store manager

seasonal associate

sales assistant

sales

retail supervisor

Smiggle UK

Don't do it unless you are young fit and want to try and work your way up. That is as long as you don't regard your personal health. Or care for a work life balance. You will be over worked and will have a break down at some point just like every other manager. That's if you make it past the 2 week mark. You will be expected to lone trade sometimes for 4 hours, sometimes all day. They only higher sales assistants on a 4 hour contract so you wont be able to find anyone reliable enough, (usually uni students who couldn't care less or are too busy studying) good luck if you want to take holiday. That's if you're allowed to take it between all the black out periods (last 2 weeks of August, First 2 weeks of September, from the second week of November all the way through to the second week of January, you cant take it through all the kids holidays, stock takes and so on. Bear in mind both you and your ASM and any sales assistants have to fit your holiday in that time and you wont have the staff to cover it. Oh Christmas day is also classed as a day off and they send you a set roster from November through to January telling you what you have to work. You will constantly be asked to cover other stores as everyone is in the same boat as the company has cut back so much that they don't actually give you enough hours to do the job required. Everything changes within a heart beat. Don't be disheartened if you re merchandise the whole store every 2 weeks and then they tell you to completely change half of it when the comms drop which is about 4 times a week. You'll be in whatsapp groups so higher management can constantly send you messages for feed back on trade or ask for pictures of your offer launch, promo change or vm change as they wont trust you to do your job. 
Expect to be constantly criticized for your work and be made to not feel good enough. 
There are no store facilities apart from a kettle. Some stores are lucky enough to have a toilet but its rare. 
The stockrooms are so small and over stocked that you have to pile backpacks and lunchboxes so high that health and safety would have a field day. 
No organisation what so ever. You'll be expected to launch a promotion every couple of days usually last minute and be expected to keep your million and 1 call outs all neat tidy and organised. Don't lose any or you'll never hear the end of it. Vm's constantly go on abouts it costs them thousands of pounds to send you the call outs  so you don't lose it yet they'll send you hundreds of new pages every couple of weeks but only use 10% of the whole lot. 

Since you lone trade so much too good luck on preventing theft, stock loss is uncontrollable. But as its made in China and the mark up price is so ridiculous its cheaper for them to lose product than pay another sales assistant to actually be on the shop floor for 4 hours. The only security measure you have for preventing internal theft is "creating a culture" there are no alarms or cameras and we get professional thieves target us as they know its an easy target. They wait for you to be distracted at the till for 2 seconds and slip a bunch of watches in their bag at the back of the store and they are off. They only reason progression is so good is because you can keep climbing the ladder while others are jumping ship. Yes you might have to run the store without any support and visit your doctor for anxiety and stress but you will get a promotion and slight pay rise and then after a year take your experience else where. Last thing, everything is covered up, If you have a surprise visit from anyone across the board you will be given 24-48 hours notice and your area manger and visual merchandiser will be at your store the day before briefing you on what to say and they will be running around fixing your store ready for the visit. Last last thing don't even ask me about the pricing. Just get used to knowing every single price in store and how much it is when it has 20% off and 25% off. You are welcome.

Trust me, ive been here long enough to have seen it all and I have covered so many stores that its the same in every store.

Let me start by saying that the Store Assistants, Mangers and the current South London Area Manger are lovely people. They've all been nice to me and is purely why there's a second star. This is probably a great place to work for a month or so, but no longer than that.

Worker turnover is something ridiculous like 3 a month. I've been working for the company since the end of August and in my own store I've remained the only constant employee, and that's just for my own store. A 12 hour part-time contract will quickly become a 30-40 hour work week as Smiggle simply do not have the staff to cover each store. 

Because the staff turnover is so high, not a lot of the employees working aren't trained in all the day-to-day runnings of the store (i.e cashing up, banking, processing delivery, opening and closing). This means the more experienced workers are forced to work more regardless of their contracted hours until new employees are up to speed, and that can take from 2 weeks to 2 months. 

The layout of the store also changed every 2-3 weeks as new briefs get sent in with the new deals going. So once you've set up and settled to the new layout, everything has to be moved around and re-organised again. This isn't such a problem with bigger stores with on-site stockrooms, but in stores with off-site storage it quickly becomes arduous. Requesting smaller delivery sizes might be flat out ignored or take up to a month to action, but then you'll end up back to your original delivery size within a week. 

Though management that actually interact with you are nice, the higher ups at head office don't seem to be listening to each individual stores needs; a smaller store  will receive the same amount of stock in delivery as a bigger store who can handle and store more stock. 

Smaller store assistants will often find themselves loan trading for long stretches of time and, if your store doesn't have toilet facilities or a break room, you'll find yourself having to close your store and face the inevitable angry customers when you get back.

Also the stores are just hard to work in due to their aesthetic and the mingling of all the scented products. The combination of white walls and bright vibrant reds, baby blues, purples, pinks, greens and other rainbowed and mixed colour schemes and the mandatory Smiggle radio becomes too much for most employees to work with and I often found myself either suffering mental exhaustion or sensory overload migraines. I've also had at least half of my customers complain about the aesthetic, thats not counting the people who just come straight in and then out again purely because they just can't stand it. 

All in all, the people on the front lines are surprisingly lovely despite the amount they have to deal with. But with a head office and management who either don't seem to know or communicate or they just don't care about those running the stores. If you like hard but repetitive work in an environment that will cause sensory overload migraine then apply, but if not only apply if you're absolutely out of other options. It's not worth the just above minimum wage you'd get.

DO NOT WORK AT SMIGGLE. I lasted 2 years and hated getting out of bed just to go there and be ignored, belittled and verbally abused. If they can get away with not paying you, they'll do it. I can't remember the number of times my pay was short, always by £100 at least. 
The regional managers and visual merchandisers are the reason the company is in such a mess due to their lack of organisation and communication- then they have the nerve to look at you with sympathy and say "oh yes this company's not very good" and then they'll berate you for not keeping up. 

Once when I was in work just after I'd had a death in the family, my VM asked how I was and when I told her why I wouldn't be at my best that day, she just said "oh that's not ideal" and kept tapping away on her phone without even looking at me. 

When I made a suggestion about how to stack some items on the shelf it was branded as pointless but when the managers from head office were in they did it themselves and passed it off as their idea. They were there to help us organise our stockroom- all they did was put some bottles on shelves and then go off for a 2 hour lunch whilst complaining that they didn't get enough money on their company cards. They left their snack wrappings and rubbish strewn across the stockroom floor. 
These people will only play ball with you if they like you. Professional procedure is ignored in favour of who is willing to brown nose them and suck up to them and throw in with their clique. 

On top of all this, you are expected to smile and welcome in the customers- rude, self-important parents who don't even say "hello" back to you when they come and dump their purchases on the till. When you don't have an item in store, this is apparently enough to traumatise their children for life the way some of them react. I have had to wipe up vomit, urine (believe it or not) and food from children who have thrown tantrums. The parents believe it is "part of the job" and use this logic to avoid cleaning up their kids mess themselves. They all treat the shop like a zoo so you waste hours of your day -then get moaned at because tasks aren't done, but if you ignored the mess and got the tasks done you would also get moaned at- but you then get things trashed minutes before closing time because someone "just wanted to have a quick look". 
One morning I was doing administration and till drawers when a little boy started banging on the window because he wanted the shop open now. He banged on the window so hard parts of the display fell down. The parents ignored it and I got no apology when they entered. 
Forget about closing on time. 10,15 minutes past closing time there are still people milling around who DO NOT CARE that you have a life outside the shop. Even when you've switched the music off and dimmed the lights so they know it's closing time. This then gives other people the prerogative to PHYSICALLY DUCK UNDER THE HALF OPEN SHUTTER and come in and start looking around. They then get personally offended when you say the shop is closing. 

The sales assistants I worked with were amazing and I formed some amazing friendships. The customers and managers can get in the bin

I could write a 10,0000 dissertation on how disgusting and poor this company is. So many promo’s changing all the time, so much pressure. Brief change every 2 weeks, only get paid 1 hour after work to do it. They expect you to stay after work to do changes as if you don’t have a life outside of smiggle. Products falling over every 5 seconds. Customers returning items everyday. Higher management is so disgusting, treating staffs very poor. No appreciation when we get jobs done, only reply when we beat budget. VM’s need to calm down as they think they’re so superior. No security cameras in store. Could get stabbed but they will get ask whether we beat budget or not first. Company does not care about a single thing apart from MONEY. Staffs are so overworked and can’t even rest or talk. They think we are superhumans. I hope everybody leaves the company at the same time.

This company has no people skills from above. If you fall behind on set ups you get 101 phone calls and emails asking why your not following the promo check list, why are you not managing your time. The truth is you have 3 hours a day mon-friday with another team member the rest of the time you will be lone tradding. Need the loo? No chance. A customer needs something thats in the stock room but you can't leave the shop floor or will get in trouble as there is no security if somebody was to steal something within the time you've gone to the back and came back out.  A normal day would be 1 hour worth of opening paper work in the morning then setting up and changing promtions that change nearly on a daily basis. You get constant calls for cover aswell. You will then do breif and delivery have your hour break . Then will be left to lone trade again till close where you have another 40mins of paper work and emials to send.No support what so ever unless you are a favourite. The Vm is extremely rude and toxic. She is the main reason i left the way i was spoken down too and treated was not on. I spoke with many managers and the issues i had with the vm about leaving constant mess, not pricing,  talking down to me and my team,  always leaving my stock room a mess and gaps on the shop floor and coming on sneakily on my days off because i said i didn't like the lack of support or the way she always left the store knowing we had to all finish her work the next day ontop of what we needed to do. was left in charge of the shop after 3 days of training! I got so unwell and stressed my hair started to fall out. I wish i could upload the pictures. 

Please please find somewhere else the money is not worth your happiness. You will be physically, emotionally and mentally drained.

A typical day for me was checking comms, setting up the day, accepting and processing delivery (or delegating it to someone), analysing figures and then actioning floor moves accordingly, updating visuals, training the team and of course, introducing the Smiggle product to the wide-eyed kids! 

As a company, I really enjoyed the mix of structure and the amount of discretion that we had as managers. If you followed the instructions and delivered good "quality" sales (so strong KPIs even if footfall/turnover wasn't great), you would get recognised and appreciated.

In the store, I was lucky to have an experienced, "no-nonsense" manager and a wonderfully positive team. I helped open this store with my manager, who worked very hard to ensure we all achieved and exceeded our targets consistently. Probably the best boss I have had so far.

We had an AMAZING Area Manager. He had more of a mentor/coach management style as opposed to dictatorial which I have experienced in the past. I definitely learned a lot from him in terms of operations and people management as well as how to make smarter business decisions in order to improve profits. 

I think the hardest part of the job was that the company was/is expanding too fast and wasn't focusing enough on the issues already at hand. So at my store level, that sometimes meant that we were stretched in terms of hours/support available. Eventually, it became exhausting for myself (personally) but I'll always have a soft spot for Smiggle!

If I could give 0 I would this is the worst company I have every worked for. I am currently seeking a new job as I hate the whole company. It is a total joke. Smiggle a smile and giggle after two months you will not be smiling or giggling as they work you into the ground. You get no thanks or acknowledgment from your area manager or above for achieving targets nothing a big fat 0. As for head office, area management and above no idea what they are doing so ever trained monkeys could run this company better at least then you might smile and giggle. Personal matters like a death in the family or something more serious is just laughed off. I NEED OUT AND WOULD TELL PEOPLE TO NOT WORK FOR THIS COMPANY AS THEY DONT LOOK AFTER THEIR STAFF AT ALL THEY JUST EXCEPT TO MUCH FROM ALL STAFF MANAGERS DOWN TO 4HOUR STAFF. 
THE WORST COMPANY I HAVE EVER WORKED FOR AND I AM NOT ALONE. IF YOU LOVE BROWN NOSING AND YOUR A YES PERSON YOU WILL FIT RIGHT IN AS THAT IS WHAT SMIGGLE WANT NO ONE TO QUESTION OR HAVE A VOICE. IF YOU DO THEN YOUR PUSHED ASIDE FOR MORE BROWN NOSERS
DO NOT WORK FOR SMIGGLE YOU WILL SLOW DIE INSIDE. 
STORES DONT HAVE REST AREAS, NO TABLE, NO FRIDGE, NO MIRCOWAVE, NO LOCKERS NOTHING. I was told by my area manager to warm my food up in another store!!! Plus I was told by them to stack boxes up for a table!!! This is all real and true. I could go on and on there is nothing good about this company not one thing.

A decent enough company to work for, has its ups & downs as all retail business do!, depending on which branch and who you are working under. 
Seems to have a high turnover of staff though, but I haven't quite gotten to the why yet.

The general business motto is great, supposed to be like a family fun environment and it can be, but it can also forget that motto at times when they are pushing for sales figures and focusing on performance above all else and how much the store brings in.
Sometimes the spirit level slips between the two.

It can have its fun days, but it can also be very stressful.
The company expects a lot from its staff, especially with it being incredibly corporate with its paperwork and figures, ie tracking absolutely everything that goes on within a day in each store, even down to each hour!.

There are frequent LP reviews on each store and it doesn't take much at all to drop a tier or more, we are only human after all.

The progression is there though if you want it, lots of basic training, nothing in depth really, they give you a good basic skill set but you do have to do a lot of finding out on your own how to do things within the position at times as there is a lack of backup and support at times.

Overall a good company to work for if you can avoid all the extra 'extra' work that you dont get paid for after the shop shuts at the end of the day.

I started working at Smiggle in July 2017 as a Sales Associate.  

A typical day at work consists of: checking daily targets, receiving & checking delivery, tidying & replenishing the store, greeting and approaching customers, serving at the till, getting email sign ups, setting up VM displays, pricing & labelling products etc..

The job itself is easy and I enjoy working with all aspects of retail, my favourite being Visual Merchandise. 

There are some downfalls though. 

The job is mostly lone working and when there's only two people in on one day, tasks cannot always be met, especially if the store starts to get busy. Unrealistic tasks tend to be given on days where there's not enough staff - no matter how fast or hard you work, it is sometimes impossible to complete everything. 

Smiggle don't offer Full Time contracts to SA and overtime is few and far between, so the hours are just not enough for most people.

Rota's changing constantly, which can be very annoying at times. 

Was not trained well, not necessarily the manager's fault as started  at an awkward time but I got blamed for mistakes.  

Without sounding too negative, Smiggle is generally an okay place to work. I just wouldn't recommend this company to anyone who needs full time hours, as they don't not offer to SA's.

Smiggle is a great store, however, the management could be a bit better. During my first few days, I had NO training at all and the manager expected me to know things from the top of my head leaving me to make mistakes which I would then get moaned at. The store is situated in an extremely busy part of London making the shop full, which is fine, but when the manager overcrowds products on display, customers begin to drop things on the floor. Not only does this waste time and cause some kind of health and safety issue, but some customers are not spatially aware and begin to trample on you whilst you pick up the products.

Plus side some of the customers are lovely and are patient with you (most of the time). The till is easy to use and the stock room is very well organised, making it easier to find things to stock up on the shop floor, as the store is constantly busy.  Hours are flexible, however, the manager always find themselves exceeding my contracted working hours.

Also, when the shop rearranges products on the shelf, the manager will not inform you, so you kind of need to orientate yourself with where the products are in case a customer asks you on where to find them.

For a fast paced environment, this company is short staffed all the time. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a good working team, otherwise it’s chaos working with management who bump heads. You get paid for breaking your entire body for this company and they don’t even acknowledge the hardwork you put in or the days you said yes for attending. They’ll remember the “No’s” deeply which turns into grudges later.  All they care about is money not your health. customers can give you hard time too. You'll be dealing with many Karen’s and they’ll do the absolute most for discount; they’ll drag you through a pit if that’s what it takes! Customer abuse is real and i wish this company took it seriously, you could be breathing trying to pull yourself together and the next thing you know, you’ve been reported. They want someone who has no life to begin with and is fully flexible. You’ll be managing both shopfloor & stockroom. if they’re short staffed,  they’ll hand you the keys/ sort emails/banking/clean shop floor & stockroom.  if one or 2 bottles are out of order or not stocked up, they’ll lash out on you on the group-chat. There is no fixed rota, they’ll be changing the rotas daily; when it finally comes to sending it, comes Sunday, they delay it. Not worth the stress, the drama or your life, not worth £8ph 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Store manager 2 salaries reported	£30,000 per year
Seasonal associate 2 salaries reported	£17,846 per year
Sales assistant 2 salaries reported	£24,347 per year
Sales 1 salary reported	£45,000 per year
Retail supervisor 1 salary reported	£12.50 per hour

Working at Smiggle: company overview and reviews

Smiggle

Smiggle ratings

Popular jobs at Smiggle

Salary satisfaction

Jobseeker tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected