I loathe sales (except ours)

Wednesday, July 08, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Retail sector | Tags: entrepreneur, Ros Simmons, women in business, VIE at home, sales, Entrepreneur’s Diary

Ros Simmons, CEO, VIE at home: Well, we are firmly into the mad ‘summer sale’ selling season. I’m sure I’m not alone in that I loathe sales. I can never find what I want, the stores look messy but, at the end of the day, we are all looking for a good deal and it definitely gets people out looking. Our own VIE at home summer sale started two weeks ago…

Entrepreneur’s Diary

We had a record day on ecommerce, partly as we sent a teaser email out the night before. What I can never work out is that for us our ATV (average transaction value) goes up – even with 40% off?! – anyone else have these stats?

My main activity this week has been working up our German launch plan with our new German sales team.

It’s very exciting to work with a blank piece of paper and create a commission structure that will be ‘best of breed’. Forecasting the stock will be interesting as I hear that in Germany the natural look is very popular – I’m talking about make-up, of course!

The translations should be interesting, too. Apparently ‘radiant skin’ in German translates into something like ‘radioactive skin’. Maybe I could be the next Alistair Cook writing American Journey – only writing on setting up a British cosmetics company in Germany.

You can catch up with Ros Simmons’ previous posts in our Entrepreneur’s Diary series, in which we follow a male and a female CEO to discover life behind the scenes.