TRPG 25 Episodes In: Reflections and Future Visions for Retail Property

Reflecting on 25 Episodes of Retail Property Insights with Gary Marshall

In this milestone 25th episode of 'That Retail Property Guy' podcast, host Gary Marshall reflects on the journey that began in January 2025, sharing insights and thanking his audience for their support. Drawing on over 40 years of experience, the podcast offers infotainment, anecdotes and practical advice aimed at improving property cost management and operational processes for both small and large retailers. Regular themes include the critical intersection of estate management and property accounts payable for retail tenants, the importance of reading contracts thoroughly, lobbying for fairer business rates, and enhancing back-office processes. The episode underscores that these insights are not just relevant for retail tenants but extend to all businesses dealing with contracts and legal agreements. Lastly, Gary emphasises the value of community and invites listeners to share their thoughts and suggestions for future topics for ‘That Retail Property Guy’. 

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview

00:29 Reflecting on the Journey

01:06 The Purpose Behind the Podcast

01:55 Sharing Experiences and Insights

03:18 Challenges and Community Building

04:44 Advocating for Retail Tenants

05:38 Importance of Reading Contracts

06:06 Supporting Independent Retailers

09:55 Navigating Changes and Compliance

10:39 Encouraging Best Practices

11:28 Conclusion and Call to Action

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And find Gary and team on LinkedIn for regular updates and community info!

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to that Retail Property guy with your host, Gary Marshall. In each podcast episode, we delve into topics relating to the particular overlap between estate management and accounts payable from the perspective of a retailer as tenant sharing stories and insights through Gary's unique lens. We hope you'll be entertained, enlightened, and may be a little inspired. Welcome to the 25th episode of that Retail Property Guy. First of all, huge thanks. Immense thanks to my listening audience for your support and feedback and your nudging and your inspiration. Back in January, 2025 when I decided to create this new podcast. It was a personal objective. And it's had its challenges, but this week sees me drop the 25th episode, which seems like something of an achievement for a startup. So I thought I'd look back at the journey so far while considering what lies ahead. And like I said, thanks to my audience, there'd be little point in this if you weren't there for me. So a quick recap. 25 episodes in and still loads more to follow. Why did I launch this series? Where is it taking us? I make no secret that I'm one of the gray beards in the retailer property sector. I'm no spring chicken. I started in this business 40 ish years ago, working with well-known and respected high street brands on the rollercoaster of prosperity and crisis growth and hard times, changes in trading patterns, changes in locations. Changes in obligations. What I've learned along the way has helped me and my retailer colleagues and clients, and I decided it was time to give something back. What I have is a wealth of experience and anecdotes and the desire to share it. What my audience seems to have is a thirst for infotainment. Hearing those anecdotes and applying them to real life situations in the current retailer landscape. I hear back from small, independent retailers still striving and in some cases struggling to gain a footing in the business, and from larger well-known operators looking to streamline processes or mitigate costs, and from fellow professionals who share my perspective that it's essential to operate as a community, strength in numbers and all that, whether they're in lease advisory, legal, or academia. Above all, I'm passionate and some say obsessed with the idea to champion the needs of the retailer tenant. The Retail Property Guide Podcast is a springboard for an ongoing discussion, sharing ideas, helping the independents who maybe don't have easy access to professional guidance alongside the national chains, who occasionally just need some glue to bind and overlap teams and processes for both ends of their business to mitigate costs, to foresee and overcome practical operational challenges. To manage the back office admin to improve the profit at the bottom line, and that's what it's all about. A major component of my podcast has been to share some common or not so common experiences to transfer knowledge and understanding, just to put stuff out there for anyone to make of it what they will. Maybe there's a book in here somewhere, but in the meanwhile, there's a podcast and thanks again for listening. A few things have actually surprised me about this podcast. An early challenge by a mentor was, do you have enough material to fill three episodes, five episodes, 10 episodes? Apparently many fledgling podcasts lapse after as few as three episodes. I. Well, that retail property guy is currently at 25 and counting. I've got a notebook full of ideas and each week I add more potential topics to that list, prompted by my own recollections or encountering similar situations, maybe queries from clients, comments from listeners. I. There's just so much to share as we advocate for tenant retailers. It's a passion, but it's also supposed to be a bit of fun. I've been surprised how the podcasts and their associated posts have forged new connections in our community and refreshed the old ones too. It's not surprising, I suppose. How many like-minded professionals and operators share the same challenges? Particularly as legislation changes around us, but also as older cyclical challenges come around. Again, I have to confess, technology has been a bit of a challenge. Dropping a podcast episode isn't as intuitive as one might think, but I'm supported by great people helping me to drive this voice forward, to fly the flag for retailers with property. And the comments and the dms that I get, help me to recognize that it's appreciated that we are getting somewhere with it. Regular listeners will by now have realized that there are a few common themes I. You might have deduced that I despise with a passion, the outdated concept of business rates. I can and often do wax lyrical about the inadequacies and inequity of this kafkaesque bureaucratic white elephant for which retail occupier bear more than their fair share of hardship. I'm obsessed with the idea of glue between the back office processes that retailers small and large are obliged to perform, to meet their contractual leasehold commitments and their statutory reporting obligations. Where estate management meets property accounts payable. There's often scope for team bonding, process smoothing, cost, reducing waste, mitigating. It's a small percentage game, but when it involves large sums of money, it's worth the trouble time and time again. Another of my pet topics is read the lease and not just the lease, but any contractual document. I can't say it's often enough yet still, it amazes me how often I encounter a scenario where the person responsible for that contract doesn't actually know what's in it, whether they negotiated at the outset, but skip the details or they inherited it in a team reshuffle and treat it as a fat accompli That's not worth reading. Read the lease. I strive to be inclusive, by which I mean including the smaller, independent non-chain operators whose management teams often have to combine rules such as property and finance and hr, which can leave them little time to keep ahead of the latest updates in tenant legislation or to be aware of the factors which are a big contributor to property costs. The comments I received show me that it's great to have discussions about upcoming new rules or even old unchanging rules that maybe not everyone knows about sharing conversations in LinkedIn or through blogs on our websites or at networking events like the retail technology show, or complete the retail. We have the opportunity to turn up the volume on the issues that impact us all to be our own lobbyists, to provide our own ongoing learning. Above all that retail property guy strongly urges retail tenants to pay closer attention to what their landlords, or in particular their landlord's managing agents do. These managing agents include some of the biggest names in the industry, but you'd be surprised, or maybe not since you listen to my podcasts, just how shockingly poor their accounts receivable service to the end user tenant can be, and some client landlords can be blissfully unaware and others couldn't care less. So what do these points tell us? What community spirit is that retail property guy helping to foster? Where does that community take us? We can consider five strategic points among many more retailers who occupy property, all have to manage their rating appeals, and whether the cyclical overspends and refunds. This is a cost burden only required to service a flawed and unfair tax. We should all be sure to continue consistently and persistently to lobby government to abandon this system in favor of something fiscally neutral, but a down site fairer. Through my business service team at Smarter Estates, we've helped retail companies mitigate their costs and claim refunds from landlords and their agents counting in the millions of pounds. It teaches us that although this might be a small percentage mitigation in property outgoings and possibly viewed as a small percentage of profitability, don't consider it not worth getting outta bed for. It's your money left on the table. Why not take it? There are so many business gurus offering insight to improve margins. Why not start with the simple and the obvious? What retailer wouldn't want support to improve their property, occupation, cost base. Read the lease. Know your obligations allows you to be one step ahead of the upcoming problem and to help the business to sweat the asset to gain a better yield from that investment in bricks and mortar reading the lease should be a proactive thing, not a reactive thing. A bit of housekeeping here and there to optimize the cost base. And I was pleased to receive a comment from a non-property listener who mentioned how this comment gelled for him in his business. Read the contract. Know your stuff. Get ahead of the game. I. We generally expect or presume that the bigger, better established operators have better access to the right advice, which maybe the independent retailers don't have. Now, I don't suggest for a moment that the national change should carry their independent colleagues and sometimes competitors for free, but we're all in the same boat as retail occupiers, so it makes sense. To share the basics if only to prevent Ill-advised strategic choices that could be likened to rogue deals with a long-lasting impact for everybody. We should all appreciate the organizations and associations that the independent retailer relies upon, and if you are these organizations, then reach out. Let me know how we might help with a voice, some advice, some inspiration. Any retail operator, small or larger, somewhere in between can face challenges to pick up on, changes in rules and regulations and compliance. Possible changes in requirements for energy performance, certificates, amendments to long established landlord and tenant statutes, or changes in accounting practice like FRS 1 0 2. These all bring costs, demands on resource. It changes strategic changes. No retailer should be left behind, laid outta the starting gate, struggling to deliver the business changes that are necessary to comply with an ever-changing rule book. So let's talk about them. Share the views and opinions, get these matters in the public domain, or at least in plain view of all retailers. Is there anything you think we should be talking about? Send a dm and finally, if retailers don't check monitor, challenge resate and generally push back at flawed accounting, incorrect billing and allocation, tardy reconciliations, missed deadlines, withheld credits. Then these scoundrels that the managing agent can quite literally get away with it retaining thousands of pounds that are due to the eventual tenants. It's your hardened profit at stake. Why sit on your hands? Why accept this? Sorry, state of affairs. Let's share some good practice. How to push the right buttons, how to highlight the inadequacies step-by-step. Maybe the solutions lie in better process and then better communication, and then maybe AI or standardized billing methods that facilitate easier checking. Let's start that ball rolling. So pulling this together, what do we have? We have anecdotes, we have experiences, we have lobbying, we have nudges to raise the bar, and I'm grateful it isn't one way traffic that I get feedback from you out there in podcast land. I've seen that that retail property guy can trigger some interesting discussions on a common topic of retail estate management and accounts payable. It seems a niche area, but it's an industry measured in billions. My business team at Smarter Estates shares in the fulfillment of raising the bar for retailers with property with successes measured in millions. That retail property guy has dropped 25 episodes with more to follow on subjects which impact on the world of retail estate management, and its associated cost management. What do you think? Dear listener, subscribe, follow, leave a comment or DM me. Let me know your views. Let me know your suggestions for other topics you'd like to cover, and in the meanwhile, once again, thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to that Retail Property guy. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion and found it both entertaining and insightful. Don't forget to explore more episodes and if you have ideas for future topics, feel free to share them below. Be sure to like, share and subscribe so you can never miss an episode. For more information, visit that retail property guy.com. Thanks again for tuning in.