Sometimes because of the way her clients try and dig their heels in to avoid change. And sometimes because you can’t believe that people are just ignoring what she says when they’d have to pay a fortune to get such advice from anywhere else!

Over the last few weeks her programs have been a departure from the go into a shop, motivate the owner(s) and revive the shop.

Mary Portas Does It For Charity

In this series we’ve had a concerted campaign to improve the profits of a charity shop. And it proves more awkward than you might expect as volunteers who run it are perfectly capable of saying “forget it, I’m off!” which doesn’t really make for a stable work force.

However, despite the difficulties of working in the charity sector Mary duly helps the shop to double their profits, and at the same time justify employing a full time manager.

And the result is that Mary’s way of handling a charity shop is rolled out to the rest of the charity’s chain of shops across the UK.

Mary also helped other charities by putting on a retailing boot camp where shop managers and volunteers could learn how to sell and position their shops for their customers.

And during the screening I’m sure other charities have taken notes to apply in their own shops.

Mary Portas Saves Tewkesbury Town Centre

The Tewkesbury townsfolk get together and invite Mary Portas to help them “Save Our Shops.”

First she makes sure that she gets thoroughly despondent by checking out how another town is even worse off and how landlords don’t really help themselves by allowing vast swathes of town centres to lie fallow. Unfortunately shops that are not used reduces the footfall to the remaining shops. Some of those shops close which reduces footfall to those that are left and it becomes a vicious circle.

The Mary Portas solution at Tewkesbury is to get as many of the retailers as possible involved in working out possible solutions, rather than simply listening to them whining about what wont work.

This is quite a creative thing to do. However, Mary makes the point during this show that department stores run events all the time. It’s something none of the retailers seemed to latch onto.

A town centre event every month would really help the shopkeepers by increasing footfall into the town centre.

Examples would be: Country fair (which to be fair Tewkesbury ran and the retailers attended); Easter parade; a Tewkesbury raft building weekend; what about a German market, or a Christmas market?; vintage car rally, fun run, run for charity, fashion show or fashion parade…

The list goes on. Anyone can see that there’s a wide variety of inexpensive but interesting events they can hold. 

Seth Godin and a bunch of others have produced a free book of questions and answers all about "Tribes" and based on his latest book:, called Tribes.

While I really like the thought that we all belong to a tribe led by a leader of some sort I really think that we’re in danger of over complicating life.

If you look at the compact Oxford English dictionary definition of "tribe" you get the following:

noun 1 a social division in a traditional society consisting of linked families or communities with a common culture and dialect. 2 derogatory a distinctive close-knit social or political group. 3 (tribes) informal large numbers of people. 4 (in ancient Rome) each of several (originally three) political divisions. 5 Biology a taxonomic category that ranks above genus and below family or subfamily.

The common theme for tribes appears to be that they’re closely linked by common bonds, either social, political or biological.

The problem with using the tribes to express a market segment or niche is that it’s quite possible to be part of a market segment without close bonds to anyone else in that niche.

In addition, when you belong to a tribe you are fiercely loyal to that tribe. You wouldn’t belong to any other tribe. And yet people swap between market segments, or tribes, as they mature or have different experiences. Maybe the company that had their loyalty goes bust or commits a major marketing mistake.

The danger of thinking in a tribal analogy is that you are assuming a tribes complete unswerving loyalty to its leader, aka company. You’re also assuming the tribe is made up of people with similar attitudes and culture.

Both those assumptions would be wrong. American students have a different culture to British students who have a different culture to Australian students who have a different one to Japanese students who are in turn different to Indian students or French students.

So whilst I liked the tribes analogy I do think if it’s carried too far companies may become complacent and rely on their "tribe" to buy whatever they produce regardless of quality or fitness for purpose.

Business reality shows are big business. Previously I blogged about the fantastic BBC series “The Troubleshooter” with Sir John Harvey-Jones. More recently we’ve had Sir Alan Sugar’s “The Apprentice.”

Around the same time we got a dose of Brummy with a double glazing firm run with an iron fist in an iron glove by the Armstrongs.

And of course we have a wide variety of kitchen-related business shows. Of which Gordon Ramsey’s “Kitchen Nightmare” is far and away the best. Although to be fair I have really enjoyed the current series of “Restaurant” where couples are given a restaurant to run — and may the best “man” win. I hadn’t watched the first few episodes so I had to cram them in by watching them on Virgin replay. 

Obviously Duncan Bannatyne is in there with Dragon’s Den and his companion Dragon Peter Jones with the terrible Tycoon show.

We’ve had Mary Portas showing exactly how small fashion boutiques can be nurtured, and sometimes dragged, into the 21st century.

And we also have the slightly quirky “Hotel Inspector” where it seems as though all failing hoteliers have the same opinion of the advice they’re given. Again the interesting thing most recently was that the “Inspector” helped to improve one hotel only to go back and discover the owners didn’t want to do it anymore! And really there was no surprise there.

We’ve had kids reality business shows and we’ve also had mid morning business shows – like “Mind Your Own Business.”

So far most of these series have been quite interesting to watch and useful to pick up wrinkles or different approaches to common marketing and business problems.

However, the main thing that keeps coming through all these programs is that the business owners can’t see beyond where they are. They may be making significant losses but they haven’t done anything different to help themselves.

After all doing the same thing gets the same results.

Because the businesses are so desperate to get money coming into the tills they forget the one thing they need to look after.

Yes! The customer. They don’t put themselves in their customers shoes. Or if they do they don’t think it matters…

The morale to take from all these shows?

See everything you do from a customers point of view. Either ask them yourself or ask someone else to. However, you do it find out. Then address the issues raised and let them all know.

As I’ve noted before it seems it’s invariably the case that the shop owners start off well then get into a rut and their shops become more charity shops than fashion houses.

Welcome To Fashionable Islington

Divorced couple Ruth and Anthony continue to run their boutique unhappily called “Comfort and Joy.” Designer Ruth is producing clothes that compete head-on with major chains and she’s trying to compete on price.

Not a good situation to be in.

When Mary suggests changing the name Anthony is not impressed and explains the name is a clever reference to a 70′s Sex manual called “The Joy of Sex” by Dr Alex Comfort.

As Mary points out it’s a book that the tribe the shop should be attracting wouldn’t even have heard of.

So which tribe’s that then?

Clever Mary Portas has realised that with Ruth designing and making her clothes for the shop the shop could clean-up by selling them to the individualistic woman shopper.

The first thing you notice as you walk in the shop is a central Berlin wall down the middle made up of hanging rails and topped by handbags.

On one side is Anthony’s clothes a mish mash of designers sourced from around the globe. and the other contains Ruth’s designs – some good, some not so hot.

Down With The Walls!

The first thing Mary suggests is removing the Berlin wall. Anthony is not impressed.

Then Mary suggests taking down the wall that blocks Ruth’s design studio from the shop, so Ruth can go out and talk to the customers about the designs or simply say hello from the design table. And of course Anthony wasn’t impressed.

In fact Mary got quite frustrated by Anthony’s lack of enthusiasm for many of the points that at one moment she looked as if she’d throw in the towel.

Finally she takes Anthony material shopping to Liberty’s and there she finds he’s an absolute star for choosing exactly the right materials.

She also gives them both the chance to dress a side street shop window at Harvey-Nicks. And they do a good job of it. And of course Anthony is not impressed by what he sees as being “damned with faint praise.”

After many moments of Anthony being under-whelmed, under-impressed and reluctant he relents and takes part in changing the shops’ name to “Handmade and Found” (originally made and found and subtly improved by Mary by to Handmade and Found), designs and stamps the bags with the new logo and designs the new shop window and incorporates his designer buy-ins with Ruth’s garments.

And The Result?

Of course the refit brought Ruth’s designer backroom and her credentials out into the shop.

Anthony’s materials really added something to Ruth’s designs and they both found that they worked well together. The shop also become one unified shop rather than a shop with battle lines drawn between two talented and creative people.

The tribe they brought into to see the garments were very pleased and Ruth (if only she could see her own value) is able to charge more than she has been.