Smart Shopkeeper Strategy
Real expertise doesn’t come from a corporate boardroom. It comes from behind the counter. It comes from stacking shelves with one hand and serving a customer with the other. It comes from struggling with the summer rota while your kids are off school and staying up till midnight updating
Smart Shopkeeper Strategy
“No rushing, no pushing.” It’s something I say regularly in yoga classes. A gentle reminder to stop forcing. To stop straining. To stop trying to wrestle life into submission. And lately I’ve realised it applies just as much to running a small business as it does to yoga.
Smart Shopkeeper Club
There’s a strange assumption I keep bumping into from some business voices in the retail world. Former consultants. Industry insiders. Ex-corporate “experts” with glossy profiles and big opinions. They all seem to come from outside the day-to-day realities of indie retail. And the assumption goes like
Smart Shopkeeper Club
If you come to our shop, don’t expect perfection. Expect a real working independent business, run by real people in the middle of real life. There might be a gap on a shelf needing to be restocked, a display being tweaked and a task being finished behind the till.
Smart Shopkeeper Club
I was really pleased to be featured on the Greeting Card Association’s official Thinking of You Week blog, talking about the ideas and campaigns we created around this year’s event. Thinking of You Week is already a genuinely brilliant campaign. At its heart is something very simple but
Smart Shopkeeper Strategy
People love a business origin story. How did they start? What was the lightbulb moment? How did they go from nothing to success? We’re taught to believe the secret lies in the beginning. That somewhere inside the founder’s early decisions is a blueprint we can follow ourselves. But
Thinking of You Week
Why I created these free retailer resources and how they can help your shop make an impact with minimal effort. Thinking of You Week is a nationwide campaign that encourages everyone to send a card and deliver a smile. Brought to you by The Greeting Card Association, it’s a
Smart Shopkeeper Strategy
One thing my team will tell you very quickly is this: I rarely leave anything alone for long. A display gets adjusted slightly. A sign moves half an inch. A product gets regrouped. A caption changes. A window gets simplified. A price point shifts. A shelf suddenly makes more sense
retas awards
We were incredibly proud to have our Female Founders Month campaign named Best Retailer Initiative at The Retas 2025, a national awards event celebrating the very best of the UK greeting card industry. Not long afterwards, the Leicester Mercury also featured the story, helping share the campaign and award win
Smart Shopkeeper Club
I was really pleased to be featured by PG Buzz in an article titled ‘Sophie’s Boost for Shopkeepers’, recognising some of the work I’ve been doing to support independent retailers through campaigns, ideas and practical resources. The phrase “boost for shopkeepers” actually captured something quite important to me,
Small Shop Summer
I was delighted to see the Small Shop Summer campaign featured in Gifts & Home magazine, helping spread the message and ideas behind a campaign I created to support independent retailers during the quieter summer months. Like many shopkeepers, I’ve always felt that summer can sometimes become a strangely
Smart Shopkeeper Club
They’re not just buying things, they’re choosing us. Let’s make it easy for them do a little bit more Something has become crystal clear to me this year: customers aren’t just buying products, they’re backing people.They’re not passive. They’re not indifferent. They