Shamly Sud and family made it an historic two victories in a row at this year’s SLR Awards by claiming the top award once more. We visited their Bearsden store to find out why.
By Antony Begley
It was another successful night for leading local retailer Shamly Sud and her family at this year’s SLR Awards. As well as claiming the top Scottish Local Retailer of the Year award – for the second consecutive year – the family also claimed no fewer than five other Awards.
These victories were shared across two of the group’s stores, Bearsden and Strathclyde, both built in the last year and both taking local retailing to an entirely new level.
To find out a little more about what makes Shamly’s Premier Racetrack Pitstop stores so unique and so very special, we took another trip to the flagship Bearsden store and attempted to describe the indescribable.
It probably is fair to say that representing the store in words and pictures will never quite do the store justice. It’s a store that just has to be experienced – and what an experience it is. 
Track record
As a business, Premier Racetrack has long developed a reputation for creating spectacular stores. Drawing influences from as far apart as the US, the Middle East and Asia, the first showstopper was the family’s Racetrack Autoport store in Ibrox. A mind-bending fusion of countless digital screens, liquid nitrogen ice cream, Havana cigars, plush beer caves, 60+ flavours of slush and a whole raft of other innovations, the store picked up pretty much every industry award going when it opened.
So how does Bearsden compare? Well, it’s certainly a recognisable evolution of the Ibrox concept, but it takes that concept and pushes it even harder and even further.
The store is built on a former run-down, old-school forecourt which was levelled and rebuilt from the ground up. How much it cost to build is not something the family wishes to share, but it must have been a lot. An awful lot. Well into six figures.
To put that into some sort of context, during the judging of the SLR Awards Sustainability category – which the store also won – the judges learned of the extreme lengths that Shamly and family went to in order to embrace the latest sustainability concepts. A massive and very expensive heat exchanger to keep the building at a constant temperature, despite the dozens of slush machines and countless other bits of kit churning out heat all day; a rainwater harvesting system that collects water from the roof for use in the carwash; solar panels on the roof. The list goes on. In other words, the family spent more money on things that customers can’t see and aren’t aware of than most retailers spend on a full refit. 
Breath taking
Needless to say, spending big money in building the store has created a world-class business. But it’s not the money spent that makes the difference. It’s the quality of the concept and the execution that makes Premier Racetrack Pitstop Bearsden so special.
There’s also a lot of courage involved. Courage to try things that most retailers wouldn’t contemplate, even if they had the funds available.
From the second you arrive at the store, it’s clear that this is something different. Something very, very different. The building sits over two levels with the store on the bottom half and a seated area on the top half, complete with floor-to-ceiling glass panels.
The entrance is dominated by an enormous digital screen used to share fuel prices, promotions, NPD and, of course, important award wins like the Scottish Local Retailer of the Year award!
Step inside and your senses are overwhelmed by sights, sounds and smells. There’s an atmosphere and a vibe in the store that’s unlike anything most customers will ever have experience in a forecourt. Another truly enormous digital screen on one wall highlights everything on offer from the Tubbees dessert bar and the Pret a Manger coffee machine to the festival of slush, the American range of confectionery and soft drinks and the Subway. 
Venture a little further inside and a world of retail-as-entertainment opens up. A standalone beer cave, a wall of vaping products to meet every need, a range of Havana cigars, a raft of American lines you won’t find anywhere, a premium dessert bar with hand-made luxuriant, premium-priced offerings.
A neon-lined stairway to the upstairs section is reminiscent of a high-end cinema while the seating area itself overlooks the shopfloor and the giant digital screen, while the plate glass windows offer a view over the forecourt and on to Bearsden. It’s experiential shopping at a different level.
And, of course, there is a full standard convenience range too. If all customers want is a can of Coke and a bag of crisps, they’ll find it. There’s plenty of grocery and, this being affluent Bearsden, there’s an extensive range of fresh, chilled, organic, food-to-go and free-from, as well as ultra-premium cigars and wines.
But it’s hard to enter this store and leave with just a couple of items in your basket, as we observed. When SLR visited the store, it was around lunchtime and literally dozens of kids from the school across the road were in the store – and they certainly weren’t on economy budgets. Many of them were spending upwards of £10 and £15 each on the most random selection of very expensive American imported crisps, bizarre flavours of slush, Subway foot-longs and Asian soft drinks, many of them retailing for upwards of £3. 
Exceptional standards
It’s all very well building a fantasy store, of course. It’s an entirely different thing however to keep it looking fantastic day after day – but this is another area where the hands-on involvement of the family is evident. Visit any of their stores and you will find the same, pristine standards. The merchandising is immaculate, the team are extremely well drilled, and the stores always looks great, which is no mean feat in stores as large and complex as these.
The digital screens help, by taking a lot of the spadework out of changing POS as well as flagging up promotions and products. It’s all done centrally with the push of a keyboard button.
Interestingly, the one thing the stores don’t yet have are digital SELs but no doubt these will find their way onto the shopfloors soon enough.
What is abundantly clear from a retailer perspective, however, is that Premier Racetrack Pitstop Bearsden majors on premium-priced, premium-margin products. The store does not sell itself on price. Customers are coming here for the experience and the range – and they are very evidently prepared to pay handsomely for the privilege.
To all intents and purposes, the store is an experiment, albeit a controlled experiment based on the learnings from the group’s other sites. It’s taking local retailing in a different direction, one where the experience is what matters. Probably 50% of the entire range isn’t available anywhere else in Bearsden, so it’s a true destination store in the area too.
And if you haven’t visited it yet, it should be a destination on your list for your next store safari. You won’t regret it. 
