Arcadia: Goodnight for retailās bad knight
The past decade has been a roller-coaster ride for Britainās real-life high-street Monopoly owner. In this article, I consider the implications of the collapse of Sir Philip Greenās Arcadia Group.
The past decade has been a roller-coaster ride for Britainās real-life high-street Monopoly owner. In this article, I consider the implications of the collapse of Sir Philip Greenās Arcadia Group.
We spoke to Daniel Teacher, managing director at T-Tech, who provide technology, consulting, support, & strategy for forward-thinking, small & medium-sized Accountancy practices to add more value & support.
The fast-fashion retailer saw a surge in virtual footfall due to the nationwide lockdown, but can it climb back from PwC resigning as its auditor and a recent working practice scandal?
We spoke to Brendan Shanks, founder and CEO at Husky, a London-based Fintech company that makes it easy to take control of your workplace pension through their app and makes sure you’re investing in what’s important to you. Husky helps to make informed pension decisions so you can take control of your personal financial future.
I recently had the pleasure of judging the Digital Accountancy Show awards. Iām a big fan of awards. While winning an award, or being shortlisted feels great and is confirmation youāre on the right path, itās the process of applying for an award thatās much more powerful for your business success.
There are a lot of apps available to build forecasts. They all work to some extent but like everything, they have their sweet spot and they have their limitations. The more you pay, the more power and functionality you get. But if youāre looking to build a multi-year model to put in front of an investor, expect to build it in a spreadsheet. It pains me to say that given how much we leverage technology but itās the way it is (for now). Equally, investors know and understand spreadsheets; itās much less likely they know and understand the black box of an app you choose.
It can be pretty confusing to understand what is really going on with high-street companies. Even before Covid-19 times, there seemed to be continual news of high-street giants shedding jobs or closing down. In recent months, weāve seen even more of a flurry of high-street redundancies, closures, CVAs, and administrations. Unfortunately, Debenhams is just another on a long list, thatās getting longer.
If you havenāt seen the news, Gymshark announced itās now worth more than Ā£1bn thanks to a 21% investment from General Atlantic. This now brings founder, Ben Francisā, share of Gymshark to over Ā£700m.
[…]
I recently watched the movie Coach Carter for the first time ā if you havenāt seen it before itās a biographical sports film drama based on the true story of a basketball coach (Coach Ken Carter) played in the movie by Samuel L Jackson.
[…]
Share options are common currency today for attracting and retaining staff in the fast-growth tech world. They are also becoming more common place in other companies. Share options are frequently used to incentivise, and part compensate, employees in their commitment to an aligned goal of increasing the value of the business, and thus rewarding loyal employees when that value is realised.
I often write about screw-ups; Jamie Oliver, Patisserie Valerie, HMV, Theranos, Marks & Spencer, Pizza Express, Heinz etc. After all, we learn most from mistakes ā and learning from other peopleās means we can hopefully avoid making them ourselves.
However, this time I want to write about a company thatās doing things well, a company that has an inspiring story, and hopefully one we can also learn just as much from – Gymshark.
In this webinar, I wanted to give my views on how to keep a focused state of mind to increase your ability in both business and personal performance. I feel it is critical in stressful times to be able to de-stress, reenergize, and focus on the task at hand, especially during the current times of this webinar being recorded.
Iāve started watching McMillion$ on Sky. McMillion$ is the story of the McDonalds Monopoly scam that occurred between 1995 and 2001. Iām only a couple of episodes into it so I donāt know the full story yet but itās fascinating to watch and hear.
Listen to the article:
I was a huge Michael Jordan fan; I watched every game on Eurosport as a kid, I even had a full-sized poster of him in my room (next to Charles Barkley from the Phoenix Suns). But even if youāre not a basketball fan, if you havenāt seen The Last Dance, youāre missing out on one of the most inspiring sporting stories of all time.
Listen to the article:
Iām not going to dress this up ā physical retail has absolutely and definitively taken a complete beating in the last month.
I was recently out on my bike getting a bit of exercise and whilst out I had a few thoughts on how the countryside hills I was navigating had some parallels to being an entrepreneur running a business. The following are my thoughts I recorded while cycling that explains the challenges:
Hope you’re doing well and combatting any cabin fever you may be feeling working from home the past week! In this blog post I wanted to talk about how we are approaching COVID-19 at flinder & how you can safeguard your business in the months ahead.
Here’s an important email that I sent out earlier today to flinder clients:
Dear all, following on from my note last Friday please see below additional business exercises to consider in these testing times. Businesses need to prepare for potential significant business disruption and adverse impact to demand (some may actually see an increase in demand depending on their sector).
Many entrepreneurs struggle to get enough sleep. Iām one of them ā my most creative thoughts come to me in the middle of the night. I can fall asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow but itās the 4 hours later that Iām literally wide awake with so many ideas running through my head. And so with that in mind, this weekās 3 things are all about sleepā¦.
This is a note that I sent out to our clients earlier today in light of the recent developments with COVID-19.
Alastair Barlow examines the history of M&S leading up to its recent deterioration and loss of CFO Humphrey Singer.
flinder celebrated in style as they took home Mid-Sized Practice of the Year 2020 after experiencing unprecedented growth in the past 12 months.
HMV has been in the news recently so I thought I would dig in a little deeper to see what was going on with its performance and strategy. Have a read below for my take on this once high-street super-giant!
Moneyball is a 2011 American sports film based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 non-fiction book of the same name. Itās based on the true story of the Oakland Athletics baseball team’s 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane’s attempts to assemble a competitive team using data!
Value is one of the most important concepts in business but too often we let price get in the way of seeing the value.
As we get back to work this week at the start of a new decade, many businesses (and people in general) will be thinking about objectives (or New Yearās resolutions) for the coming year. While the business side of this should have been done a long time ago, itās better late than never.
Finance is not a support function so donāt treat it that way: itās an enabler to making sound decisions and getting investment, so get your act together and stop putting investors off, writes triple Accounting Excellence award-winner Alastair Barlow.
Happy New Year ā we hope itās a great one! What youāre about to read will flip all your goals for the next year upside down.
Have you ever used Airtable?
written by alastair barlow [blog]
Last week I had the joyous experience of sitting in an F1 simulator ā the full on virtual reality version at Mercedes-Benz World. It was an incredible immersive experience whereby I actually felt like I was on the grid and racing the Suzuka circuit in Japan. Words just do not do justice to the experience!
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
If technology is the engine behind your business, processes, customer experience or even designs, then data is most certainly the new oil. While oil is there to make sure your engine runs smoothly, data is also a rich resource and powerful commodity the can drive your business performance.
written by alastair barlow [blog]
Are all accounting firms born equal?Ā Not quite, hereās just one reason why we are differentā¦
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
I recently gave a talk onĀ How to be a Kick-Ass CFO at Accountex in London (Europeās largest accounting conference). Most of my presentation circled around improving management information.
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
The past couple of days Iāve attended AccountexĀ in London and Iām exhausted from it! If you read my previous newsletter on management lessons from my fitbitĀ I absolutely smashed my steps over the 2 days and my calories target ā I actually burned 4,000 calories on day 1 from walking around. It really is on a huge scale!
[…]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
Iāve had a personal trainer for about 18 months now ā heās awesome. Weāve worked hard together (more so me!) to shift some of the fat I put on post ankle surgery (invasive micro-fracture surgery on my ankle where my cartilage had pretty much disintegrated). It turns out running is not that great for you after all!
[…]
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.