The Team

Colin Mullins has 40 years experience in retail across all disciplines. He spent 25 years with the Martin Retail Group (1,400 outlets, now Martin McColl Retail Group) working in Operations, Buying and Marketing. His last position was Head of News with responsibility for a news turnover of £120m. He spent two years as Managing Director of a specialist news consultancy before joining the Northcliffe Newspaper Group in 1991. As Managing Director he was responsible for developing the business from 40 ‘sweet shops’ selling news products to an estate of 320 owned and franchised News led retail outlets. He wrote and implemented three, five year business plans to create a ‘News, Confectionery and Tobacco’ (NCT) retail group before leaving the group in June 2007.

Richard Smith is a qualified accountant (FCCA). Richard trained with Grant Thornton, held a number of commercial roles in business including Nationwide Building Society, Texas Homecare Ltd and Booker PLC before joining Northcliffe in 2002 as Finance Director. He has been responsible for redesigning and implementing both new management and financial reporting systems and improving the control over margin management. Also responsible for all I.T. and EPOS systems and implementing Newscore, an in-house advanced generation news management system.

Alan Quinn began his retail career as Shop Manager with the Martin Retail Group. Promoted to Area Manager, he then left to purchase his own retail business. He returned to corporate life as Marketing Manager of Papershops (based in East Anglia with 120 branches) and joined Northcliffe Retail in 1995 as an Area Manager. He was appointed as Trading Director in 1999.

Vance Potter joined Northcliffe Retail in 1991 having previously owned and operated his own newsagents in Shropshire for ten years. He appointed as an Area Manager in 1993 and seconded onto the Northcliffe Partnership project in 1997. He asppointed Business Development Manager for the Partnership in 1999 where he successfully managed the rollout, recruiting 200 retail members. He was appointed as Operations Director in October 2005.

Marie Corbett has worked in this Retail sector for 23 years. She commenced her retail career by joining her family’s newsagent business and building her knowledge of this sector for 8 years, this culminated in her managing this business. She then joined Northcliffe Retail’s Buying Department in 2000 as Product Co-ordinator for Newspapers, Magazines and Greeting cards. She was promoted to News category Manager in 2004 responsible for the Newspaper and Magazine strategy for the business and all Publisher and Distributor negotiations and relationships.

Caroline Nichol joined the Nottingham Evening Post from university in 1995 and spent 8 years working in various roles in the Circulation department, culminating in the role of Field Sales Manager. She joined Northcliffe Retail in 2003 as a Regional Manager, responsible for building a network of 50 retailers on the Northcliffe Partnership in the South-West, before moving to manage a territory in the East Midlands. Regional Managers were responsible for working with retailers to grow their sales of the Northcliffe newspaper titles and to provide them with retailing advice and support to help them drive overall profits in their business and develop Northcliffe Retail shop standards. Caroline was promoted to Marketing Manager in 2006.

Steve Rogers has worked in the Newspaper and Magazine industry for 19 years. He commenced his career with WHSmith News as a Regional Trainee where he spent 5 years in a variety of sales and operational based roles. He subsequently had spells with Northern and Shell and Frontline before joining Seymour Distribution in 2000. At Seymour he was promoted to High Street Channel Manager before being given responsibility for launching Seymour's Independent and Regional Multiple Group strategy. This culminated in the successful launch of Seymour Select – a magazine promotion club aimed at leading Independent Newsagents. Steve joined Fore Partnership in November 2008 and is part of the Publisher Client team.