Considering it was the middle of the morning, when all of us small business people are supposed to have our noses firmly to the grindstone, Filbert Brown was surprisingly busy. I walked in without challenge and found myself in a glorified warehouse. It reminded me of those cheap and cheerless back-to-basics supermarkets that we’ve imported from Europe in recent years. Anyone who did their shopping in Netto or Aldi would have been right at home in Filbert Brown. Me, I always find it incredibly cheap to shop there-they never stock anything I’d want to buy. The same went for Filbert Brown. I know Richard thinks I have an unhealthy obsession with cleanliness, but even I couldn’t get turned on by cases of dishwasher powder, drums of worktop bactericide and cartons of paper towels. I was clearly in a minority, judging by the number of people who were happily filling up their trolleys.
I wandered up and down the aisles for a few minutes, getting a feel for the place. One of the things that struck me was how prominent KerrSter was among the cleansers. It occupied the whole width of a shelf at eye level, the key position in shifting merchandise. Compared with the other Kerrchem products, which seemed to be doing just about okay compared with their competitors, KerrSter was king of the castle.
What I needed now was a pretext. Thoughtfully, I wandered back to the car. I always keep a fold-over clipboard in the boot for those occasions when I need to pretend to be a market researcher. You’d be amazed at what people will tell you if you’ve got a clipboard. I gave my clothes the once-over. I was wearing tan jodhpur-style leggings, a cream linen collarless shirt and a chocolate brown jacket with a mandarin collar. The jacket was too smart for the pitch, so I folded it up and left it in the boot. In the shirt and leggings, I could just about pass. Freeze, maybe, but pass.
I walked briskly into Filbert Brown and strode up to the customer service counter. I say counter, but it was more of a hole in the wall. Customers here clearly weren’t encouraged to complain. The woman behind the counter looked as if she’d been hired because of her resemblance to a bulldog. “Yes?” she demanded, jowls quivering.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” I said brightly. “I’m doing an M.B.A. at Manchester Business School and I’m doing some research into sales and marketing. I wonder if I could perhaps have a word with your stock controller?” “You got an appointment?” “I’m afraid not.”
She looked triumphant. “You’d need an appointment.” I looked disappointed. “It’s a bit of an emergency. I had arranged to see someone at one of the big do-it-yourself stores, but she’s come down with a bug and she had to cancel and I really need to get the initial research done this week. It won’t take more than half an hour. Can’t you just ring through and see if it would be possible for me to see someone?”
“We’re a bit busy just now,” she said. “We” was inaccurate; “they” would have been nearer the mark, judging by the queues at the tills.
“Please?” I tried for the about-to-burst-into-tears look.
She cast her eyes heavenwards. “It’s a waste of time, you know.”
“If they’re busy, I could make an appointment for later,” I said firmly.
With a deep sigh, she picked up the phone, consulted a list taped to the wall of her booth and dialed a number. “Sandra? It’s Maureen at customer services. There’s a student says she here wants to talk to you… Some project or other…” She looked me up and down disparagingly. Then her eyebrows shot up. “You will?” she said incredulously. “All right, I’ll tell her.” She dropped the phone as if it had bitten her and said, “Miss Bates will be with you in a moment.”
I leaned against the wall and waited. A couple of minutes passed, then a woman approached through the checkouts. Her outfit was in the same colors as the rest of the staff, but where they wore red-and-cream overalls, she wore a red skirt and a blouse in the red-and-cream material. She smiled as she approached, which explained why she’d never get the job in customer services. “I’m Sandra Bates,” she greeted me. “How can I help you?”
I gave her the same spiel. “What I need is a few minutes of your time so you can run through your shelf-allocation principles,” I finished.
She nodded. “No problem. Come through to my office, I’ll take you through it.”
I fell into step beside her. “I really appreciate this,” I said. “I know how busy you must be.”
“You’re not kidding,” she said. “But this business needs more women who can give the boys a run for their money. When I was doing my business-studies degree at the Poly, it was almost impossible to get any of them to spare any of their precious time,” she added grimly. Thank God for the sisterhood.
She ushered me into an office that was marginally bigger than the room off my office that doubles as a darkroom and the ladies’ loo. Most of the floor space was take up by a desk dominated by a PC. The desk surface and the floor around it was stacked with files and papers. Sandra Bates picked her way through the piles and sat in her chair. “Give me a second,” she said, staring at the monitor.
I used the time to give her the once-over. She looked in her late twenties, about my height, her jaw-length light brown hair expertly highlighted with blond streaks. She was attractive in a china doll sort of way, pink-and-white complexion, unexceptional blue eyes and a slightly uptilted nose. Her determined mouth was the only contrasting feature, indicating an inner strength that might just give the boys a run for their money in the promotion stakes.
“Right,” she said, looking up and grinning at me. “What do you want to know?”
“How you decide what goes where on the shelves,” I said. I don’t know why I wanted to know that, but it seemed a good place to start if I wanted to get round to KerrSter.
“The general order of the products in the aisles is ordained from above, based on market research and psychological analysis, would you believe,” she said. “It’s the same way that supermarkets decide you get the fruit and veg first and the booze last. I mean, those of us who actually do the shopping know that your grapes get crushed by the six-packs of lager, but I suppose they work on the principle that by the time you’ve cruised the aisles, you feel like you need a drink.”
My turn to grin. “So what decisions do you actually make on the shop floor?”
“What we decide is what goes where within each section. The received wisdom is that items placed at eye level sell better than those you have to reach up for or bend down to. Now, all the checkouts are computerized, and I can access all the product figures from this terminal here. That way, I can see what stock is moving fast, and make sure we reorder at the right time so that we neither run out nor end up with huge stockpiles. When a particular line starts to outstrip rival products, it automatically goes into the best shelf position so that those sales are maintained or increased. With me so far?“
I nodded. It was all terribly logical. “Are there any exceptions?”
Sandra nodded approvingly. “Oh yes. Lots. For example, when a company brings out a new product, they will often arrange to pay us a premium in turn for our displaying it in the most advantageous shelf position. Or if a company’s product has been ousted from its top-selling position by a rival, they’ll offer us a loss-leader price on the product for a limited period in exchange for them getting their old shelf site back so they can try to reestablish their old supremacy.”
“Is that what Kerrchem have done with KerrSter?” I asked.
Sandra blinked. “I’m sorry?” she asked, sounding startled.
“I was having a browse round before I asked to see you, and I couldn’t help noticing how prominent the KerrSter was. And with that guy dying after he opened it, I’d have thought sales would have gone through the floor,” I said innocently.