YPIE Tour Blog Day Two: Fishpools & UBM

Meisha Grace Nicely of Parker Knoll writes about day two of the Young Professional Industry Experience tour, which saw the group visit retailer Fishpools and trade show organiser UBM.

Day Overview

Crammed into a very small taxi, with suitcases on laps we began our journey to Fishpools. Ed Duggan, who is an expert in a range of business functions, gave us a detailed store tour and an in depth yet succinct presentation on Fishpools’ business model, marketing techniques and cost investment strategies.

Having made the journey back to Central London – in yet another small taxi, we met with Kali Nicholson at UBM (at their very swanky London offices), she gave us a general overview on why an event is important to businesses and how to plan an event. At the end of the day, we were tasked with putting our learnings into practice and come up with a summary of how to plan an event and the key areas that we need to take into consideration.

Learning Outcomes

Over the course of the day we were all very engaged by a number of points that both Kali and Ed raised in how they run their businesses, such as the following:

• Fishpools group their furniture floors by type of product i.e. Leather, Classic, Higher price point products and ensured that their sales staff were specialists in those areas
• Fishpools are part of a group with a number of other retailers in order to share risk in a number of areas such as buying containers from abroad
• The amount of work and structure required in organising a show and ensuring Return of Investment for a brand is becoming increasingly prevalent

For both Fishpools and UBM, it now clear to us that managing/running a store and organising a show are both very sophisticated operations. They need detailed planning, organising and cost management structures to ensure overall success and subsequent growth.