《我的回忆录》4.12~ I Didn’t Even Know How to Do Rota ~

圣诞旺季结束，之前的火爆销售几乎在一夜之间消失。我们原本计划好好复盘这半年来的问题，但还没来得及开始，运营已经出现了明显的“失控点”。🛑

当时，我和团队把大量时间放在货品和补货上，却很少在门店一线与客户沟通。我一度认为，本地员工更了解客户，更容易跟客户沟通，所以几乎完全依赖店长去管理门店。甚至很基础的事情——比如排班、员工休假安排、工时管理、绩效评估——我都没有真正参与过。

很快，问题开始出现：

➡️ 员工陆续离职

➡️ 培训不到位

➡️ 员工对岗位缺乏认同感

➡️ 客户没有持续复购

➡️ 业绩开始波动 现在回头看，我才意识到一件很重要的事：

🚨 在创业初期，创始人如果不在一线和团队一起成长，是非常危险的。

因为这意味着：

⚠️ 你不了解真实的客户需求

⚠️ 你无法感知员工的状态和问题

⚠️ 你也无法判断产品是否真正被市场接受 当时的我，是在一种相对“粗放”的状态下开始创业的。随着时间推移，需要面对的问题也越来越多：

➡️ 固定成本持续增加

➡️ 热销产品频繁断货

➡️ 滞销库存需要处理

➡️ 退换货压力上升

➡️ 门店管理逐渐失控

我原本以为，这只是一个需要逐步解决的清单。但后来才发现，这个清单，只会不断变长。这些问题，其实也是很多品牌在英国开店初期都会遇到的共性问题。如果你正在考虑进入英国实体零售市场，有些坑，是可以提前避开的。 （未完待续）

“My Memoir”4.12~ I Didn’t Even Know How to Do Rota ~ As soon as the Christmas peak season ended, the sales almost disappeared overnight and massively dropped. We had planned to take some time to review the past few months, but before we could even begin, the operations had already started to show red signs of “losing control.” 🛑

During Chirstmas time, my team and I were mainly focused on products and restocking, while spending very little time on the shop floor interacting with customers. I believed that local staff would naturally communicate better with customers, so I relied almost entirely on the store manager to run the store. Even very basic routine works — such as staff rota, holiday planning, working hours management, and performance evaluation — I was barely involved in.

Soon, problems started to surface:

➡️ Staff began to leave

➡️ Training was insufficient

➡️ Employees lacked a sense of engagement with the role

➡️ Customer repeat purchases were low

➡️ Sales performance became unstable

Looking back now, I’ve come to realise something important：

🚨 In the early stages of a business, it is super high risky if the founder is not present on the sales frontline and growing alongside the team. Because that means:

⚠️ You don’t truly understand customer needs including the consume trends

⚠️ You cannot sense your team’s challenges and concerns

⚠️ You cannot judge whether your products RRP are actually accepted by the market At that time, I had started the business in a relatively “rough and unstructured” way. As time went on, more and more issues began to emerge:

➡️ Staff turnover invisibly increases operational costs

➡️ Best-selling products frequently went out of stock

➡️ Slow-moving inventory started to build up

➡️ Returns and exchanges increased

➡️ Store management gradually became chaotic

I initially thought this was just a list of problems to be solved one by one. But later I realised this list only keeps growing. In fact, these are common challenges that many brands face in the early stages of entering the UK retail market. If you are considering expanding into physical retail in the UK, some of these pitfalls can be avoided. (To be continued)