Nisa-Today’s chief executive, Neil Turton, has moved to reassure existing and potential members that the buying group is on a secure financial footing despite the economic climate. Turton revealed to members at its recent conference in Dubai that it had completed a negotiation to renew its financial facilities and loans with Barclays and also favourably renegotiated its covenants.
“We are delighted to secure our future financial facilities with Barclays,” said Turton. “To engender such confidence from our financier, Nisa has to run well and be seen to run well.”
Sales were ahead of its 7% growth target for the current financial year at just under 10%, though product inflation was running at 6%, he said. Nisa was expecting to hit a sales target of £1.22bn for the year to April 2009, he said. But the group was reducing its budgeted profit by more than £1m to enable the benefits to be passed to members in better prices and promotions. Nisa now expected to make a net profit of £2.4m, giving it a profit margin of just 0.3%, he added.
Last year, Nisa added an extra week of promotions for retailers, in October, and following the success of this strategy had decided to run a similar extra week of deals next week. Turton said he expected this to be the group’s most successful promotional week in terms of volume, and that it would process 1.5 million cases through its ambient warehouse in Scunthorpe for the first time.
Getting existing members to buy more products from Nisa remained central to the group’s success, he said. Sales for members adopting Nisa New Era Trading Terms were up 25% this year while sales to its symbol group were up 32%.
In order to continue to grow its symbol operation, Nisa has been working with retail designer CDW on a new project labelled Nisa Store of the Future. The group is set to roll out a revamped fascia and design to a number of stores on a trial basis in the next few months. The first will open on 22 November in Maylandsea, Essex.
“We are delighted to secure our future financial facilities with Barclays,” said Turton. “To engender such confidence from our financier, Nisa has to run well and be seen to run well.”
Sales were ahead of its 7% growth target for the current financial year at just under 10%, though product inflation was running at 6%, he said. Nisa was expecting to hit a sales target of £1.22bn for the year to April 2009, he said. But the group was reducing its budgeted profit by more than £1m to enable the benefits to be passed to members in better prices and promotions. Nisa now expected to make a net profit of £2.4m, giving it a profit margin of just 0.3%, he added.
Last year, Nisa added an extra week of promotions for retailers, in October, and following the success of this strategy had decided to run a similar extra week of deals next week. Turton said he expected this to be the group’s most successful promotional week in terms of volume, and that it would process 1.5 million cases through its ambient warehouse in Scunthorpe for the first time.
Getting existing members to buy more products from Nisa remained central to the group’s success, he said. Sales for members adopting Nisa New Era Trading Terms were up 25% this year while sales to its symbol group were up 32%.
In order to continue to grow its symbol operation, Nisa has been working with retail designer CDW on a new project labelled Nisa Store of the Future. The group is set to roll out a revamped fascia and design to a number of stores on a trial basis in the next few months. The first will open on 22 November in Maylandsea, Essex.
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