Retail Managers Meeting: two days of best practice sharing in Sofia

Retail Managers from 28 countries met in Sofia, Bulgaria, to talk about the new actions for this financial year, exchange ideas and discuss the most important topics within Retail activities. The focus of the meeting was one of our current CSF’s, Everyone Above Average.

The last time they all saw each other was back when we didn’t use color codes when travelling between countries. More than one and a half year has passed since all the Retail Managers have met physically, and during this time JYSK continued to grow.

We are now One JYSK. We implemented many new digital tools that help stores in their daily routines. We started the process of upgrading to Store 3.0 for all the stores that use previous concepts. These changes were among the main topics discussed in Sofia.  

Michael Olesen, Retail Operational Director, described the meeting as fantastic and full of energy.  

“The Retail Managers have a lot of great things to take home to their own organisation, trying to improve things based on what they hear from other countries. JYSK strongly believes in best practice. They are the ones who really know what is going on out there, in the stores. This is the reason why they are actually better in helping each other and coming up with solutions than we are. They have the solutions, they just need to share them,” said Michael Olesen. 

Everyone above average

Our focus this year is "Everyone about average", the new CSF that will help countries improve the areas that could be done better.

"The purpose is to get the bottom performers above average. The Retail Managers were very open. They love to have input from each other, that is the mentality within the group," explains Michael Saldern Smith, Retail Process Coordinator. 

Going back to basics and ensuring that stores are implementing the essential actions is one of the solutions that can improve everyone’s KPI's. The Back to Basic workshop focused on this topic.

"If we do not have the basic in place, the fundamentals, it does not matter if we care about additional selling or other things. We did some unannounced visits in stores and we saw that in certain areas we had some challenges. The basic means to be ready for the customers, to have a store front that presents itself in a nice and welcoming way, to have the store filled up with articles and to not have empty spots, to have the price signs up to date and so on," said Michael Saldern Smith.

What do Retail Managers say

The Retail Managers talked about the experience they had in Sofia and they all agreed on two things. It was great to finally meet in person and it was very engaging to attend the workshops.

"For a long time we had not been together. It was nice that we also had colleagues from DBL Region countries, as we are now One JYSK and we have over 3,000 stores. We had some great presentations and best practice sharing, as we asked. We wanted to have more best practice sharing so we can exchange experiences between us and take the good things to our country, to make everyday life and the operational things easier and smarter," said George Tsironis, Retail Manager in JYSK Greece.

For Péter Kubon, Retail Manager in JYSK Hungary, this was his first Retail Managers Meeting.

"It was good to see that we fight similar things in every country. We found some really good solutions that we can take with us at home," he said. 

Tiina Palosaari, Retail Manager in JYSK Finland, appreciates the variety of topics that were discussed.

"One of the most interesting topics was the Business Plan. We have many ideas after these two days, and we will use them when we start working on the business plan in spring. The atmosphere was great, I am happy we managed to see each other after such a long time," says Tiina Palosaari.

She came to Sofia together with her colleague, Retail Manager Leena Pakarinen.

"The most important things during this meeting was to know what other countries did, learn their best practice and apply it in our local organisation," added Leena Pakarinen.

Stian Stenseth, Retail Manager in JYSK Norway, was happy to see the atmosphere, engagement and laughter during a physical meeting again.

"We have discussed a lot of interesting topics and we had to actively listen, so that we can catch on all the best practice, steal from others and make it your own. We had opened discussions about topics that are the basis of our retail operations," said Stian Stenseth.

After the meeting, the Retail Managers went back to their countries, where they will put into practice the good ideas they got in Sofia.