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

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/

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/

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/