The top stories from Retail Week Live 2023
TALA founder and CEO Grace Beverley: ‘Sustainable fashion as a concept is entirely oxymoronic’
Grace Beverley, founder and CEO of sustainable sportswear brand TALA and fitness brand Shreddy, has said the fashion industry is inherently unsustainable and the best it can do is be transparent.
“The fashion industry will always be, to a certain extent, about consumption,” she said. “When you stick sustainability in front of that they are always going to be at odds with one another. If you're asking people to consume you are asking people to be less sustainable.”
Beverley said TALA, which she founded in 2019, aims to provide more sustainable options to people who are currently shopping from fast-fashion brands. One of the ways the brand does this is by offering inclusive sizing up to a size 18 and 4XL.
“Fifty per cent of the UK’s population is above size 16 and only 8% of brands are offering sizes to this demographic. When you’re asking people to shop more sustainably and not providing them with options then you’re not doing anything, you're not allowing that mission to happen.
“While that might sound like a product and customer decision, that's also a deceptive sustainability decision because if we're asking people to be more sustainable and not even providing clothes that fit people well, then fast fashion was the only option in that scenario.”
Beverley said that traditional retailers are underestimating the importance of social media for Gen Z consumers.
“I think that the shift to social media as a shopping tool, whether they are checking out by that platform or not, is bigger than can ever be stated.
“I think social media becomes most effective when you stop looking at just selling some products online and you really concentrate on how you can give someone almost a live shopping experience via your social media page.”
Beverley, who raised £4.2m in capital last year, also criticised the fact that 99% of venture funding is given to male-owned businesses and said more people needed to speak out about this.
Beverley explained it is just as important to talk about the venture funding gap as it is to address the gender pay gap.
"We talk about the gender pay gap a lot, we talk about discrepancies between gender in the workplace. If we are not talking about the venture funding gap, then we're leaving a huge amount of that out.
“We know statistically as well that women hire more women. Women are less afraid to put women in leadership positions when they might be at childbearing age.”
New Look boss: It’s not just the director’s responsibility to count every penny
New Look boss Helen Connolly has said that it’s up to every person in a retail organisation to focus on profitability and is not just the responsibility of the directors to count the pennies.
Connolly said the pandemic and now the cost-of-living crisis has meant investors are now solely looking for profit after a period of prioritising sales or customer acquisition growth.
As a result, it can no longer just be directors or senior members of the team worrying about profitability if a retail business is to succeed.
“I think people are generally thinking profit is now more than the top-line sales. I think it's an easy thing to say, it's not just directors but every team member needs to think about every penny they're spending.
“I come from a grocery background as well and George at Asda, where I worked for a long time with an everyday low-cost, everyday low-price mentality. I think that everyone needs to think along the way. Hopefully that's something I've been able to bring to the unit as well as make sure that we're absolutely focusing on profit all the time.”
Connolly, who took the reins at New Look in January 2020, said the retailer still has some way to go before its ongoing turnaround phase is secure. Success will hinge on “the right product; continuing and getting better at online and omnichannel” and moving ahead with some new technology partnerships.
'Consumers want brands to speak up' – making the most of social media
The founder and formulator of vegan skincare brand Frank’s Remedies, Kyle Frank, said while a presence on social media is increasingly crucial for brands, new starters should not to dive straight in and try and emulate the latest trends.
Frank said Gen Z and younger consumers above all value brands that are true to their values in every way – from the products they produce and sell through to the way they communicate with their customers.
“Consumers want brands to speak up and people want to know what a brand’s stance is on any issue,” he said. “It’s given smaller brands a chance to break into the mainstream because they tend to be founder-led and can have a more unique and coherent voice on these issues.”
He said for brands or founders new to using Instagram and TikTok, finding a unique and true brand voice is the most vital thing.
“It’s good to have a strategy about what you bring to the table and how you can differentiate yourself from what other people are saying. Good to be authentic. Don’t just chase the viral trends,” he said.
“It’s good to experiment and try different things, so as you build a community you can work out what they really want. Is it more entertainment, is it more educational, is it more scientific? Knowing these things is really important.”
Three ways retailers can make the hiring process more age inclusive
Lafiya Health founder Shomi Williams, Billion Dollar Boy talent acquisition and DE&I assistant Harry Lloyd and Celutions UK founder Celine Erorh took to the stage to discuss the importance of bridging the generational gap in retail workplaces. Here are some of the “quick wins” the experts said would help retailers ensure their hiring process is more age inclusive:
- Don’t look at people in terms of length of service. The recruitment process should assess people based on their ability and their skills, not tenure. Avoid setting minimum experience years in job descriptions, as people can gain experience at a different pace from others.
- Don’t get hung up on gaps in people’s CVs. It is easy to forget that the applications that come through for a job are from a human being – and hiring managers should always keep that in mind when they’re assessing applications. People may take breaks for a range of reasons, including illness, and family reasons. This shouldn’t put managers off of a good application.
- Offer and ask candidates about mentoring and in-house training. This will provide a gauge for how enthusiastic they are about working for you and how passionate they are about growing within the industry, regardless of their age.
One in five people are joining the metaverse
One in five people are entering the metaverse, research by Kantar unveiled at Retail Week Live has revealed.
Fashion client executive and metaverse specialist at Kantar Scarlet McNicol says retailers need to have a good R&D budget to keep up with digitisation as more consumers join.
“Kantar has identified five key strategic drivers for retailers to enter the metaverse – brand awareness and engagement, new revenue stream, product launches and marketing, community building and customer acquisition.”
McNicol told audiences at Live that the metaverse will continue reappearing and brands need to find a way to reach out to customers through this technology.
“We need to analyse the type of audience we want in the metaverse,” she said.
“Do we bring existing customers in or find new ones there?”
Gen Z finds emails boring and outdated
Hummmble founder and senior product designer Mabintou Kolley said personalisation is one thing retailers need to get better at.
“There’s a need for personalisation as the way we consume individually is very different. The way brands communicate with Gen Z needs to change too.”
Emails are not reaching the younger generations and Kolley believes Instagram would be a better way to communicate.
“Emails are annoying and I’ll only subscribe to them if I shop there enough or if there are any benefits, such as discounts.
“I tend not to read the emails as they are irritating and I have no interest in them.”
‘Retailers stuck in Amazon’s headlights’ in terms of personalisation
Eagle Eye communications and propositions director Sarah Jarvis said that “retailers are stuck in Amazon’s headlights” when it comes to cracking the personalisation puzzle for their business.
“Personalisation is about trying to replicate a one-to-one relationship as you would between a customer and shopfloor employee in store, but with millions of data points in the most useful and relevant way,” said Jarvis.
She said retailers can massively benefit from personalisation if done right – so much so that they can “calculate their marketing budget down to a single consumer”.
Yoox Net-a-Porter head of product management for mobile apps Kimberley Roditi said just like Netflix and TikTok speak to our unique individual taste, brands can use personalisation to know exactly what customers want and benefit from this.
Decathlon personalisation and customer retention officer Zoe Allen said it is important for brands to cut through the noise and reach the right consumer through their preferred platforms. These can include apps, push notifications or emails.
Price is a feeling, not a number says Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland
Ogilvy UK vice chairman Rory Sutherland told audiences at Live they should look at price as a feeling and not a number to get better results from their customers.
“Price isn’t a number, it's a feeling,” said Sutherland.
“You can make something feel inexpensive, even when it's quite a big number. It’s the reason Rolls-Royce and Maserati stopped exhibiting at car shows. A €350,000 car looks really expensive at a car show. Instead, they go to aircraft shows and yacht shows because if you spend your whole afternoon wandering around looking at 200-foot yachts and Learjets, a €350,000 car is an impulse buy.”
Sutherland also flagged how retailers should consider consumer perceptions of price, rather than the price itself.
“In economics, there’s no distinction between a bonus and a bribe,” said Sutherland
“But in human psychology there are people who fundamentally value 50% extra free more highly than 33% off the price. And 50% extra fee is a lot less margin eroding than dropping the headline price.
“Test stupid things. If you've got a product that’s not selling and you put the price down that will probably work. But you should also test putting the price up.
“It doesn't work as often, but it works surprisingly often. And if it works, obviously it’s a much more valuable discovery to find that you can sell more by increasing the price than the rather banal discovery that you can give shit away for less.”
Tesco boss Murphy: Deposit return scheme ‘concerning and far from simple’
Tesco boss Ken Murphy has lashed out at the results of the Scottish government’s deposit return scheme (DRS), saying take-up has been “concerning” due to the scheme itself being “far from simple”.
For the DRS to work and effect real change in customer behaviour, Murphy said the process must be simple. However, in Scotland, Murphy said the process is “far from simple for customers, suppliers and retailers”.
“That’s a concern,” he continued. “I want Tesco to be at the forefront of systematic change and genuine partnership with government and regulators in Scotland and across the UK. But for that [to happen], it’s got to be done right.”
Murphy said that instead of a devolved, country-by-country approach, the UK government should look to implement a nationwide DRS as “the more logical approach”.
He also said that in some devolved nations, the “handling fee” for returns is “not transparent” and does not cover supplier costs, leaving retailers out of pocket as a result.
“We need a scheme that’s financially sustainable,” Murphy said. “We need and want to set ourselves up for success for our customers, colleagues, suppliers and our uniting mission of getting it right for our environment.
“The very worst outcome here is we set back progress with a poor scheme, rather than drive forward the changes we all want and need.”
Boots CEO: Whole team focused on making Sephora Westfield launch ‘a disaster’
Boots chief executive Seb James has said he and his team leaned into making the recent Sephora London store launch “a disaster”, having grown Boots’ beauty market share.
James said in the current rapidly changing and turbulent environment, it is important to try and benefit from your competitors.
He said: “In beauty, we’ve grown 200 basis points in market share in one year by using one simple rule. And that is, in the nicest possible way, if your competitors are struggling put the boot in. There’s nothing like the feeling I get when a new competitor turns up in the mall. We had one recently in Westfield and our whole team leaned into the idea of making that launch a disaster.”
The Boots boss went on to quote his former boss at Currys, Lord Kalms, who, in reference to Comet, said “you must hate your competitors and dream of their deaths”.
Boots opened its newly renovated Beauty Hall in Westfield London on the same day as the Sephora launch and announced its biggest investment in value by extending the benefits of its Advantage Card.
James said the Boots store in Westfield grew by 85% as a result of the buzz around its competitor’s comeback and strategic timing.
He explained how it is important to stay ahead of technology to lead a market. He said it is only partly true that technology has changed and people have not.
“We live in a very interactive world today. And it is important to adapt businesses to fully reap the benefits of technology,” he said.
Using the Advantage Card as an example, James said the confidence that Boots customers have shown the brand is something to be cherished.
He said: “We have an Advantage Card programme which is now 27 years old. Seventy-five per cent of British women are active users of that card. We now have long-term data from the card and the Boots app now has 6.3 million users.”
Greggs CEO Roisin Currie expects high inflation for some time
Food price inflation and the pricing pressure it brings is unlikely to head downwards in the immediate future, Greggs chief executive Roisin Currie believes.
Currie said: “My feeling is that it will continue to be high this year.”
Retailers have been battling higher costs, while consumers have been facing a cost-of-living crisis, as prices of essentials such as food and energy rose in the aftermath of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
On the day that Currie was speaking, market monitor Kantar reported that grocery price inflation has climbed to a record 17.5%, “adding £837 to the average household’s annual bill if people don’t change how and what they buy”.
“If ever there was a time when you had to work hard at your value credentials it was the last year,” Currie said.
In order to maintain a strong value positioning, Currie said there is a constant and longstanding effort to control costs and create efficiencies.
She said Greggs has been on “an accelerated automation journey” – the addition of a pizza-making facility has increased production capacity while lowering costs, for instance.
That does not necessarily impact employment – she said recruitment remains a challenge, as it does for many retailers.
Currie, who became Greggs chief executive last year having previously been retail operations and people director, said a focus on low costs as well as value has been part of her approach since early in her career when she worked at Asda.
BP’s Clements: Retail crime more prevalent in UK than in Europe
BP’s European convenience boss Tracey Clements has said the rate of abuse and crime against retailers is far higher in the UK than in its other European markets.
Clements drew parallels between the current levels of abuse and crime being driven by the cost-of-living crisis and the upsurge in incidents during the global financial crisis.
“At BP, safety is our primary value. In the UK, unfortunately, shoplifting and the rise in crime against retail workers are more prominent here than what I see in the other nine countries I look after.
“It reminds me of when I was with Tesco Express c-stores back in 2007. The banking crisis led to a huge increase in shoplifting and aggression and violence against shop workers. Sadly, we’re seeing that again,” she said.
Clements said in a bid to combat this BP had been employing more security and had begun trialling more body cameras being worn by staff and also implemented a strict “non-confront policy”.
She added that at BP “colleagues are always more important than stock”.
The Body Shop: Double-digit sales increase at stores that open hire
The Body Shop UK and global inclusive hiring lead Antonia Tony-Fadipe said the retailer’s stores that open hired in the US saw a double-digit increase in sales compared with those that didn’t.
The open-hiring process is a concept where the first person to apply is recruited and was first introduced by the Body Shop in distribution centres in the US in 2019.
The retailer has since then expanded the programme to the UK and Australian markets after seeing positive results.
Tony-Fadipe explained how since its adoption, the open-hiring process has impacted more than 4,500 lives and increased retention of seasonal staff by 30%.
Some 84% of the open-hired staff said this helped improve their confidence while performing their duties.
And 69% of open-hired colleagues admitted to having at least one barrier, ranging from low income, age, physical or mental disability, or hailing from an immigrant or refugee background.
Tony-Fadipe said: “Ensuring the candidates have willingness and desire to work and partnering with the right charities are central to the open-hiring process.”
Trinny London CMO: Being in touch with your community is essential to DTC success
Trinny London chief marketing officer Shira Feuer has pinned the ongoing success of the direct-to-consumer brand on its ability to relate to its community.
Trinny London originally launched as a beauty retailer in 2017 and since then has grown to be one of Europe’s fastest-growing beauty brands shipping to 180 countries.
Feuer said it was important for Trinny to be consistent and visibly recognisable to its community.
Touching on what she called the four pillars every DTC brand must have – entertainment, interest, inspiration and education – Feuer said brands must focus on creating content that is relevant to potential and existing customers.
“For Trinny, this means through entertaining content, but for others it could mean something else. It is about focusing on what we are good at.”
Speaking about how retailers can future-proof themselves from slowing online growth, Feuer said it is important for brands to understand the intersection of online and offline channels and use that to enhance customer experience.
Feuer said the brand is looking to expand to more countries and launching new products as it hopes to continue its tremendous growth.
“We are looking to do more in retail, some exciting new channels and content activity that I can’t talk about just yet. But watch this space for more.”
New Look tech boss: Retail needs to stop chasing ‘new and cool’ solutions
New Look technology and engineering director Ian Mahoney said retail needs quicker and more intuitive tech solutions rather than capex-intensive ones that take years to implement.
Mahoney said it is important for retailers not to go after “new and cool” tech just because it's “new and cool”. Solutions must be aligned with customer intent for them to be truly beneficial to the retailer.
BP vice-president for operational excellence in Europe Hannah Barnes said tech is most useful when used correctly to solve the problems faced in day-to-day operations.
She said: “It’s very important to make sure we make the most of the three-and-a-half minutes a customer spends in our stores, that’s where technology can help us.”
Barnes said it was all about listening to the customer’s needs and then delivering that with the help of technology.
New Look “is a little bit behind the curve in terms of implementing technology,” said Mahoney. He said that the retailer is working on implementing both customer-facing and employee-facing tech to enhance its operations.
Zebra Technologies director of retail and hospitality solutions EMEA, Mark Thomson, said the mobility of a business to adopt new technology is just as important to see positive results.
Majority of retail managers have had to support a colleague with a mental health issue in past year
The majority of managers working in retail have dealt with a colleague who has been impacted by a mental health issue in the past year.
According to a survey by the Retail Trust, revealed at Retail Week Live, 85% of retail managers say they have had to deal with a colleague who has had deteriorating mental health within the past 12 months.
The research also found that 30% of people in retail wanted to leave, which the Trust said was down to a “perfect storm” of recruitment and retention issues, the cost-of-living crisis and people reassessing their lives post-pandemic.
Retail Trust director of wellbeing services Cliff Lee told audiences at Retail Week Live: “Managers are becoming overwhelmed with the challenge.
“Without ample support, they are potentially a flight risk. Ultimately [managers] are the glue that holds responsible organisations together.”
He continued: “One of the biggest challenges we're seeing at the moment is that managers are kind of squeezed in the middle. They've got colleagues that they're needing to support but they don't necessarily feel that they have the tools to address those challenges. Training those managers, that's going to be the key.“
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