Everything you need to know from Retail Week Live 2022
DAY ONE
Digital transformation and innovation
Boots CIO: Staff retention is ‘most wicked problem’ facing retail tech leaders
Boots chief information officer Rich Corbridge says the health and beauty retailer has overhauled its technology division in a bid to attract and retain a more diverse workforce.
Corbridge said, in 2022, the “ability to retain staff is the most wicked problem for anyone working in retail tech”.
He said that in a bid to counter the effects of “the Great Resignation”, Boots has rolled out a range of initiatives to embed ongoing learning and development for IT staff working at the retailer, as well as ensuring they feel part of the organisation as a whole, rather than a separate entity working alongside the business.
In March this year, IT staff were invited to visit as many shops as possible in 12 hours to record issues that staff in stores were experiencing, which was then collated to create a new store IT strategy that was implemented and communicated to store staff just 24 hours later.
Corbridge said IT staff are also provided with “bitesize learning” opportunities across all levels of seniority in a bid to “change the diversity of the makeup and mindset of those working IT, and how we work with our business”.
Corbridge explained that his top priority as CIO had shifted in recent years to ensure Boots’ IT division was an appealing place to build a career for employees across the business, and prospective new hires.
Retail needs to ready itself for Gen Z workforce, says Boohoo’s Jo Graham
By 2025, 30% of retailers’ workforces will be from Generation Z, according to Boohoo chief information officer Jo Graham, so retailers need to listen to their needs and expectations for the world of work.
“How much do you really focus on your people?” she asked. “And I don’t mean in traditional ways.”
Boohoo has kicked off sessions within its business to ask colleagues what they want from the company in terms of diversity and inclusion.
From listening to and paying attention to the habits of its Gen Z workforce, Boohoo has found that many of them have already worked for two or more companies by their early 20s.
Graham said she would previously have disregarded any potential candidates for a role at Boohoo with less than a year’s service at multiple companies as they appeared to lack dedication, but such careers indicate the changing way in which younger generations now view work.
If the work is not interesting and they are not being managed differently, Gen Zers are likely to move on quicker, she said.
Graham added that her Gen Z colleagues are often late to meetings and on their phones, so perhaps there is a way to conduct and manage them and their timings differently.
“There’s nothing radical in that – it's going to be about going to talk to them, and maybe resetting our own thinking around how we encourage and attract talent in a way to make us an employer of choice,” she said.
Consumer ‘G-spots’ have moved in today’s ‘retail Wild West’, says Portas
Retailers with a clear sense of purpose are those that will thrive in a retail "Wild West" disrupted by Covid-19 and radical shifts in what consumers want, former Harvey Nichols director and retail industry adviser Mary Portas maintained.
Portas said businesses that had “lost their soul” had consequently failed to sustain their connection with customers, who now have a different set of expectations about the brands they deal with.
While they are shopping with a new generation of businesses such as Shein, which have faced questions on issues such as sustainability, consumers want to engage with retailers that they feel reflect changing times, she believed.
Portas said: “It is the bloody Wild West out there. The [retailers] that are breaking through are the ones that realise that the game of passive consumerism, that’s changing.”
She said a 1980s mentality of “money, power and fame” was disappearing amid a move from “status symbols to status ambience” influenced by concerns such as the planet and social injustice.
“The G-spots have moved from greed and gain to generosity and giving,” she argued. “That’s where brands need to position themselves.”
However, that positioning needs to be authentic. She pointed to the example of The Body Shop, which she said “lost its soul and heartbeat” under L’Oreal’s ownership but has since been revived under Natura by returning to its original values.
While a fan of bricks-and-mortar retail, she said online retailers were often showing the way, citing businesses such as Collagerie and The Modern House that typified “editorial, curational and creative brilliance coming back to retail”.
Portas said retailers and shopping centre owners increasingly need to create reasons for people to go there. The big question to ask is “what’s going to make people come”, she said, and “the by-product will be what you sell”.
“Let’s take risks, let’s have a go, let’s be playful,” she advised.
Very Group to roll out beauty AR tool to ‘fill the gap left by Debenhams’
Very Group chief information officer Matt Grest said the online marketplace is set to launch an AR beauty experience in the coming weeks.
Grest said Very will introduce the feature to its app in a bid to “fill the experiential gap left by the demise of the Debenhams beauty hall”.
The tool will allow Very shoppers to see how products such as lipsticks will look on them using augmented reality.
This is one in a series of technological innovations that Very aims to add to its website and app in the coming years.
The online retailer, whose owners the Barclay brothers have reportedly revived ambitions to float the business on the London stock market for £4bn, aims to replace every piece of technology that "powers" its business by 2025.
Grest said as more retailers launch financial service offerings, Very’s former USP is no longer unique. Therefore, it must raise its investment in technology and data to increase its “understanding of the customer”.
Snap teams up with Puma to launch AR shopping kit
Snap’s head of AR business strategy said the social platform is launching a new toolkit that will allow shoppers to access its suite of augmented reality tools directly on retailers' websites.
Snap’s new product launch, called the Camera Kit for AR Shopping, will add features and tools from its own platform to third-party retailers’ ecommerce sites.
Puma is the launch partner for this new tool, with Snap’s suite of features available for shoppers to access directly on the sportswear brand’s app without needing to have Snapchat downloaded.
This new product launch bolsters Snap’s ambitions to be retailers’ partner of choice to boost their AR capabilities, as over 250 million Snapchat users used the platform to virtually try on products over 5 billion times in the last year alone.
Carolina Arguelles Nava said AR will “transform how people spend” on fashion in years to come, adding that three-quarters of shoppers are more likely to spend with brands that personalise their products to them.
River Island trials smart mirrors to ‘blur’ physical and digital shopping
River Island is trialling smart mirrors in its stores as it sets about “blurring the lines” between its online and in-store experiences
The fashion retailer’s chief information officer, Adam Warne, said although the technology is only being piloted in “a handful” of shops, it was already having benefits for shoppers and the business.
Warne said: “When you look at it through a customer lens, when you are in a changing room, you want to see what other products go with what you’re trying on. You also want to avoid that awkward position where these jeans don’t fit, do I shout over the top and get my partner or friend to go and get a different size, or do I put my clothes back on?
“We’ve put smart mirrors in a handful of our stores that do that as a service. People probably wouldn’t think of River Island being a service-based organisation where you can be in a changing room and someone will bring you the things that you are interested in, but we have done that in a handful of our stores – we are trying it, we are learning from it and we are getting value from it.
“What that’s doing is blurring the lines between physical and digital. We are using digital content and recommendations in a physical environment. And because we have got RFID tech in all of our garments, we are also using that for insight-driven metrics as well. If we see a pair of jeans go in, and people are constantly going for a size up or down, that might tell us we have made some mistakes in our fit and our design process.”
Warne, who joined River Island from N Brown last October, said the move was part of the retailer’s drive to make better use of the data it collects from customers.
He admitted River Island was a “data-rich, insight-poor” organisation, but insisted the business is changing the way it thinks about data.
“We are seeing data as much more about insight-driven action now,” Warne said.
“We have so many data points across product, physical and digital, so for us it’s about creating data inquisitiveness in the business, creating a sandpit for people to play in and not dictating what they should be doing with it. What that creates is a real demand for change in the business.”
Levi’s Katia Walsh: ‘Retailers can grow by growing their own data scientists’
The war for digital talent is beginning to be won by Levi’s, chief global strategy and AI officer Katia Walsh said.
The denim brand launched its own machine learning boot camp in 2021, which Walsh believes is the answer to attracting, retaining and building a digital team for the future.
Levi’s opened up the boot camp to all job functions across the business in 24 locations worldwide — allowing colleagues from designers to store managers to distribution centres to take part.
Narrowed down from 450 applicants to 100, the eight-week boot camp trained participants in AI learning and coding.
In turn, Levi’s has seen results in three key areas: creation; commerce and connections. Participants have, for example, created algorithms to predict when a machine in the distribution centre will fail and issue a call out to engineers to carry out preventative maintenance.
While the boot camp helps to build up Levi’s own data scientist pool, Walsh said it also helps it to acquire and retain talent.
She said: “These skilled insiders also help us hold onto externally hired AI experts that we would otherwise lose to the endless cycle of frustration.
“Because we now have more than 100 people on the site who speak the language fluently, the external hires who come on board are actually staying with us. They get up to speed faster, they get more productive faster, they collaborate more intuitively and they ultimately become integrated faster.”
Retailers should democratise data to gain business benefits
Democratisation of data across a company can help retailers gain insights and avoid drowning in a sea of information.
Meal kit specialist Gousto's chief marketing officer, Tom Wallis, said the business had been founded on the principle of the power of data and making it widely available to employees had been central to success.
He said: “We built [data] into the culture of the company since day one. Everyone feels empowered to take it, use it and drive insights from it. Data comes first; food is the consumer result.”
CTS head of Google Cloud Platform Chris Cox said the shift away from business siloes, when data was stored in different locations and formats, towards a single, consolidated model was useful.
He observed that “having a single consolidated model means you get to do some of the cool stuff”, and avoid being overwhelmed by data that is not tailored to the needs of the business and those working for it.
Cox said: “You can capture all this raw material but it’s not necessarily useful. It becomes noise rather than signals, and you want a good signal-to-noise ratio.”
Diversification of partner base key in addressing supply chain challenges
Retailers are increasingly widening their supplier base and diversifying their supply chain partners following disruption during and since the pandemic.
They are developing relationships with more suppliers, rather than relying on a few, and extending their portfolio of providers of services such as freight to ensure business continuity.
Art and gifts specialist Abstract House co-founder and chief financial officer Summer Obaid said: “You can’t put your eggs in one basket any more. We have to invest in finding alternative sources.”
Naked Wines supply chain director Phil Coghlan said the supply chain of the future “will involve a more diverse set of suppliers. The days of one freight operator are gone.”
The changes come as retailers see the opportunity to make supply efficiency a competitive advantage, including over the last mile, Grey Orange EMEA head of retail Robert Hughes said.
‘One woman at the table is not enough’
Ethnic minority communities make up 14% of the UK population and 40% in London, yet only 1.72% of venture capital is invested into their businesses – these stark figures were revealed by Kami co-founder and PhD student Erika Brodnock.
Brodnock has published research entitled Diversity Beyond Gender exploring the intersection of inclusive behaviour including educational background and ethnicity, alongside gender.
She said some businesses see diversity as a tickbox, thinking putting one woman in the boardroom is enough when it is not.
Worldwide, 40% of venture capital goes towards businesses founded by alumni from Harvard, Stamford, Cambridge and Oxford universities, while 0.02% goes to black women.
Brodnock said the start-up world is often a “mirror-tocracy” rather than a meritocracy, meaning investors are more likely to give funds to founders who look like them.
She said the solution is to make investors disclose their investments, forcing them to recognise any biases they may have.
“As we've started to publish the ethnicity pay gap, the ethnicity pay gap starts to reduce, because people know that they're going to be looked at. If they are paying one person 30% less than another, it will be seen,” she added.
DAY TWO
People and planet
Alessandra Bellini: Tesco wants to help customers save themselves and the planet
The chief customer officer of Tesco has said it wants to become the “easiest place to shop for healthy and sustainable food” for customers.
Alessandra Bellini said Tesco would achieve this through educating customers through marketing and in-store signage, as well as working closely with partners and wider stakeholders in grocery to affect change in customer behaviour.
“When you look at the food system, I think we can all agree that it is broken from the point of view of the impact it has on the planet and the impact it has on our health,” she said.
“Obesity is on the rise, particularly among children and the young, and two-thirds of people say they want to live more sustainably. However, the link to food is very, very weak.”
Tesco last week launched its Better Baskets campaign to help “people make better choices".
She added: "We're not about telling anyone what they should or shouldn't eat, should or shouldn't buy; we want to make it more affordable, easier to shop, and more relevant and inspiring, which we think is the role that we can play as retailers now easier and more affordable in a way that is safe.”
Bellini also said it would be pivotal for grocers to work together on a unified labelling strategy for produce to enable customers to make healthier and more sustainable choices more easily.
“We want to work on a labelling system that could help customers navigate the health attributes of the food [they are buying]. Something that is of national relevance, rather than a system that each retailer might invent and create, which will only add to the confusion,” she said.
Iceland boss: Inflation ‘much higher than 7% if you’re on the breadline’
Iceland boss Richard Walker has said customers “on the breadline” are facing far worse inflationary pressure than the 7% figure most recently given by Kantar.
Walker said the 7% figure is a “median figure that includes champagne and legs of lamb”, adding “if you’re on the breadline and only have £25 a week to spend on food” then the reality is much worse.
“If you take milk, for example, we were at £1 a year ago, as everyone else was. Now it’s much higher than that. We’re now at £1.29 for four pints and we’re not making any money out of that.”
Speaking on a panel with Walker, and Ocado Solutions chief executive Luke Jensen, Co-op Food boss Jo Whitfield was asked to give an assessment of how bad inflation could get over the rest of the year.
Whitfield said it was hard to say, but warned that the 10% figure being predicted by Kantar “isn’t unlikely”. However, she said it was more important to know how much of the inflation was temporary and how much would now be baked into the cost of doing business.
“I think the real question for all of us is where it’s going to settle and how much of [inflation] is structural and how much is temporary?”
Walker described the ongoing situation as a “perfect maelstrom” of different business headwinds, “from worker shortages, through to commodity price increases,” adding that there are no energy caps for businesses.
Ikea chief sustainability officer: Purpose and profit together can make sustainable consumption possible
Ikea owner Ingka Group’s chief sustainability officer Karen Pflug said she believes it is possible for a retailer to be “truly sustainable” even if its job is to “sell more stuff”.
The retailer’s solution is to ensure each product is both as sustainable as possible and encourage consumers to act more sustainably.
Ikea is working towards goals including reaching 100% renewable energy by 2030 and zero-emission home deliveries by 2025 but is also making changes to its stores.
“We want to really look at how we move to be a more circular business and that includes looking at secondhand. We're testing and trialling different secondhand options across our business,” she says.
The retailer replaced Black Friday with ‘Buy Back Friday’, last year, urging customers to return their unwanted Ikea goods to stores to be resold in their circular hubs.
As a result, 155,000 items were returned and 18 million spare parts were delivered to customers to help them repair products.
“We're a company that's here for people to buy the essential items: a bed, a sofa, a kitchen table; to come together with their family and friends,” Pflug said.
“Of course, we want to grow – we're a commercial organisation – but we want to grow sustainably and we want to offer alternative services like the buyback, secondhand and recycling and repair so that people can keep things for longer, and then once they do want to get rid of it, then it goes back into the supply chain.”
Ikea has also introduced sustainable living areas in all stores where customers can learn more about how to live more sustainably – including learning about elements such as LED lighting or reducing food waste.
“It is about purpose and profit together, going hand in hand, and how we measure our performance and our success is around better homes for our customers, better planet for all of us and being a better company with how we really look after the financial side of the business so that we are sustainable in the longer term in the broadest sense of sustainability,” she concluded.
Creating a circular model: Sustainability expert’s four-point plan
Accenture sustainability expert Wesley Spindler lifted the lid on the four key areas for retailers to start their transition to a circular business model.
Companies are seeking to clean up their operations across all areas of their business including sourcing products more responsibly; reducing waste; and recycling, reusing or reselling the items they produce, as the clock ticks down on climate change.
Spindler, managing director of sustainability at Accenture, shared a four-point plan for retailers at the start of that journey.
“‘How do I get started’ is a question I get all the time,” Spindler said. “How do we make circular happen and what is really at play here?”
- Operations: “This is about your retail footprint – your stores, your factories, your manufacturing sites, even your offices. Operational activities can supplement existing sustainability activities around things like water, energy, carbon and waste, and act as a wider umbrella to create momentum on larger initiatives. There are often shorter-term wins and paybacks and it starts to get the business thinking and moving towards that concept of net neutrality or ultimately net positivity.”
- Products and services: “This is all about reinventing what our portfolio looks like and how we reassess the full product life-cycle from design through to end use. That is critical in a circular system.”
- Culture and organisation: “How do you facilitate the right mindsets and bring your workforce along the journey with you, in terms of learning? How do you build circularity into the organisation’s purpose and strategy and vision, and really get buy-in from the bottom-up across all your functions?”
- Ecosystem: “It’s not only important to partner with your supply chain to start thinking about that reinvention but also with policymakers, given the evolution in policy, as well as investors, academia and NGOs.”
A third of retail workers deemed ‘flight risks’
One in three retail workers are actively looking to leave their jobs, new data has revealed.
Figures from digital career development and happiness tool WorkL found 33% of retail staff were now deemed to be a “flight risk” in the next six to nine months. That compares to a global average of 27%.
WorkL’s findings are based on monthly responses from 5,000 retail workers who answer questions about their happiness at work, wellbeing and relationships with their line managers.
Lord Mark Price, former Waitrose boss and founder of WorkL, said: “What we see is there is a close correlation between peoples’ wellbeing and their likelihood to leave. If people are scoring really poorly on wellbeing questions, there is also a much higher risk that they are going to leave the organisation.”
Price added that 41% of retailers completing the WorkL survey in April had a “wellbeing risk” – the highest score for retail in the five years that the company has been tracking the data.
He insisted there were commercial advantages to prioritising workers’ mental health and wellbeing.
Price said: “As well as being morally important – who doesn’t want to look after their workforce? – there are also commercial advantages in making sure your people are well looked after: higher productivity; lower sickness absence; higher profitability; lower staff turnover.
“Getting it in everyone’s heads that wellbeing equates to commercial success, as well as morally wanting to help people, is really important.”
‘Covid has given us the opportunity to make path to the top more accessible’
A flexible attitude to how people want to work will be key to attracting and retaining talent, said Seraphine chair Sharon Flood as part of the Chairs’ Panel.
“How many businesses look at their boards and see that the business is being run by the same type of person, who is quite different from the rest of the population of the business?” Flood asked.
“We need to address that. Covid has given us a really great opportunity to make sure that the path to the top is more accessible.”
Flood suggested businesses need to remove the barriers that are stopping people from advancing their careers, including offering more flexibility in terms of days in the office, parenting or bringing pets to work.
“The war for talent is getting tougher and tougher and we shouldn’t be ruling anybody out just because they want to live their life slightly differently,” she said.
The panel, which also included New Look chair Mike Coupe and Pets at Home deputy chair Dennis Millard, highlighted the importance of creating a working culture where all employees feel valued and that those at the top should be talking to their workforce, not at them.
“Diversity is non-negotiable and I think retail as an industry is in a really great position to lead on that. We have a diverse population, a much more diverse population than other industries, and we should be taking advantage of it,” Flood added.
Shoppers want ‘joy and comfort’ from stores post-pandemic
Software consultant Amido’s director Stefan Hull observed what retailers are prioritising in terms of in-store investment.
“Two years ago, the conversation we were having with retailers was around cool tech, things like smart inventory, whereas conversations now are about storytelling and the feelings retailer wasn't to evoke in-store – giving a sense of joy and comfort is very important,” he said.
Hull added that shoppers are after a “lightness” in in-store experiences, rather than pushy sales assistants and jam-packed clothing rails, as many adapt to shopping for leisure post-pandemic.
As retailers adapt to these shifting needs, Hull also observed that how the amount of data being collected, and how it is being used, is also changing.
He said rather than the avalanche of data points retailers would collect in previous years, many are opting to focus on “eight or so data points that give correct and useful answers 80% of the time”.
Tribal Worldwide chief experience officer Yasmin Borain echoed this point and said retailers should be “data-inspired, not data-driven”.
She also said retailers needed to take cues from purpose-driven brands such as Sweaty Betty, Patagonia and Nike to engage customer-facing staff.
“You can’t talk about customer experience and satisfaction without talking about employee experience and satisfaction; one doesn’t happen without the other,” she added.
Rental could be the new Klarna, says Hirestreet CEO
Leaders in the clothes rental space predict the mindset shift to have rental as an everyday consideration for fashion lovers will happen sooner than people might think.
The chief executives of Rotaro, Hirestreet and Cocoon said the time is ripe for retailers to make moves in this space, as consumers look for accessible and affordable options that are also sustainable.
Hirestreet boss Isabella West said she believes rental will soon start to be integrated into retailer’s websites as an alternative option to purchasing.
“If we look at the real winners over the last couple of years, arguably it is someone like Klarna, which has powered affordability for customers,” she says.
“Brands working with them have basically realised Klarna increased loyalty and increased engagement because of that affordability.
“Now, we're moving into a world where affordability is more important than ever before but equally, where consumers are more aware of the dangers of overconsumption; 60% of consumers are looking to be more conscious in their consumption.
“In my view, rental’s part in the future of retail almost sits [alongside] and replaces that Klarna button.”
Instead of spreading payments out over time like with Klarna, consumers could purchase their garments temporarily, offering the same level of affordability with sustainability added in.
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