Saving Money and Energy in Retail Business

By Paul Bennett, Executive Chairman.

I have been working with retail clients in delivering energy saving programmes for over 10 years now and during this time have managed to save some of the largest UK retailers many millions of pounds in energy costs.

The difficulties in saving money and energy in retail are immense and the time and investment required to achieve tangible results may seem incredibly daunting. Retailers face many dilemmas such as:-

• If it isn’t broken don’t fix it. Internally, there can be a tendency to leave machinery, technology or lighting running all the time to avoid any rebooting issues and costly delays to business. Such behaviour can result in up to 50% higher energy costs.
• Don’t compromise on retail lighting. Yes, lighting sells. Over-lighting circulation spaces and areas of shopper un-interest certainly works, but there are ways of making your whole lighting solution super efficient, without compromising (often even improving) the shopper experience.
• Time. The Store Manager is far too busy already to worry about saving energy! But with a few energy saving measures put in place, staff problems such as overheating changing rooms, till areas and cash store rooms, which often occur as a result of misused controls and over illumination, can be eliminated.

What I have experienced is that through listening to the retail management and staff’s key issues and exploring the operation of retailers’ building services systems, and in particular controls, amazing energy savings can be achieved relatively easily. And in my experience, sometimes savings can be as high as 50%, on a single site, through a single day’s work.

On top of this, employee engagement in energy efficiency can be introduced via a bespoke change management programme. As a result, staff and management feel happy about adopting new procedures, leading to less complaints all round and more time freed up to do what they do best – sell!

If you are interested in hearing more about my experience or discussing potential energy saving opportunities for your business, please contact me on 07815 82 44 62 or email paul@bssec.co.uk.

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