=redThis has been split out from the "Whinging" thread as it was going off on a tangent about a specific topic. - Iain


in terms of the club shop/online shop

i think the way forward for the club shop would be to order to purchase, i think the business would be more succeseful on this aspect of it if, they put together a catalogue every quarter or every 6 months and then people could order it there and then and collect in a few days? there would be pro's and cons of this for example the club would lose out on any discount of them 'bulk' ordering, but hopefully this would be outweighed by the fact that there wont be left over stock at the end of the year in which the club would try to get rid of at a cost to them from original price???

does anbody else think this could be a feasable option?

people could argue that it would be far more difficult to have something exchanged, but that never harmed next or any of the other catalogue providers...

they could still sell items in the clup shop/classroom on matchdays as i appreciate there are people that only come to matchdays as one offs or what have you.

i think this could be a good solution especially for people like gt who are not local to the willows and cant just pop in to buy a coat

He wouldnt be interested unless it was a big black hoolie coat



Presumably the club have a deal with the manufacturers that they will provide a minimum of x amount of shirts n coats because they know how much they sell on average, so budget for it.

Its all a bit hit and miss imo i remember the retro shirt with the big s and they went dead quick and never got restocked or a newer one like a esab 80s shirt that would be great, perhaps somthin to look into for the season when the stadium gets underway.

Im not sure if i heard it right but there was talk of renting past games out from the shop, now that would be a great idea well worth the membership fee if you had to be a member to do it

.

The club could still order replica shirts as they do now, but they could sell all the other stuff to order, or at least give people the chance to order stuff once all the other gear has gone, instead of it going and then not putting in anymore orders



this is a good idea although they do already sell past matches on dvd in the shop, obviously nobody is going to go a buy a dvd if salford get hammered by saints, but i now the leeds away dvd from last year sold like hot cakes,

they should stock famous victories of 'the dvd' era, i know these games would certainly get some interest...

leeds 09 grand final 08 cas 04 wigan 01 (i think it was '01, 31-30?) wigan 96

another good idea. although maybe not now the tavern isnt open but, having a night once a month where we could relive past matches that will be remembered fo a while, you could say 3 - 5 quid in, have a bit of food on as well, plus wet sales?

[size=59but that idea would only last about 3 months because then we would be relivin games like the bradford shambles

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As the Trafford centre are our main sponsors, you would think a small shop in the trafford centre would be the natural progression, or is that to simple?

i was thinking that myself but for this to happen we would probably have to spend at least 3 - 4 grand a month rent (thats with discount) and then with the shop being a lot bigger and hopefully busier, you would need at least 15-20 members of staff working on a rota for the week and then on top of that, you will have to give it another name other than salford city reds shop... and sell salford gear but a lot of it would have to be subtle, just how gt and others like it... we would have to sell things that was not strictly something a salford fan would wear but what anybody would wear.

perhaps there could be a possibility of a concession stall in john lewis, selfirdges or debenhams, that whay you would only need 4-8 staff but there would still be the cost of rent and the issue of selling garments that havent got salford city reds emblazened on them

If I'm not mistaken, Howard Clague covered this at a recent FR meeting.
Basically, all the money provided by The Trafford Centre sponsorship deal would go right back to them in any form of unit rental.

So that's a non-starter then.


........ or do people disagree

What about the the products we could sell, what about the marketing of the club, what a way to get the message across, how many people visit the Trafford centre, we always seem to look at the negatives instead of looking at the positives. sums up if that was the reply at the FR meeting.

If we attracted 1% of the visitors who shop at the trafford centre to come & watch Salford or buy some gear because they like it, surely with the Trafford centre sponsoring the club we are missing opportunities.

I bet if Warrington or Wigan had the chance they would have some form of presence in the Trafford Centre.

Now that is an idea id go for sure

See here for the rentals in the TC [urlhttp://www.traffordcentre.co.uk/corporate/lettings/12regentcrescent[/url

You're starting at OVER £1/4 million a year plus nearly £90 grand rates!

Yes there are smaller units but I doubt Peel would be interested in offering any at a discount to SCR as their other customers would start asking for discount too!



Warrington or Wigan (or anybody else) have all the chances they want to get a unit in the Trafford Centre, there are plenty for rent - but they don't seem to be there - I wonder why not?

whoa, those figures are staggering! the 200k sponsorship we get per year seems like short change to them lol



i think the first quote could point to the reason why not



in a perfect world we would be big enough to afford something like that to happen but thats if we were in dreamland!

like i have stated previously i think the club do a good job but as with everything there is always more that could be done

I say bring back the cubicle on the precinct from yesteryear, find a new version of Miss Monks and her perfect pins and you'll be onto a winner.

Pretty certain i've mentioned it before but I still think it's a good idea and something the club should be actively persueing, with the Beeb moveing so many personel up to Salford and the surrounding areas surely there is scope to target some of these people with cheaper tickets and what have you to see if we can get some of them interested in the club as it is the sole fully professional team from thier adopted new home town.

a small unit in the lowry anyone?

all these i feel are good ideas but i am but i am expecting someone to tell me why its hasnt been doing, isnt being done, or never will be done because of reasons x,y and z
i feel many posters on here have strong opinions about what should be done but dont actually look into the reasons why it isnt/wont be being done!

Retailing is a very very competetive area in our society these days, there is phenomenal expertise and experience involved in setting up a successful retail operation and it is somewhat naive to think you can just set up a stall and make money on the scale that is need for it to be really significant for an operation like SCR, without that expertise.

That said, everyone in retail started somewhere!

I think that it is probably stating the obvious to say that Salford's fundamental problem is the size of the fan base (and no that's not Big Pev's shirt size

) so until that is addressed I think any retail operation is going to be pretty restricted - what's the size of our target market i.e. how many individuals will actually buy anything from SCR in a year ? 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 ? my guess is that 3,000 is optimistic, but let's use that as a working figure.

The first thing you have to do is maximise the revenue from the willing customers that you do have - we've chosen to give shirts to the season ticket holders, lets say 2,000 of them, so maybe the remaining 1,000 will buy a shirt each and half the season ticket holders will also buy another shirt - so 2,000 shirts at £50 (average adult & junior) - thats £100,000 income - margin 60% (? don't actually know), but if that's right then thats £60,000 profit (hmmm - a bit far away for a £250,000 rent in the Trafford Centre!)

Then we need to target people who don't currently buy anything:

1: Existing fans
2: Away fans
3: Others

How to do that? It's called marketing and it costs money! You have to create the "I want one" feel about the merchandise. It never ceases to amaze me how many folk will wear Brazil shirts, or Barcelona shirts who have no actual connection to either but who buy into the brand. Now could Salford ever become such a brand? Tough call I suspect.

So where does this train of thought lead? Well, first you have to manage your costs to suit the size and scale of the operation - is a bricks & mortar shop ever going to make real money - if the answer is no then we just souldn't have one! In my opinion (and I think Chico challenged me a while back on the feasibility), the ONLY way forward is online - the cost of entry is small, you can outsource the fulfillment and order processing and you get world-wide coverage instantly (albeit competing with a few other sites!)

You may take exception with the numbers I've used, they are complete guesswork, but whatever anyone comes up with you must do that kind of projection to see if the idea is viable

Right I'll stop rambling and get back to the red wine (it's official now it's good for you!!!!)

thats a great post beacause for people like me ( i know the basics of business) but wouldnt of been able to put that down to paper as such.

i think the online/order route could be a possible way to go, but it think i would have to go with the online aspect being a seperate site to the club one but obviously the 'online shop' link would lead you to the said site
this is entirely because of the amount of time it takes the thing to load up on reds.co.uk

we are living in a virtual world and we need to try to use that to our advantage! , i also like the idea of having some kind of retail presence in the salford quays area could be beneficial in targeting 'new customers'(bbc workers) and also because it isnt no salford precinct, its a much nicer area and would give a much more positive look on the whole scheme of things

Moving away from what I said last time about internet access, one thing to add here regards online sales conversion. Rule of thumb is that 5% of your website's visitors will buy something [iif[/i people want what you're selling. Now, that percentage is skewed by auction websites and let's say banks because for those markets sales conversion is high — over 10%. The sports market tends to be around 1.5%; speciality goods around 3.5%.

Let's just say, for example, the new home shirt comes out and for a limited time only retails at £35. That's an attractive offer. So if you had 1000 unique visitors to your website every week, you expect to sell between 10 and 30 shirts every week. Similarly 100 uniques could equal 1–3 shirt sales a week.

Therefore depending on your visitor demographic and stats, online shops can be a boon or a bit of damp squib. As BartonFlyer says though, if the setup cost is relatively small, then you may as well offer the service regardless.

i hope the club take not of this thread, like you say at leat offer the service i know my dad in new zealand would almost certainly buy things of the site, and there are many other salford ex pats who dont have access to the club anymore like they once did

Again it's another suggestion i've mooted before but I still say it stands as being worthy of being investigated by the club.

Salford and Manchester has a huge student population and i'm willing to bet that marketing and some form of commercial studies are prominent as topics of learning. for me the club should approach the universirty who actually have something along these lines on thier list of studies and see if they can help by letting the students invest some of thier study time into looking at ,arketing. It has to be a worthy idea as trying to market a club who treads water at best and offers limit goods for sale to a small fan base is a challenge and should one bright spark hit on a winning idea it would surely look good for them when they qualify and look for real work in the marketing sector.

Another factor that I find personally to be a problem is that I brought a friend to a game last year who didnt mind the admission price but nearly soiled themselves when they queued for 10 minutes for beers only to find that they horrendously over charged for look warm canned stuff poured into a plastic glass, we have a massive drinking establishment nailed onto the side of the club surely they can come up with a method of getting this right, I did suggest to the club once that they have mobile backpack based beer sales in the ground and if my ageing memory isnt totally gone they did infact introduce this only for a few random knobs to ruin it for the rest by launching the empties onto the pitch.

Now is the time to plan for the future.

Lets assume the stadium and retail gets built.

The club shop should be in a prominant position facing theother retail, happy staff with product knowledge and a love of the agme should be used.

The shop should have an area suitable for people to meet, maybe have a drink or coffee with dvds of old games. make it the place to be for fans.

Products

Well how about actually asking the fans what they would buy?
ensure the quality some of the t shirts have been like old rags recently.

Invest in a t shirt printing machine, this will enable the transfers to be added and means less stock.

On line and out of hours we need to ahve the shop open late on a regular basis, maybe this could tie in with FR meetings, or have the oportunity to purchase/order items at meetings.

get a new marketing guru, this current bloke seemed clueless.

Cracking idea. I did this myself during my PR degree, and there will be hundreds of students in the Salford/Manchester Uni's willing to work on a voluntary basis in order to gain some relevant work experience.
It's win-win. It costs the club nothing and they get a fresh pair of eyes from someone hungry to prove themselves in the industry, and the student gets some real work experience to place on their CV alongside their studies.

It would cetainly enable me to buy merchandise... I get back up to Salford about twice a year and not always at times when the club shop is open.

With rents at the Trafford Centre (although what happened to the link in with Debenhams - is that still ongoing? I never go to the TC to be able to find out) and the Lowry Mall being too high to justify, then what about making merchandise available in the Salford Tourist Information Centre in the Lowry? I've only had a quick scan in recently (nudge, nudge - pop in and vote for pic one - "I met my Love..."

) , but they do sell locally themed products so club stuff would fit the bill nicely there.

I work at the Tourist Information Centre as a casual assistant Iain and have been acting manager on several occassions. From what I can gather having raised the issue of the club selling merchandise from the TIC it seems they would have to climb through a mountain of red tape first. The Council, The Lowry and Enjoy England work in partnership with the TIC and they are very limited as to what they can stock and what they can sell. Would love to see a deal struck but I think its unlikely.

but why, Salford TIC is about promoting Salford so any idiot with one tenth of a brain would see this as an ideal method of promoting the City, we have Magenta on our kit to reflect Salford, I bet they sell Kendal Mint Cake!!!!!!. Rugby was INVENTED by a SALFORD lad are the TIC aware of this, apart from yourself do the staff know about Salford City reds. Manchester Tourist place has stuff from City and United, get rid of the Red tape and get the City Reds in. as it says =violetIn Salford

The Lowry would be my first guess, the Council only rent the space.

Anyway most Salford residents don't even know where or have never been to The Lowry, a bit like Mancs and OT! So would it be worth it?

No Kendal Mint Cake but we do sell Uncle Joes Mint Balls