I have a huge amount of empathy for those retail businesses of Farnham who are struggling to make ends meet. Walking through the Woolmead today I noted that over 1/3rd of the retail units were empty. As a Farnham man that hurts – I want to see Farnham businesses doing better and trading strongly.
The logical question to ask is why has this happened? You could blame the commercial landlord for not being more flexible as regards rent payments – probably set at a time when trade was booming – but contracts are a two way thing and the retailer knew the value and timing of the payments when they signed the lease.
Unfortunately it is more than likely that it is the business planning that has gone astray. One of three things can have happened here. Either the business failed to plan, or it made a plan but set assumptions that were too bullish for the current economic climate, or perhaps it failed to monitor adequately their trading situation against a well constructed initial plan.
It then begs the question what kind of advice are these businesses getting? From my experience business owners need good advice from someone they can trust and perhaps the current professional advisors were just not up to scratch or were not listened to. Perhaps the business owner did not even ask for advice on the assumption that “they knew best” or they were too frightened to ask.
Now is the time to make a business as efficient as possible with a robust plan to beat the downturn. If a business gets the basics right now it will emerge a much stronger beast on the way back up. And guess what the best way of getting the business basics right is… getting some good advice!
Alex Warren – Yellow Brick Road Consulting Limited
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