Nigel's Blog
Hi, I'm Nigel the Chief Executive of Retail Trust.
The coming year will be a time of growth and change for Retail Trust. The charity will be working more closely than ever with organisations in the retail sector as we cement ourselves as the charity committed to the well-being of employees in the retail industry.
Part of working more closely with the industry is communication. Technology allows me to communicate with you through this blog – spelling mistakes and all! So please feel free to email me on the Contact page with feedback, ideas, or just to swap stories about our blogs. Enjoy!
You can read my biography on our Trustees and Chief Executive page.
Nigel J L Rothband
Chief Executive
Read Nigel's Blog
21 August 2009 : From IOD To Oxford
Thank to Jemima Bird the marketing director from Musgrave who met Ana Atherton and I at the IOD this morning.
We discussed a whole series of issues ranging from our employee assistance programme, Retail Trust Search For A Star, Retail Trust Week and Charms. I am confident that I will be reporting a partnership with Musgrave in the not too distant future.
Following a meeting with Oliver Jones, Chairman of Autism Trust, it was off to Oxford.
This year is the 80th bssa Oxford Summer School and sees the retirement of the School's Chairman, after 20 years at the helm, Stan Kaufman.
Stan has been an inspiration to thousands of students over the past 20 years and has been a great friend of Retail Trust. He has been the key player in involving us in the school and allowing us to promote our work to the students.
A dinner was held in his honour this evening. (Here I am pictured with my old mate Jim Hodkinson, retail entrpreneur and former CE of New Look)
18 August 2009 : Table Sales Roll In
Two of the most important retailers in the country confirmed that they will be taking a table at the Retail Trust London Ball next January.
A call from Paul Marchant the CEO from Primark in the morning and Andy Higginson Tesco's CEO of Retail Services in the afternoon gave us all a boost.
Despite the economic situation, we have sold more tables at this point than at any time in our history.
If you want to attend the best retail party of the year book now as some catagories are selling out!
15 August 2009 : Mike's A Dream
What a great piece in today's FT.
Mike Clare, one of our 175 Patrons, and fantastic supporter was featured in the "How to give it" section on the back page of the "Life & Arts" section of the paper.
Mike talked about his support for many charities and goes on to say....I feel most passionately about Retail Trust. It used to just provide retirement homes for people in the industry who'd fallen on hard times, but now it supports the 3m people working in shops. A lot of shop staff are on the minimum wage, and they have all sorts of problems - such as bereavements, trouble with their mortgages or bullying - and Retail Trust helps them.
Cheers Mike and thanks a million for your continued support.
14 August 2009 : Mint Velvet To Come To The Ball?
I am delighted to hear that my old mates Peter Davies, Richard Sims, Liz Houghton and Chris Inman have got together to launch Mint Velvet. Described as "relaxed yet glamorous clothes" and "sexier than Principles" with 13 in House concessions in House of Fraser and an online business to kick off with it sounds great. They are looking for up to 30 shops in the next three years. An interesting time to launch a new business, I am confident with the team they have assembled it will be a great success.
The big question for me will be, what class of table will Mint Velvet be taking at the Retail Trust London Ball? All the guys named above are regular attenders. I'm off to make a call!
Today we launched our very own YouTube Channel, it's a bit of an experiment and our first toe in the water, why not have a look at http://www.youtube.com/user/RetailTrust
13 August 2009 : Bruce Almighty
A trip up the M1 to Milton Keynes for a meeting with Bruce Greenhalgh, the Head of Employee Assistance at Accenture, was the perfect start to a rainy Wednesday morning.
A friend of my wife suggested we should meet and it proved a very interesting meeting. Retail Trust launched an EAP service a handfull of years ago and it has gone from strength to strength. We are at a very interesting point in our development, as a charity, and our employee assistance programme is becoming increasingly important. Only six years ago we would have described ourselves as a housing charity, today that is not the case. We would now firstly describe ourselves as a provider of an employee assistance programme to the retail sector. That EAP provides access to the totally free, confidential and independant Retail Trust Helpline 0808 801 0808 which provides access to free counselling and free legal advice. In addition we provide a ReWork programme that helps retail employees move from redundancy to recruitment and also access to educational bursaries.
Our housing business continues to provide first class retirement accommodation for people who have retired from retail and for older relatives being cared for by people who are currently working in retail.
Bruce was articulate, impressive and very helpful and gave me much food for thought. I look forward to catching up again soon.
10 August 2009 : Hurrah for Hilda's Hundreth
What a fabulous occasion!
Miss Hilda Hyder, one of our residents here on our Mill Hill estate, celebrated her 100th Birthday with a tea party for her relatives and all our residents.
The day started with Hilda planting a rose in her garden that was named in her honour. It was a special pink rose (her favourite colour) named “Hilda Hyder”.
The tea party followed which was attended by her relatives, our residents, our Chairman Dudley Cloake and the local MP Andrew Dismore as pictured alongside Miss Hyder and myself below.
The event was concluded with a wonderful performance from the Mill Hill choral society who performed a medley of songs.
The highlight for me was to see Hilda's face when she opened her birthday card from Her Majesty The Queen. Although Hilda received over 100 cards it was clear how much this one meant to her. She clutched it for most of the afternoon!
There were speeches, presentations, cake cutting and above all, a wonderful atmosphere.
Hilda is our oldest resident at Mill Hill although we have Mary Walker and Flora Miller who live at our Glasgow estate who are 106 and 101 respectively!
07 August 2009 : Sparring Partner
Thanks to Jerry Marwood, MD of Spar for his time this afternoon. John McDermott, my Development Director, and I met Jerry in his Harrow office with a delightful view over the Harrow bus station!
Spar have featured Retail Trust Search For A Star in this months"intouch" magazine which hits down in stores and with suppliers today. A huge thank you to Eimear Anderson of Tansor PR for all her support in pulling the article together and getting it featured in the magazine that she edits so expertly.
We talked about a range of issues including our employee assistance programme, the London Ball and Retail Trust Week.
I look forward to catching up with James Lowman CEO of the Association of Convenience Stores next month to see how we can progress our involvment with the convenience sector.
I understand England have made a dissapointing start to the Test match in Leeds!!! Off to watch the "highlights".
Have a great weekend.
06 August 2009 : Back Breaking
A visit to my osteopath this lunchtime was the perfect preparation for the Guardian on-line Careers Forum. I answered questions relating to careers in the retail sector and tried to add some personal anecdotes and advice along the way. It was the perfect opportunity to promote our ReWork programme which has been designed to help managers who have been made redundant from retail to get recruited back into a new job in retail.
04 August 2009 : Grants Granted
Excellent Grants & Services meeting this afternoon. We are very fortunate to have such a lively and enthusiastic team of volunteers who get together every few months to drive our programme and agree the grants. The committee is expertly lead by Jane Gurney-Reed and has representatives from companies including M & S, Sainsbury's, Debenhams, bssa and Morley's Stores. Grants distributed today will mean we are on track to distribute £1M in grants this year!
03 August 2009 : Guardian Angel
Interesting meeting this evening with Kalpesh Tanna, a Partner at Osborne Clarke. OC are becoming firm supporters of Retail Trust and we explored a number of possible partnerships. We also managed to squeeze in a brief conversation about his favourite football team - Liverpool F.C. This is despite Kalpesh not being born anywhere near the city!
I am looking forward to taking part in the Guardian careers on line forum this Thursday between 1.00 p.m. and 4.00 p.m. If you know anyone who may need retail career advice ask them to log on and take part. Address is http://tiny.cc/Fll8C
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