The traditional small retail shop located in big as well as medium sized towns is confronted since decades by the growing presence of the grand commercial chains of stores. To that ”old” challenge must be added the new challenges of the megastores of the malls, the e. commerce, the ICTs and first of all the substantial change in the way of living and in the mentality of the client. In order to survive to those challenges it should be necessary a counter-balancing change: that the project defines as “to get excellence in the small retail”. A goal that may be achieved through training: of the shop keepers and of their employees. Training has never been the top interest of the small urban commercial business-people: whose professional growth has always been based on the experience and on the skills acquired in an informal way. Reluctant as they are to the traditional classroom training for subjective and objective reasons(conflicting timetables of shops and of the classrooms training) let’s try with e.learning: that is the philosophy of the project. The project adopts a methodology mixing together the competencies informally acquired thanks to the experience, with those learned in formal and not formal training activities. -- OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES: The objective of the project is to favour the accession to the lifelong learning of the target groups and the improvement of their competences till to the acquisition of excellence: through an innovative e.learning programme, based on a previous investigation of the existing good practices and a research aimed at identifying appropriate indicators for an efficient training. It will be tested through a pilot training and consequently revised. -- RESULTS AND PRODUCTS: The intermediate products will be 3 collections of indicators : the first finalized at assessing and certificating the informally acquired skills, the second the formally acquired competences, the third concerning the assessment of the non formal ones. The final outcome will be the e.learning training programme, complemented by relevant manuals -- POTENTIAL FUTURE: The above quoted training programme could be adjusted and transferred to other sectors until now based on competences learned by doing.