Has retail priced out customer service?

Five contrasting examples of are you being served...

Jessop, Nottingham – went in to ask about a zoom lens for my Nikon. Assistant tried a tactic on me: show him expensive and he’ll buy mid-price. Didn’t work because I’d done my homework and knew there was something substantially cheaper. She didn’t seem to be able to find it, and looked more interested in handling a delivery which had just arrived: Customer service: 3/10

M&S Nottingham – big store, big racks, easy to pick the wrong size. Solution? Have someone near the changing rooms who will go and get the right size for you. Staff were efficient, pleasant, humorous even. Result? A sale with added value. Customer service 9/10

Gift shop, Southwell – my wife bought jewellery for a friend there a couple of weeks ago. She was served well by a helpful assistant. Phone conversation with friend’s husband later made it obvious the gift wasn’t right. So, took back unopened. Looked for alternative, but there was nothing even remotely suitable. But the shop refused to give the money back, insisting on a credit note instead. ‘But you haven’t got anything we can spend it on!’. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s our policy’. ‘So you’re basically saying you’ve got our money and you’re keeping it?’. ‘I’m sorry I’m not the owner, I don’t make the policy’. Result? We got nothing, but they got £20. And me bad-mouthing them in a blog because that’s what they deserve. Customer service: sub-zero – they took money, gave us nothing, parroted what is in the circumstances a wholly flawed policy which leaves the customer feeling fleeced.

Zara, Meadowhall. Long search for a particular coat that youngest daughter wanted had drawn a blank. Wife phoned Meadowhall branch, they had one in the right size in the sale but with a button missing. We can sort that, so we asked them to put it to one side. We arrived to discover that there were infact two buttons missing and the gilet that goes with it can’t be found either. Not unreasonably, we say to the assistant that since we’ve come all this way we would still be interested if they could reduce it a little further – it’s damaged, incomplete goods. Assistant says she doesn’t have authority to do that because all prices set by head office. Result? Embarassed assistant who knows how far we’ve driven and that a one-size-fits-all corporate policy has made them look like computer-says-no numskulls. Customer service: 2/10


Meadowhall generally. Even allowing for the fact that I’m a fully-qualified GOM, family agreed that this was a ghastly experience all the way from car park to check out. Big stores groaning with unbrowse-able stock, shoppers wandering around with hunted looks. By retail standards it was a medievally gruesome environment. Too big to offer service on a simple human level, it was an unpleasant machine which left me wondering whether malls on this scale are out-dated dinosaurs. Customer service: impossible.

Conclusions? Retail is in for a tough time this year because of the economic situation, and it is having to balance two conflicting pressures. One is the obvious need to add value to the shopping experience, a central part of which comes from staff offering great service. The other is a almost crushing pressure to reduce costs in a UK retail landscape where price is king. I almost wonder whether we’ve priced service out.

Economic soundbites and a speech that matters

There have been two big economic stories over the past 48 hours. One of them has big implications for business in the long-term, the other for politics now. You can guess which one hogged the headlines.
The release yesterday of the first impression of the UK’s economic performance in the last three months of 2010 got hijacked by a yawn-worthy shouting match between Government and opposition. The most informed analyses came from Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s economics editor, and Gavyn Davies of the Financial Times.
Neither characterised the figures as an unmitigated disaster, while Davies said that because they varied so much from the aggregate of surveys tracking the performance specific industries he didn’t really believe them.
Anyway, the point is that those figures are not where the action’s really at. A much more telling contribution to the debate about where UK business goes from here was provided by Sir Richard Lambert.
It’s the last speech Sir Richard has given in his role as director general of the CBI. Once again, one particular theme in his speech got well and truly ‘politicked’ after the CBI emailed out advance copies to media organisations.
I’ll digress for a moment and explain why this happens. The reason is that this one theme – that the Government hasn’t said nearly enough about policies for business growth – plays to a political agenda currently being driven by the big unions.
The GMB, for example, is in the midst of a PR campaign which involves emailing journalists across the country with round-ups about public sector job losses which it says are ruining the recovery. Whether you agree or not, it’s an effective campaign and in the absence of another narrative from government it’s made the running.
Len McCluskey, the incoming boss of one of the big unions, Unite, went so far as to suggest that Sir Richard’s speech showed that the CBI and the unions are now singing off the same hymn sheet. He clearly didn’t read all 14 pages of it.
Thanks to the good offices of Paul Southby, the Nottingham lawyer who did a sterling stint as the CBI’s regional director, I had a couple of long chats with Sir Richard during the depths of recession. He is a hugely intelligent and very measured man, and anyone who characterises his speech as a political pot-shot is wide of the mark.
And the really important point is not what he says about what the government hasn’t done, but what he says about what it should do. That section his speech – which is much longer than the bits which suited the current news agenda – wasn’t covered at all.
I’ll come on to that in a moment. Sir Richard’s speech contained a useful recap of why the economy is where it is now and why, in his view, public spending would have been slashed even if Labour had been re-elected.
Granted, the coalition has gone about the cutbacks in an uncompromising fashion, but two statistics tell you why public sector retrenchment of one flavour or another was inevitable. Government spending last year was around 3 per cent above the original forecast made by then Chancellor Alistair Darling two years ago. But Government tax revenues meant to fund it were a whopping 13 per cent lower than expected.
Plummeting tax revenues are a measure of how much business activity has fallen out of the economy. Much of it will never come back, leaving a permanent hole in Government budgets. Tellingly, Lambert says that regardless of the economic cycle, “the tax and spending policies of the last government created a substantial structural deficit…that’s what made substantial spending cuts inevitable” (I’d be amazed if Len MCluskey is on the same hymn sheet as that).
So Sir Richard’s speech wasn’t a one-sided attack on the coalition. He poured scorn on the idea that higher business taxes would help plug the deficit, pointing out that this would be an even bigger long-term drag on jobs and growth than the public sector cutbacks are now.
His take is that the ingredients for a private-sector led recovery are definitely there: many businesses have cash in the bank because they cutback in recession, significant opportunities for growth lie in areas like the UK’s power generating infrastructure (which has to be upgraded to meet future demand) and manufacturing-led exports, where the weak pound is beginning to pay off.
So what’s lacking? This is where the serious criticism kicks in: business needs confidence to get spending and investing, but it’s lacking because the government has been far too slow in outlining its policies for supporting business growth.
And those policies that have impacted on business so far – the immigration cap, the localism agenda, the introduction of Local Enterprise Partnerships – have been woefully ignorant of the law of unintended consequences.
Finally, here’s the bit that matters. Beyond those soundbites (which most media focused on) Sir Richard went into some detail about what the Government now needs to do to unlock the growth potential the private sector can deliver.

Long term

• Put a relentless focus on the development of human capital (education, skills, training) and physical infrastructure (power, transport, digital). And do it across the regions to tackle our lop-sided economic geography. So the message for government is that it must invest again once the deficit is tackled

Short-term

• target policies which help small to medium enterprises, NOT large businesses. SMEs, says Sir Richard, are the main source of new jobs in the UK and successful ones are spread all over the country (so fewer ministerial photocalls with big companies!)
• Don’t fall into the hoary old political trap of trying to back ‘winning’ industry sectors. Sir Richard cites fascinating research by our own Experian here, which points out that innovative, ‘growth champions’ are NOTdefined by industry sector – they are defined by the “entrepreneurial zip” of management and an innovative approach. Experian’s research shows it can happen in any industry, anywhere.

Sir Richard says: “What politicians find it difficult to get their mind round is that it is just as possible – and important – to be an innovator in the brick making industry as it is in biosciences. And innovation is not confined to the South East corner of England.”
It follows that if government launches initiatives which back sexy industry sectors it will almost certainly exclude massive numbers of businesses with great potential for growth. So government has to concentrate on policies which support firms which display certain characteristics, not certain SIC codes.
Sir Richard criticises politicians for placing huge emphasis on trade with India and China when UKTI, the Government’s export advice service, would be better supporting these smaller firms trading with Europe.
He says the government’s lukewarm attitude towards Knowledge Transfer Partnerships – which put postgraduates into innovative work in companies – makes no sense when evidence suggests the scheme costs peanuts but delivers significant economic benefits.
Then there’s finance. Again, he says the emphasis should be on making sure cash gets through to those growth champions, not setting one-size-fits-all lending targets for banks based only on a number.
Sir Richard says he isn’t looking for the Government to come up with a five-year, Soviet-style blueprint for the economy. If you read between the lines, he would probably attach a health warning to any slogan-led grand plan.
And there is no succour in this for the public sector or for unions, despite the soundbites. Sir Richard’s analysis is grounded in hard, economic facts presented in a non-partisan manner.
You get the impression he feels politicians have failed the economy once and that we can’t afford it again.
Here’s hoping Vince Cable read all 14 pages, not the news channel soundbites.

That 'shocking' GDP figure explained

Not surprisingly, there's been some sharp reaction to today's news that the UK's economy may have contracted by 0.5 per cent in the last three months of 2010.
Indeed, according to newly-installed shadow chancellor Ed Balls, Britain's recovery has now ground to a halt.
Has it? Well, a word or two of caution.
This is only a first-pass at assessing GDP in the final quarter. The figures which the Office for National Statistics releases at this time of the month are based on an initial assessment of only 40 per cent of all the data which goes into the mix.
So the ONS will routinely revise this figure at a later date when it has done some further number crunching.
If the experience of the preceding quarters is anything to go by, that revision is likely to be up.
It would have some ground to make up, of course, to get back into positive territory. But it's worth bearing in mind what ONS chief economist, Joe Grice, said this morning: that 0.5 per cent of the fall can be attributed almost entirely to the severe weather which ran from the last week of November up to Christmas.
In other words, without the big freeze, the initial figure suggests the economy was at a standstill in the last three months of the year - it lost as much as it gained.
There are gains out there - manufacturing businesses are doing well, largely on the basis of exports driven by a weak pound.
But the service sector which dominates our economy is still struggling, and clearly didn't benefit from the weather. Neither did construction, which isn't exactly in rude health to start with.
One more point. History tells us that when an economy comes out of recession it will bob up and down as it tries to find a way forward. Fall backs are not unusual.
So, these figures aren't good, but they are not the full picture. And it's premature to paint them as a disaster.
The bigger issue is not the GDP of three months ago, but where business goes from here. I'll be blogging on some interesting ideas about that later.
UPDATE: Ian McCafferty, the CBI's chief economic adviser, has just said this: "On this data it is far too early to conclude that the UK economy faces a serious double-dip, and it will be some months before a true picture of its underlying performance becomes clear."

£140k top job holds key to planning

I had a long chat a couple of days ago with Jennifer Dearing (right), the interim planning chief at Nottingham City Council. She's won significant respect during her time here for the way she has put some purpose into a department which had seemed to the property industry to have been cast adrift.
Why do the problems in the city's planning department matter so much? Because it’s a key part of the face Nottingham presents to home-grown business success stories and to potential inward investors. If you want to build an office or factory these are the people you'll discuss your plan with.
Logically the discussions will take place with experienced planners who understand what business tries to achieve. That doesn't mean they'll roll over and say yes to whatever business wants – developers can be a pushy crowd – but you would expect them to flag up any potential problems, suggest ways round them and, if the plan goes forward, make the case for approval to the city's development control committee.
Right at the top of the department, you'd also expect to see people who appreciate the economic importance of the development industry, and can talk their language while being heavyweight enough to fight the city's corner when crappy designs are drawn up. Jennifer Dearing clearly has those attributes. But she'll be leaving soon. And restructuring of the department has seen experienced hands leave.
So the problem for Nottingham is that planning struggles to convincingly tick either box. Worse, it's been struggling for sometime, with a series of abortive attempts to fill top jobs - which gives the impression that the city council leadership either doesn't fully appreciate this problem or doesn't think it's a top priority.
Anyway, two things will happen with this story on Tuesday. I'll be running a piece in the commercial property section of Business Post which suggests at least some of the criticism of pre-planning fees may have hit home. More importantly, the deadline will have passed for the receipt of applications for the £140k-a-year role of corporate director of development.
The office – one of the top strategic jobs in this £1bn-a-year authority – has had no permanent occupant for nearly a year.

I've got a Ferrari in the loft

I bought some batteries yesterday for my remote control helicopter, which has been gathering dust since the last lot ran out in the summer.

I say ‘remote control helicopter’ when, as my daughters constantly remind me, what I really mean is ‘toy’. It is small enough to be flown indoors and offers hours of harmless fun (unless you’re the cat).

It got me thinking about all the other ‘toys’ I’ve got and how they define me as one of countless boys-who-never-grew-up. My haul of priceless cultural artefacts (also known as "useless tat which clutters the house up") includes:

Antiques Roadshow
Four Tamiya 1/12th scale models of Ferrari 312T (like the one pictured), Lotus 78, Brabham BT44B and Tyrrell P34 Formula One racing cars. Fabulously detailed 1970s self-assembly kits, they marked the high watermark of my ambition to become an automotive engineer. Still boxed in the loft, still dusted off may be once a year.
A Roberts R606MB mains-battery VHF radio. Bought with money I saved up from paper rounds, it is a big FM radio with a wooden cabinet. Now over 30 years old, it still offers a richer sound quality than one of those under-bandwidthed, underwhelming DAB contraptions.
A Swiss Army knife. Again, bought aeons ago with saved money it has helped me do a Ray Mears in hostile, unknown surroundings (cut up apple and cheese during a walk on the Somme)
A Nikon F801s 35mm body, a Nikkor 80-200mm zoom, and an Nikon SB25 Flashlite and a canvas and leather Billingham bag. I was earning money by the time I bought this lot (tragically, I part-paid for it by trading in a steel-bodied Nikon FM. Epic fail). When I took it into Jessops and asked for the trade in price against a digital SLR the screams of laughter could be heard all over the Market Square. Sod them, I thought, I’ll keep it in my studio (the loft). It’ll be worth something one day, as we blokes say.
Beatles LPs. Yup, a whole bag of vinyl beauties. Sold the the hi-fi separates system which played 'em (including a Dual CS505 turntable) a while back, but they’ll be worth something etc etc...

Techno, techno, tech…not
My iPod Touch. My only real concession to the modern world. Great when I’m up on an early start because I can read the headlines without having to wait five minutes for the Windows craptop to fire up. And when I’ve done that I play the Cannon Game on it, tee-hee!
My Tom-Tom XL Western Europe. It beeps warnings when I’m near speed cameras, has a great Homer Simpson voice option, glows nicely at night, and last guided me somewhere…um…er
Four chronograph watches. Four! I can pretend to do laptimes with a steel bracelet, a brown croc strap, a black over-stitch strap and a silicon strap. Jealous, eh?

Boys-will-be-boys: The Tell-Tale Signs
I still watch Thunderbirds when it gets repeated
I’ve been into that model shop in Broadmarsh and checked out an Airfix Lancaster
I find useless gadgets strangely appealing until boredom sets in
I feign disappointment when I’m asked to ‘look after the girls in the toy department’ at John Lewis
I wish I had a cap-gun
I believe toilet humour has a Shakespearean majesty

I could go on (and boys often do). However, I can think of at least one woman and two girls who will be shaking their heads in total despair at this point.
I don’t care. I plan to fuel up the 'copter tonight and take off on another mission laced with danger…for the cat.
(Credits roll, 633 Squadron theme plays)

Planning for a big appointment

I’ll blog later about the story behind the Nottingham Commercial Office Market Report, but what caught my ear at the launch this morning was yet more muttering about Nottingham City Council’s decision to bring in charges for planning advice.
As I blogged the other day, this has provoked strong reaction in the property community, and the sentiment this morning was, if anything, even more negative. It cropped up in conversation with five separate people, all of whom were dismissive about the service they have received until now and united in their belief that the only way the charges will stick is if they are accompanied by a step-change in the quality of the advice.
One told me: “I’ve had a development client who has just given up and walked away from the city because of this.”
As before, these conversations took place only on condition of anonymity, but it can’t be too long before someone says something publicly about the issue.
The City Council’s leadership has an awful lot to occupy its minds at the moment, notably the May elections and the budget cuts.
It doesn’t just need high quality people in its planning department to hit the commercial standard the fees suggest it now offers. It also needs them to help deliver the political agenda for residential and commercial regeneration in the city’s disadvantaged areas. That is a huge challenge.
I understand there’ll be an ad in the professional trade press shortly for a new director of planning. It will be a big appointment.

Oil's well with inflation

A load of fevered comment today about inflation rising to 3.7 per cent, approaching twice the level of the Bank of England’s target.

Does this mean interest rates are about to shoot up as the Bank tries to keep a lid on rising prices? Surely the Monetary Policy Committee will be under pressure to do just that at their February meeting?

Calm down, calm down. Graham Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, was among the first to point out that underneath this headline rate of inflation, some of the underlying numbers – the kind of stuff which excludes the temporary effects of tax rises like VAT – are still where they need to be.

We shouldn't forget, either, that inflation hit five per cent towards the end of 2008, before crashing down to one per cent a year later. So 3.7 per cent ain’t quite the hit-the-panic-button level some people are suggesting.

While a lot of businesses would love to shove their prices up there are all sorts of reasons why inflation may well settle down as the year progresses. In normal circumstances, it starts rising because high demand stretches factory capacity, but at the moment a still-weak economy means most businesses are not working flat-out. Another crude measure of the conditions for rising prices is peoples’ ability to pay. Again, we’re not exactly flush with cash at the moment. Finally, a weak economy also means businesses are having to compete hard against each other for scarce business – which tends to drive prices down.

Put all those factors together and you have reasons why it’s less likely inflation will spiral out of control and less likely the Bank of England will ratchet up interest rates immediately.

We’ve all noticed prices rising most at places like the petrol pumps, so here’s another piece of news today which might turn out to be a bit more significant: some of the member states in OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) are, according to the FT, quietly increasing production.

That may take the heat out of at least one of the key influences on the prices we’re all paying.

An expensive decision?

There's been a reoccurring theme in conversations I've been having with people in property recently. You'll hear it yourself if you use the words 'planning' and 'charges' in conversation with a surveyor.
I did last week and was on the receiving end of a five-minute, from-the-heart tirade. If you feel that strongly go public, I said (I would, wouldn't I?).
The response was almost depressing: "We can't, we do business with them. It would be too much of a risk."
We all know the way the world works. Suppliers don't diss clients. Particularly powerful, influential ones.
But that's not the relationship that's at the heart of this problem. Developers and their agents are feeling sore because of fees Nottingham City Council's development control department wants to charge for a service IT gives THEM.
That service, in simple terms, is the advice it gives to developers and their agents about proposals for new buildings before they put in planning applications. If you want to meet a planning officer and talk through the issues your proposal for an office block raises and get a written response it will now cost you more than £1,200. And further conversations mean further fees.
So why is an industry which routinely deals in millions bothered about a bit of small change? First there's the principle: we already pay for the planning department through council tax. The fees mean people are being charged twice (never mind the fees for the actual planning application itself).
Second, there is no guarantee this advice will smooth the application's journey through development control. Indeed, the worries here are best summed up by the nickname which some property people have given the decision-making body – the 'Out of Control Committee'. So it could be a thousand quid or more for nothing.
Third – and this is the contentious part – some in property think the quality of advice they get from the city's planning department is average at best.
It's an open secret in property circles that the department has gone through a difficult time recently. It is being restructured, experienced, senior figures have left and the council has struggled to find replacements. There is unhappiness, too, about the hand the city played during the good times, nodding through some pretty mediocre developments while regeneration zones went nowhere.
It also has a tense relationship with Broadmarsh owner Westfield, the feeling being that the council spent 10 years bending over backwards to accommodate its whims only to see them redevelop Derby instead.
As if to rub salt into these wounds, Tesco wants to build its biggest Nottingham store yet on Eastside – a site which the council had hoped to see turned into a £900m new office quarter.
So planners are under pressure to assert themselves at a time when the council is strapped for cash (which is what the introduction of these new fees is really about).
I wonder whether the name 'development control' is really appropriate. It suggests the authority is there to rein developers in rather than find ways of enabling regeneration and growth. If it wants to be seen as a body which offers authoritative input into development proposals in a major, regional city then its committee won't deliver unpleasant, expensive surprises which begin with the word 'no'.
And if the city is bringing in fees for professional advice (as opposed to a simple, technical service), it must understand that it changes the dynamic of a relationship. The expectation will be that the advice is delivered in a timely, professional manner, hits a certain quality standard – and gets results.
If that happens the complaints will disappear.
There are some dedicated, experienced people in city planning, and they have to deal with an industry which takes an approach which is often robust, occasionally aggressive. That's the nature of the beast when large sums of money are at stake.
The reality (as the council calculated) is that these fees will simply disappear in the cost of a major development. Smaller developers will probably also swallow them. Property and planning agents who act for developers may be less happy, because they'll could be asked by some of their more uncompromising clients to pay the fee on the understanding that "we'll reimburse you when the plans are approved" (i.e., it's your problem if they say no).
There is an opportunity here for the council to change the way it is seen in some quarters of the business community. If that is the approach it is taking then may be the grumbles will die down.

Just time for a coffee

Most of us are creatures of habit and I’m no different. When I’m out and about meeting people I’m looking for a place which is within 10-15 minutes walk, serves good coffee and is busy enough for some atmosphere but not so crowded that you can’t engage in discreet conversation.
The days of long lunches are history, which means you end up in a café or coffee shop of some sort.
I have my regulars and my views about them, and I’d be fascinated to hear what other people think/recommend.
Anyway, my coffee shop rundown:
Caffe Nero on Bridlesmith Gate – good service and a window seat means you can chat and watch the fashionable world go by. Dingy at the back, though.
Costa, Waterstones – service OK, the opaques stuck to the windows ruin what could be a great view. Better now it’s spread out, with a reading room vibe in parts. My greatest time-waster because you can linger amid the books afterwards.
Delilah – good food and coffee, but room limited and you’re stuffed if it’s busy
Café Contemporary – until recently, the only blemish on the Contemporary’s ground floor eatery was the fact that it is closed on Mondays, which is commercially silly. Otherwise, a hassle-free atmosphere in unique surroundings where it was easy to talk in your own space. Jury is out now, though: does the new franchisee understand its position as a particular kind of fashionable haunt?
Caffe Nero, Wheeler Gate – good service, roomier than the Bridlesmith Gate branch, room to breathe upstairs.
Starbucks, Sainsbury, Castle Marina - where I head when I'm working late. Except I can't now because they brought forward closing time from 7pm to 6pm. Aaagh*!?
Costa Coffee, Castle Wharf* – great addition to an already humming business location which daily attracts hundreds of visitors from the businesses in Castle Wharf, the courts, Castle Boulevard. Set to make a killing in the summer because of its canalside location. Overcomes the coffee shop desert which exists between Broadmarsh and the Station.
*OK, so I can dream, can’t I?

Life's little luxuries

Back in the days of decent expenses, I did a Business Post business lunch with Steve Kent, then recently installed as chief exec of what was still ClinPhone.

This was the drug trials services business brought to life by Neil Rotherham and Jonathan Engler (the only entrepreneurs I knew who still acted like a pair of giggling junior doctors).

Kent had come in to prepare the growing ClinPhone for its next step – possible flotation or a merger with something bigger (it turned out to be the latter through the warm embrace of Parexel).
His CV included a stint with the luxury goods firm Alfred Dunhill, and he was the bloke who opened my eyes to the almost gruesome reality of both luxury goods profit margins and the rarefied atmosphere which the market inhabits.
He told me without batting an eyelid about the days when the Sultan of Brunei would visit its West End shop. The routine was that the shop closed, the Sultan came in, walked out with a load of silk ties and the till would ring to the tune of £40,000 or so…
The closest I’ve ever come to this market (besides an agreeable lunch with a high-flyer like Kent) is rubbing my nose against the windows at Berrys or Copes and drooling over the serried ranks of Jaeger le Coultre, Panerai and IWC.
They are, if you don’t know, Swiss watchmakers. Now, if this conjures up images of white-haired craftsmen using generations-old tools to lovingly assemble intricate movements, forget it. All are owned by luxury goods conglomerates (like Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy or Swatch Group) and the only thing slowing down production at their factories is the need to limit supply so prices stay high.
As my wife knows, I am entirely comfortable with the concept of blowing £10k on an IWC Portugese chronograph in rose gold. She’s comfortable with it too, because this fantastical notion remains unsupported by my bank account.
But I love Swiss mechanical watches, so what do I do? Enter Christopher Ward, a Liverpudlian ex-retail executive who, having made his money, decided to indulge his own passion for timepieces by launching an English watch company.
Ward is a savvy individual, and he spotted a gap in the market for people like me – those who like male ‘jewellery’, have admired classy watches from afar but would probably struggle to shell out for a major brand without giving the plastic an almighty caning.
He decided he was going to make watches which had Swiss movements, luxury design cues and a certain cache. And that he was going to do it for a fraction of the spondoolicks you would normally have to hand over.
How? Well, the £3-4k you usually cough for the likes of a Rolex GMT clearly doesn’t bear any relation to the cost of the metal mickey whirring away inside its 42mm-wide case. No, you are, of course, making your own personal contribution to multi-million Rolex sports marketing budget (check out some of the Golf majors), the velvety environment of the jeweller who sold it and, last but definitely not least, Rolex’s handsome luxury goods profit margins.
Ward decided to ditch all those things which added nothing to the fundamental qualities of the watch. So out went the retail middleman, out went the marketing budget, out went European manufacturing.
He designed the watches himself, secured a supply of Swiss movements, found a manufacturer in the Far East, and set up a website.
Result? A beautifully-designed watch with a Swiss movement was yours by Special Delivery for a couple of hundred quid.
Sorted? Well, not quite. The Swiss watch industry has a well-deserved reputation for protecting its collective interest, and didn’t entirely approve of some English upstart buying its movements and apparently selling Swiss on the cheap.
So after a few years Ward had to transfer manufacture to Switzerland to ensure a continued supply of movements. It meant a small tick up on the prices, but the payback for Ward was that instead of putting Swiss Movt on his watch faces he could now put Swiss Made – an altogether higher level of cache among horological afficionados.
These afficionados will also point out that the Eta 2824 and Valjoux 7750 movements found inside some of Ward’s watches are largely identical to those ticking away inside an Omega or a Breitling.
He shifts thousands of them a year to buyers at home and abroad and to this day his main marketing tool is the website. Cleverly, it gives open access to an entirely independent enthusiast forum, where whinges about delivery problems and the occasional technical hitch have simply added to the brand’s trusted appeal.
So what can we learn from an operation like Ward’s? What you notice on that forum is the surprisingly large number of people who have gone on to buy several of his models –the classic Malvern chronograph, the beautiful C5 Aviator with its glass back, the bruising C40 Speedhawk or his own GMT homage, the C6 Trident (which is in the picture).
And here’s the punchline: in the process, they’ll have spent around the same it would have taken to buy your average Omega.
That’s the line I’m taking at home, anyway...

Welcome...

A coupla words of welcome.
I have the credit crunch to thank for my introduction to blogging. As a business correspondent on a daily regional newspaper (the Nottingham Post), I found myself having to come to terms with a once-in-a-generation economic event. And to do it in print.
The only way to do that was to revise ferociously (I've got a shelf full of economic tomes) and then write about it. One of the best ways to explore the impact a fast-changing economic explosion was having on the world around me was to blog about it, so I did, originally on a blog on the Post website, http://www.thisisnottingham.com/
The world's calmed down a bit since then, and my original blog ran its course (though it's still buried on blogger right HERE - I've had an amusing time finding out how many of my wise-owl predictions came true).
So now there's something a bit more personal. I'm still going to waffle about business and economics-related stuff and you'll find it either fascinating or a laugh. But there will also be more about me, myself and I.
There are some great blogs by people in and around Nottingham - some of which mirror my world, others which offer piercing insights, and a few which irritate the hell out of me. But that's why I read them - you learn something even when you disagree.
I don't mind whether you disagree with what I write, or if you say so in no uncertain terms. As long as you give it a go.