Swindon’s Brunel shopping centre has launched an innovative new initiative aimed at helping store staff develop their business and retail skills.
The Brunel Retail Academy, believed to be the first shopping centre-led scheme in the UK, opened earlier this month. Its programme of monthly, free, half-day courses cover topics from recruitment skills to visual display training and e-marketing to operations planning.
Visual display training firm Made You Look staged the first session which attracted an impressive turnout representing more than a fifth of the Brunel’s tenants.
The programme is designed to help owner-operated independent stores and while the majority of attendees came from these shops, staff from some of the more established high street names, including Lush and Shuropody, also took the opportunity of free development training.
Louise Norton, manager of vintage clothing store Revolva, said: “The session was very good and gave me lots of new ideas and contacts for props and display items.
“We’re going to be building on what we’re already doing by adding more colour and lighting to our window displays to make us stand out more. It was good to know that we were going in the right direction with what we were doing previously as well.
“I’m definitely going to the next session. I was planning on going on another course in Leeds, but that’s expensive and meant time away from the store. Having the Brunel’s Retail Academy just around the corner is a great help.”
The Brunel's manager Andy Wynn added: “This is a really exciting development for The Brunel. The big boys have head offices with training departments and development plans as you’d expect, however around half our tenants are independent and many of these stores’ owners/managers find it hard to meet their own development needs when they are focusing on the day-to-day running of a small business
“By putting together this training programme The Brunel is providing this service as an added extra to help managers look beyond the day to day issues. We hope that the training programme will help individual stores fulfil their potential while having the side effect of improving the overall offer of The Brunel.”
A large number of the courses will be delivered as a part of a new partnership between The Brunel and Swindon College, through which NVQ students will use empty units to practice their merchandising skills.
