To help businesses in East Anglia navigate through the Covid-19 crisis, MHA Larking Gowen has organised a series of free insight webinars. The last one looked at the challenges in retail.
There isn’t a company in the country that hasn’t been touched by the coronavirus pandemic. Business as usual hasn’t been an option, but successful companies have adapted to the new conditions and continued to thrive.
So, what are their secrets? To find out and share their experiences, accountancy firm and business advisors MHA Larking Gowen has organised a series of free webinars. Lasting just 30 minutes, these Bitesize Insights ask industry leaders to share what they’ve learned about getting through the pandemic.
The most recent of these webinars saw Robert Hughes, chairman of Hughes Electrical, explaining how the family business has faced up to the challenges of Covid – while looking ahead to the future of the high street.
Celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, Hughes Electrical is one of the largest and best-established businesses headquartered in East Anglia, with a turnover in excess of £120 million. Running its 32 stores, nine trade counters, six service centres, three websites and two call centres is a workforce of more than 750.
“We have one brand but a wide range of customers and a lot of routes to those customers, to give efficiency,” explains Mr Hughes. “My life’s work has been to move the business from something fairly narrow to something broader and more resilient.”
Before Covid, this had meant that business drew roughly equal amounts of revenue from in-store sales, online sales, rentals and business-to-business sales. “We were able to survive when other retailers couldn’t because we went multi-channel,” says Mr Hughes. “It was balanced – like a table with four legs.”
Working with Hughes Electrical, MHA Larking Gowen had seen how that changed with the pandemic. “The analogy I’ve used is that it’s been like having one foot in a bucket of boiling water and one foot in a bucket of ice water,” says Mr Hughes. “On average, it’s been okay – but it isn’t half uncomfortable.”
While stores were closed for four months, the online business boomed. “We can compete by having a strong website supported by shops, where it used to be strong shops supported by websites,” explains Mr Hughes. “The legacy of Covid will be how that relationship has changed.”
Mr Hughes says retail businesses need to compete in the space between the website and the shop. “Covid made us innovate as we had to think hard about how to do more in this space,” he explains.
One solution was the introduction of the Shop Live Service, where staff equipped with selfie sticks can take customers watching online around a store, showing products as if they were there in person. The firm also increasingly focused on click-and-collect offers as lockdowns gave buyers – especially older consumers – increasing confidence to shop online, but many still valued being able to go to a shop.
“The high streets have to get smaller and less homogeneous,” says Mr Hughes. “People want a nice high street, but it needs to scale down, lose the faceless national retailers and have more local businesses that provide better service and represent their community – and that suits us.”
Mr Hughes went on to share advice on looking after staff and leading a company – including having a no-blame culture and the success of “the passion card”. He also revealed how many things he has on his to-do list and what he thinks is the most important thing for business leaders to do.
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To learn more, you can view the free 30-minute Bitesize Insight webinar here.
Bitesize Insight with Spider
From working in a market that froze at the start of the first lockdown to having the busiest winter for years, award-winning recruitment specialist Spider has managed to weave a successful path through the pandemic’s many challenges.
For the next MHA Larking Gowen Bitesize Insights webinar, managing director Michelle Pollard will share her experience of running the business, making a key acquisition during the pandemic, motivating and supporting staff, as well as the challenges facing businesses recruiting during lockdowns.
“I look back at 2020 and it almost seems low-key,” she says. “But in fact it has been the toughest 12 months I’ve ever had in business."
“It’s been such a high-pressure situation for so long, for so many reasons, and that’s what we want to draw out,” says MHA Larking Gowen partner Becky Ames, who will be chairing the webinar.
To book your place to watch the free webinar, click here.
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