HGA Group

Fascinating reading...................Dual-pricing is a menace that demonstrates how the perception of value is more important than the reality................... Sir Jack Petchey, the businessman and investor who died in June aged 98, received, quite rightly, a full-page obituary in this newspaper last week. It was full of fascinating detail, not least that, from a very early age, he earned money running errands for neighbours. Aged 11, he received one of his first business lessons from Eric Woods, a greengrocer, who told him to divide a box of tomatoes in two and price one half higher than the other. “Some like them cheap,” Woods said, “and some like them expensive.” And that is how you end up with a fortune worth £434 million. Well, not quite. But the lesson in tomato pricing given to Petchey is as relevant today as it was in prewar east London. Indeed, it forms part of the thinking that would help to secure a Nobel prize in economics for Daniel Kahneman, another recent recipient of a Times obituary when he died in March. The founding father of behavioural economics, Kahneman became best known for his Prospect Theory, which says that consumers and investors are more risk-averse than they are greedy. In an experiment, he showed that people felt twice as much pain at losing $100 as they did pleasure from gaining the same amount. We may believe we are sophisticated and intelligent, but as consumers and investors we do not behave rationally. Instead, we frequently rely on heuristics, the process of using mental shortcuts to arrive at decisions. The most fascinating example of this is another aspect of pricing that Kahneman explored — anchoring. This is when shoppers, hurriedly buying products, try to evaluate whether something is good or bad value in relation to an “anchor price”......Frequently our anchors are irrational and not rooted in objective reality. #dynamicpricing #twotierpricing #rationalconsumerbehaviour

A great antidote to election fatigue.... the story of Louis Vuitton luggage. "English princesses had miniature renderings of them made for their dolls. Maharajas preferred to use theirs to store one-of-a-kind tea sets. The earliest regal fan was an empress: Eugénie de Montijo of France. One hundred and seventy years later there is still no receptacle considered to be more stately, striking or stylish than a Louis Vuitton trunk. Few fashion icons come as densely packed. That’s not just in regard to the broad variety of contents it can carry — caviar! Croquet sets! On-the-go casinos! — but its level of design detail, craftsmanship and history. Asnières is LV’s heart and soul — and where, in 1858, the very first commercial Vuitton trunk was put together. Hundreds of artisans still work there building bespoke special orders and passing down traditional skills and savvy. The location was initially chosen due to its position close to the River Seine, so that it was easier to receive the requisite raw materials and wood. There’s a toiletries kit for the couture designer Jeanne Lanvin (1926); a vanity case for Sharon Stone (2000); trunks for watercolours, flowers — even croquet sets, skateboards and, for the French string quartet leader Pierre Sechiari in 1895, a violin. More than a century later, the pieces on the Louis Vuitton website boast that they can carry a hanging wardrobe, a cocktail bar, a doll’s house, even a pop-up casino. Louis Vuitton trunks are beautiful and adaptable, clever and useful — just don’t expect to see one on a baggage carousel any time soon!!" #luxuryluggage #louisvuitton #luxuryheritage #craftsmanship

Interesting - "A lack of meaningfulness at work - What I do do does not contribute...."Employees dubbed “quiet quitters” are so-called because they do the minimum work required in their job and do not go above and beyond in their efforts. Research from Gallup found this month that the UK’s employees were among the least motivated by their work in Europe, with only 10 per cent saying that they were engaged in their job. The lack of engagement in work is estimated to cost the UK economy 11 per cent of GDP, or £257 billion annually. The 2 major reasons seem to be: "A lack of meaningfulness at work, so a sense that what I do doesn’t contribute. The second factor is harmful aspects of work such as burnout, toxic work environments, when work is so draining that even though I may want to still engage I can’t." Helen Richardson at Moorhouse Consulting said: “We’ve seen an increase from clients asking for help engaging and motivating their workforce. Clients are feeling the impact of quiet quitting on their key performance metrics and looking to us for support in boosting productivity." “For us, the key is generating desire in employees and helping them to ‘fall back in love’ with their work. How? By working in partnership with organisations on their vision, values and culture and helping employees to understand and articulate the impact their role has on the big picture.” #meaningfulnessatwork #quietquitting #whatdoesworkmean?

The Franchisee world - Interesting well done Domino's - "over 90 per cent of our franchisees started out making pizzas or as delivery drivers and have worked their way up.” For Andrew Rennie Domino's UK Chief Executive, the scheme is partly about providing his “Dominoids” with an entrepreneurial alternative to climbing the corporate ladder as an employee. “If you are a franchisee, you are running your own business. Within the walls of the franchise, you get to choose how you do that and where to invest your time,” he said. “Although not everyone wants to be in business — there is risk and you have to take on debt — over 90 per cent of our franchisees started out making pizzas or as delivery drivers and have worked their way up.” The sight of its branded scooters zipping around Kent must have made quite an impression on Lucy Harman. Not only has she been working for what is now Britain’s biggest pizza chain since shortly after she left school 16 years ago, she also has just sunk her life savings into the business and is busy preparing to open her own Domino’s franchise in Hayling Island, Hampshire, complete with her very own delivery bikes to look after. The chance to run her own small piece of the more than 1,300-strong Domino’s UK branch network came as the result of a company initiative called Homegrown Heroes, aimed at encouraging successful employees to take the plunge and become franchisees. Harman, the first woman to become a Homegrown Hero, said that despite her being “a walking Domino’s dictionary” and one of the firm’s top-performing store managers, without the push provided by the scheme she would not have had the confidence to go for it. “I don’t come from a business background. All my family work in regular jobs. Homegrown Heroes gave me the opportunity I needed. I don’t think I would ever have done it by myself.” #growingentrepreneurs #dominospizza #becomingaboss #franchisee

India’s overall luxury market is estimated to grow to $30 billion by 2030, with 60% of existing consumers spending on luxury every year, according to a study by Deloitte. India also is not immune to a shortage of great retail talent. “Talent has moved and continues to move—about 30-40% of all the job placements we do now for luxury retail are from hospitality, while another 15% come from aviation. Pre-covid, these numbers stood at 20-30% per annum and 10% respectively,” said UDIT MITTAL, founder and managing director at recruitment firm UNISON INTERNATIONAL CONSULTING (The Recruitment Company) International Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Luxury retail recruitment at the firm has grown two-threefold. "Companies also realise that selling at the store is very important and no matter how good the product is, if the customer service is not good, nobody will buy it,” Mittal said. #luxuryretail #retailinindia #retailtalentinindia #buildinggreatretailtalent

There's a lot written about the soft labour market and the challenges of securing a new role - there are some green shoots..... "The number of people taking up permanent jobs fell again in May, as vacancies dropped and demand for staff declined. The latest Report on Jobs survey, compiled by KPMG and the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, shows that the labour market continued its slowdown, with permanent staff appointments falling for the 20th month in a row. A shortage of vacancies and slow decision-making from companies were said to be behind the decline. However, the fall in permanent job appointments was the smallest in more than a year. There was also a slight decline in the number of temporary job appointments, the survey of 400 recruitment firms found. A growing number of people searching for permanent jobs pushed staff availability to its highest level since December 2020. Researchers said this was due to a mixture of reduced demand for staff, a rise in redundancies and an increase in unemployment. There were also regional variations in the labour market, with a sharp decline in the number of permanent appointments reported in the south of England. By contrast, researchers found a small increase in job placements in the Midlands." #findinganewrole #beinginformed #howtosecureyournextrole

Fascinating reading...it really is India's decade..."One in six of the Fortune 500 tech companies are run by people of Indian heritage. From family values to education and entrepreneurial spirit, India offers lessons from which Britain could learn." Leena Nair of CHANEL Satya Nadella of Microsoft Sundar Pichai of Alphabet® Raj Subramaniam of FedEx Arvind Krishna of IBM Laxman Narasimhan of Starbucks - discuss their defining factors. - A culture of learning, Family values, Great universities and Immigrant entrepreneurialism. #leadersfromindia #indiasdecade #indianleaders #indiantalent

Kudos to The Co-op in leading the way in terms of diversity........... Debbie White and Shirine Khoury-Haq say that although diversity is crucial to the group’s recruitment process they would always pick the best person for the job. When Debbie White took on the job of chairing The Co-Operative Group in January, it was a significant milestone for UK plc. In joining Shirine Khoury-Haq, the chief executive, she was creating an all-female duo at the top of the group — a trio, in fact, if Rachel Izzard the company’s chief financial officer, is included. As White says, “it’s unusual to have two women at the top. It’s also relatively unusual for businesses to have any women in the top four roles from a corporate governance perspective, but the Co-op board is more than 60 per cent women.” In fact, women make up 53 per cent of the total workforce at the 180-year-old mutual, a business that spans funeral homes, legal services and insurance, as well as its familiar supermarkets. Diversity factors heavily into the Co-Op’s recruitment process, but according to Khoury-Haq it “was never the intention to say that we should have a female chair. My view has never been to try to put women in roles. It’s been to go through that process and then pick the absolute best person for the job.” As for working with White? “It was love at first sight.” A view that White clearly shares: “The feeling was mutual.” Does this mean the cogs are starting to turn in the right direction when it comes to female leadership? Khoury-Haq, 52, hopes that it does, “but we know that across the corporate world there isn’t enough of a pipeline coming through. We have talent programmes here for women and ethnic minorities to ensure they’re able to progress into senior roles and to stay in the workforce, but if the rest of the corporate world doesn’t focus on that, then the cogs won’t turn in the way that they should.” White, 62, who in 2013 called for the introduction of quotas for women on boards, agrees that more progress is needed to inspire the next generation: “Everybody looks up to more senior people and they think, ‘Well, that person doesn’t look like me, so can I really get there?’ That’s quite a challenge for younger people coming through. And that’s diversity in its wholeness and inclusion in its wholeness, not just a single focus on women.” #femaleleadership #leadfromthetop #diversity #diversityinretail

HGA Group we seek 2 Luxury HR Professionals as below. Contact me for further information. #HRprofessionals #HRtalentacquisition #HRtalentdevelopment

HGA Group we are looking to secure senior HR digital transformation expertise, from the fashion, beauty or luxury sectors. Contact me for further information. #HRDigitaltransformation #HRDATAtransformation #HRtechnology