A Day in the Life of a Retail Assistant #55

Hi everyone! It was great to see some familiar faces and some not so local customers visit for the first time.

On Monday, Porscha and I were blown away by the amount of online orders we had to pick! The flash sale for the weekend, which was the Casual smoke sampler, was extremely popular! So much so that we ran out! Meanwhile I served a gentleman who was from Walsall! Which is not far from where I grew up! He was on the last day of his holiday and really wanted to visit our shop. I was very happy to serve him and was surprised to find out that his first cigar he smoked was an Aladino! Usually more experienced smokers tend to enjoy Aladinos, however to hear a relative beginner enjoy one really shows that there is no real beginner cigar as they all can be enjoyed whether you’re a novice or experienced. He treated himself to another Aladino as well as the H. Upmann Majestic. It’s safe to say he enjoyed our visit and I’m sure we will see more from him!

On Tuesday, I was joined by Sarah, we picked orders as usual and had a good tidy of the shop. Afterwards we continued our work on the till system, making sure all the cigars were correctly priced removing duplicates to ensure a more streamlined experience. 

On Wednesday, It was Porscha and myself running the shop again. Most of our regulars will be used to Josh being in the shop as that is his favourite place to be however, we have decided to train him up in other aspects of the job. So he was with Ciaran and learning the different aspects of pipe tobacco, how to pick them for online orders and also what tobacco goes in our samplers. Meanwhile I was helping Ben edit his pictures for the website, he is the man behind our tobacco samplers and wants to find better ways to promote them so he has been taking more artistic pictures and I have been helping to teach him how to edit them. I was also working with our general manager to find better ways to keep on top of our stock levels, ensuring we are ordering stock we need and overstocking in other places.

On Thursday, it was my day to concentrate on my pieces of marketing, however it seemed like I spent most of my time training other members of staff. To begin with I helped all of our retail staff understand our humidors a lot better. I trained them on what temperature and humidity our humidors should be kept at (69%-72% and around 18 degrees celsius for those interested) and what to do if they are high or low. I also spent time teaching them about plume and what to do if they see any as well as generic humidor maintenance. 

Afterwards I wrote an article for the C.Gars cigar library explaining about the history of whisky which you can read here. After this I was with Ben again training him on getting great pictures of his pipe tobacco. He has admitted that creativity isn’t his strong point, however with practise he will get there. We took a few pictures of different samplers and then spent some time editing them. After a few blips we got there and they are now on the website and he will be working through them all make sure you take a look! After spending time with Ben, I took pictures of my own, they are for next month’s cigar of the month of which I can’t reveal yet but they are ones that I have never considered trying but after reading about them I may have to treat myself! 

On Friday, I was back in the shop with Sarah, we were updating displays and having a general tidy up. As always in the afternoon we had our Cuban stock count, which we sped through incredibly fast!

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks going on in Norfolk and I hope to see you all again soon!

So long for now

Oliver