Nia Elias – Director of Business Development at Amgueddfa Cymru

Paul Ogburn’s retail strategy work for Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales has been a strong and constructive partnership. Paul’s excellent people skills and attention to detail has delivered a well-researched analysis of our retail position across all seven museums in such a collaborative way that teams have also benefitted from his considerable knowledge and experience along the way. We’ve also all thoroughly enjoyed his company. His practical and realistic recommendations are fully grounded within the context of our organisation, external environment and market sector, meaning that we’ve been able to activate and implement immediately. Paul grasps what’s needed quickly, immerses himself in the client’s world to have full understanding and makes comprehensive pragmatic recommendations based on a wealth of knowledge and experience. His exceptional people skills has made him feel like part of our team. We’ve loved working with Paul Ogburn Consultancy ltd and would highly recommend.

Liz Jones | Deputy Head of Enterprises at Amgueddfa Cymru

Paul’s approach to developing a retail strategy for Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales has meant we now have a thorough and considered framework in which to drive forward improvements in our retail operations. However, what is of much greater value is how this was done and the way he worked with our teams to explore and collaborate on a range of recommendations. He was able to apply his knowledge and experience in such an engaging way that all the teams he worked with are enthusiastic for the next stage. The creativity, energy and warmth he brings are truly inspiring. I firmly recommend Paul Ogburn and would love the opportunity to work with him again in the future.

John Tee | Head of Visitor Experience and Operations at Beaulieu Enterprises Ltd

Paul worked with us at Beaulieu to review our retail offer and make recommendations around the strategic direction and focus for our future offering. We really enjoyed working with Paul. He is insightful and clearly an experience retail professional. Paul was able to cut directly to what we needed and make practical detail driven recommendations. One of the best things about working with Paul was his ability to work with our team and to be a positive influence on them. I personally really enjoyed getting to know Paul and would recommend him without reservation.

Rachel Chivers, Retail Services Manager, Bath and North East Somerset Council.

Paul has recently worked with us at The Roman Baths in Bath, to create a retail strategy of ‘quick wins’ to help us increase income. After spending a good amount of time visiting site and viewing financial reports, Paul recommended that we should make changes to our shop fit, apply a pricing architecture and invest in developing our staff through training. Paul really promotes the importance of your staff, and dedicated a lot of his time to speaking to all the sales assistants and supervisors, to gain a real understanding of the operation.

After writing a retail strategy with clear recommendations, Paul supported us through the process of tendering for a shop fitting company. He was able to use his contracts in the industry to find us the best local companies, and supported in writing the project brief.

It has been a pleasure to work with Paul, and I am sure we will work together again on future projects.

Graham Cross | Head of Commercial Operations | High Life Highland

Paul was recommended to us through our contacts at ASVA and he has been a pleasure to work with. He is very personable and professional and his experience and knowledge brought fresh eyes to the concept and design of our retail project. He is a consultant, but this is backed up by having strong practical experience at the sharp end which makes for a winning combination. We very much look forward to continuing to work with him as the project develops and moves towards fruition.

Kit Grover | Kit Grover Ltd

Paul’s insight into retail operations and consumer behaviour contributed greatly to our design process and outcome for several of the shops we created for Tate. His methods gave us the tools to deliver our best work and educated us along the way. It’s difficult to be brief in explaining his influence but Paul instinctively understands the map upon which a shop is built and knows how to brief a design team about the form and function of the landmarks on that map.

Paul also consulted for us as part of our team at KG Ltd, working as a retail analyst/financial & operations planner for various institutions where we were asked to create retail programmes from the ground up. Once again, his knowledge proved invaluable, and we use his plans as a reference to this day.

Grant MacKenzie | Director | David Livingstone Birthplace

We began working with Paul in January 2021, just 6 months before we planned to re-open the David Livingstone Birthplace, after a three-year £9.1 million refurbishment project. His challenge, in a very short timescale, was to take our vision for our retail offer and make them come alive.

Paul took our ideas and made them a reality. This ranged from helping us to redesign our small retail space (from a corridor to a contemporary and visually appealing retail offer in just 5 months. This included helping us to redesign our retail space, working on a tight budget to develop our product offer, and helping to develop the look and feel of the shop and ultimately, providing us with a high-quality retail offer, ready for our opening in July 2021.

He understood our brand and produced products that matched it and is continuing to work with us on our journey. His ability to predict some of the issues we may have has helped us significantly. Ultimately, he has made our life easier.

Personally, I found Paul to be supportive, creative, and willing to go that ‘extra-mile’ to help our team and I would heartily recommend utilising his expert skills, experience and knowledge.

In the end, we ended up with a new retail experience which far surpassed my initial expectations.

Andy Logan | Sales Director

I have had the pleasure of working with Paul for many years on some fantastic fit out projects across the Tate Group. The attention to detail was always spot on and knowledge of the sector has always led to some great conversations.

Paul’s leadership skills and ability to pull multiple projects together and ‘get the job done’ I always found to be a reassurance when working together. A genuinely nice person who will bring a huge amount of expertise to the consultancy world.

Eleanor Payne | Commercial Services Manager | St Albans Museums

St Albans Museums have commissioned Paul to deliver a piece of scoping work with a view to developing a strategic plan for our retail offer at St Albans Museums. Working together has been a great experience which has quickly led to what I feel is a natural and productive working relationship.

Paul has taken time to develop a thorough understanding of our business and has provided me with objectivity and appropriate challenges, both of which have been most welcome. I look forward to our working relationship developing further and would highly recommend Paul’s approach to any organisation looking to refresh or review their retail offer.

Matthew Bellhouse Moran FSA(Scot) MInstLM | Museum Manager

Paul worked with us to produce a fantastic shop offer within our available resources. Spend per head has improved markedly and our retail space now matches the quality of our museum. Paul also delivered bespoke customer service training that was tailored to our needs and really changed the way we think about customer service on board. I would recommend Paul without hesitation.