talk again Oh why can't we talk again Don't leave me hanging on the telephone Don't leave me hanging on the telephone
Don’t let the Ba - d News Grind You Down! 7. January 2009 paul.bentham@robinsons-uk.com Behind the Scenes (0) Happy New Year! We’re all hearing how difficult a year 2009 will be for consumers and businesses alike and I have to say that we’re a little concerned about it all. We’re concerned that you may think we’re suffering from the ‘credit crunch’ like everyone else. In fact, this is year of optimism for us, especially as this year, we celebrate 25 years in Mail Order. That’s right. In 1984, we took the first steps into distance-selling, primarily to the once-a-year customers we’d meet at the many shows we were exhibiting at back then. Over that time, like most mail order companies, we’ve made plenty of mistakes – some of them horrendous. Importantly, we learned from our successes and failures and here we are, a quarter of a century later, still the largest in the country at what we do. I heard an interview this morning with Sir Stuart Rose, the Executive Chairman of Marks and Spencer – a man who always seems to say what I’m thinking and he was doing the usual PR that’s required when disappointing results are announced to the City. During the interview, he sought to reassure those concerned about the future of M&S. He said “We’ve been going for 125 years. We’re still here, we’re still breathing and we’ll be here tomorrow”. Once again, he’d said what I was thinking. That’s exactly how I would describe Robinsons. We’ll be here tomorrow – even if some of our competitors may not be. In uncertain times like these, that’s not a bad way to describe yourself. Then, another thought occurred to me. He’d said that M&S, arguably the most respected name on the High Street, are 125 years old this year – fully 17 years younger than us! I checked it out on the internet and it’s true! When the economy is buoyant, you wonder if anyone cares about the age and stability of the companies they deal with. In truth they probably don’t – and why should they? As customers, we are told we are the ‘King’, making all the choices in our own interest, concerned largely with price, quality, service and image. As a company who seeks your custom, we must treat you thus or bear the consequences of disappointing you. For many, that is the depth of the relationship and generally, we all accept that status quo. In financially darker times, particularly those with longer memories may perhaps give a little more thought to the credibility of those to whom they choose to give their money. Now it’s perhaps a little churlish to portray a company with a £9bn turnover like M&S as comparative ‘Johnny-come-lately’ types, so I won’t do that. What it does invite you to think, however, is that we’ve both lasted through recessions, depressions, World Wars and everything else that the 20th Century has inflicted on the world. Such heritage doesn’t give us any magical powers and it doesn’t guarantee that we’ll fare any better than anyone else – as we’ve seen with Woolworths recently. What I believe it does give us is the credibility to reassure the customer who is deciding where to buy the item they want. In Mail Order in particular, trust is a huge part of the decision-making process. We appreciate that you’re in effect paying for items that we’re promising to send to you at some point. If you’re fortunate to be young enough not to remember the last recession, please bear this in mind. It’s much easier to keep your promises in the good times. When things are not so good, the companies under the greatest pressure tend to be those who break their promises most. In this and other industries, be careful who you pay to keep their promises this year. I look forward to wishing you a Happy New Year in 2010. Believe me, that’s another promise we will keep…
Feeling the Crunch? 22. September 2008 paul.bentham@robinsons-uk.com Behind the Scenes (0) There's been so much talked about 'The Credit Crunch' this year, it seems almost mandatory that we should all be suffering from it. Some people have even gone as far as pinpointing exactly when it began, as if we could all agree that this was the point in time at which we all began to feel less well-off. In truth, we're all affected in different ways, some of us more so than others. The one conclusion that it's almost impossible to draw is that you're completely unaffected. Whatever shape our finances are in, we're all customers of someone and if the companies you buy from are affected, sooner or later, you'll be affected. But here's the thing that isn't often reported. Being 'affected' does not always mean being adversely affected. Uncertainty may be troubling but change isn't always bad. What do I mean by that? Well - and whisper it quietly - some effects of the credit crunch are actually good news for customers. Like the emergence of a buyer's market in many retail sectors as companies become more motivated to sell because of their rising costs - and at the same time, customers become more price-sensitive. The media focus is almost exclusively on the fact that mortgages and other credit is harder to get and more expensive - not generally a good thing - but the point that's often missed is that more pressure that sellers are under (and many of us are under more pressure), the more keen they are to make a sale, and the more they are prepared to lower their prices. As customers, we can at least save back some of the extra money it's now costing us to fill our tanks. In recent weeks, we've heard a few stories in the industry about some of our competitors getting into difficulties and some of the offers we've seen being made would seem to illustrate that. No retailer can make genuine '70% off' reductions for very long and none would even consider it unless they felt they absolutely had to. As the biggest operator in our market, we're thankful to see that our sales are continuing to grow, even in a difficult year like this. In fact, with the opening of our second Superstore at Cannock in October, it's fair to say that we're very confident about the future. All this means that we're not forced into selling off stock cheaply, just to keep the wolf from the door, but if we do carry on regardless of what others do, we could begin to look quite expensive compared to those sacrificing profit for survival. Obviously, we'd rather not give you that impression, so we begin to find ourselves embroiled in a price war not of our making. As the customer, the choice of where to buy is always yours and we never expect you simply to presume that our selection and our prices are the only option open to you. Of course you will look out for bargains wherever you can find them. We even have to accept that there will be some offers that we won't be able to match. All I can do in those instances is to ask you to bear in mind why the offer is so good. It may not be too good to be true, but it's almost certainly too good to last. We'll do our utmost to offer you the best bargains this year but I promise you that we'll also be here to offer you more bargains next year. Not everyone in our market can promise you that.
Meet Kimble - on the run to Cannock... 7. September 2008 paul.bentham@robinsons-uk.com Behind the Scenes (0)
Cannock Progress Still on Schedule 20. August 2008 paul.bentham@robinsons-uk.com Behind the Scenes (0)
Summer Days, Drifting Away 24. July 2008 paul.bentham@robinsons-uk.com Behind the Scenes (0) It’s been a busy few weeks here at Robinsons and we’re now gearing ourselves up for a busy few months to come - right up to Christmas! Last week, our Design team sent all our catalogue pages to the printers, just before the deadline - which means they’ll be arriving on a doormat near you from about the middle of August. You’ll also find them inserted into the August 21st and 28th issues of Horse & Hound and also the September 11th issue of Your Horse. If you haven’t seen what it looks like yet, here’s a picture of the front cover. With the catalogue gone, this week usually marks the passing of the summer’s biggest project. This year, as you may have heard, we have another project on our hands… We’re very pleased to say that in autumn, we’ll be opening our second superstore – in Cannock, Staffordshire. At 10,000 square feet, it’ll be one of the biggest equestrian stores in the country and it’s only 5 minutes’ drive from the motorway network. Of course, this means that we have quite a lot to do to create a store worthy of the high expectation it will undoubtedly generate. As I type, it is still an empty shell of a building with loads to do before we can even begin to decorate it, let alone fill it with stock. Naturally, we can’t really say yet what the ‘opening date’ will be so we’ve done the next best thing which is to be a bit vague and say “opening autumn 2008”. If you read an earlier blog of mine, The Perils of Success, you’ll also know that we learned some valuable lessons about the hype that can go with a store opening. With this in mind, we decided that we won’t have a particularly grand opening. We’ll just open as quickly as possible and then tell as many people as we can once we’ve opened. All of this extra work in turn means that we have even more work to do to promote the new store. We can’t be arrogant enough to presume that every rider in the country reads our catalogue or visits our website. There will be a lot of people for us to tell all about it and we’ve got to find them. Again, using our experience at the Ashton store in 2003, even years after we actually opened the shop, we found we were asked when we would be re-opening. We certainly can’t take for granted that people will just find out about things like this and we’ll do all we can to raise awareness. To that end, we’ve decided to attend three large shows in the Midlands. I’m pleased to say that we’re now the title sponsors of the Robinsons 2008 Midland Championships, the ‘finals’ of the Midland Association of Riding Clubs, held at Rodbaston College, Staffordshire on 30th and 31st August. In October, we’ll make a welcome return to the Horse of the Year Show at the NEC, Birmingham (8th-12th). While visitors to HOYS come from all over the country, its location inevitably means that Midland riders will be well represented. The same will be true of Your Horse Live at the National Agricultural Centre at Stoneleigh between 7th and 9th November, where you can also find our stand. Based on the reaction this story has already generated within The Robinsons Online Riding Club, our Facebook group, perhaps I can guess your next question: When will we be opening a store in your area? As you can imagine, we're going to be very busy with this new store this year but don’t rule it out at some stage. I think the message that you may take from this is that we're taking seriously the idea of retail expansion. Obviously, it’s far too early to say any more than that at this stage, but if you’re not from the North West or the West Midlands, I hope you're encouraged that we're at least thinking about it now. As the sign says, Watch This Space!