Retail Excellence Programme

Applications for the Retail Excellence Programme 2026-27 is open!

More than 100 retailers and high street stakeholders took part in the Retail Excellence Programme in 2025. Everyone has seen improvements in their business and those who made major progress with their action plans are seeing increases in sales and customer engagement. Now, you can take part too. Find out if you are eligible and what we have in store for you.

Retail Excellence Programme Leaflet

What is the purpose of the Retail Excellence Programme?

The Retail Excellence Programme is designed to:

Upskill high street retailers
Foster a stronger sense of community
Encourage innovation and future retail collaborations.

It’s tailored for Suffolk’s diverse towns, with a focus on:

Thoughtful workshop structure
Effective use of training hours
Practical, accessible content for all experience levels
Skilled delivery team
Expert guest speakers.

Who can take part in the programme?

The programme is inclusive of all high street stakeholders, including:

Traditional shop retailers
Market stall traders
Farm shops
Online retailers seeking physical premises
Estate agents, beauticians, hairdressers (for relevant sessions).

Retail & Market Towns

This support continues following the proven Retail Excellence model and widens support to reach more towns and business types.

Key elements:

Ongoing Retail Excellence workshops for five towns in total, offering new content shaped by business feedback.
Themes include HR and staffing, leadership, pricing and margin, compliance, customer experience design, and work life balance.
Super Rural Support, addressing low footfall and visibility through targeted marketing, mobile advisory clinics, and rural retail trails.
Urban Business Engagement, helping businesses differentiate through immersive retail experiences and data driven decisions on opening hours, promotions, and layout.
Market Stall Trader Support, helping traders with pricing, visual merchandising, mobile payments, pitch improvements, and routes into online selling.

Retail Excellence workshops - 5 sessions

(click on each for more details)

Love Your Town (In‑Person)

Focus: A creative session that explores local identity, civic pride and shared challenges, helping businesses understand their individual needs and skills, find quick practical solutions, reconnect with their place, and collaborate on bold, town-wide ideas.

Strategic Planning & Financial Literacy (Online – 2.5h)

Focus: Understand market position, plan clearly, and build ﬁnancial conﬁdence.

Marketing for Retailers (Online – 2.5h)

Focus: Blended digital and traditional marketing to drive sales and seasonal planning.

Operational Excellence (Online – 2.5h)

Focus: operational standards, customer experience, stock processes.

Improving daily operations with a bold ‘Fix This Shop’ simulation.

Merchandising & Customer Service (Online – 2.5h)

Focus: Better displays, product ranges, and service standards.

Sept-Oct 2026 programme

(subjects, dates and venues)

Love Your Town	In person	10am – 12.30pm	Beccles – Wednesday 9 September Brandon – Tuesday 15 September Mildenhall – Wednesday 16 September
Strategic Planning & Financial Literacy Guest speaker Rob Hall, Yawn Marketing	Online	9am – 11.30am	Thursday 24 September
Marketing and E-commerce Guest speaker from Digital Bridge Skills	Online	9am – 11.30am	Thursday 1 October
Operational Excellence Guest speaker Simon Wingfield, Wingfield Consultants	Online	9am – 11.30am	Thursday 8 October
Merchandising & Customer Service Guest speaker Nathan Lomax from Quickfire	Online	9am – 11.30am	Thursday 15 October

NOTE: Last day to sign up for the September – October Programme is Wednesday 2 September 2026.

How to Join

The Retail Excellence is proven to be successful and beneficial for businesses and high streets. Run by retail experts, you will receive tailored support and be able to make improvements to your business attracting more customers.

Get in touch for more information shsm@newangliagrowthhub.co.uk and sign up to our next programme in September/ October by registering your interest below.
Tick ‘Retail Excellence‘ under ‘Reason for Enquiry‘.

The Retail Excellence Programme received 5-star ratings from participants on Google Reviews.

‘I found this programme very beneficial in many ways, taking the time out of my day-to-day to open my mind to where we could improve our business, what things aren’t working in our business and how we can invest in new ways to make our business grow.
‘I’ve been introduced to many great businesses that could help us in areas we struggle in and also hearing other small businesses’ struggles similar to ours and how they have/ plan to overcome this. From this course, we have decided what we need to do next to invest in our business to help it grow and achieve more sales.’

Fay Bunn, Noor Company5 stars (Retail Excellence Programme)

‘Completed Love Your High Street training which has been extremely valuable, thank you for such a comprehensive course.’

Little Movers5 stars (Retail Excellence Programme)

‘We attended the Retail Excellence Programme and it has been the most valuable and insightful course I’ve ever done. Alex and all of the speakers were incredibly knowledgeable, and generous with their time and advice. We’ve already received more online shop sales since we’ve started to implement what we’ve learnt. We massively recommend it to all businesses in Norfolk!’

The Wayward Adventurers Guild5 stars (Retail Excellence Programme)