A Day in the Life of a Retail Assistant #94 Hi everyone! It has been another exciting week here in Turmeaus Norfolk!
On Monday, I was in the shop with Ciaran. We had loads of online orders to pick! It took us a long time but we got there in the end. In the middle of my pickings, I received a request to create a news piece for the C.Gars news page about our online cigar auctions! So I politely asked Ciaran if he could pick the rest of my orders and serve the customers in the shop whilst I contacted the auction team to ask which lots they wanted promoting. They sent over some very interesting cigars indeed including two Cohibas and a Trinidad which was never sold commercially and only available for attendees of the Dinner of the Century on Saturday, October 22, 1994. So I quickly created the news piece and carried on helping the team.
Tuesday was my marketing day and boy was I busy! Firstly I created an article for the C.Gars cigar library – It was about Douglas Laing & Co whisky, you can read it here. As always I spent some time taking the pictures and I think they turned out really well! Taking pictures of bottles has always been a weakness of mine so for them to turn out this good was a real morale booster! Afterwards I completed all of my shop newsletters ready to be sent out on the 1st of March. During this I was discussing ideas with the sales team, the result of this process was two amazing deals in March! Firstly on Monday the 3rd of March it is International Irish Whiskey Day! So we will be having a sale of 10% off all Irish Whiskey in store! I imagine this will be very popular so I have ordered some extra bottles to make sure we have enough stock to keep everyone happy! The next deal in-store will be on the 17th of March, which is St Patricks day! We will be offering 20% off any full priced Peterson Pipe! This will make them an unbelievable price! In addition Ben has made a sampler which involves a Peterson St Patricks Day pipe, click here to take a look.
After I completed all of my newsletters, I was discussing ways we can make the cigar subscription even more appealing and I thought snacks is the way to go. I did some research into some other subscription services and a lot include a snack to pair with what they supply so I thought I would do the same! So my subscribers for April will certainly get an extra bonus with their New World Cigar Subscription! Afterwards I took the pictures for Cuban and New World cigars of the month for the monitors in our humidors. Finally I was asked to help out with the images for online listings, we are now trying to make all of our images more uniform by having them on a plain white background. So my task is to edit out the background of all of the Cuban cigars and rotate them so they are straight. This is a very long task which will take me a long time, however as many of my loyal readers and customers know, I am always happy to help.
On Thursday, I was back in the shop. I started the day by going around and stocking both Cuban and New World humidors. I then served a lovely lady who was picking up some pipe tobacco for her husband. She is a regular customer for her husband and always comes with a list (which I love). His order was a lot bigger than normal, but the more tobacco you buy, the more you save! Afterwards I spent some time filling up the pipe tobacco shelves. It’s always great to show the vast array of tobaccos we have! I also served a couple who are starting to become more regular. I recommended them to try the Peterson Connemara Black, as an old regular loved it as it reminded him of a black forest gateau. Afterwards I continued with my online listing task.
On Friday, I was picking orders with Ciaran, we got through them incredibly quick despite the vast amount we had! I also sent my manager a marketing content report to let her know what I have been up to and what I could improve on. I did receive some news that a picture I took was the most liked picture we uploaded on Instagram in the last two weeks which made me incredibly happy! It’s always nice to see some recognition of your work. Later on in the afternoon, Josh and I worked together to complete the Cuban stock count.
On Saturday, I was back in with Josh and Porscha. Josh and I took care of the online orders, whilst Porscha dealt with the customers in store. We were running 10% off everything online so we decided to help the packing department and packed some orders too.
I hope you have enjoyed this week’s blog and I hope to see you all in store very soon.
So long for now
Oliver
