038: How Nisa Are Transforming Independent Grocery Retail (part 2)

Convenience retail has been one of the hot retail trends of 2019 and the last few years. In fact, the IGD have forecast that the grocery convenience market will continue to grow by 16.6% over 5 years. Independent supermarkets have a huge opportunity to grow and Nisa Retail are supporting them to do this. Nisa’s Steve Leach shares more about how the Nisa model works and how they have dealt with their own transformation.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• How Nisa support partners with making the most of their physical stores. 
• Why Nisa are looking to continue to strengthen social media. 
• How Steve led the Nisa team throught the acquisition by Co-op.  
• Also, what would be Steve’s key takeaways and lessons learnt from merging with the Co-op team and culture. 
• And, what’s next for the next stage of Nisa’s growth and expansion.

 

 

However, please note, this is part 2 of my conversation with Steve Leach. Be sure to check out episode 37 for the beginning of the conversation. 

Listen to episode 37

Introducing Steve Leach

Steve Leach is Nisa Retail’s Sales Director. Essentially, he is accountable for both delivering and growing sales revenues and profits. This is through working with Nisa’s large network of partner retailers as well as through recruitment.

In terms of background, he’s worked in major retail businesses. This was in grocery and other categories. His CV includes major roles at M&S, Sainsbury’s, Boots and Vodafone. 

The best place to connect with Steve is on Twitter, where you can find him with the handle @first4retail.

Managing physical space across the partner estate

“If you look at the physical element of the store, we have a very well-run format and development team that is able to help the individual retailer in terms of managing their micro and macro space.”
Steve Leach

The Nisa Retail team support through:

1. A standardised look and feel – that promotes more about the brand as well as positioning the product in the store.
2. Category management – to ensure it matches the demographic for the local area.
3. Range layout – to maximise the customer shopping experience and maximise sales and impulse purchases. 
4. Business planning and much more. 

Using social media to connect to the community

Steve mentions how Nisa have doubled down on social media. He points out that it’s instant, local and free. This makes it a great tool for retail to connect to their nearby communities and consumers. Also, small independent retailers are so much more nimble than large corporate retailers. In turn, this allows independent retailers to be faster and more agile when reponding to trending topics or replying to customers.

“Like any national retailer, the one thing that unites the diverse set of consumers and customers that we have is that everybody carries a mobile phone now.”
Steve Leach

In the episode, there are several good examples which Steve called out. Here is a selection of these examples and how the Nisa team focus on doing the simple things well to engage their local market. 

Find out more or join Nisa

If you’re interested in discovering more about Nisa – or are interested in joining them – then go to join-nisa.co.uk.

Plus, check out Nisa Retail on Twitter at @NisaRetail and on their colleague handle, @WeSayNisa. Plus, take a look at the Nisa charity, Making a Difference Locally, which you can find them on Twitter at @MADLcharity.

The Nisa logo is a trademark of Nisa Retail Limited. Throughout this article and in the podcast, the use of “Nisa” and “Nisa Retail” refers to Nisa Retail Limited.

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