ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

Work Tales – August 2010 have recorded the highest furniture sales throughout the whole of last year, therefore this August 2011 is a very challenging month for me to repeat the feat of last year. There were some strong mailers promotions, there were some not so strong mailers promotions, there were some really good killer items, there were some not so really good killer items – so I really hope that by 31st August…with everyone's hard work & effort...by hook or by crook, all of the stores can beat their last year actual sales…or in a worst case scenario, to at least to narrow the sales gap as much as possible.

I know that my Store Team have toiled very hard since 1st July in this Raya Battle, whatsmore the outside market is still soft, the consumers only start to shop for their Raya needs at the very last minute (it only started last week & hopefully it will pick up its momentum this week) and the very intense competition from our competitors which is slashing their prices crazily in order to increase their sales & market share. I want my Team to be rewarded. No doubt that the company have come out with the Raya Challenge competition at the Store & HQ level where the monetary rewards are to die for. But like everything else, there are flaws to this calculation mechanics. Why? Because this scheme only rewards those stores that didn’t do so well last year or for the smaller stores. The calculation is based on the actual sales of 2011 minus the actual sales of 2010 and the value will then be converted to percentage to see which store will have the biggest sales growth progress evolution. So currently, based on the ranking, the top stores who will earn the prize money comprises of smaller stores where as the bigger stores are stuck right at the bottom and these bigger stores are the ones who is contributing at least 80% of the overall company business. I really don’t know who came out with this idea and for me such a calculation is not really that fair. This incentive plan is a bit one-sided. If it were me to develop a new reward plan - it will be best to based on the budget because each stores are different in sizes and every store can compete at a more fairer level. Now, if the buyers were just pump in additional assortments into a smaller store, automatically that store will see a high jump in sales growth percentage and stand a chance to win the reward. And now my big stores teams are very sad and de-motivated. At the HQ level, last year, D31 did very well too, so it’s hard to emulate the sales figure now. So, good luck to me. This year 2011 is when I did some serious growing up. In fact, I believe I have grown up a lot faster (business wise) than I did in my early 20s.

I am also looking forward to the coming Raya holidays…it’s time for me to make time to go away for a little while to be refreshed and re-inspired. It is so easy at times to be buried in consistent mountains of pressure to perform and forgetting that sometimes the best way to come up with a solution to a creative problem is just to step back. Having breathers keep me passionate about my job; and I always return to it with brighter enthusiasm and a collection of new ideas. Isn’t it, where there are instances where you keep question how often do we get sucked into our daily routines and not find the joy in anything we do? How often do we get so competitive in what we do that we no longer enjoy it? How often do we focus on the bad stuff, whine all day and feel there’s no hope? Well, my goals involve approaching things a little bit differently and to be as authentic as I can. Even if I am being over the top or crazy, I want to do something different & original :)