Haresh Keswani, chief executive officer of Artee Group said protection, controls, results and harmony are the four essential words that people must focus on to be successful in any retail business in Nigeria.
He noted these nuggets on Saturday at the maiden edition of the Africa Retail Congress hosted by the Lagos Business School (LBS) Africa Retail Academy.
The congress, theme ‘The Future of Retail: Positioning Africa as a Retail Hub’ shared experiences and addressed some key issues impacting the growth of Africa’s retail in the constantly evolving landscape.
“Don’t go into retail, if you can’t balance these four words properly. You have to know how to protect your staff, brand, inventories and cash, the controls to put in place, how to market your products to get results (profits) and how to do all these without disrupting harmony,” Keswani said.
He said retailers must embrace harmony as it is an important element in retail.
Keswani who is also the managing director at Spar Nigeria, a top supermarket chain, said retail can be a pressure or pleasure, but that the difference between these two words is passion.
“So, pressure plus passion will give you pleasure. But most retailers and their employees don’t know how to develop this passion,” he said.
The advocate of human capital development recommends that retailers should focus on human capital by enrolling their teams to understand and work with their vision.
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“The number one rule in retail is to get your staff to understand what it takes to keep a customer happy, and then your half job is done.
“Secondly, know how to build relationships and trust with your suppliers because credibility is key. You can only get it when your customers support you and your people support your customers,” he said.
Nnamdi Ezeigbo, managing director/chief executive officer, Slot Systems Limited also said one cannot grow their business if they don’t have the right people, skills and competence in place. “You are going to be struggling, which is the problem of most retailers.”
The first three years of my business was a chaotic period because there was no mission, vision, statement and business plan, said Ezeigbo.
“We were just doing the business like any other person. So, it took us for years to be able to connect the dots because we were not knowledgeable about what we should know and how we should run businesses,” he said.
Since 2021, the academy has been nurturing the next generation of African retail professionals, practitioners, and captains of industry.
Drawing upon the expertise of foremost academics and practitioners from around Africa, the academy paints a vivid portrait of the history, future, and present state of retail on the continent.
With the explosion of such a dynamic and increasingly modernised sector come myriad opportunities, risks and potential that a well-positioned retail professional can manoeuvre through to positive effect.
The teaching, research and practice of retailing in Africa have long been undecided with different hard-to-neglect existential challenges facing the sector, said Chris Ogbechie, dean at LBS.
“Studies have shown that 24 percent of retail employees had been with their current employer for less than 12 months against 18 percent in other industries. Also, only 15 percent had worked for their current employers above 10 years compared with 24 percent across other industries,” he said.
Ogbechie added that it was his hope that the maiden congress will serve as a premier platform to access the best thinking around the future of the industry and as guidelines to navigate its existential challenges in positioning the continent as a retail hub.
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