Mary Portas is launching a series of retail master classes to help independent shopkeepers carve out a niche on high streets increasingly dominated by Tesco, Subway and Pret a Manger.
The saviour of clothes retailers, charity shops and, in the latest series of Mary Queen of Shops, an assortment of independents, is holding seven seminars around the UK.
Topics mooted include the overall vision for a store, how to develop the brand, buying the right merchandise, improving the look and feel of the shop and balancing the books.
Portas, who made her name revitalising the Harvey Nichols brand, is holding the classes to high streets and in shopping centres in Tyne and Wear, West Yorkshire, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cheshire, South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Black Country, West Midlands, Buckinghamshire, London, Essex, Kent, Hampshire, Avon and Dorset
The master classes will be delivered with the help of Skillsmart Retail, the sector skills council for retail.
Retail guru Portas has been starring in the latest series of Mary Queen of Shops, where she turns around failing high-street businesses. In recent weeks she’s met convenience store owners struggling to integrate into their new, rural community, home furnishings retailers stuck in a kitsch 70s timewarp and a hairdresser charging £60 a haircut in the benefits capital of Britain, Rochdale.
However, most compelling of all was the bakery owner who took umbrage to the slightest criticism, blocked all her proposed changes and eventually kicked Portas out of her bakery and called a halt to filming.
