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

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

"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.
Chapters
00:00 — The closing down sale that never happened
02:28 — Inside the ghost store business model, with Chris Emmins of KwikChex
04:50 — The 97% rule, and the question customers now ask you
08:15 — What a fast-growing brand does differently, and why AI is reading your trust signals too

Links and resources
Resilient Retail Club podcast: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
Catherine'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.com
Bazaarvoice: https://www.bazaarvoice.com
Passenger: https://www.passenger-clothing.com
Which? investigation into bogus boutiques: https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/the-bogus-boutiques-ripping-off-shoppers-aqruM5i1zJLH
Say hello on Instagram: @resilientretailclub

Mentioned in this episode:
Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month
https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/

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 episode
00:00: 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 links
Find out more about Stock Doctor: https://stockdoctor.net
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
More 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/

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 episode
Grab my free guide to creating a sales strategy for your business: resilientretailclub.com/strategy

Useful links
Free sales strategy guide — https://www.resilientretailclub.com/strategy
The Resilient Retail Club — https://www.resilientretailclub.com
All podcast episodes — https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Connect with me on LinkedIn — https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
Watch 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/

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 & resources
Free download — The 3 Key Numbers guide: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/numbers
My book, Tame Your Tiger: How to Stop Your Product Business Eating You Alive — where I show you how to calculate your breakeven step by step
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
More episodes & the audio podcast: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/