Sales soar at family-run Shropshire Nisa store

Sales at a family-run store in Shropshire have rocketed and continue to grow a year after investing in a major development programme.

Bells of Habberley in Kidderminster, a dual branded Nisa Local fascia store, re-launched the larger modernised business to shoppers in April last year and weekly average sales are now up 55 percent year-on-year.

The new store has embedded itself at the heart of the community, providing a one-stop shopping solution for local people.

The original shop was moved to larger premises further down the same parade of shops which has been in the Bells estate for more than 15 years. It offers increased selling space and storage, enabling the retailers to introduce a host of new products to their range.

With an empty shell and more space to play with, store owner Jordha Sanghera worked with Nisa’s store development team to design a significantly improved shop.

He said: “We wanted to give our customers the wow factor, from the second they stepped foot in the door right through to checkout.

“It was important that we gave the new store a point of difference from our previous one, but also, to have a clear point of difference from local competitors.”

As an independent grocer, they played to their strengths by focusing on the community and their customers who are the heart and soul of the business.

“Before we opened the new store, we carried out market research to find out what our customers truly wanted and needed. Once we had established the fundamentals, we focused our efforts on amplifying the product offering by diversifying the range from the brands found in local multiples,” explained Jordha.

“We also wanted to ensure that our brand’s ethos of being customer-centric was communicated as a part of the re-launch which we did with help from our strapline, ‘trusted community grocers’.”

New hot food counters are well used by students and other shoppers on the go, offering a wide choice of lunchtime food such as pasties, sausage roll and potato wedges.

And the growing relevance of fresh food and chilled products has been recognised with more than double the chiller space incorporated into the new store, growing from 7 metres to 16 metres.

Jordha explained the end goal of the refit wasn’t just to invest in a shop, it was to invest in a community that has spent more than a decade supporting a family business and in doing so, strengthening that relationship with local people.

And now, in 2022, the store looks and feels stronger than ever and has the sales to match.

“We’ve gone from strength to strength and as well as exceeding shopper expectation, after our first year of trading we saw the strongest sales since we opened our business more than 15 years ago. I’m really proud,” added Jordha.