SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think the the popular opinion that are a good thing is one of the biggest lies I think we're we're feeding to the younger generation. If you want to understand why brands are successful, it's not because they've had a great idea. It's not because the product is amazing. It's the hard work of the family. When you're sitting in your living room and going, I want to go do my own brand and my own business, that's all wonderful. And then when you see somebody who's actually doing it and you think that's not really for me, hyper intelligence is sort of app just mind-bumping.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hi Rob and welcome to the Build to Perform podcast. Thank you very much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Thank you very much for inviting me.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I'm really excited about what we're going to talk about today. Um, there's a whole host of things which I want to really get on the subject of, you know, talking about the landlord and tenant uh relationship is one of the big things. But before we get into the real depths of that, um just could you tell me who are you and why do you do what you do?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Um born in a small town in Derbyshire, um, back in the day of um coal and pits. So I come from a pit family. Um not a huge amount of choice in that small town, and you had two choices, which is you either go and work in the pit. By that point it had closed down. So my other two options were uh the biscuit factory, McVitti's, or Rolls-Royce as an apprentice, um, neither of which I wanted to pack biscuits for a living. Nothing's wrong with that, obviously. Um, but I wasn't clever enough to be an apprentice at Rolls Royce, so I meandered, as all kids do at that age, going from job to job, and then I fancied something a little bit more interesting. So back in the day, not many people will remember is job centres were horrible offices with job cards. Yeah. And I used to go every day and just look at the different jobs, and there was one for a lab technician. Didn't know what it meant, took it down, went to the job person, and they said, Oh, it's for a company called Spec Saver. So back in that day, it wasn't particularly well known. So I went for the interview, got the job, enjoyed that, um, and then stayed in the optical sector for uh for almost 30, well, over 30 years now, in one form or another, from a lab technician to an optical assistant. Um, even worked for my family who had a lab making spectacles. And then the challenges came for myself as I got older because let's face it, as a man, you don't really become mature until you're about 30 years old, and then you look back in your life and think, I've actually done nothing. So I challenged myself to become a regional manager at Vision Express, um, and that's where realistically my journey began to get to where I am now. Um, I'm fortunate enough and lucky enough to have worked with some good mentors, um, particularly in the corporate environment, and also been lucky enough to work with two different types of founders in two different types of companies to where I am now at working at Bluebloom.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

And can you just explain your role as head of operations at Bluebloom?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

So I'm the at Bluebloom our roles are not defined by hierarchy as such. So, you know, we don't wear badges that give us just one job. So my role there as with this company has progressed, is become what's part of what's called special operations or retail operations. So my role encompasses everything. As Bluebloom is a relatively new and still small company with um seven coming onto eight sites in central London. Um my role encompasses everything from working in stores and working with the teams, working in facilities, working in new store openings, um, dealing with HR problems, um, what else? To simple things like putting vinyls in windows, which I greatly enjoy because you're close to the coal face. So you get a mixture of everything. And you know, Blue Bloom is compromises, the two founders, you know, Abyss and Farris, um, a CTO, CFO, a retail manager, um, myself, a customer services manager, um, and some developers that work in the UK and outside of the UK, and a small lab team. So it's a very, very small, condensed, concentrated, high-performing team with a very, very simple rhetoric and goal.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

And I think that's it'd be quite good to have your viewpoint on that in terms of the start, the start-up side of things, because obviously Blue Bloom is a very different position to what you're doing kind of with Vision Express beforehand. And obviously, like you said, you've got your fingers in a lot of different pies, your your role isn't probably quite as siloed a pigeonhole, really, is it?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

No, not at all. Um corporate work with Vision Express was very much around KPIs, um, compliance. Nothing wrong with that. It's a large company, and with large companies, you have to have that around if you've got, I think it's at the time it was nearly 600 stores, including some of the Tesco outlets that they had. So compliance was important. But you what you do find is a lot of legacy decisions made in there and a lot of legacy KPIs that aren't relevant in today's world. It's a bit like um buying a house and then stripping off the wallpaper and realizing that there's several other layers of wallpaper behind that, and then we find that the original scripture of Vision Express was actually written, and then somebody's put their own ideas and what they think is is important. Working with uh two founders, and we'll take the latest one as an example, is they of they want to simplify things. So they're not interested in things that don't have value. Um optics can be quite a almost like a secret magic circle where but then nobody really understands why these things are happening. Um the good thing about Abbas and Farris is they will question everything. And when I came to work with them, I thought I knew everything because it was almost a decade of Vision Express, you know, nearly 30 years in the in in this particular industry, and they really, really challenged me in the way I think and the way I work to get rid of some of that corporate bullshit that we have and just look at the bare facts. You know, all ideas are welcome, 99% of the ideas are pretty naf, and 1% of the ideas will be good, and then once that idea has been agreed upon, um the two super brains of their two brothers will literally take it apart, look at things I've not even considered, and then as a company we will deliver something that, in my opinion, is excellent. You know, we've you know we designed our own POS software, it's uh entirely in-house. We've just completed um a branding campaign that was completely designed by Abbas, one of the brothers, from top to bottom. And I think when you work with founders, um you don't realise how hard they work, but also how clever they are. This is why I never could be a founder, if that makes sense. Because when you're sitting in your living room, go, I want to go do my own brand and my own business, that's all wonderful. And then when you see somebody who's actually doing it, you think, Oh, it's not really for me, because like you know, 24 hours, constantly worrying about it, you know, the hyperintelligence that some of the founders have that I've worked with is just mind-boggling. I consider myself a reasonable intelligence, but then when I sit down with them, I do feel a bit Neanderthal, if that makes sense. And it's kind of like, yeah, but um, you know, yeah, and I think when you go back to the corporate world, if we bounce back to that, everybody has a job, you know, the director of toilet paper, the director of you know, the whatever, um, will do that one task, and some will do it great and some will do it poorly, and then it filters through the company. But because it's a corporate environment, um, you don't necessarily have to be the best at your role to get the best positions, should we say. Whereas where I work with with the brothers in Bluebloom, it's you are noticed for your output and your work quality and your performance rather than who talks the best gang. So you find that the right people are in the right positions as we go forward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah, and it's quite interesting because when when you talk about scaling startups at the start, that's not always the case. And there's typically in quite a lot of startups, quite a lot of churn. And so that sounds like that's something that's not really happening.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Um from the retail side, maybe. Um, but that's retail, you know. Regardless of if it's in a new founding business, that there's still, you know, the cold face, as I've mentioned before, of working on a shop floor. You know, we can touch on that, what retail means later on. But like, you know, one of the good things is is we're open to making mistakes. We will try something, and sometimes it works really well, and sometimes it will go terribly, and then we will just learn from that and move forward. You know, we we sit at dinner sometimes and we go, Oh god, can you remember that time when we did that? And we thought it was a great idea, but it wasn't. And we don't look at it as an embarrassment or what a terrible mistake. We look at it as well, we tried it, it didn't work. But what we have now is much better, but we wouldn't have got there if we hadn't had made the mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, fail fast and earn fast.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yeah, exactly. You know, mistakes in some and again, if you take that to a corporate environment, not only is the scope for creativity stifled, but mistakes are not looked on in a in a great manner because obviously if you've got five, six hundred stores, one mistake can cost you millions.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, so we we connected due to me watching you on on uh on stage at the Revo Revo conference, yeah. Um where you delivered a a brilliant background story into kind of what you do, but also your interactions, generally speaking, with probably some of the not the landlords in that room, but some of the landlords in that room's um peers, should we say.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah, that was very, very it was a uh a measured, measured one looking at who people were, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Um, but I found it fascinating and so and and found it really enjoyable and with a lot of humour around it as well. And I think one thing which I want to touch on later probably is kind of I can see you bringing that humour from those interactions which you're having into how you're dealing with landlords and asset managers and property managers and such, because actually it's quite an typically adversarial world, right? Yeah, and actually being able to bring a bit of humour, a bit of human into it, um, must be quite a powerful tool. Um, so I'd like to touch on that and how you how you go about that interaction and dealing with that. Um but I think first of all, I think really I'd just like to understand kind of in in an environment like that, it's it's typically very landlord-dominated traditionally in terms of representation there. So I thought it was really refreshing to have a tenant in that space and hearing the challenges firsthand of what you're dealing with, and I think that would have been really powerful to the people in that room. Um, how did that come about?

SPEAKER_00 11:48

So it was Alice Dur Alice Durr, Alice Durr. I must pronounce his name correctly, otherwise he gets annoyed with me. Um I actually um in my first contact with him is um I interviewed him and hired him as a general manager for Oxford Street store. So he was to be my uh successor at that time. Um he did really, really well. And then he went off to the Crown Estate, I think it was, wasn't he? Um a complete left field move for him, but he's doing very, very well there, so you know, more power to him. Um so he contacted me based on you know the expansion of Blue Bloom, some of the things we've done at Lens Store. Um at first, you know, I was like, you know, I don't necessarily deal with lease agreement negotiations, I kind of deal with the after. The after effects, the after effects of it. Um, from the day-to-day, you know, retail analytics to facilities management to, you know, in some cases, um, you know, store builds, there'll always be something that gets thrown up, which is either shared with me and we're scratching our heads or laughing about it, one of the two. So he asked me to, you know, to come and do a presentation. I wasn't going to do it at first because I thought, you know, the imposter syndrome that we all have is like, well, what have I got of worth to tell you guys, you know? Um, because in my mind, and you know, with the state managers and the state agents, and you know, this is just my opinion and slightly jokey, but like, you know, they're all she know wearing chino trousers in different colour bright colours, every single one I've met. So I was expecting that in the room. So when I thought about it and I went through my emailing box and I thought, actually, we can probably get my point across without being too formal and too moony. So I thought, you know what, we'll just throw some of the couple of the emails in that I've had, which I found quite humorous, to deliver a little bit of sarcasm, but also to give a theme of things do need to change. There is, you know, it works for both sides, you know, it doesn't have to be, you know, 90% landlord or estate manager and 20% or 10%, I can't remember the percentage, but like, you know, a smaller percentage for for for the tenant. Um, and yeah, that was that. And I showed my wife, and she was like, okay, let's go and see. And then by the time you get to the point, you think you just don't care anymore, and you just go and deliver it, and you just whatever will be will be. But the reception from private messages and some of the LinkedIn messages really caught me by surprise. So I thought, well, actually, perhaps this is you know not just my opinion. This matching just might be a common theme. So I was I was quite happy and surprised with the response to it.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yeah, I think I think it's so for the people listening, I think maybe good to kind of just give a bit of a flavor, obviously not railing off all the conversations verbatim, but kind of the flavour in terms of what was being talked about, but essentially it was um just the normal day-to-day sort of challenges you have as a tenant and a landlord talking about some of the mundane stuff, but which can really slow up and hamper you delivering a site, basically.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Yeah. I think um there was a time I we did a two-year project at Lens Store. Um, um, one of them was it was smack bang in the middle of Brexit, and um Lens Store was privately owned by um a husband and wife, Matesh and Olga, who I've got a huge amount of respect and thanks for for giving me the opportunity at the time because it opened this particular type of my bit the what I do up. Um they did live they created the business from scratch, delivering contact lenses both nationally and internationally. Um but then obviously Brexit came, so then it threw in all sorts of challenges when it came to VAT, customs tax, you know, because we did not want to add that to the ticket price of a pair of contact lenses for somebody in Europe. It made things woefully difficult because it's almost like the borders were closed. Um so we decided that we needed to um find, deliver, and operate a warehouse in Germany. The the issue we have is getting the estate and the estate managers and the landlords to understand what you're actually looking for. So it was a very long process. We did find one in the end, but getting there was quite painful. And it's the same in you know, my current role is getting people to understand the brand. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah, 100%, and delivering retail on that. Yeah, exactly. When when I talk about retail delivery, it's about the landlord preparing a building and allowing that a unit for you guys to go in, and then also for then you guys to then do the fit out, right? Yeah, exactly. And that whole process tends to be quite regimented, quite contractual. Yeah. Um and for a startup that probably For all the startups, not necessarily for us, we're quite powerful that way. Yeah. When you're trying to push something and move forward and move forward at speed, that sort of process can be quite frustrating, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah, it can be. Um we, you know, um there was one particular occasion with one company um where we wanted to open a store in um a shopping centre, and I'll be as vague as I can on this. Um and the lease agreement was agreed, um, substantial discounts for the first five years because obviously everybody was, you know, they were trying to fill the units. A budget was established, um, and then the contractor was hired, and this goes to the the email around preferred suppliers. Um and then all of a sudden we've got to use their air conditioning supplier, we've got to use their cladding supplier, we've got to use all of these different things, which then bump up the price of the actual build for us, and it got to the point where it was just like we're gonna have to walk away from this, which was a real shame. So that's quite painful, and then you've got lots of red tape coming through, can't use this colour, we you know, we've got to use this supplier, the can't change the access port, put you know, places where we go. Um, where we want to go can sometimes be quite difficult because there's a lack of understanding of the brand versus where we want to be, if that makes sense. So you do get a little bit disenchanted. I think at Bluebloom it is easier for us now because we're a little bit more well known. We kind of understand what our our brand is, so we also know where we want to be situated. So, you know, there are many occasions where different agents have taken us to different areas, and you know, I I personally get frustrated because it's like, well, why are you showing me this area? Um, yes, I can see there's a huge amount of floodfall right now, but it's rush hour. What about two, three, four, five o'clock? What's it looking like then? And then you go back on your own and it's dead. Do you see what I mean? So then the suspicious per part of my mind thinks you're not really interested in our brand, you're more interested in just selling the unit. Um, luckily it hasn't happened a great deal at Blue Bloom. I think our agents and our estate managers are frankly excellent. Um, so if we take Shaftsbury, for instance, um, very in tune with our brand, they did their own due diligence and research of what our brand is. So they went into different stores, understood what it is, and then helped us situate us where we currently are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Um, which is basically outside their front door.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly, which is handy for them. Um but you know, I've never had any, you know. I find if we had everybody that was like Shaftsbury, the world would be a wonderful place for a retailer because they are very, very um pro-retail, they're very um helpful. Um, and if you find a partnership where they understand the brand and make you feel that you have worth there, then it makes everything a lot better. Yeah. If that answers your question.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

No, yeah, 100%. And I think Did you also have a do you still have it or did you have a space in Carnaby Street as well? Yeah, so we still do. So you've got two two locations kind of within within their estate essentially, haven't you? Exactly. Which says a lot.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Yeah. And then we have, you know, the Marleybone store again. There's um a great manager called Rob who um I annoy every couple of months with something, but he's very quick to help. You know, we had an issue um around security, um, and he helped myself understand, and the store manager there to understand that there is help with security and reporting of theft and stuff like that, which is which has been a huge asset to us.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

And so on on that, um I want to talk about the the landlord versus tenant relationship, and I always put in the versus bit because that's the traditional way of calling it landlord versus tenant. Um, adversarial sounding, adversary by nature as well. But where you're talking about the likes of Shastri Capital, who are sounds like doing it really well, and they've got a great relationship with you. What what are they doing in particular which works so well for a retailer like yourselves in comparison to some of the other areas in which you've you've experienced not just the Bloom Room but you know other places?

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Um you know, I don't want to mention the Shaftsbury too much, but like you know, I think it's the the fundamentals of a good tenant and good landlord is an understanding of what their brand is. Yeah, first of all. So Shaftsbury understand what the brand is and where it's situated. They could they they understand our carnival streets or which they had first for us to be able to get the covenant garden uh site, which is you know a premium site. You know, they could have told us to know, but you know, they understood the brand and that helped us to situate ourselves in a really good position. In Coven Garden. And it was all boiled down to an understanding of what our brand can bring to that particular area because there are other opticians around, as we know. But then the other side of that, in different companies I've worked for, it has just been a transactional thing. They don't care, they're not interested, you know. They'll, you know, surround you then with card shops and vape shops in the future. Yeah. Yeah. That would never happen in Carbon Garden. We have a confidence that Sharpsbury will look after us as a business because they're very select in who they put into those environments. But when you deal with private landlords in other businesses, it's purely transactional. It's quite restrictive of what you can do with a unit because obviously they own that unit. You know, and if you go in and you want to put a completely redesign it, they get a little bit tense over it. Um the analytics and the feedback you get from some landlords is very poor, which doesn't help. Um whereas when you get other estates and other landlords that want to help, it it's night and day. And you know, and to a certain degree, I'm a believer that if you have a bad landlord, it's actually detrimental to the success of your business, full stop. Because if they're not going to support you, then that business will fail to a certain degree. If if you're like a sole trader. Yeah. Does that make sense? 100%, yeah. I'm talking theologically here, I'm not talking, you know, practically. And I have a strong opinion of, you know, as myself as a manager at look upon the teams that I manage, or my team. I think landlords and estate managers need to look at retailers as part of their staff almost and expect a certain performance from them. Now I can't expect performance from my team unless us as a business are giving them something, which is brand, store environments, and volume of people. That's our responsibility. When you have a landlord that is not interested and just leaves you to it, and he's not interested in the estate around him or what is putting next door to you, particularly if he owns multiple sites, and just puts whatever he wants into, it's a very, very temporary solution. I don't understand it from their perspective because they're going to have to do the work again, pay the estate agent fees and the, you know, and and and and the finder fees to find somebody to go into that shop again, time after time after time. And that's the difference between private landlords and smaller estate management, and the larger estate management is the larger estates see every single retailer as part of a family of businesses that generates them income from a from a rent perspective. Whereas if you've got a small landlord that's got four units and he doesn't care what goes in them, and he's got three vape shops, the 15th barber's there, and a card shop, you know that they're going to be there for six months and then they're gone, and then he's got to do the whole cycle again. And you see it, you can see in some streets that you know you have larger estate groups that all their units are full and they've thought about it, and then you see smaller estates and landlords that have got smaller units empty all the time. There's always one empty all the time, and one feeds the other. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah. And not building a relationship with the people that are in there just ends up, you know, you just end up with an empty unit within six months or twelve months, you know, and then the you know, that young guy or woman or family who wanted to start that small business are just left a flounder with rent and rate increases, some other service charge that they weren't available, something breaks that's technically not their issue. It's a landlord's issue. I don't know, the air condition is broken, all the water is not being fed, which can have a detriment to the customers that they're trying to serve and the happiness of their staff. It all trickles down, yeah, ultimately.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Um, something which I found quite interesting, which I wasn't hadn't really considered either until I got into the more landlord side of the industry for a while, is actually the good landlords as well. They they want to know your business plan, yeah, especially for the the the smaller startup scale up businesses, they want to know the business plan, how they can help you with that business plan and how they can provide the right space that meets that requirement as well. Um, and I I think that was something which was quite refreshing to see. I'm not sure if you see that across across landlords or whether that is just good landlords working um with with people or yeah, I think if you like you say, you're right, if if the landlord is in, you know, has an interest and investment in your business, they can help when things go wrong.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

You know, we we we touched on in in that presentation um you know the COVID situation. You know, you had landlords that were, you know, just taking the money regardless, and then when that money dried up, it was like you're done, you're out. Again, just a lack of foresight to think if you just ride it through with your tenant, if that tenant has been consistently paying their tenancy agreement rent and lease for the past two years, surely you must see that it's not their issue. You know, what you're gonna do? You're gonna throw them out and what somebody's gonna come in in the middle of a COVID situation, they're just not gonna it's just not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Um I've seen relationships completely completely ruined and still still suffering from that period. Yeah. Which is now quite a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

It is. Um, I don't think you know the the I mean you know, I'm gonna we're not gonna go into the the COVID situation too much, but I think it you know it has changed the landscape of everything anyway, including relationships with businesses and tenants because uh with landlords because um just a complete lack of trust. That seemed to have got worse.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

And so you think it's the the trust position between landlord and tenants got worse? It did then, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

I think it's slowly being rebuilt. I think you know there was almost a cynicism when Covid was coming towards the end because then the the rent cost just dropped because they wanted everybody in, and then the evil eye comes back when things are normal of this a steady increase in rent costs as they go forward, and it's like okay. To be fair, in some respects, you know, COVID was a terrible thing, but it did allow towards the end people who were starting new businesses to get a foothold into some prime real estate, and some of them have stayed strong because of it. So it did open the doors up for you know smaller businesses that wanted that kind of nice bit of healthy footfall and environment to actually get in because obviously the rent's real reduced, but then they've got to really quickly be able to generate revenue to pay for the you know ever increasing rent and rates that are coming through.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

And how can landlords better support retailers in general, but I also more like independent retailers?

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Again, understanding the business, we'll keep going back to that all the time because that's the the forefront, is understanding the nature of their business. And in understanding the nature of business, tailoring the analytics that are fed to the businesses, you know, shopping centres um are the worst for analytics because it's a very broad spectrum, which doesn't necessarily isn't is not necessarily relevant to your business.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Yeah. What analytics would you find really helpful?

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Zonal footfall is is helpful. So if you've got, you know, we had Vision Expresses in Merry Hill and all the major shopping centres, and you would receive the analytics just in an email that was just dropped into the store. You'd visit a store and you'd read it and be like, it's just a pie chart, means it means nothing to me. It would tell you how many people are coming in, how many people are leaving, what's the dwell time in the shopping centre. That's wonderful. But it's not helpful to this particular site. So nowadays, a lot of the shopping centres have zonal cameras or zonal footfall cameras, um, which I only just discovered probably three, four months ago. But that data's not on the quarterly reports, yeah. And not and nothing's on the quarterly reports around um light for like comp numbers. So, you know, is it up or down on last year? Yep. It's up by one percent. Okay, what with what exactly? Dogs and children, you know, what's coming in that's extra? Where is it going in the shopping centre? Is it going down to the the east side of the shopping centre, the west, you know, the first floor, the second floor? Where's it going? Yeah. Because it what you're telling me doesn't correlate with what I'm seeing in my business.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

And this is I this is something which we see quite a lot in terms of the world which I'm now in, which is obviously building technology, property technology, and and the data analytics which roll around that, and we're getting more and more involved in that analytical side of things as well, and working with people like FIMA, AI, and people like that with computer vision and stuff. I I know you want you want data and you want the landlord to give you data, but also the landlord probably wants data from you. Um, are you sharing that data back to the landlord as well?

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Yeah, I mean the data that we do share obviously it goes straight to our CFO because I get the emails and I go, it's just that's for you to deal with. But like um the data that they want is purely financial. Most nine times out of ten, um, you know, the the revenue for the quarter. Obviously, you you know, we deliver it because if it's part of the tenancy agreement. Um, I'm not quite sure how that's relevant to them because um we give them that data, but what there is actually being done with it is up in the mythical lens of you know and uh data extraction. Um I think the data that they should be asking from us is how many people are you are seeing per day? Yes. You know, how much of this footfall, this wonderful footfall that I'm telling you is three percent up on last year, does it correlate to your business? And if it's lower, then we should be having meetings to understand why. Yeah, and that can be anything from looking at the nature of your business, it's probably not in the right place. But we've got a unit where the age demographic's probably a bit more where you need to be, you know, there's probably a bit more footfall traffic there for you, you probably see that percentage increase there. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

But I just go in with a revenue number, it doesn't help. Yeah, I think, unless you can tell me different why you want it. I think well probably just to make sure we can pay the rent, probably.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Well, I think sometimes the revenue is it's revenue-led uh leases, isn't it? Yeah. I think um another thing which we sitting from the landlord side and this discussion which we have with landlord and tenant quite a lot is energy data sharing as well. Um I don't know if you have come across that requirement more and more.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

It's not it's not something that I've come across myself, whether it just goes directly to the office and then they give them the information. I don't know. I mean we're pretty okay with that to be fair, because we're a carbon neutral company. So we're actually pretty strong when it comes to stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

And I don't want to get too stuck on land the landlord um tenant relationship bit, but I think it is an important, a really important subject and one we end up talking about on this podcast quite a lot because one of the things which we've got in the industry, commercial real estate industry, is how slow moving we typically can be. Um, and I I'll touch on that in the sense of change management, and that's obviously an area which you're quite passionate about, and one thing which you do quite a lot of. Um, but in retail delivery, what are typically what the biggest, say, misalignments you see between the landlord and tenant in terms of a delivery of a scheme?

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Um site location is can sometimes be mismanaged. So, you know, we talked about Chef's before, they're getting way too much airtime, but okay. Um they understand the brand and where it should be situated, but they have a very, very strong understanding of the type of customer that is around that area. Um, we as a business have to do quite a lot of that research ourselves. So we'll put it out there, you know, you know, and then we have some very good estate agents that we use and agency managers that do understand where we need to be situated. But we have had in the past the odd one here or there that have taken us to wild and wonderful places where it's like you you you don't understand where we need to be. So I think the synergy between um estate managers, landlords, and businesses needs to be very much aligned in the type of customers that they want to see, but also for the landlord landlord to understand his own area.

unknown 35:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. So if he's you know in a town that's got you know a lot of over 60s and 70s, um slightly aged, be careful of the age, because I'm 48, so 60's not old. Um, you wouldn't necessarily put um you know a gaming shop there, if that makes sense. Stupid landlords would. But you know, the clever landlord would not really, but also tell that gaming, should we say, the mythical gaming business, that that's probably not the best place for them to go, even if they're desperate to go there.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

And then finally, on the retail delivery side of things, what what really builds trust fastest between the tenant and the landlord in that?

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Um, being helpful and not obstructive, you know. I understand from you know, it sounds like we're landlord bashing, but I'm not, um, because like I say before, majority of the landlords, nearly all of them we worked in are blue bloom, in fact, all of them have been really, really good, is just being helpful um and understanding, but also holding us to account. I've uh trust is built by setting standards both sides of it. So if you know if I step out of line, you know, if I take one of our stores, um the paintwork was looking a bit ropey. Um and you you walk past it all the time, it's you don't see it straight away, but then you know I get an email saying, look, part of the tenancy agreement, we have to keep the shopfront nice and clean and tidy. And it's like, okay, that's fine, I get it, paint it, job done. But in in the other side of it, you know, if there's some mould in a basement somewhere, I expect the same kind of service back, and I do. So that kind of relationship is really good because I'm set to a standard, he's set to a standard, and we both deliver on it, so therefore the trust is mutual. Yeah, makes sense, yeah, really good.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

Yeah, yeah. On change management, um, I think it's something which you're quite passionate about, and something where um in your role you probably undertake quite a lot of change management and processes and putting those in place. How do you go about successful change management?

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Well, oops, sorry. I don't know, you go it's painful. Um I mean, change management is such a broad and scary term, but the actual ingredients of it aren't really that scary. You know, change management in some people's minds is like, oh my god, we're going to change the company top down, etc. But change management can be as small as a uniform, you see what I mean, and things like that. So for me, it's like we have that we have our ideas, what we think, and we will bat it back and forth, and in any company that they've worked at, and then we would agree on where we're going to go forward, and then we would deliver on it. And I think a lot of change management, in some cases where it's not been successful, is you haven't really taken into account the human element and how it affects other people. Um, and that's the most important part. One of the things that we do do as Blue Bloom is we will canvas opinion, not necessarily listen to that opinion because sometimes it can be to the negative, but you know, we will listen to opinion, you know, if we take um uniforms. So we had somebody come in to design the uniforms, um, and the uniforms weren't to the liking of the staff. So we binned it. It was like, okay, you know, we're not wearing them, you are. Yeah. So, you know, we we removed that uniform and we just took the the highest voted um requests, which was we want to wear something personal to us, and we're happy to wear it in black. So we agreed, okay, you can find. Along the you know, construction I don't want no crop tops or shorts or anything like that, but um you can do um wear what you want as long as it's within reasonable taste, but it has to be black, and we'll give you a badge. And since then everybody's been perfectly fine with it because it allows them to show a little bit of individuality while at work, but it's still uniform, because that's what uniform means. You know, people attribute uniform to some form of clothing, it's not it's the the word uniform is uniform uniformity. Do you know what I mean? It's like everybody kind of has a common theme. You go from one store to another and kind of recognise a blue-blue member of staff because they're in black and they wear a white badge.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

So that's change management.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

So yeah, communicating it properly, yeah, listening, yes, active listening, yeah, and then working together and and pivoting as well if you need to.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Yeah, yeah. Um, and then another bit which I think you're quite passionate about on that sort of management side is is mentorship. Um and the importance of that, and from listening to you today, um, it sounds like you've had some brilliant mentors yourself um and are soaking up and a sponge for the kind of the founders, etc., which you've worked with. How are you kind of implementing that across your team?

SPEAKER_00 40:38

I come from a different era. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. I come from a different era um where you had two choices. You either went to work or you went to university. That was it. Yep. So if you went to university, you went to university, and if you decided not to go to university, you went to get a job, whatever that was, and then you pay board or rent or whatever it was called. Um so I didn't go to university and I went straight to work, and like I said, you know, I was relatively lost. I was going from job to job, you know, I tried to do a carpentry, um, you know, I worked at I worked on a farm, I enjoyed all of them, you know. Um, but it wasn't really giving me a career. So, and I really didn't get my first mentor realistically until I got to Vision Express. And they came in the guises of regional managers, they came in the guises of um, you know, the CEO at the time, his name's Jonathan Lawson, who's still active. I think he's the CEO of Book and Breweries. I had some phenomenal access to him. I had phenomenal access to the operations director, his name is Neil McGowan, is Neil McGowan, who, how can I put it, give me the best of times and the worst of times at the same time. Um, and I was lucky enough to work with him on the next project at Lens Store, along with Mitesh and Olga. And then obviously we've got Abyss and Farris who are still mentoring, not I wouldn't say mentoring me, but I'm still learning from them at the age of 48, which is difficult because they're a lot, they're 10 years younger than me. So they're keeping me relevant, frankly. They're stopping me from becoming an old curmudgeon. But when it comes to mentoring the people that come into our stores now, it is a lot more difficult because everybody's got a side hustle. It's very rare that you get retail staff, and I'm not talking about you know, the Bluebloom staff are excellent. You know, I think if you go into our stores and see the energy and the customer service that they deliver versus some of our competitors, it is night and day.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Well, yeah, as you as you know, I'm a customer, so I've definitely seen that.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Um but even towards the latter end of Vision Express, it became very difficult to recognize and pinpoint people that were actively interested in that role. Do you see what I mean? Yep. So people come into retail because it's a job. That's fine, that's fair enough. I get that, you know, we've got things that we want to do are outside of it. But it's very, it's getting rarer now to find somebody who wants to make a career in retail. So the opportunities to mentor people are very difficult, they're very far and few between. Because, with the greatest respect, I'm not going to waste my time and energy on somebody if I know that they're going to be here for six months and they're just doing it for you know a party on a Friday night.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

Why why do you think that is? Why why do you think people aren't seeing it as the reason this is the scare the scary road we go down, I think.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

I think I see it now. You've got YouTube, you've got LinkedIn, you've got Instagram, you've got Facebook well not Facebook. Show my age now, but you know, even I I mean I'm not on any social media apart from LinkedIn because I use it for sourcing of recruitment and just getting an understanding of the markets. But even on LinkedIn now, you see everything has got to be now and quick. And I tell anybody who ever watches this, you will only ever be successful, really, with just sheer bloody mindness hard work. You know, if you want to go and see, if you want to understand why brands are successful, it's not because they've had a great idea, it's not because the product is amazing, it's the hard work of the founders, and this is what I mean where I don't, I literally at 48 would not have the energy and the capacity to do it now. And hard work is is is that's it, it's as simple as that. But then when you mention that to people, well, it says on Instagram that I just need to do a side hustle. I think the popular opinion that side hustles are a good thing is one of the biggest lies I think we're we're feeding to the younger generation.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

And passive income.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

And passive. Oh, somebody mentions passive income to me one more time. You know, it's kind of like, you know, but it was back in the day, it was drop shipping with Amazon, you know what I mean? It's kind of in and now it's the markets and crypto, and then it was not so much crypto now. But now I see I see a potential for people to be to be it's easier to develop a brand in your mind and on your laptop. Does that make sense? Yes. And it's easy to get a Shopify account. But because you're gaining this from LinkedIn and um Instagram and TikTok to a certain degree, people think that's it. But what's actually happening is they do all these things and they've got two products on it, and then nothing happens because they realise or not realise that there's so much work that has to be done behind the scenes. You know, I've seen, you know, Mitesh and Olga at Lens Storm, you know, telling me stories before I started of working day and night and delivering things themselves, you know, and Abas and Farris at work until 6 a.m. And you know, we're having text conversations at 11 o'clock at night for seven days a week. This passive income and this side hustle thing distracts from actually them concentrating fully on a career that might not be sexy to them. I mean, I love retail with a passion, but to some people it's just a means of income while they concentrate on something else. And like I say, I don't don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that at all. You know, we have staff within Bluebloom that come to work because they enjoy coming to work at Blue Bloom, and then they go home, have dinner, play, you know, and have a social life, and that's perfectly fine for them. But people who really want a career in in retail, it's it's getting harder and harder and harder because the thought of actually having to work for two years or three years to get to an assistant store manager's role, or five years to get to a store manager's role, is completely alien to them. And I think we are to blame. My generation is to blame. You know, that's that saying, isn't it, that you know, hard men mech soft times and soft times mech soft men and soft men mech hard times. So you go through this cycle. I say men people, but you know, I think you you go through this cycle, and I think we're just going through a you know um softer leaders, um softer CEOs, softer HR people in businesses um that are delivering softer working environments for people, and that is delivering then um weaker retail forces. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And I think until we realise that, you know, we have to be hold, you know, our staff accountable, we have to hold our CEOs accountable for a full understanding of why things aren't necessarily we're not getting the right types of people into retail.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Yeah. So the last two questions are quite commercial real estate heavy, um, massively focus on that. But in terms of for you as a retailer and for a ten as a tenant, what's what's the biggest opportunity change which we can put into commercial real estate, which would really help um you as a tenant in in commercial real estate?

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Um more tailored data would help. Um I think you know, we I was talking to Alice Dir about this before we were talking about, you know, so what you know, what the hell you want me to talk about in this particular um conference. And because he asked me a question, well, you know, it's very much similar to yours, and um and we were just spitballing. And I think you need I think every single estate manager manager and every single landlord needs to be having more direct contact with the individuals and the businesses and the founders, even if it's just once a week or once a month, and have a proper meeting and develop a relationship again, human it's no different than retail and customers. Develop a human-level rapport with each individual one of their tenants to discuss their problems and it'd be a safe place where you know we're not worried about well, why is he asking that question? Yeah, a full on trust with each other, where you almost become like business partners because technically you are, you really are, and sharing each other's woes, you know, there's no dang, you know, there's no shame in saying, you know, oh, you know, my business isn't doing particularly well, and the landlord going, okay, so what can I do to help? You know, you can't do much, but you know, what can I do to help? Do you you know, is there something that we can do from a local advertising point of view that we can discount for you for the next quarter? Obviously, not forever, but the next quarter. Do you need some more tailored footfall? Do you want us to work with Google and you and maybe sign us up to see what's coming into the stores? I've got a unit further down the road that we could use. There are many, many things that you can do. Having somebody as a point of contact makes life so much easier rather than just a faceless number or 15 numbers because you need to find the right department for this particular problem. Yep. And having one person, I think all estate managers and all landlords should hire one person that has been in retail a fair amount, understands different types of retail, and can empathize with businesses, but also bring businesses down a peg or two if they're getting a little bit too big for their boots and just go, hang on a minute, you know. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, this is a mutual agreement, this is not your agreement.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

Yeah. And then finally, with commercial estate, do you think it needs to evolutionize or revolutionise?

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Revolution is always a dangerous thing. I think um evolution is better. I think um evolving um is basically well, evolution is basically taking mistakes, billing them off, snipping it off, and just keeping the good stuff. Um let's keep the stuff that works, let's get rid of the stuff that doesn't work. Um and then you find yourself in a more mutual, respected way in an environment. You know, in in if it was a utopia, I would know who I could talk to for every single site that I've ever worked in, and we could pick up a conversation and just go, Oh, Rob, it's you know, Jane or etc. And just have a bit of a chin wag and say, Look, do we have XYZ? Yeah, you know, this is a problem for me this week, you know. Coven I'll give you an example of Covent Garden. Um, you know, there's a particular annoyance for me at the moment that the bus, you know, the buskers, which are great, some great singers in Covent Garden, but they're right outside the front of the store. So it would be interesting to me to have a conversation with Shaftsbury State to see, okay, I don't mind it two, three times a week, but but can we potentially move it to the other side of the street? Because what's happening is the crowds are at the front of the store that's affecting the footfall. So it would be interesting to see what their response to that will be.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Yeah, and I guess the next episode. So we can't. Yeah, and also I guess actually having the data analytics to show to you actually and say, actually, we'll do that, we'll move it, and what impact that could have a negative, it could have a negative impact, but actually let's let's sit there and analyse that together, work out what works out for you and also your neighbours as well, because it can't be just for yourself, can it, I guess. Um, but kind of how what impact that has, and you know, what street performers actually have a better impact on you as a store as well than other ones. So you know, it's that shared shared analytics thing, which is really could be really cool.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Really, really tailored to your demographic of the customers that you need. You know, we work in an optics environment. You know, we test people's eyes and we sell glasses, we don't sell flowers and we don't sell perfume. So our customers are you know fashion focused. Yep. So, you know, where's the data on that? It's not, it's just a number, it's an arbitrary number. It's up 2% versus last year. It's not helpful at all. You know, what type of customers are coming in? What age group are they going to come in? Canvas it. If you're that interested, spend a bit of money on your side to canvas the customers coming in to figure out what age groups they are, or come to us with real questions about data that we have, such as the age group of our clientele, but everybody. And then you would have a better idea of what's coming to particular environments that we see.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for joining me on Built to Perform podcast today. Um, it's been a really fascinating discussion, and um, the transparency and openness and also the humour of um when I see you on stage uh has definitely shown through here again. And it's um been really impressive to hear everything which you've kind of been doing across your career. But yeah, thank you so much again for joining me. A really fascinating discussion and uh great to hear from a retailer's but also tenant customers' point of view in terms of commercial real estate. And I think our listeners who probably will be of a mix of the whole commercial real estate, but probably quite a lot of landlord, asset management, and property management uh will take a lot of value out of hearing some of the challenges um which you face and how we can work together in a better way going forward. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

That's right. Just don't hate me. I think that's hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 54:46

Thank you so much.