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
14 May 2009 : We Did It!
Today we set the World Record for the most people folding t-shirts at Westfield, London.
A fantastic turnout with retail staff, management, customers and press all joining in the fun. Disney sent a load of people from their head office and Harvey Nichols sent a bus load of staff from their Knightsbridge store!
We will be posting YouTube links and photos of the event on the website soon for you to see this great event that was part of Retail Trust Week.
Thanks to our events team for all their efforts, to House of Fraser for the LCD TV, to DMI for the production and to Mark Heyes from GMTV for hosting the "show".
In the evening I was a guest of him at the ctp awards 2009 at the Natural History Museum.
A great evening and some great company too.
I met up with my old mate Andrew Mounsey who is Sales Director of Musgrave and we agreed to get together to discuss how we could work in partnership. Adrian Hussey from McCurrach, based in Glasgow, was an entertaining character who was keen to find out more about Retail Trust and our services. I know he is a keen reader of my blog and will be getting in touch to set up a meeting.
The one and only Kishor Patel was there too with his young wife Anita - what a gent he is and a great supporter of Retail Trust.
Table 36 was a delight!
Eimear Andersen from Tansor was the first person I met, she knows of our work because of her connections with Spar who have signed up to our employee assistance programme.
Two people from him were also on the table Tracy Faulkner, who did a great job presenting one of the awards, and Sophie Seymour.
Sophie is 29, supports Southampton F.C. and lives in Hackney. Her mum is desperate for her to have a family and is delaying her move to France until Sophie "produces".
Kate Dickenson from New Trade Publishing completed the team and was charming company. Good luck to Peterborough United next season. Good luck with your run too and if you need a marathon place we have them available.
A huge thank you to Georgina Wild for inviting me and for introducing Retail Trust to him and the ctp awards
Last but not least thank you to Tom Fender and Mike Greene, from him, for promoting Retail Trust on the night and offering to make a donation, I will be writing to you to set up that meeting.
13 May 2009 : No Time To Get Board
Fantastic Board meeting today with a new format.
We got the business stuff out of the way quickly and efficiently during the morning and after the break had an excellent discussion on the future of our charity.
Brilliant to see all Trustees taking part and joining in the discussion and it has given us all food for thought.
The great news is that we are in good shape to help all those in our industry who need our support and we are going to be helping more people than we have ever helped before this year.
I'll keep you posted.
13 May 2009 : Your Charity Needs You
Tomorrow, Thursday we are going to set a world record for the largest number of people folding tee shirts!
The record attempt is taking place at Westfield, London, in the Atrium and we need you there for 3.45 p.m. for a run through. Why not come down and help us set the record and tell your mates.
You could win a 32" Samsung flat screen TV for your efforts too! Kindly donated by House of Fraser.
Feel free to view our You Tube video here.
Follow us on http://twitter.com/RetailTrust or follow the RTWeek Twitter tag. You don't have to be signed up to Twitter to follow this tag. Just go to Twitter Search or any other search engine.
I look forward to seeing you there.
08 May 2009 : Retail Trust Week to Break Records
Retail Trust Week is just around the corner and we have thousands of members of staff signed up to have loads of fun and raise lots of money for Retail Trust. You can sign up and view league tables by clicking here.
Matalan in Wellingborough is leading the table with an amazing £9.50 raised per head! The highest total has been raised by Debenhams in MetroCentre £1,058 (£3.02 per head)
Cargo has come up with daily activities during Retail Trust Week for all their stores. On Tuesday 12th May they are holding a poem competition. Staff members can write poems, raps or songs but they must include the words Cargo, Retail Trust Week, fun, summer and money. On Friday 15th May they have a "Stress down day" where staff and management can come to work in pyjamas and slippers.
Disney stores are having a "Happy hat week". The Retail Trust Week logo has to be incorporated into the hat.
We are also trying to beat two world records at Westfield, London. Click here for details. We would love to see as many people as possible joining in the fun.
See you there!
07 May 2009 : Fiscal Response
An interesting day that started in Central London with our second career cafe aimed at people in the retail industry who have lost their job. The cafes are designed to give practical help. This morning, Erica Wilding from Norman Broadbent gave handy tips and hints all about interviews. Details of future events can be found if you click here.
A dash across London for our investment committee followed at UBS' offices near Green Park.
We had a great discussion on our investment strategy and during the discussion I learnt a useless fact.
Did you know that $1.1 trillion dollars in fiscal response has been implemented in the G8 nations as a co-ordinated response to the global recession.
So how much is that?
Well, if you compare $1.1 trillion dollars to $1 US dollar it is the same as 330,000 years compared to one second!
06 May 2009 : Storm in a D cup.
I loved today's story that has caused some problems for my friends at M & S. They are going to charge "larger ladies" an extra £2 for their bras because they need greater engineering!
The Busts 4 Justice campaign group said the pricing discriminated against bigger busted women and are not happy.
The campaigners have bought shares in the company so they can confront Sir Stuart Rose about the issue at the M & S AGM in July.
I'm sure it will end up as a storm in a D cup.05 May 2009 : Happy New Year
As we start a brand new financial year it is good to look back and see what progress has been made in the past 12 months.
The highlight has to be the amazing success of our employee assistance programme. Not only have we signed up over 70 retail companies and have over 500,000 employees involved, we have also raised £368,000 by providing the service to those retail companies.
Calls to the Retail Trust Helpline 0808 801 0808 are at an all time high, and you can now email helpline@retailtrust.org.uk or Text HELPLINE to 88010.
Our retirement housing business has just broken even in the past year, for the first time!
Thank you and well done to the whole team.
A word of caution, we are going to have a tough year in terms of Fundraising this year. We are in a reccession and things will be tight. We have a great product, we have the team in place to deliver, I am confident we will continue to make progress in getting our message out there, raising more money and helping even more people.
28 April 2009 : Marathon Effort
Over £16,000 was raised by our marathon runners on Sunday.
A huge thank you to each of them for their enormous efforts, both in the run up to the event with all their training and on the big day itself.
Our fundraising team were well represented and the Retail Trust balloons and banners were on show for all to see. In fact they were captured a number of times on the TV coverage.
The runners and their time were as follows:
NAME: FINISH TIME:Brendan Dorrian (Patonz) 4.39:23
Erika Adams (Matalan) 4.42:54
Nancy Maury (Matalan) 4.42:54
Alistair McGeorge (Matalan) * 4.44:00
Amanda Wetz (Ann Summers) 5.19:58
Paul Gilbert (Matalan) * 5.23:29
Jo Keenan (Matalan) 5.51:44
Louisa Hogarty (SSP) 5.52:41
* Running for NSPCC but kindly raised money for Retail Trust too.
27 April 2009 : North West Adventure
Why have they changed the train timetable from Watford Junction to Liverpool?
What used to be a reasonable journey proved to be more difficult this morning. We got to Moores House in Liverpool later than we wanted but the reception we received was just the tonic. The third roadshow was great with excellent participation from the team.
A quick 45 minute drive to Salford (thanks for the lift Karen) and the small but perfectly formed team at the new estate awaited.
It's a while since I have been to our newest facility and it looks superb. We are all very excited about the second phase opening in around five months time.
24 April 2009 : Roadshows 2009 Kick Off
A morning spent with our Chairman, Dudley Cloake was followed by the first of our Roadshows. Dudley showed me an excellent article that had just been published in the Gazette, the John Lewis Partnership's staff Magazine.
The Roadshows are an opportunity for the executive team to visit every estate to discuss and debate the issues facing the charity. As we come to the end of our financial year it is perfect timing.
Today we held two sessions, the morning session was with the head office team and in the afternoon we met with the staff from the Mill Hill estate.
It was great to have Dudley there, to hear what the staff had to say and for them to engage with him.
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