Deliveroo, Boots and L’Occitane lift lid on strategic priorities

One month into 2022 and retailers are already fighting a battle against rising inflation, demand volatility and another year of supply chain challenges.

Understanding the winning strategies to invest in across markets, customers and resources is crucial to remaining relevant. 

At Retail Week’s Strategy Week masterclass last week, we brought to life data, industry knowledge and insights to uncover priorities of top retailers and brands for 2022.

Featuring discussions with leaders from Currys, Bravissimo, Costa Coffee, Boots, THG Ingenuity, the Co-op, Deliveroo, Cloud Nine, L’Occitane, and more, three strategic priorities were identified:

Deliveroo: Doubling down on collaboration

Deliveroo vice-president commercial UK & Ireland Rob Harris revealed how retail partnerships have transformed the business and were a big investment opportunity for the year ahead, having established tie-ups with The Co-op, Waitrose, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, One Stop and BP over the past four years.

Grocery represented 7% of its global turnover in the first half of 2021.

“Grocery is rapidly growing for us,” said Harris. “We’re now offering more than 1,500 SKUs when it comes to grocery, which is a whole different customer experience. We couldn’t have done it without effective partnerships with retailers.

“When you do things in a partnership you don’t necessarily have some of that organisational inertia that you have when a business is doing it on its own”

Rob Harris, vice-president commercial UK & Ireland, Deliveroo

“We led in the UK and have been able to build out in other markets too. We think [retail] is a big opportunity and are putting a lot of investment behind this for the coming year. Ultimately it helps the whole ecosystem for customers on our Deliveroo marketplace – we see customers who join because of grocery and then use our restaurant proposition, and vice versa. 

“We’ve had to learn and listen together – it takes two to tango in this world – and act quickly upon it. When you do things in a partnership you don’t necessarily have some of that organisational inertia that you have when a business is doing it on its own.” 

Boots: Revolutionising the supply chain

Boots is one retailer that has experimented with on-demand delivery, working in partnership with Deliveroo, as it looks to ‘revolutionise’ its supply chain.

Its UK ecommerce director Paula Bobbett said tie-ups like this are enabling it to become faster and smarter operationally. 

She said: “One thing the pandemic has taught us is the importance of immediacy and convenience, and we want to be wherever customers need us. We know we need to continue to revolutionise our supply chain and we’ve got significant investment going into that.

“One thing the pandemic has taught us is the importance of immediacy and convenience, and we want to be wherever customers need us”

Paula Bobbett, UK ecommerce director, Boots

“In August last year we started a trial pilot with Deliveroo across 400 healthcare and beauty lines in 14 stores, and we’ve been tremendously pleased with the results, particularly for immediate-need products. 

“We’ve then expanded that to 700 lines – bringing in cosmetics, fragrance and gifting – and have seen lots of customers using us for cough and cold products. For us, it is revolutionary because we’re where customers want us to be […] in as little as 20 minutes.”

L’Occitane: Betting big on experiential retail 

L’Occitane CX lead UK and Ireland Millie Lloyd shared how the beauty retailer is investing heavily in its flagship store as a way to drive greater customer engagement:

“It’s about [using stores] to create touchpoints, tell a story and communicate our values,” she said.

“If you were to go into any of our 80 stores across the UK and Ireland you would be able to try our hand creams, but in our flagship we wanted to elevate that experience. We’ve invited customers in for 15-minute complimentary hand massages where they can spend time in store and engage with our ambassadors.

“It’s about [using stores] to create touchpoints, tell a story and communicate our values”

Millie Lloyd, CX lead UK and Ireland, L’Occitane

“We’ve also had chefs in store who have created macarons with our ingredients and flavours [based on our hand creams] so it was really different and unique.”

Significantly, Lloyd highlighted how in-store accessibility is a continued focus: “On all our packaging we have braille. Again, in our flagship we take it one step further, we have braille plaques throughout and the staff are all trained by the RNIB.

“It’s moments like these that elevate and enhance what your brand already does in a way that speaks to the customer.”