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

"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

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/

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.
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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/

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.
Chapters
00:00 — 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 & resources
Connect with me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
More from Resilient Retail Club — podcast page: resilientretailclub.com/podcast
Hannah Bartlett — The Christmas Insider: thechristmasinsider.com
Discover independent brands to stock on Faire: faire.com
Plan a profitable Q4 with Stock Doctor: stockdoctor.net

Mentioned in this episode:
This podcast uses chapters