The Wendover Group's staff have over 50 years of combined experience working for many of Europe’s largest and most successful retailers and leisure companies.

Our services can help answer the following questions:

• What level of sales can we expect at a particular site given a proposed brand and size of store?
• What market share can we expect in each residential area in the catchment area of a new store?
• What will be the impact of a new store on existing stores?
• What is the expected level of performance for each branch?  Is the branch over- or under- performing?
• Where are the next 100 opportunities for a new store?
• How many stores will the market support?  In which regions of the country?
• What is the likely to be the most successful brand/format a location given the expected catchment demographic profile? 

The following are specific areas in which the Wendover Group are experienced:

Site assessment

Sales prediction models are used to estimate the sales that a retail or leisure venue can expect to achieve at a particular site.  A variety of techniques are employed such as regression, spatial interaction and analogue models. 

 The best technique or combination of techniques in any particular situation is highly sensitive to the data available and the characteristics of the specific retail or leisure market. 

The output is a sales prediction for the individual site and, depending on the technique employed, a prediction of the impact of the new opening on existing stores both of the same brand and for competition stores in proximity to the site.

The sales predictions can then be fed into a financial model to estimate overall viability of the site given cost of development, operating costs and the net effect of cannibalisation of sales at other stores.

The Wendover Group team have a long track record of building site assessment models for grocery stores, superstores, cinemas, bingo clubs, bank branches, post offices, lottery terminals, wine warehouses, betting shops, high street retailers and retail parks.

Opportunity scanning

Opportunity scanning involves running a sales prediction and impact model for a large number of locations covering all conceivable sites for a new store.  For instance, a retailer may wish to consider all major road junctions, all retail parks, all town centres, all forecourt sites, all local parades etc.  The model outputs for every potential location can then be mapped out to provide an "opportunity surface" of the market.  The number of potential locations can range from a few hundred to several tens of thousands.

The results are used either to support store roll out or more strategically to determine the number of supportable stores within the market.

Format alignment 

Where a retailer has a large estate covering both high streets and local centres, improvements in market penetration can be realised by aligning the offering at each store with the demographics of the local catchment, the relative strength of the centre and the set of competition brands present.  By segmenting the estate in this way action can be taken, ranging from sub-branding to selectively merchandising each store.

Setting stretch targets

Sales targets at a branch level are often set primarily on historical performance multiplied by a percentage.  This can cause problems with motivation when exceptional performance is followed with an unrealistic target for the following period or where poor performance is rewarded with a easily achievable target.

Using peer group analysis and performance benchmarking realistic stretch targets can be set for each branch in line with equivalent branches, market conditions and competition.  The overall corporate target can be fairly spread among all the contributing branches in a fair and transparent manner.