Had a meeting with most of the retailers around my shop's area yesterday.

The agenda was how to tackle the problem of poor human traffic flow. That seemed to be the only concern because with a healthy human traffic flow, everything else will fall into place, chief of it being an increase in sales.

I've warned my boss about this before we took up the premise but he refused to listen. In fact, at one point he even wanted to take up a premise at Dhoby Ghaut MRT station! That'd be even more of a suicidal move.

If you haven't heard, the retailers over there recently went on strike and refused to operate for a day in protest of the fact that their landlord hadn't done anything to assist them in creating more public awareness.

Despite everything, I'm glad to announce that among all the retail shops in my area, mine is the only one that is not losing money. My shop is the smallest. So small until there is no space even for me that I have to sit outside the shop. Compared with the other shops, mine is also the one with the most ugly renovation work done. We did a lotta DIY work.

In fact I feel quite smug about it. My shop is actually the most popular in the area and it's got to do with a combination of choice of name which never fails to encourage a few giggles from passersby, the extremely reasonable prices due to the fact that we self-import our own merchandize, our low operating cost, the way we display our products by letting people touch and feel them and of course having a hunky (and of late, chunky, haha) shopkeeper helps too.

I still turned up for the meeting though. Partly to give face to the other retailers and partly because I wanna learn from their points of view of how they propose to go about increasing the amount of human traffic flow to the area. We made it clear among ourselves that we have no intention to protest or anything. It's a peaceful gathering.

The outcome of the meeting wasn't really exciting. Our conclusion is to collectively pressure our landlord to more actively promote the existence of our retail area instead of doing it individually like we have been doing. I'm not hopeful but what the heck. From my experience on the side of the landlord in my past employment, in this country, I know the landlord wouldn't give a rat's ass at all. It's not their problem as long as they get paid the rental every month.

On a personal note, my boss has responded to my proposal of a new remuneration structure. In my proposal, I offered him four options. I call it a remuneration structure because I'm no ordinary worker. My boss is actually my franchisor. I'm the boss of this shop but he's the boss of the organization. That makes him my boss. And that makes me the boss of..... uh, nobody. Haha.

We agreed to conclude the final details of this proposal after Chinese New Year next week. As for me, he could throw a dart at my proposal and I'd be happy with any of the options it falls on because each option I offered is equally beneficial for both of us and definitely much better than my current personal remuneration structure.