The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

Resilient Retail Club's Catherine Erdly
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Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan - giving you retail insights, retail trends updates and best practices for any retailer, from Shopify stores to bricks and mortar units. I'm Catherine Erdly, veteran retail expert and consultant and also founder of The Resilient Retail Club. This is the podcast for anyone wanting to start, grow, or scale a profitable small medium or large product retail business. Aimed at independent retailers, e-commerce brands, indie sellers, online shops, independent boutiques, shopkeepers, brands and makers. I'm dedicated to breaking down the concepts and tools I’ve gathered from twenty years in the retail industry in the UK and USA and showing you how you can use them in your small business.

  1. 1d ago

    Christmas Retail Strategy: Why August Decides December

    The retailers who have a brilliant Christmas are not the ones working hardest in December. Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. It is the middle of August, and I know that for a lot of you the word "Christmas" right now produces a small internal flinch. But here is the uncomfortable thing about peak season: by the time December arrives, almost every decision that will determine how it goes has already been made. The buying, the sales plan, the staffing, the storage, the marketing calendar. Every one of those is a retail management decision, and every one of them gets made weeks or months earlier, usually in a rush and usually on instinct. The effort you pour in during December is real, but it is spent inside a retail strategy you built in August whether you meant to or not. In this episode, the first of four I am running across the next month on getting ready for Christmas, I want to talk about where you actually start. Not with this Christmas, but with last one. There is an exercise that every large retail business I have worked in runs religiously, and that almost nobody in indie retail ever does. It takes about half an hour, it uses data you already have, and it will tell you things your memory absolutely will not, because we are all very good at quietly editing out the worst bits of the last peak season. I will walk you through the questions it should answer: which products were really carrying your Christmas, what surprised you, what you were too timid on, and which bits of your small shop marketing genuinely earned their keep and brought you repeat customers. Then I want to talk about the two things that turn that review into a plan: choosing one clear goal for this Christmas instead of trying to fix everything at once, and being honest about whether your business can physically cope with the Christmas you are hoping for. That second one matters most if you are scaling a retail business, because retail business growth is wonderful right up until the week you cannot fulfil it. Demand you cannot fill is expensive and stressful, and it is far easier to see coming in August than in the last week of November. By the end of this episode you will know exactly what to sit down with, what to look for, and what to have decided before the next one, where we get into the cash flow to fund it all. Press play, then go and grab the free planner. CHAPTERS 00:00 Why a great Christmas is decided in August 01:12 The Lessons Learned exercise big retailers never skip 05:37 Choosing your one Christmas goal 07:18 Capacity planning: can your business actually cope? LINKS Get Set for Christmas planner (free): https://www.resilientretailclub.com/christmas All episodes: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/ Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly Mentioned in this episode: Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/

    Christmas Retail Strategy: Why August Decides December

  2. Aug 13

    Retail Profit: Sales Down 23%, Profit Up 22%

    One of my clients finished the month with sales down 23% on the year — and profit up 22% in that very same month. Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. There's an old business adage I wheel out more often than I probably should: turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is reality. Most of us know the phrase. Far fewer of us have ever been shown what it actually looks like inside a real independent retail business, month by month. That gap matters, because almost everything we are taught to celebrate — a big sales month, a record week, e-commerce growth — sits squarely on the vanity side of that sentence. In this episode I dig into what a healthy-looking top line can quietly hide. How much are you actually paying for those sales? What did the stock behind them cost, and what are you still sitting on unsold? I share the story of a retailer whose online sales grew enormously and who became less profitable as a result, and another whose order numbers fell while the business underneath got noticeably healthier. If you have ever had a month that looked wonderful on paper and felt awful in the bank, you already know the gap I am describing. I also get into the part almost nobody looks at until it starts to hurt: the cash locked up in your stockroom, and the one number that tells you whether your stock is working for you or quietly working against you. By the end of this episode you will know exactly which three numbers to check every single month, why the margin you set on the way in and the margin you actually achieve on the way out are two completely different things, and what it really takes to finish a year holding less stock and more money. Press play to hear how. CHAPTERS 00:10 Sales down 23%, profit up 22% — the month that shouldn't add up 02:18 What a big top line quietly hides 06:39 In margin vs out margin — where the profit actually came from 15:13 Cash is reality — the client now holding £900,000 less stock LINKS Find out more about Stock Doctor and apply: https://stockdoctor.net Connect with Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly All episodes of the Resilient Retail Game Plan: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/ Catherine's book, Tame Your Tiger: How to Stop Your Product Business Eating You Alive Mentioned in this episode: Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/

    Retail Profit: Sales Down 23%, Profit Up 22%

  3. Aug 6

    Retail Sales Are Vanity. Retail Profit Is Sanity

    A retailer I once worked with was selling children's clothes by the hundred. When we finally costed everything properly, she was making about 50 pence an item. Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. Most of us build a product business the sensible way round — get trading first, worry about the back end later. And that is the right instinct at the start. But somewhere along the way the sales data ends up living in Shopify, the stock data lives somewhere else entirely, the costs live in your accountant's software, and when you finally put the three side by side, none of them agree. This week I'm joined by Stacey Dorrian, who I've known since we were the two senior merchandisers at Coast, and who has spent 25 years since then working in retail data. We talk about what actually happens inside a growing product business that has never built any structure underneath its numbers. We get into the questions most retailers never stop to ask. Are you recording your cost of goods anywhere at all? Is your best seller genuinely your best seller, or just your busiest product with the margin quietly stripped out of it? Are you staffing, stocking and reordering a corner of your business that isn't earning its place on the floor? And if you're carrying eight, ten, thirteen thousand lines, how would you ever know? Stacey explains why a sales report only ever answers one of the four questions your data is capable of answering — and why the other three are where the money actually is. I also share the moment that retailer realised she had never had a sales problem at all, and Stacey walks through exactly where she would start if your numbers are currently a mess and the whole thing feels too big to open. By the end you'll understand why gut decisions get more expensive the bigger your order quantities get, what "sales is vanity, profit is sanity" really costs you in practice rather than as a slogan, and the three things to fix, in the order to fix them. Press play to find out where to begin. CHAPTERS 00:00 The signals your shop is missing 04:40 The four questions your numbers can answer 06:15 Sales is vanity — the costs nobody records 12:02 Where to start if your numbers are a mess LINKS Apply for Stock Doctor: stockdoctor.net All episodes: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/ Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly LSE Data Analytics Career Accelerator (mentioned in the episode): lse.ac.uk

    Retail Sales Are Vanity. Retail Profit Is Sanity

  4. Jul 30

    Ghost stores, fake shops and what they mean for real independent retailers

    "It's with a heavy heart that we share this message with you." A little boutique closing its doors after years of love and care, one final sale, the owners off to enjoy being grandparents. Except the shop never existed."Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. I started this episode pulling on one thread — a closing down sale that didn't add up — and ended up somewhere I wasn't expecting. The photo of the owners had the smooth, too-perfect look of an AI image. The listing named a local town, but the shipping notes said the orders ship from a warehouse thousands of miles away. And it turned out I hadn't found one fake shop. I'd found an entire business model: set up, run a huge "closing down" sale, collect the money, wait for the bad reviews to pile up, disappear, start again. Chris Emmins of consumer protection organisation KwikChex tells me there are thousands and thousands of them, and that even the people whose job it is to count them can't keep up. Here's the part that should worry every independent retailer. The standard advice given to shoppers is to be wary of a company they've never heard of — which is a fairly accurate description of almost every small business in the country. Research from Bazaarvoice, which I dig into with their CMO Doug Straton, found that 97% of shoppers no longer buy from a single source. They're cross-checking your website against Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, your reviews and a quick Google before they'll spend anything with you. That isn't paranoia, it's adaptation. So when someone sees your ad, they go looking. The only question that matters is what they find when they get there. In this episode I look at what a genuinely sceptical customer is hunting for, what a fast-growing brand like Passenger does that most independents don't, and the shift that caught me off guard: the trust signals you build aren't only being read by people any more. AI models and shopping agents are reading them too, and deciding whether to put you in front of a customer at all. By the end you'll know what to check on your own website this week, which signals carry the most weight, and why the one thing that makes you almost impossible to fake is something you already have — you're just not showing it. Press play and I'll walk you through it. Chapters00:00 — The closing down sale that never happened02:28 — Inside the ghost store business model, with Chris Emmins of KwikChex04:50 — The 97% rule, and the question customers now ask you08:15 — What a fast-growing brand does differently, and why AI is reading your trust signals too Links and resourcesResilient Retail Club podcast: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdlyCatherine's Forbes piece on this investigation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/catherineerdly/2026/06/26/how-fake-online-stores-are-damaging-legitimate-retailers/KwikChex: https://www.kwikchex.comBazaarvoice: https://www.bazaarvoice.comPassenger: https://www.passenger-clothing.comWhich? investigation into bogus boutiques: https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/the-bogus-boutiques-ripping-off-shoppers-aqruM5i1zJLHSay hello on Instagram: @resilientretailclub Mentioned in this episode: Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/

    Ghost stores, fake shops and what they mean for real independent retailers

  5. Jul 23

    The Retail Stock Mistake Even Veteran Retailers Make

    I’ve had retailers with 18 years in business tell me the same thing after just a few months working with us — and it isn’t what you’d expect. Hi, I’m retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. Most of us are convinced we’re on top of our numbers. Shopify pings with every sale, we know our best sellers by heart, and we watch the sales roll in. But in this episode I dig into the uncomfortable gap between looking at your numbers and actually understanding what they’re telling you to do next — the difference that quietly decides whether your stock is working for you or slowly working against you. I walk through the questions most retailers never stop to ask. Is your best seller selling fast enough, or should you be buying twice as many? Are you carrying twice the stock you actually need? Is one category — or even one supplier — secretly funding your whole business, or quietly trapping your cash? If you’ve ever felt like you’re “all over your numbers” but still can’t confidently answer what to buy, what to clear, or what to plan for next, this one is for you. I also share the shift that’s helping retailers get more sales from less stock, free up cash they didn’t know was trapped, and walk into their busiest months without panic-buying — plus how to tell whether you need a Stock Doctor, an accountant, or both. By the end, you’ll know exactly why collecting data isn’t the same as making decisions, and what to do about it. Press play to hear how. In this episode00:00: The confession every experienced retailer makes 02:36: Rear-view mirror vs sat nav: how to actually read your numbers 04:53: What we look for when we analyse your stock 07:52: Stock Doctor vs your accountant — and who this is really for Useful linksFind out more about Stock Doctor: https://stockdoctor.netConnect with me on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdlyMore episodes & resources: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/ Mentioned in this episode: Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/

    The Retail Stock Mistake Even Veteran Retailers Make

  6. Jul 16

    The 4-Step Sales Strategy Every Independent Retailer Needs

    Sales are quiet, and you've already decided it's your fault. It isn't. Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. Every retailer I have ever worked with has quiet weeks — including the multi-billion businesses. The only real difference is that they have enough stores and enough channels for the inconsistency to smooth itself out. When it's just you, one shop, one website, a couple of marketplaces, there is nothing to smooth it out. So a slow Tuesday doesn't feel like a slow Tuesday. It feels like evidence. Evidence that people have stopped buying, that your marketing has stopped working, that you have somehow lost your touch. This is the single biggest confidence killer in independent retail, and it has almost nothing to do with your products. It's what happens when you run a business without a plan: a good week means you've cracked it, a bad week means it's all falling apart, and you spend the year strapped into an emotional rollercoaster you never bought a ticket for. Most retailers respond by either setting wildly optimistic goals with no route to hitting them, or quietly setting no goals at all because a missed target feels worse than no target. Neither works. And neither tells you what to actually do on the Monday after a bad week. In this episode I walk you through the four-step sales strategy I've used with hundreds of retailers to get out of that cycle for good. It won't make your quiet periods vanish — nothing will, and anyone selling you that is lying. What it will do is tell you which quiet periods were always going to be quiet, which ones actually need your attention, and precisely what to do about them. By the end you'll know how to set a number that feels exciting rather than terrifying, how to see the rhythm your business has been running to all along, and how to build the one document that means you never again stare at a bad week and think "maybe I'm just terrible at this." It takes about ninety minutes to build. Press play and I'll show you where to start. In this episode(00:00) Why your sales feel random — and why it isn't you Why every retailer, from a one-woman shop to a billion-pound chain, has quiet days and busy days — and why only one of them feels it. The confidence cost of an unplanned year, and what a sales strategy honestly can and cannot fix. (01:57) Step 1 — Set a sales goal you'll actually aim at The archery question that exposes how most retailers approach sales, why a target isn't there to make you feel bad, and the last-12-months-plus-run-rate calculation that gets you a realistic number in minutes rather than weeks. (05:05) Steps 2 & 3 — Monthly targets by channel, and your trading calendar Breaking a yearly number down by month and by channel, the hidden benefit that reveals the rhythm of your business (and why February is not a personal failing), then building the trading calendar that bridges your sales plan and your marketing — including what to do when a month has no reason for anyone to buy. (11:50) Step 4 — Track what matters, and why future you will thank you Why the answer isn't another analytics tool, the four things worth tracking weekly, the four worth tracking monthly, and the one-line note that will save you an hour of confusion this time next year. Free download for this episodeGrab my free guide to creating a sales strategy for your business: resilientretailclub.com/strategy Useful linksFree sales strategy guide — https://www.resilientretailclub.com/strategyThe Resilient Retail Club — https://www.resilientretailclub.comAll podcast episodes — https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/Connect with me on LinkedIn — https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdlyWatch on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwFwdhK_WMJvXntxKLZj83Inz1fFNAN2P New episodes every Thursday. If this one was useful, following the show is the single most helpful thing you can do — it's how other independent retailers find it. Mentioned in this episode: Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/

    The 4-Step Sales Strategy Every Independent Retailer Needs

  7. Jul 9

    Drowning in Data? The Only 3 Retail Numbers That Matter

    Have you ever opened your Shopify dashboard looking for one answer and somehow ended up with ten new questions? Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. Most retailers I work with don't have a lack-of-data problem — they have the opposite. They're drowning in dashboards, apps, reports, spreadsheets and AI notifications, yet they still can't confidently answer the three questions that actually matter: Am I making money? Am I on track? Is my stock healthy? More information hasn't made the decision easier. If anything, it's made it harder. In this episode I talk about cutting through the noise. I share why “tech creep” quietly drains your bank account and your attention, how new AI tools like Shopify Sidekick are changing the reporting game, and why the answer to feeling overwhelmed is almost never another subscription. Then I get into the small handful of numbers that genuinely tell you whether your business is healthy — and why clarity beats complexity every single time. If you've been feeling unsure about how things are really going in your shop, this one will help you stop guessing. By the end you'll know exactly which three numbers to check each month, what “good” looks like for each, and how to build one simple place to track them so you can see the health of your business in seconds — without drowning in data. The specific numbers, the benchmarks and the exact formula I use are all inside the episode. In this episode(00:00) Drowning in data, starving for clarity — why more tools won't fix it, and how to cut tech creep (06:45) Number 1 — Am I making money on every sale? Understanding your sales margin (11:02) Number 2 — Am I selling enough to cover my costs? The power of breakeven analysis (14:40) Number 3 — Is my stock turning fast enough? Weeks cover and why stock is cash Links & resourcesFree download — The 3 Key Numbers guide: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/numbersMy book, Tame Your Tiger: How to Stop Your Product Business Eating You Alive — where I show you how to calculate your breakeven step by stepConnect with me on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdlyMore episodes & the audio podcast: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/

    Drowning in Data? The Only 3 Retail Numbers That Matter

  8. Jul 2

    Independent Retailer Trends 2026: Plan Christmas Now

    The shoppers who start researching Christmas earliest are also the ones who spend the most — and most retailers are invisible during exactly that window. Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly. If you think July is far too early to be thinking about Christmas, this episode will change your mind. I sat down with Hannah Bartlett — founder of Jolly Festive and The Christmas Insider — to unpack why the shoppers who start researching Christmas earliest are also the ones who go on to spend the most, and why that completely changes how you should be building towards your peak season. Here's the trap most independent retailers fall into: they treat the research window and the purchase window as the same job. Right now, around 60% of shoppers are quietly building their Christmas shortlists — and holding off on actually buying until November. If you only show up when people are ready to pay, you've already missed the moment that decides where their money goes. That window is your opportunity, not your problem — but only if you know how to be in it. Hannah has distilled her forecasting into six emotional needs and four distinct aesthetic directions for Christmas 2026. In this episode she shares the framework for choosing the one that's right for YOUR business — not just whatever the big retailers are doing. Press play and you'll walk away knowing how to show up in your customers' research phase, how to plan your stock and marketing around emotional connection rather than discounting, and how to set yourself up for your most profitable fourth quarter yet. Chapters00:00 — Why the earliest Christmas shoppers spend the most 03:33 — The six emotional needs shaping Christmas 2026 08:02 — The four aesthetic directions to plan around 13:44 — How to choose your direction and bring it to life Links & resourcesConnect with me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/catherineerdlyMore from Resilient Retail Club — podcast page: resilientretailclub.com/podcastHannah Bartlett — The Christmas Insider: thechristmasinsider.comDiscover independent brands to stock on Faire: faire.comPlan a profitable Q4 with Stock Doctor: stockdoctor.net

    Independent Retailer Trends 2026: Plan Christmas Now
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Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan - giving you retail insights, retail trends updates and best practices for any retailer, from Shopify stores to bricks and mortar units. I'm Catherine Erdly, veteran retail expert and consultant and also founder of The Resilient Retail Club. This is the podcast for anyone wanting to start, grow, or scale a profitable small medium or large product retail business. Aimed at independent retailers, e-commerce brands, indie sellers, online shops, independent boutiques, shopkeepers, brands and makers. I'm dedicated to breaking down the concepts and tools I’ve gathered from twenty years in the retail industry in the UK and USA and showing you how you can use them in your small business.

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