Five months ago, Phase Eight opened a new-format store at Lakeside – one of the first of many in a major rebranding exercise. Starting as store manager at the centre’s upmarket Brompton Walk has given me an excellent opportunity to train the team and make the store my own.

One of the challenges of managing a new-look store has been maintaining the loyal Phase Eight clientele, while simultaneously attracting new customers. Lakeside management has a great programme to support retailers and helped us implement a marketing event, where we spent a day informing Lakeside shoppers about the store. Through flyering and a competition to win gift vouchers, we introduced Phase Eight to a different audience, which resulted in new customers coming through our doors.

As supportive as the centre management is, opening hours are long and one of my more demanding roles is monitoring rotas and hours. If I ensure that every staff member has one Friday and one weekend off a month, I have a happy team.

Excellent customer service is crucial, too. I find the best way to reinforce this is to lead by example – interacting with people who love fashion is the most rewarding aspect of my job. We are passionate about fashion and this is passed on to customers day-in, day-out, so building a base of satisfied customers has been easy.

I also receive excellent support from head office and the staff training programmes available for the team allow me to ensure the Phase Eight message is delivered to customers.

Store manager’s diary, Sameh Trad, Phase Eight, Lakeside

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