Introducing Retail ROAR 2025

[00:00:00] Introduction to Retail ROAR 2025

Catherine Erdly: Retail ROAR is back. Hi everybody. Welcome to episode number 239 of the Resilient Retail Game Plan. My name’s Catherine Erdly. I’m a small business and retail expert. I am the founder of the Resilient Retail Club. You can find out more at resilientretailclub.com. I’m also the founder of the free online summit, Retail ROAR, which is coming back for 2025.

I am so excited to share this episode with you. It has been several, several months in the making, and I wanted to share a little bit more about the summit, why you should come along, who you can expect to see there, and what’s so great about Retail ROAR.

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan, a podcast for anyone wanting to start, grow or scale a profitable creative product business with me, Catherine Erdly. The Resilient Retail Game Plan is a podcast dedicated to one thing, breaking down the concepts and tools that I’ve gathered from 20 years in the retail industry.

and showing you how you can use them in your business. This is the real nuts and bolts of running a successful product business, broken down in an easy accessible way. This is not a podcast about learning how to make your business look good. It’s the tools and techniques that will make you and your business feel good.

Confidently plan, launch and manage your products and feel in control of your sales numbers and cash flow to help you build a resilient retail business.

Now, some of you may have attended last year’s summit, but if you haven’t, let me paint the picture for you.

Retail ROAR is a two day. Free online summit, specifically for e commerce sellers and brands and independent retailers. So all of the talks, all of the speakers are all aimed towards people who sell products. In other words, you.

[00:02:01] The Origins of Retail ROAR

Catherine Erdly: I created Retail ROAR back in, well, I came up with the idea at the end of 2023.

And I created it because I felt that there were great small business summits and there were retail summits, but I hadn’t really seen one that was for small retailers. So you could go and listen to, say, the CMO of Tesco talk about their strategies, which is all very interesting, but not super relevant if you’re a small business.

Or you could go to small business summits and hear lots of people talking about, for example, more issues that relate to service based businesses. But what I didn’t see out there was anything that was really tailored specifically for e commerce businesses and independent retailers.

So I set about pulling together the most exciting retail entrepreneurs and experts and putting them together into a free online summit. And last year, 2000 of you signed up for Retail ROAR, which was incredible. And this year it’s going to be even bigger and better.

[00:03:00] What’s New for 2025

Catherine Erdly: So when it came to speakers and experts this year, I was on the lookout again for the best, most exciting people who’d all started where you guys are or where you guys started. So people who started on market stalls or in their bedrooms and have grown their businesses. And I also went out and looked for the most exciting experts who were going to be able to give information that was super relevant to you as a business owner in 2025, when it comes to growing your sales or understanding the industry, understanding what’s going on, what you should be buying and what consumer trends you should be looking out for.

[00:03:36] How the Summit Works

Catherine Erdly: I pull all of this together into a two day summit. It is broadcast into a Facebook group. So that means that you get the opportunity to not only come along and watch these sessions, but you also get to come along and network with hundreds and hundreds of other small product business owners. So you get the inspiration.

You also get the networking, which is a fantastic combination. And as I said, I really believe that this is the top online free event for product businesses in the UK. I haven’t seen anything else like it and I’ve worked really, really hard to not only meet the level of last year’s speakers. We had some incredible speakers.

People like Lucy Greenwood from Lucy and Yak, Joe Touch and the Sharp from Scamp and Dude, Bree Reid from Snag Tights, a whole host of people who’d hit the UK’s top 100 Fastest growth companies. So we had, for example, Ammo, a J from plant made, we had your cherry from Ava Estelle, people like that, who’d grown their businesses really well, as well as some amazing experts.

And this year I wanted to go out and look for some even more exciting people to join the lineup.

So it’s really simple to sign up. You head over to RetailROAR.co.Uk. That’s RetailROAR.co.Uk. You’ll be able to sign up. There’s even an opportunity once you’ve grabbed your free ticket. If you tell me a little bit more about you, I’ve even got some bonus events and materials for people depending on what level you’re at.

So don’t forget to fill that in, but otherwise you just pop your email address in and you will be signed up and you will be notified of how to join the Facebook group when the itinerary comes out, you’ll get that so you’ll know what time to show up for each individual session or block out some time in your diary and come along and watch.

There will be replays. If you can’t come on the 20th and the 21st of March, you need to get yourself signed up because we will be having replays over that weekend. They can’t stay up forever, unfortunately, but If you sign up you’ll get all the notifications and you’ll be able to come and watch the replays. They get broadcast into the facebook group and then they’re there available to watch in the facebook group until the following monday. So go check it out and make sure you get yourself signed up, even if you’re not available on the 20th and the 21st.

The talks are about 30 to 45 minutes long. So you’re going to be able to fit those in. And what I suggest that you do is you go through and have a look at the itinerary when it comes out. I’ll be sharing more about that later. Make sure you go through and highlight the talks that you really want to focus on and make sure that you get to see those either come along, watch them while they’re being broadcast or watch on the replay, but you need to be signed up either way in order to get those.

[00:06:16] Why You Should Attend Retail ROAR

Catherine Erdly: So why attend? Why make time out of your busy schedule to come along to Retail ROAR? Well, As I said, this is your opportunity to hear from some absolutely incredible entrepreneurs and founders. So for example, I won’t go through the whole lineup, but you can see it all at retailroar.co.uk.

[00:06:34] Featured Speakers & Expert Insights

Catherine Erdly: But for example, we have Saira Khan, who is going to be sharing with us her story. Now, Saira Khan is somebody that you might recognize from the first Ever series of The Apprentice. She was a bit of a breakout star from that. She’s also been on several other TV shows, including Loose Women, and she is a really incredible skin printer. So in other words, she started her own. Skincare brand, Saira Skin.

And what I think is absolutely fascinating about Saira’s story, which I think you’ll really enjoy hearing is all about how she grew to seven figures in two years through organic means only. That means no outside investment, no paid advertising, but just the power of community. So it’s a really incredible story that she’ll be sharing with us.

We also have Paige Williams. Now Paige Williams is the founder of P Louise Cosmetics. P Louise is the number one shop on TikTok and it’s absolutely fascinating if you go take a look at it. It is a business that has had some incredible success on social media. She’s going to be sharing her journey again without any external investment, how she’s grown it from a effectively a side hustle to a multi multi million. They’re getting close to a hundred million pound turnover all through social media. And I’m going to be talking to Paige about her journey with P Louise.

We also have Daniel Priestly. Daniel Priestly is a very successful serial entrepreneur. You may have seen him, he’s been on Diary of a CEO podcast with Stephen Bartlett a couple of times. He’s also written many books on business. And in fact, his book oversubscribed was something that I read very early on in my business and had a profound impact on how I think about my business. He’s just an incredible business mind. And he’s going to be sharing a talk specifically all about how to attract and convert traffic for product business owners. So you’re not going to want to miss this.

And we have so much more. If you head over, as I said, to the signup page to RetailROAR.co.uk, then you’re going to be able to see the full lineup. And then I’m also going to be doing an episode a little bit in a couple of weeks, where I talk a little bit more about the different sessions.

So you can get an idea of them and get an idea of which ones you want to come along to. But let me tell you this. Every single person who talks is handpicked by me. I invite every single speaker myself these are some incredible entrepreneurs who’ve done amazing things with their businesses and everything that they’re going to be talking about is focused on lessons and ideas and inspiration that you can take away and apply to your own business.

So that’s why everybody there is either a product business founder or an expert who works with product businesses. So you know that the information that you’re getting is really, really tailored for you. So I truly believe this will be very well worth your time. So head over, get your space reserved if you haven’t already.

And take a look at the lineup. As I said, the itinerary will be coming out shortly in a couple of weeks. So you’ll be able to know exactly when to come for each individual session. Or if you get signed up, then you will have the opportunity to watch that throughout the weekend as well. So you get a chance to catch up if you’re not available on those particular days.

[00:09:52] Key Themes for 2025

Catherine Erdly: Just to give you that general sense of the overview. We’re going to be covering everything to do with growth. We’re going to be talking about community, how you build your community. We’re going to be talking about how you attract your ideal customer, how you convert them and really specifically, we’re going to be talking about what that looks like in 2025 because it has changed.

Business has changed. Retail has changed. It changes all the time and it will keep on changing. So everything that we’re doing is all about what works right now. You won’t want to miss out. As I said, you’re going to be hearing from some people who’ve had some incredible success, so you’ve built incredible businesses that lasted and grown, and they’re going to be sharing their thoughts and also what’s what have been some of their challenges.

And I think that’s often really inspiring as well to hear that it’s easy to look at a business from the outside and think, wow, this must have all been plain sailing. But we’ve got some incredible stories of resilience in there as well. So I think we can all learn from From what people do when things go wrong and how they can turn it around for their business.

I have been absolutely blown away by the excitement when I launched the Summit lineup last week we have had such a great reaction to it and I think it really speaks volumes to the value that people get from coming to Retail ROAR that I’ve had so many messages from people talking about how much they loved it last year, how much they really enjoyed it and how much they’re looking forward to it again this year.

As I said, it is absolutely handpicked. I spend a lot of time reaching out to people, discussing with people, getting people on board as speakers. And, it’s just absolutely fantastic to see the whole lineup come together.

I always set myself a goals list of my dream speakers and I really feel like for 2025 I pretty much got everybody that I wanted and so I’m really super excited to share it all with you.

We also have three phenomenal sponsors this year we have Square, we have Fair and we have ScoreApp. On the signup page you can find out more about our sponsors who have been very generous in supporting Retail ROAR and helping me bring it to you again for a second year.

[00:11:58] How to Sign Up & Access the Event

Catherine Erdly: So I would absolutely love to hear from you. If you attended last year, then drop me a message. If you want to sign up, you can also send me a DM with the word ROAR25. That’s R O A R 2 5. If you send me a DM with that on Instagram, then you’ll get signed up as well through our very snazzy Instabots, which I’ve had set up for this time round, which will take all of your details for you without even having to leave the app.

So it’s super, super easy for you to sign up. You can, as I said, come over. There’s several posts on Instagram as well. If you comment on any of those with the words ROAR25, R O A R 25, then you will get put into our super snazzy InstaBot, which will take all your details and sign you up. Or you can head over to retailraw.co.uk and sign up there. Super simple, super easy to do, takes one second. You just need to give your name and your email address and then that’s it. You’re in the, you’re, you’re joining the summit. You’ll get the details on how to join the Facebook group. You’ll get the whole itinerary. You can see all of the speakers are there on the signup page.

A little bit about what they’re going to be talking about. I’m going to be talking. Some more as well on the podcast about the different talks and what you might want to come and listen to, I am just really super excited about this. Please, please, please, if you are coming to Retail ROAR, if you’ve been before, if you’ve enjoyed it, then do please share this with your friends, anyone you know who has an independent retailer or an e commerce business, then please, please do share it with them because I promise it will be worth their while, as you know if you’ve been before.

It’s a super valuable summit. So do take a moment to share. I’ve got a whole folder full of, graphics and logos and anything like that. So if it is something that you wanted to share with people, if you’ve got a community, for example, product businesses, then do drop me a note. And I’d be very happy to send that over to you and we’ll be super grateful.

So. Share with your network, share with your friends, come along and join us. Go check out the amazing lineup. As I said, it’s an incredible array of entrepreneurs and founders and experts and we’re going to be talking everything to do with sales success in 2025 so you won’t want to miss out. See you there.

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