Do our politicians truly care about the SME’s within the independent sector?

As we approach the election and we see a considerable amount of jockeying for position on the basis of “please vote for me”; once again we find Government departments, with the blessing of politicians, lining up to penalise our industry under the guise of controlling obesity.

Whether it’s the Scottish Parliament putting in place rules and regulations based around where impulse products and soft drinks can be merchandised through ill advised and outrageous proposals to our industry; or Westminster with a view towards a fat tax against products that they believe lead to obesity or are a contributory factor towards obesity.

I have said before, the greatest threat to the independent sector is not the march of the multiples but the incompetence of the Government applying rules and regulations against legitimate and legal products. At the same time they are taking away the freedom of choice from the general population, presumably on the basis that we are all incapable of making decisions for ourselves and, therefore, by conclusion we must assume that politicians and leaders in the Civil Service are far more informed, intelligent, capable, ethical and honourable than the rest of the UK population.

Thank God they are saving us! In reality I sincerely hope that during the election campaign, where they are forced to actually listen to the people they serve, they will start to understand the effect their ridiculous legislation is having on our society.

Entering the conference season

After returning from a highly successful Sugro business convention and consequently looking at my diary for the next four months, it begins to hit home that we are entering the conference season for our trade channel. From a Sugro point of view it’s an excellent opportunity to talk to wholesalers and suppliers collectively, discuss strategic objectives and performance statistics and reinforce our mission statement.

The Sugro conference theme for this year is “Perfect Partners” - not a new speed dating service - but reinforcement that the success of all our businesses, whether supplier, wholesaler or retailer, is only as good as the partnerships we share. Principally this is about getting the products at the right price, with merchandised visibility to the consumer because you can’t sell anything if it’s not available or obscured from sale in some way.

I will tell you more about the Sugro conference in future blogs but, in the meantime, the conference season rolls on with the Today Group off to Madrid in the next seven days; the Federation of Wholesale Distributors (FWD) conference on 10th May; followed by the Sugro conference on 14th May; the Landmark conference at the end of the month in Dubrovnik and the Scottish Wholesale Association (SWA) conference on 18th June.

When all the conferences are finished, it will be interesting to establish the similarity of the message, because I believe the objective for all of these gatherings is ultimately the same - though they may be dressed differently. Let’s see how it progresses, I’m sure this will be the source of more blogs in the future.

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