Biography
1969 - John achieved a Master of Science degree at the age of 21, the youngest recipient of the award at that time.
1970 - John went straight from being a student to lecturing at his college and was immediately promoted to course manager of the Bachelor of Science degree.
1975 - John became an Approved Examiner of the National Proficiency Tests in the United Kingdom.
1976 - John won a Nuffield Scholarship to study horticultural marketing in the USA.
1976 – Following his USA study tour, John left his position at the college and commenced full time consultancy. His consultancy business was born-global with his first consultancy work being an export of his services to the international marketplace.
1976 - John published his first book, "The Modern Nurseryman" co-authored with Alan Toogood. This book was the standard textbook on hardy nursery production in the northern hemisphere at the time.
1979 - John co-authored "The Garden Centre Manual" with Ian Baldwin. This was the first book written on horticultural retail management.
1987 - John moved to Australia as his major consultancy direction had moved too toward general retail consultancy.
1995 - John published his first edition of "The Nursery and Garden Centre Marketing Manual". John was by now working with Farm Shops and Hardware Stores as well as the horticultural industry. Retail is retail regardless of the industry, and retailers were demanding a good retail consultant help them solve their challenges and grow their profits.
1997 - John became Australian Government approved as an Accredited Trainer Category 11 for Retail Training and an Accredited Assessor Category 11 for Retail Assessments of Proficiency. This accreditation heralded John's entry into Supermarket industry and department store training and consultancy.
1999 - John's first general retail management book "Just About Everything a Retail Manager Needs to Know", was published and rapidly became a best seller, further catapulting John's general retail conference speaking and retail consultancy work. It was through this book that John's work with the library industry around the world blossomed.
1999 - John's brief with libraries was to modernize them, stop their decline and bring them into the 21st century using modern retail principles. John's schema for libraries was enormously successful, turning around his first library service from a decline in lending to 60% increase in the first year. The demand from libraries for John's assistance was so great that John employed an assistant to help him turn the libraries around. Fiona Emberton joined John as a library consultant.
2001 - While John's library and retail consultancy work grew, his retail horticultural consultancy work continued to spread across the globe. In 2001 at the request of Ball Publishing in the USA "The Complete Guide to Garden Center Management" was published. This book is used by universities in the USA as the authority and textbook on horticultural retailing as well as by garden centres around the world as the recognised leading textbook.
2001 - was also the year that John's first writing for the library industry was published with a chapter in "Planning the Modern Public Library Building" by the American Library Association. The chapter was written on how to set up the internal merchandising and display within a USA library to maximise lending rates.
2004 – John was now firmly established as a world leading library consultant, farm shop consultant, garden centre consultant, supermarket consultant and had become a much sought after inspirational conference speaker.
2004 – This was also the year his business became broader still, moving beyond general retail consultancy into general business, with the publication of "Think FOR Your Customer", co-authored with his wife Linda. This book outlined a new approach to customer satisfaction in the service industry.
Today John Stanley specialises in conference speaking, retail consultancy, training and development and management analysis. His work takes him to 18 countries. His specialist skill areas are in conference speaking, and growing profits and sales in the service industries.