Retail transformation
& training specialists

First Friday is a retail 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.

We 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 the uniqueness of this offer, we decided to set up a new change management and training consultancy with its roots in retail – First Friday was born!

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.

Putting people at the heart of change

Using our collective knowledge and expertise to help 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, we have since expanded internationally and 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 are 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 transformation and change management 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.

Tenacious

Determined to get it right for our clients

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 return on investment (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.

The professional commitment, partnership mind set, coupled with the drive to add value from First Friday has been second to none.

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 retail backgrounds, many at a very senior level and from across a wide variety of high street names and brands.

Retail specialists

We are 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.

Meet the team »

Delivering lasting transformation and 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.

Read all case studies »