My Week: Tracey Compton
A week in the life of Tracey Compton, co-owner of Peterborough Uniforms4All - www.Uniforms4All.co.uk
A week in the life of Tracey Compton, co-owner of Peterborough Uniforms4All - www.Uniforms4All.co.ukMonday
The day starts by running sales reports on our computer system to check for any items running at low stock levels. Orders are placed with a number of different suppliers to ensure that our stock is returned to the optimal level. Maintaining stock levels is one of the most difficult things to deal with in retail – don't order enough and you run out, but order too much and cashflow can be tied up in stock that may take a while to sell.
After checking that all is running OK in the shop, it's time to start planning an embroidery schedule for the schools that are supplied from the store. The majority of our sales are during the summer holidays before the start of the new school year in September, but the planning for this begins much earlier than that.
Between now and July, I will need to ensure that more than 10,000 items are embroidered on our machines. Eventually, I come up with a timetable to ensure this will be delivered in time.
I spend the remainder of the day on the shop floor catching up with e-mails and serving our customers.
Tuesday
I arrive at the shop at 9am ready to open at 9.30am and discuss the day's activities with Steph, our full-time employee. At 10am I have a strategy meeting with our website designer, Dave Dorward. Dave is the owner of Dorwood Media, a local website design company (www. dorwardmedia.com), who has been invaluable in the set up of our website. He supplied me with some stats showing the number of hits our website (www.uniforms4all.co.uk ) has had for March. We compare these figures to the previous month and are pleased to see that the site is generating almost double the amount of hits compared to February. I hoped this would be the case as sales from our online shop have also increased – so word must be getting round about this.
Due to this encouraging start, we decide that the next step is to increase the amount of choice available on the site. The action plan I take from the meeting is to take more photos of our stock and construct a plan for this to go live on the website.
The remainder of the day is spent catching up on orders from our direct supply schools and serving customers in the shop. We normally have a busy spell from about 3.30pm, after the schools close and today is no exception.
Wednesday
My turn for the school run today, so I arrive at the shop at about 8.45pm after a drive in of about 45 minutes after dropping everyone off. One of the main pieces of feedback the business had from the school holidays in August last year was that our store did not provide a fitted shoe service, which meant a trip to another store (and another queue) after visiting us.
We have acted upon this and have made a significant investment in providing a fitted shoe service this year. Our shoes arrived last week and this morning a trained shoe fitter from Hush Puppies came to the store to provide Steph and I with the required training to provide this service.
After three hours of foot measuring she is happy that we have the relevant skills. She will return in the Easter holidays to train our seasonal staff, so that they are also trained for the anticipated rush in the summer.
A number of deliveries have arrived today from the orders I placed on Monday to replenish our stock levels. These deliveries need to be processed through our computerized system, Eskimo Shuttle.
This piece of software has proved to be invaluable for the business and can provide sales reports, current stock levels, automatic ordering and many other useful tasks. Unfortunately, computer systems are not advanced enough to display stock or take it upstairs to the stock rooms, so the rest of the day is spent performing this task.Thursday
I drop the children off at school today, but instead of heading to the shop as usual, I have a business development meeting with my accountant. I meet with Mark from Greenstones, which has an ultra modern office on the Business Park at Lynchwood and offers very good coffee and biscuits.
They have been our accountants since the day we set up the business four and a half years ago and I am always impressed by their advice and efficiency. We have a very productive couple of hours discussing different aspects of our business and ways in which the business can develop further. Armed with more thoughts, I head off back to the shop just in time for lunch. A friend calls in who I have asked to translate some information for our Polish customers. I just have to type it up now.
While Steph spends the afternoon embroidering, fulfilling an order for a local construction company, I start follow-up work on the discussion I had regarding the website development and take photographs of our Scout and Guide Association uniform. Once this has been done, they can be uploaded on to our web server and I can begin the task of formatting the text, so they can be pushed live on to the online portion of our website. This will have to wait for another day though as time has passed very quickly today.
Friday
Before heading to the shop I pay a visit to a couple of schools we supply. I arrive at the shop at about 10.30pm.
The rest of the day is spent planning forward orders for our back to school period. July to September sales account for a large part of our annual turnover, so it is vital for the business to get these calculations right. The process involves running historical sales reports to establish figures from previous years. I have to take into account current stock levels, the ever present economic climate, along with good old-fashioned intuition. After a few hours of number crunching, I eventually get to figures that I am happy with.
By the time I have discussed the orders with my suppliers, it is time to leave for the day. although after getting home, I connect remotely from home to one of the PCs at the shop to catch up on some e-mails and stock reports that I didn’t have time to deal with during the day.
Saturday
It is my turn to work this Saturday, so I open as usual at 9.30am and brief the Saturday staff on the plan of action for the day. Saturday is traditionally our busiest day as parents tend to come in to the shop on their day off with their children. This is mainly so that they can try things on avoiding the need to return items that do not fit. We have a steady stream of customers throughout the day, which makes it go very quickly.
At 5pm I close the doors for the week, go home and relax with a large glass of wine. All too soon it will be Monday again and I will be ready to start again.
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Weather for Peterborough
Thursday 29 July 2010
Today
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Temperature: 11 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North west
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Temperature: 16 C to 23 C
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