Ascential Events – the organisers of retail trade shows Pure London, Spring Fair, Autumn Fair, Jewellery and Watch, and Glee – has launched Inside Retail, an online hub designed to deliver insight and inspiration to the UK’s brilliant retail sector and its thousands of independent businesses. The launch follows 12 months of research among hundreds of independent retailers. Set against a backdrop of profound disruption in the retail sector, these conversations revealed an appetite for a platform focused on helping independents to leverage new technologies and trends and level the playing field between them and their larger scale competitors. With that in mind, Inside Retail will bring together information across a range of subjects that those retailers say they most want:
- How to ‘talk’ to customers. This is now more complicated than ever before, with new social media channels increasing the opportunities to connect with existing and potential customers.
- Product trends. Retailers are aware that they need to be unique, creating a point of difference so special that competing on price is not necessary
- eCommerce. This is the number one anxiety among independent retailers, with many worried about how to operate a successful transactional website without blowing the budget.
The site is designed to help retailers at any stage of development, from Getting Started, Up and Running, Branching Out and Fine Tuning. Inside Retail is dedicated to helping retailers survive and thrive in both physical and digital forms, whether they are rookies or experienced retail pros.
Information will be delivered across a mixture of articles, webinars, videos, whitepapers, seminar sessions, masterclasses and reports with tips and advice coming from industry experts, leaders and pioneers – all of it focused on helping indie retailers to thrive in today’s retailing environment. A sample of some of the articles that will be on the site include:
- Nine Things to Consider Before Setting up Online
- How to Expand from Your First Store
- Are Pop-Ups a Smarter Way to Set up Shop?
Louise Young, divisional director of retail at Ascential Events, says: “Independent retailers are at the heart of our business, with tens of thousands attending our events each year. It is independent retailers that set the pace of retail creativity and innovation for the wider industry. During our year round research with them it’s become clear that they have more to think about than ever before. The idea of Inside Retail is to give them insight and inspiration about how to use retail disruption to their advantage, taking on board advice from the peers and experts they need to run their businesses.”
