Store delivery process
Project Director, Fonda Valasis on "How to ‘get your house in order’ and your store delivery process humming!”
When managing brands who have multiple stores in their network, like our clients Bakers Delight, Adairs and Lovisa, I think it is critical to be on the ‘front foot’ at all times. From my experience partnering with these store development teams, I believe being proactive is the only way to maximise efficiencies, mitigate problems, safeguard detail and hit handover deadlines.
I have also found that being methodical and systematic is key. It’ll be no surprise to those that know me, that I’m an absolute stickler for detail and extremely process driven, making sure everything is done properly is not only important to me and makes me sleep better at night, but is essential to achieving a quality end result for the client.
Inevitably, there will be the need to troubleshoot during the process, but by being prepared for everything and always looking ahead we’re able to align the stakeholders, project managers and suppliers effectively. We can also identify better design alternatives for challenging sites and research cost engineering options if available.
The application of standards, consistent formats and specifications is also vital for quality measures and decision making, especially for internal sign-off and in coordinating the tender process. At Sandbox we have been using this time during Covid19 to ‘get our client’s houses in order’, assisting to review and manage all these project operations measures and delivery functions.
Now is the time to prepare for the retail recovery, we recommend store development teams do the following;
Review the strategy for lease negotiations and assess all rental contracts, know your options and what contributions may be available to you,
Analyse economies of scale options for production of units and fixtures,
Review all possibilities for finishes and materials exploring potential sustainable options,
Resolve any problematic operations and ongoing issues that may have arisen over the years,
Resolve any elements that cause maintenance headaches for your franchisees,
Mitigate costly unproductive time in the process,
Plan solutions for challenging formats, look at the set of challenges that usually arise and model solutions,
Review the tender process and update support materials and checklists if required,
Research hybrid models and different store formats,
And ensure the store concept and brand design guidelines remain intact.