Retail Store Manager in Preston

Monkhouse prides itself on getting children back to school in uniform, which gives them the confidence to start their academic year. You will play a pivotal role in making this happen by supporting our valued customers through our busiest period of the year, June to September. It is crucial in providing customers with uniform that gives children the confidence to flourish in their academic life cycle. A good proportion of this confidence comes from the service and knowledge that our team holds and guides families with.

You will manage all aspects of the store and live by our core values, using them to serve every customer. Although we are a retail business, our peak unusually falls in the Summer. Christmas is when the business has downtime, and Summer is when the business sees its busiest period of the year. The environment is super-fast paced during the months of July to September, and we spend all the months leading up to this to get ready to serve our customers.

In this role, you’ll drive sales and company initiatives; manage essential tasks and established processes; and be willing to share and suggest ways of improving things through your daily experiences of running the store. You’ll need to be energised and organised to ensure you stay on top of core operational procedures such as stock management, and will provide timely and insightful data back to HQ to assist in the development of our sales strategy. You will need to be computer literate with a good working knowledge of Microsoft programs.

Keeping the customer at the heart of the business at all times is crucial to the success of the store, and you will be the driving force in delivering this through your ability to make good decisions. During our peak, you will be required to recruit additional colleagues, train and lead them to deliver the same exceptional service that you provide to customers daily. We will support you with a comprehensive induction and onboarding for every new recruit.

You’ll delegate well to encourage growth in your team, recognise great performance, and won’t be afraid to appropriately manage performance to keep them on track. In addition, you will need to organise daily your supporting colleagues with tasks and check that seasonal recruits are happy and delivering on our customer service promise. You will build in opportunities for them to upskill and build up their CV.

You will also be the "go to" person for any customer issues that need resolving, so you will need excellent people skills and be a good problem solver. Off-peak tasks include reorganising merchandise as required and reorganising the stock room after our peak season. Your job will also involve keeping engaged with the business through our various initiatives and using this time to reflect on learnings from peak season and build in any training that you think will benefit you.

In general, you need to feel the pride that we feel as a business by ensuring the store is always visually inviting. You need to be a highly organised person, familiarise yourself with our full product range, company processes, money management, and rotas during our peak time. Your energy, positive vibes, and can-do attitude will be essential to the success of the business.

This is a full-time position with a 35-hour-a-week contract. Working days include a Saturday. During our peak season, we uplift our hours, and a degree of flexibility is required. The position is available now! You will be required to complete a DBS check to fulfil the regulations of the business.

We are located in Preston with good public transport links.

Social Environmental Responsibility (SER): We take our sustainability responsibility extremely seriously, and it is only with the full cooperation of everyone that we will ensure we deliver on our sustainability objectives. Below are five things we want you to build into your day-to-day responsibilities:

• Switch off lights when the space is not being used.
• Switch off computers at the end of every day.
• If possible, avoid bringing in one-use plastic water bottles.
• Only fill the kettle for the number of cups of hot drinks you make.
• Dispose of waste responsibly by using our recycling processes.

Monkhouse is committed to supporting, developing, and promoting equality of opportunity and diversity in all our business activity. We value different perspectives and believe that diversity makes us stronger. We aim to provide an inclusive culture, free from discrimination and based on the values of dignity, courtesy, and respect. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated in accordance with these values.

As a member of the Banner group, which is B Corp certified, this is an essential element of our culture.