You’ve got to look at your costs these days. Where are retailers finding savings?

Mike Mitchelson, Brampton Post Office, Cumbria

Sue Nithyanandan, Costcutter Epsom, Surrey

“Shopping around is vital, whether it’s with electricity suppliers or with anything else at all. We’ve found that going direct to suppliers has worked well for us. You’ve also got to sit down and look through your costs and identify anything that might be unnecessary. You have to be shopping around for CCTV, broadband, EPoS and even phone lines.

“Recently, I was looking at our telephone costs. From next year, BT is migrating their whole network to fibre and there are so many companies now that are offering these exact services. Different providers are coming up with different prices. BT was charging me £60 a month for my landline, but because voice calls are going through broadband now, it’s become much cheaper. I’ve managed to migrate it to my broadband system and now it will only cost me £11. These are all little things, but they add up.”

Mark Dudden, Albany News, Cardiff 

“We’ve gone through all our lighting. We have got a lot here in the shop and we found that, even now, not all of it was LED. So, we have replaced the lot with new LED bulbs. We have also looked at how we can cut costs through our waste disposal. The local council removes our waste and recycling at the moment. But moving forward, while we will still be doing some waste removal with them, we’re actually going to be reducing their services by 50% and switching to a local recycling firm that’s half the price.

“It’s a bit more effort from my point of view, but you’ve got to make savings here, there and everywhere. The council pick-ups are notoriously expensive, but this recycling firm will pick up it for a price or I can drop it off at their depot. And as their depot is on the way from my shop to my Booker wholesaler, I drop off all my cardboard and corrugates as I’m on my way there.”

Store advice: Make every inch count

Shelley Goel, One Stop Gospel Lane, Birmingham

“We’ve been clearing out all our fridges and getting new ones. There’s no point, in my mind, putting timers on them and things like that. You need to bite the bullet and change the fridges. The technology has moved on so much in recent years that if I change all the fridges, they’ll be so much more energy efficient that I’ll save more money that way. And they’re also quieter.

“It’s like having an old car. You can tinker with it, but you’ll end up spending more than the car is worth over two years, but just in smaller increments – a £200 trip to the garage one month, a £300 trip later that year. It’s better to just buy something newer and more efficient. We’ve got these Pure Cold fridges now which we got through One Stop. The beauty of that is it gives us more control and clout with them as well because we’ve got the symbol behind us. Nowadays, with the cost of living, the ones who’ll survive are the ones who have their eye on everything.”

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