By Deborah Jackson
The Liquor Stores Association NSW & ACT (LSA) held its annual Working On Your Business Forum and Expo last week delivering key insights and strategies to a turnout of around 200 liquor retailers.
LSA Executive Director, Michael Waters said: “I’d like to thank all members who invested the time to attend this important annual event. From the feedback received already, the content was well received, informative and thought provoking.”
The itinerary included presentations on a wide variety of topics including store security, online retailing and succession planning. There were also insights into people, culture and alignment, as well as workplace health and safety.
Peter Hall, who has more than 30 years of experience with training in the retail and service industries, was once again the Event Facilitator. Throughout the course of the sessions, Hall delivered some ‘Points to Ponder’, with some particularly interesting insights around impulse purchases.
He said that food impulse purchasing is as high as 45 per cent, but in liquor retail impulse purchasing is often as low as 10 per cent of total sales. This spurred an interest to us, so in the June issue of National Liquor News our shopper insights guru Norrelle Goldring will be writing about strategies to increase impulse sales.
Nic Morris from Human Tribe spoke about the importance in investing in your team. She said that the four things that high performing businesses in Australia invest in that low performing businesses do not are: strategic planning, better employment contracts, the training of their managers and supervisors, and the on-boarding of their managers, supervisors and team members.
Dominique Lamb from the National Retailers Association (NRA) spoke about workplace health and safety issues, with a particular focus on the national union for workers in retail, the SDA’s new campaign ‘Nobody Deserves a Serve’.
She said that from December 2016 to February 2017 the SDA conducted an online survey about abuse and violence experienced at work by retail and fast food workers. Of the more than 6000 respondents, over 85 per cent had been subjected to verbal abuse from a customer in the last 12 months, with most of this abuse taking place at the cashier.
Next up we heard from Endeavour Drinks Group’s (EDG) Darrel Brecknell and Dave Smith from Black Box Security.
Brecknell delivered statistics on armed robbery, assault, break and enter and retail theft – most of which were either seen to be decreasing or stabilising aside from retail theft. He then spoke about some of EDG’s Risk Mitigation Projects to protect against retail theft, which included lexcapping major theft lines. It was interesting to learn that nationally Jack Daniel’s 1L and Johnnie Walker 700ml top the list for retail theft.
Paul Greenberg from the National Online Retailers Association (NORA) gave an extremely engaging presentation on the paradox of online retail, referring to it as ‘Old Wine in a New Bottle’.
He spoke about it being a 100 per cent necessity for retailers in today’s market to be digital in some way. But he said that doesn’t mean that they have to offer home delivery, referring to IKEA – arguably one of the biggest homeware retailers, which has only recently implemented a delivery model.
Lastly, Renae Korsman from DFK Crosbie spoke about asset protection and succession planning, giving case studies on how businesses were able to increase their profit by re-evaluating their trading structures.
The LSA NSW & ACT Working on Your Business Forum and Expo sits alongside the Retail Liquor Industry Awards and The Regulatory Panel as LSA’s three major annual events.
Waters told TheShout: “Although each event is different, they each serve a very specific purpose in supporting the needs and interests of our growing, diverse membership.
“First and foremost, the LSA exists to represent the needs and interests of the retail liquor industry to all levels of government, to seek legislative outcomes that improve the business viability, or at least reduce the impact of new regulation. However, we also work tirelessly to provide members with a broad range of services to keep them ‘in the know’; provide access to information, advice and guidance; equip them with the right tools and resources; help their businesses run more effectively and efficiently; and to continue to develop professionalism in the industry – which is precisely what Working ‘On’ Your Business is about.
“At the end of the day our members are driving this bus – it’s their event, and they tell us what topics they want to see and hear and we make it happen… its’ not rocket science.”