مرحبا بكم وشكرا لكم لزيارة

Welcome and thank you for visiting

نحن نمكن النجاح التجاري وننشئ أماكن ثقافية وتجارية جديدة مقاومة للمستقبل

Who we are

Stephen Spencer + Associates has been born from the cultural retail revolution in the early 1990s, and a background working with, and learning from, the brightest stars and most prestigious brands in the retail, leisure, and tourism sectors.

SS+A is a customer experience consultancy crafted to drive enterprise growth in the cultural and retail sectors. We help organisations adapt and flourish in changing markets by innovating products, services, and experiences for evolving customer demands.

SS+A, as architects of ambience, enhance customer experiences by empowering organisations to be more creative, people-centric, and profitable.

What we do

Our promise to our customers – we create wonder and add value via the architecture of our systems and processes. Our promise is underpinned by ROEE – Return on excellent experiences.

  • We create better and more profitable touchpoints for the customer.

  • We extend the opportunity for the customer. + We enable commercial sustainability by increasing profitability + viability.

  • We deepen customers’ + visitors’ engagement with your brand.

  • We enable you to spend money better, increasing your ROI.

  • We maximise the benefits of both physical and digital in the most efficient way.

  • We embed values that are vital for you, your customers, and our planet.

  • We refocus or refresh your mission so that your customers will enjoy a joined-up and blended brand experience.

  • We help you to develop + retain a team that will own, deliver, and further enhance your customer experience.

Services

We create commercial sustainability through…

  • Start by putting employees in the shoes of a customer - themselves! Everyone is a customer and once they are engaged, a highly interactive training experience ensues. The key is not to treat every customer as you would want to be treated, but as they want to be treated!

  • Once this principle is established, teaching better communication enables employees to determine

    the ideal way to engage every customer. Building on this, teaching them the principles of a great story and great storytelling instils confidence, enabling each employee to build their personal brand and adapt it to the brand story they need to tell.

  • Selling a customer a product that meets their needs or enriches their life, is great service. Confidence is one of the keys to great selling, and from there learners can explore how to create appropriate, value-adding encounters with customers, triggering the emotional response that will lead customers to buy with enthusiasm and to look forward to engaging and spending more with the store.

  • A large proportion of operational managers are ‘accidental managers’: good employees, having been promoted into their management position because of their technical strengths, rather than their recognised people-development abilities. These managers lack the vital skills needed to deal with the people side of leadership, in turn having a negative impact on employee productivity and engagement across the organisation.

    Investing in a leadership development programme, providing a practically-focused toolbox of skills and developing confidence, is therefore one of the best investments a business can make in its employees.

  • Large, dispersed organisations often struggle to turn a brand vision into a consistently excellent customer experience. This in turn impacts customer delight, loyalty and spend. A customer charter brings together your mission, vision, values, business model, quality standards and all the ways you support your employees to deliver the brand experience.

  • Ensuring employees have detailed, and regularly-updated, product knowledge is the final key to successful sales.

Guest services
that bring joy

  • Visit the site to gather knowledge from stakeholders and understand specific needs. We also review expected revenue, targets and budgets moving onto expected visitor numbers, spend per head and events programing.

  • Taking key elements and inspiration from the venue stories. A workshop can be conducted with stakeholders to develop the concepts through the creation of customer segments/personas and developing their emotional journey; ensuring willingness to spend.

  • This element includes the creation of a structured range plan i.e numbers of the various product types, moodboards and themes, alongside a product sourcing strategy. This also includes a budget, revenue projection, COGs (Cost of goods sold), and margins.

  • The buying process provides a critical path establishing the required process from vendor sign-off to order fulfillment which will be used by your teams. A suggested sign-off hierarchy will also be established.

  • The final range/concepts are developed, suppliers are researched and presented. The range is checked and balanced for customer profile, price and category for maximum appeal and ROI.

  • Ranges are confirmed and catalogues are built. Local sourcing, ethically sound values and the commercial aspects of each and every product is considered. All will be tailored and balanced to deliver the revenue and margin in the budget and selected to delight and enhance the visitor experience.

  • This will include a set of SOPs covering (but not limited to):

    • Visual merchandising guidelines

    • Customer service charter

    • Pre-opening checklist

    • Pricing, promotion and signage strategy

    • Inventory management

    • Stockroom management

Operational services
with ambience

  • Financial operations in retail can cover a broad spectrum:

    From the everyday financial processes such as forecasting, planning and budgeting, to logistical processes such as inventory management and more strategic processes such as profitability analyses, pricing strategies and risk management.

    We have the knowledge and experience to help guide and mentor in all financial aspects of retail to help your business thrive.

  • The analysis takes into account factors such as sales revenue, cost of goods sold, staff costs, operating expenses and gross margin. By examining these key metrics, retailers can identify which categories or products generate the highest profits and which ones may be underperforming.

  • A commercial plan establishes the actions that the business needs to take to encourage current customers to buy more, or higher priced or more profitable products and potential customers to start to buy.

  • An effective pricing strategy takes revenue, profit, customer behaviour and business goals into account.

    Consideration of the competitive landscape in which the business is operating and the influence of human psychology are also important factors in determining how your customer perceives price and value in your space.

  • An E-commerce strategy is a set of plans and activities businesses use to sell products or services online. This includes reaching the right people, converting them into customers, generating repeat purchases and creating a smooth, enjoyable shopping experience.

  • Scenario planning aids organisations to make informed decisions based on a variety of plausible futures with analysis on how the organisation would fare under each of them.

    Business modelling can determine what products make sense for a business to sell, how it wants to promote its products, who the customers are and how they should be served and what revenue streams it may expect.

Financial services
for growth

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