blogs.conchango.com

5p for Carrier bags, good for the environment and good for business... Today, Marks & Spencer begin charging 5p for food carrier bags.  That's good for the environment because alongside the reduction in plastic that will be sent to landfill, the profit from the sale of the bags will go to Groundwork, an environmental charity which ...

When a retailer's business hits the rocks, everyone and his dog has an opinion. It's a rare industry whose dirty laundry is so publicly aired as that of high street retail. The announcement earlier this month that Ethel Austin was to go into administration, with the attendant loss of 181 head office jobs and 33 store closures, provoked a fair bit ...

Conchango recently hosted a Retail Business Intelligence Seminar, which was attended by many of the UK's leading retailers.  The format of the day was a number of presentations and some round table discussions on topics that had been selected by the attendees in advance by way of a questionnaire.  The Butler group presented on the ...

From user research and other customer insight I create the primary persona, Siobhan, a fictional portrait of a customer for a high street retailer I am currently working with.  As she slowly comes to life I create a vivid image of this fictional character . It isn't easy sourcing the right photo to reflect the age, gender, and ...

...TO LATE!!! As most (hopefully ALL) retailers know Easter is the second most important trading time after Christmas! However - how many retailers were ready for this Easter ?? - because this Easter is going to be tough ride... Most retailers will have planned Xmas >> Winter Sale >> Easter - roughly in that order - base their ...

Isn't searching for a house online addictive? You spend hours and hours at the computer, changing sites, varying search parameters, taking virtual tours etc.  If your seriously moving then you do this every day so you can catch the latest properties.  Is it addictive?  Or does it just take hours because traditional housing search ...

Traditional BI was all about numbers, charts and reports and it's been replaced by super whizzy dashboards that promise the earth but may or may not deliver value.  BI applications, along with email, are probably the only system that senior executives of companies actually use.  As such they have visibility that's unrivalled from other ...

Traditional BI is about numbers, charts and reports right?  Big mainframe reporting systems using Focus or SAS, or even COBOL (those were the days, PIC S9(9) COMP-3, happy memories!!). Or early implementations of Microstrategy or Business Objects that looked good in their day, but seem out of place now. The trend with technology companies ...

Hi All,   My third blog post, I am on a roll.   I was at a cleint recently where a ''Creative'' was having a debate about what colour signifies Security to them. He wanted to colour the header and footer of the secure shopping cart part of the site green to signal security, however I pitched my oar in and mentioned I thinking in ...

Today is day 1 of the Retail Week Conference 2008.  I arrived in time for the breakfast briefing, sporting a Conchango t-shirt. My trim figure barely made a dent in the XL Conchango t-shirt leaving plenty of room for a couple of colleagues to squeeze in. After a much-needed caffeine injection and over-indulgence in fresh croissants I ...