Comment: Special retail occasions are reasons to celebrate

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The best retailers are the ones that give their customers a good reason to part with their hard-earned cash.

We are a nation of shopkeepers and shopping is our favourite pastime, so none of us need much of an excuse to do what we love. Which is just as well bearing in mind some of the hilarious special occasions we’re presented with.

However, credit where credit’s due, because we should all probably thank Hallmark for our retail peaks around Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and thank God for Christmas and Easter.

All too regularly and somewhat unfairly, the church gets a bad rap in the UK, but we’d all be on our knees praying to a higher power if we didn’t have these two holidays in our retail calendar.

It’s the novelty special occasions that can bring out the cynic in us but I don’t think they should. Put your cynicism aside, use irony as your cover if you must, then make a note in your diary and find room in your retail heart in March for Noodle Month (Wagamama, UK), Chocolate Covered Raisin Day (March 24 in the US), Waffle Day (March 25 in Sweden) and my personal favourite International Rabbit Day (March 28, worldwide).

It’s hard work standing in our stores all day and sometimes - whisper this quietly - the day can pass a little slowly. So putting the jokes aside, these special retail occasions are not only entertaining for the customer, they can also help galvanise and energise a store team.

And at a time when everyone is talking about stakeholder collaboration, why not ask your staff and customers to come up with a new special day for your business - the crazier the better.

It would certainly make for an engaging digital and social media campaign and if you added a charity fundraising element it would balance the fun and frivolity with good deeds.

When it comes to Ann Summers you’ll already have National Orgasm Day in your diary and you might also come to our stores for other special occasions such as hen nights, stag nights and maybe leaving parties too, of which we recently saw the biggest of them all: the Pope’s.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that the Vatican had a night out bowling followed by dinner at Frankie & Benny’s, but I bet someone in the Papal office will have bought him a card and maybe chocolates, a balloon and a teddy bear too.

And that’s why I love retail. Even when God’s right-hand man leaves work, thanks to the likes of Moonpig, retail will have a card and a gift for the occasion. God bless us all.