Saturday at the NRCC

Saturday was a busy day at the Co-operatives UK National Retail Consumer Conference, but an interesting one! We kicked off with Peter Marks reflecting on how the movement and the Co-operative Group had gone from strength to strength after his 2006 "One Society" speech to this conference, and then immediately delved into Mark Bradley's views on customer experience in the UK.

Mark had a few simple lessons for the conference attendees, reminding them that the experience a customer has with a busines wil colour their view of it for years to come. Lots of fun stories comparing the US service culture with UK customer disservice - like the golf club that greated a member with "You can't park there and your wife can't go in the snooker room". Lots of laughs, but - as Mark asked - are we really free of sin?

Then we got a introduction to SUMA's new environmentally friendly packaging from Kevin Gray of Innovative Solutions in Packaging. Lots of very complex thinking on the environment that urned a few dearly held beliefs on their head: a question about the use of biodegradable carrier bags got a very diplomatic answer! At the end of the day, Mark's take home point was that it is vital - and very difficult - to look at the environmental impact of a product's entire life cycle.

Then we delved into the history of our cousin in co-operation, the John Lewis Partnership from ex-director Peter Cox. Peter was a mine of information about the history and principles behind the modern JLP, and it was greatly appreciated by the audience. He even managed to answer a question many have asked - why the JLP aren't members of Co-operatives UK!

To round off the day, we had a question and answer debate following on from last year's Co-operative Debate winning submission about consumer co-operatives working together with grass roots co-operatives in local communities. Ursula Lidbetter talked about the fantastic work that Lincolnshire Co-operative Society does in its local community, and how that work is imbedded into the day to day running of the society. More than one attendee started to get a little jealous as Ursula talked about successful co-operative venture after successful co-operative venture.

Then Mark Simmonds of Making Local Food Work gave a run down of some of the community co-operatives that the project has set up. This led to an open debate from the floor, with attendees trying to establish what they could do to make the world a more co-operative place. Some of the answers included working more closely with trade unions, encouraging co-operative education amongst all and ensuring that new co-operatives continue to be built from the ground up. The debte ended with a call from Chris Herries, vice-chair of the Co-operatives UK board, asking attendees to go back to their societies and talk about what Co-operative Development Agencies could do with help from a supportive retail consumer society.

The day proved to be a great success. Here's hoping Sunday proves to be as interesting and educational.