Our quarterly Retail Spotlight offsites are fast becoming a highlight on the company calendar. Partly because we get wined and dined in style, but mostly because we actually get to spend time together face-to-face, which makes a welcome change from the endless video calls that are the staple of our remote working lives.
And so we found ourselves in Rutland on a sunny Tuesday morning, ready for a half-day of serious company presentations and an afternoon on the water in a veritable armada of stand-up paddleboards, kayaks and pedalos.
But more on that later. First, the serious bit.
Peter, Gerry, Julie and I each took a slot, covering what we learned over the last quarter and where the business is heading over the next twelve months. Julie took us through the data side, which is a good reminder of how much of what we do rests on her and her team.
Then lunch, where pizza was served and gobbled down in record time by the hungry Retail Spotlight gang.
We started on the Rutland Belle, and spent a relaxing hour together on the water before things got competitive.
Then we split up, and very quickly realised that Stu and Robbie's chosen form of water transport was in some serious need of a liberal spray of WD-40. Their pedalo could be heard within a 5-mile radius as they churned up the waterways, terrifying the local wildlife and any young children within earshot.
The rest of us hopped in kayaks and jumped onto stand-up paddle boards. However, kayaking, as it turns out, is a lot more demanding on your lower back than I remember it.
Which is the long way of saying if it looks like I'm trying to lie down flat on my kayak, it's because that is 100% what I am trying to do.
Hindsight is 20/20 – if I could rewind time would I have taken a stand-up paddle board? Absolutely! Even the World's Loudest Pedalo would've been preferable to the Physio Dream Boat I found myself in.
The mini golf group had a far more civilised afternoon of it, strolling the course in the sunshine while the rest of us sweated it out on the water.
Finlay won, and has been kind enough to remind us at regular intervals since.
We finished with dinner at a local restaurant – good food, drinks a plenty and a few hearty chuckles at the day's antics.
Work is fivedays out of seven. What we do matters, and who we do it with matters more.That's easy to lose sight of when most of the week happens through a screen, soit was good to be reminded how lucky we are to have the team we've got.
Retail Spotlight collects near-real-time EPOS data from more than 13,000 convenience stores across the UK. Leading FMCG brands use it to track category performance and distribution, measure NPD, evaluate pricing and see what national averages leave hidden. To find out more, hit the contact button above to get in touch.
