The successes and challenges of female convenience store owners were highlighted at JTI’s Give Her Engagement event.

Held in Birmingham on 26 September, the event was attended by many female retailers from both unaffiliated and symbol group stores. A handful of male retailers also attended to learn more about the experiences faced by their female counterparts when running a store. Representatives from the ACS and the Fed were also at the event.

Opening the event, JTI area sales manager Julia Glanville said: “This event is all about supporting women in business. It is tough out there and I’ve always worked in a male dominated industry. I know about the challenges that we face.”

Several talks were given, providing advice to attendees on empowerment and general business management.

Tara Boparai, founder of Unlock Your Potential Coaching, advised retailers on the importance of “showing up” to events, and not just “turning up.” Explaining the meaning, she said: “What’s the difference? When you turn up to an event, you’ve just attended.

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“But when you show up, you bring your whole self. You engage with others and try to take something valuable to your life away. You can walk away with a lot of experiences. When you go to conferences and take your personality and get to know different people from different backgrounds you would have never met before, you so much more.”

Maria Thake, director at Truly Inspired Coaching and Training, then spoke about unconscious bias and how to reframe negative mindsets. She said: “What we find as women sometimes we are [described in ways] that can be taken as negative.

“I remember being told I’m quite sensitive. I am. It makes me a brilliant coach, a brilliant friend and I’m empathetic. I own it now. In some situations, words which can be taken as negative can be awesome. It’s about us owning these situations and knowing it’s okay to be certain ways.”

Attendees were also provided advice on how to manage different staff by Natalie Reeve, head of commercial at Better Retailing’s parent company Newtrade Media. She stressed the importance of learning individual learning styles of different staff members.

For example, a shopfloor employee might be better at learning a task by being shown how to do it, instead of receiving verbal instructions. She added one management style isn’t the best for running a business and store owners would have to be more flexible, dependent on situation.

An urgent task would require a more authoritative and stricter approach, while store owners might benefit from giving staff more independence if they were training someone for a supervisor position.

Register to attend this year’s Women in Convenience event