Tenacious
Determined to get it right for our clients
Retail transformation
& training specialists
First Friday is a consulting, change management and training business with roots – and a well-established client base – within the UK retail sector.
50+
Consultants
20+
Years Experience
200+
Clients
Our vision and story (so far)
First Friday was formed in 2001 when a group of retailers realised that there were no training or consulting companies out there whose teams were made up of people with a business background. They recognised the enormous benefit that comes from having consultants who have a strong retail business background, a team that understood the language of their clients, could empathise with the client’s teams/people and hit the ground running.
Recognising these benefits and the uniqueness of the offer, they decided to set up a new change management and training consultancy with its roots in retail. The pace, complexity levels and need for commercial expertise within retail set First Friday up as a great fit for working within both retail and other sectors.
Using their collective knowledge and expertise to help both retail, and other commercial organisations, overcome their challenges, to design and deliver more effective change and transformation programmes and – most importantly – ensure that people were at the heart of it, forms the ethos of the company.
Building on early success in the UK, the business has expanded internationally and has worked in Europe, South Africa, Australia, the Middle East, the US, Mexico, and Canada.
Going beyond retail
Although retail is still very much our specialism, our client list contains a growing number of construction and housing, health services, hospitality and public sector organisations.
We’re also continually adding new online training courses available through our Training Academy. Subjects including Equality, Diversity & Inclusion and Management & Leadership now available alongside our retail-specific training programmes.
Not your average change management and training consultancy
We like to think we’re a little bit different from other change consultancies.
Six core values underpin everything we do and everyone on our team shares the same ethos, determination and focus on delivering a quality customer experience.
Curious
Always seeking new ways to crack familiar issues
Open
Sharing ideas and fostering transparency
Down to Earth
Rooted in reality
Focused
Dedicated to delivering results for our clients
Fervent
Truly passionate about what we do
A people-first approach to training and business change
We’re the ideal partner for businesses looking to deliver real, lasting change and who understand that successful transformation means putting your people front and centre.
Our focus is on people; on the jobs they do and the pressures they are under.
We recommend best practice processes, behaviours, and skills alongside the use of any tools and systems – enabling us to deliver to consistently high standards, and customers to achieve targeted KPIs and long-term ROI.
Clients value our knowledge, expertise, and hands-on, practical approach – and we work with many of them on an ongoing basis, consistently receiving outstanding feedback from customer surveys and high NPS scores.
We have a “one team” approach to working on projects and operate with a philosophy of openness and trust.
Our approach to resourcing programmes is to use consultants with the appropriate business background and experience.
Having a team of knowledgeable professionals who have “been-there, done-that” to focus on project delivery leaves your internal teams to focus on their day job.
Our clients say:
A team who have seen and done it all before
Our expert team of consultants and trainers bring with them strong track records and commercial backgrounds, many at a very senior level and from across a wide variety of high street names and brands. We have a team of over 50 retail specialists, over 30 of whom have a career background in commercial, buying, planning and merchandising.
Working with world-class organisations every day gives us even more experience and a deep insight to understand your business needs and to recommend best practice.
Delivering lasting transformation & change
We can’t always name names when it comes to talking about the work that we do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t share the stories of the projects that we’ve worked on, and the change we’ve helped clients achieve.
Retail Training, Training & Development,
Merchandising Training Academy – Large European department store group
How can we help you?
Get in touch if you would like to speak to someone or have any questions