Two stores offering furniture on a take‐away basis form the theme of this picture‐feature. They are the first Take‐Away Habitat, in Wythenshawe in Lancashire, and Home Interiors, an upmarket furniture store recently opened by Cambridge Co‐op.

It is important that a prospective employer should use the proper criteria for judging a candidate's suitability for any management post. Here, Kevin Jermey outlines what, in his view, are the qualities required for one of the newer management functions in the retail industry — distribution,...

Faster re‐ordering keeps stocks down. Establishing stock levels is one of the big problems facing the retailer — over‐stock and you tie up too much money and storage space, understock and customers are turned away. In some trades, shelf life adds a further factor.

In the past, manufacturers and retailers have tended to pursue their own objectives rather too narrowly, sometimes to their own mutual disadvantage, and certainly to the disadvantage of the consumer. What follows is a slightly shortened version of a speech recently delivered by Sir Arthur Sugden...

In the last issue of RDM, Robert Williams outlined a model cost audit of a distribution system. In this second part, he demonstrates how such a cost audit can identify the major factors affecting costs, and makes some practical suggestions towards their reduction. What appears on the following...

In recent years a great deal of information has been collected and published (much of it in this journal) on the perpetually contentious issue of the hypermarket and the superstore — their effect on other forms of retailing, their capacity to reduce operating costs and therefore prices, their...

We asked Bryan Wade, Director of the Unit for Retail Planning Information, to comment on some of the implied criticisms of URPI made in the preceding feature. He replied as follows:

The profitability of the supermarket over the last twenty years has been won largely at the expense of the small local shop. Will this trend continue? Maurice Zinkin suggests that it will not. Analysing the factors which brought about the decline of the small shop and the growth of the...

A basic concept of dual merchandising — domestic and office — is being introduced into a number of Ryman shops, the management intention being to retain the commercial market and improve the domestic.

Most marketing executives would accept that one of the most significant activities in management planning and control is that of attempting to predict future sales. In Part One Nigel Piercy justifies the importance which marketing analysts attach to sales prediction and examines the role of...