Category: Amazon

  • Don’t believe the hysteria over till-free stores

    Don’t believe the hysteria over till-free stores

    We all know it’s only a matter of time before Amazon Go reaches UK shores. Trademarks have long been registered, the rumours have been flying and, having debuted in New York City last month, it’s fair to say that Amazon has an appetite for urban expansion.

    This explains Sainsbury’s recent scramble to open the first till-free store in the UK, a PR coup ahead of Amazon’s inevitable incursion.

    And they’re not alone – pretty much every grocer from Tesco to Marks & Spencer is trialling scan-and-go technology, self-ordering kiosks are now the norm at McDonald’s and Argos quietly launched its first self-service digital store last month. Time is the new currency.

    Checkout-free shopping will particularly cater to busy city workers on their lunch break and it will undoubtedly hit travel retail hard – till-free will become the norm in airports and train stations five years from now. But is this really the future of retail?

    The customer experience is paramount, but today ‘frictionless’ often translates as ‘soulless’. Most shoppers still value human interaction in-store and, as we’ve witnessed with self-checkout, there will be resistance among some shoppers to do the heavy lifting themselves.

    Source: Sainsburys

    Take the new Sainsbury’s trial, for example: for a store that’s all about reducing friction, there’s certainly a lot of it initially as shoppers have to download the app and get used to scanning QR codes.

    Let’s not forget that, a few years ago, Morrisons scaled back its self-checkout ambitions in response to customer feedback. There has been a lot of hype about automation, but when it comes to responding to disruption, retailers must not lose the human touch.

    Defending cash

    Checkout-free stores can be controversial. Not only because they will accelerate the number of retail job losses (according to the Office for National Statistics, 25% of supermarket checkout jobs disappeared between 2011 and 2017), but also because going cashless can be seen as discriminatory towards customers without bank accounts or smartphones.

    This summer, Philadelphia will be the first US city to prohibit cashless stores, and a growing number of cities are considering a similar ban. Amazon has had little choice but to begrudgingly adapt, and its shiny new Manhattan store is the first Go branch to accept cash.

    Lastly, we must acknowledge the elephant in the room: theft. Today, it feels unnatural to bypass the checkout, and Amazon says it takes customers several visits before they no longer feel like they’re shoplifting.

    But theft is a genuine concern and was one of the reasons Walmart shelved its scan-and-go programme in the US last year, with a former executive joking that the scheme should have been simply called “‘go’ because the customers can’t seem to ‘scan’ anything”.

    The biggest retailer in the world is now embracing a mobile point-of-sale solution. Equipping more staff with handheld devices so shoppers can pay on the spot is a solid compromise – you still provide a frictionless checkout experience while taking the onus off the customer and alleviating concerns over shrinkage.

    I don’t doubt that the digital store is the future of retail or that checkout-free shopping will appeal to certain customers and shopping missions. But consumer adoption will be slow, and they will never replace manned checkouts entirely, which is why the hysteria over till-free stores is unwarranted.

    Automation is coming but, in the process, retailers must ensure they don’t kill the experience they are working so hard to improve.

    This article originally appeared on Retail Week

  • Co-opetition hits the high street

    Co-opetition hits the high street

    Is this the future of the high street?

    According to Next’s CEO Lord Simon Wolfson, a partnership with Amazon is one of the ways they can stay “relevant” to shoppers.

    And I have to agree. In the UK, Amazon is the 5th largest retailer. Nearly 20% of retail sales now take place online and, although we don’t have official data, I would estimate that Amazon accounts for 40% of that spend.

    So how do you evolve?

    How do you repurpose your physical space? I’ve said time and again that stores need to become: 1) frictionless; 2) experiential; and 3) a hub for fulfilment. Ticking that last box, hundreds of Next stores will now allow shoppers to collect their Amazon parcels instore through a new program called Amazon Counter.

    It’s not dissimilar to Amazon’s US partnership with Kohls, which has been wildly successful and is now being rolled out across the entire store estate. Kohl’s stores however also handle Amazon returns and I imagine this will come in time as they look to address what is very much the Achilles heel of e-commerce.

    Meanwhile, in France, Casino recently announced plans to expand its partnership with Amazon by adding 1,000 collection lockers to its supermarkets. Next isn’t the only one willing to dance with the devil.

    Co-opetition: it’s only the beginning

    Co-opetition was a key theme throughout our book. In Chapter 2: Why Amazon is Not Your Average Retailer, we wrote:

    “In the future, more retailers will run on Amazon’s rails. Retailers themselves are increasingly content to overlook the huge competitive threat posed by Amazon to take advantage of their physical and digital infrastructure. Some may consider it playing with fire – certainly retailers like Toys R Us, Borders and Circuit City would. They were among Amazon’s very first ‘frenemies’ in the early noughties when they outsourced their e-commerce business to the giant – all three have since gone bankrupt. But we believe more retailers will cozy up to Amazon if it helps them to achieve greater reach (marketplace), drive traffic to stores (Amazon pop-ups, click & collect, instore returns) or improve the customer experience (same-day delivery, voice-activated shopping). The unique dual role of competitor and service provider is becoming more apparent by the day. ‘Co-opetition’ is a key theme for the future.” [Berg & Knights. Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce, p23, Kogan Page.]

    Later in our book, Miya and I predicted that Amazon would team up with a retailer like M&S or Debenhams; Next is actually a far better fit so consider this a coup for Amazon.

    More than half of Next’s sales now take place online and a good chunk of those are collected instore. They recognized early on the importance of repurposing their stores to cater to today’s ‘on-my-terms shopper’.

    Despite falling like-for-likes, Next is yet to embark on a radical store closure plan. They understand that the store’s role is no longer purely about selling and that having a strong physical presence is an incredibly valuable way to engage with shoppers, let them try stuff on, collect and return orders (as evidenced today) and also offer an experience they can’t get online. I’d argue prosecco bars and hair salons may be a step too far (Debenhams is closing its instore gyms, anyone surprised?) but certainly coffee shops and collaboration with other retailers like HEMA, Paperchase, Mamas + Papas is the way forward for a high street retailer like Next.

    Amazon is not a credible fashion destination

    Next’s willingness to partner with Amazon is also a sign that they don’t see them as a threat, despite Amazon building up its own arsenal of fashion brands. Never underestimate Amazon, of course, and I certainly don’t doubt that they can sell ‘clothes’ but I just can’t see them cracking ‘fashion’. But more on that another day.

  • Amazon book launch [VIDEO]

    Amazon book launch [VIDEO]

    It’s been a busy 8 weeks since our book was launched…

    I often get asked what the book covers, what’s our hook, and, without fail, ‘is it available on Amazon’?

    So I’ve decided to round up some of the interviews, podcasts and general discussions that Miya and I have had over the past two months, including today’s interview on tech TV channel Disruptive Live.

    Hope it gives you a flavor of the book. And, yes, it is available on Amazon. 😉

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thx4_CulYQI&t=21s

    Blog

    What is ‘The Amazon Effect’ really?

    TV

    BBC World News (TV): Amazon’s Q4 results

    Podcasts

    Print

  • What is ‘The Amazon Effect’, really?

    What is ‘The Amazon Effect’, really?

    The phrase ‘the Amazon effect’ brings to mind images of boarded-up shops and retail bankruptcies.

    We think of the 2,700 stores that shut or the 80,000 retail jobs that disappeared in the UK in the first half of 2018 alone. E-commerce, and Amazon in particular, is often positioned as the death knell for the high street.

    I don’t buy into the ‘retail apocalypse’ narrative, but it must be acknowledged that this is a period of unprecedented change and naturally as spending shifts online, fewer stores are needed.

    This isn’t rocket science, it is just about following the customer. Over the past five years, online sales of non-food products in the UK have doubled. Now, nearly 20% of all retail sales take place online. Today, people are ubiquitously connected. They live online. They have access to billions of products right at their fingertips that turn up on doorsteps, often free of charge, the very next day.

    Online shopping has become utterly effortless, and that has shaken bricks-and-mortar retail to its core. 2018 was the year that retail chief executives finally pulled their heads out of the sand and acknowledged that there is an oversupply of retail space and there is retail space that is no longer fit for purpose.

    Blaming Amazon

    Amazon is an easy scapegoat. After all, it’s thought that around a third of UK e-commerce sales go through Amazon’s platform (in the US, it’s closer to the 50% mark).

    And, after years of chipping away at the high street, Amazon is now among the top five retailers in the UK. Not many retailers can match ‘the everything store’ on range, convenience and, perhaps to a lesser extent, price. Not many retailers have 100 million customers around the globe willing to fork out roughly $100 annually just for the privilege of shopping with them. Not many have embedded themselves into the shopper’s life – and physical home – in the way that Amazon has; a testament to the strength of its ecosystem.

    But it is also true that not many retailers have deep pockets like Amazon – it spends more on R&D than any other American company. It is able to constantly throw ideas against the wall because it has been afforded the luxury of long-term thinking – and not paying a whole lot of tax hasn’t hurt. Business rates account for less than 1% of its sales (for comparison, Debenhams’ bill as a percentage of sales is almost 4 times that amount). The playing field has been tilted in Amazon’s favour since day one and I believe retailers are right to call for legislation to be rewritten for the digital age.

    High street woes go beyond Amazon

    But the industry’s problems run deeper than Amazon. Retailers continue to grapple with the dangerous combination of rising costs and soft demand which has created considerable pressure and particularly exposed some of the weaker retailers with underlying issues, such as Toys R Us.

    Real disposable income growth has been weak for a good decade and now the big unknown that is Brexit is added to the mix. In a similar vein to the weather, Brexit may be a convenient excuse for retailers reporting weak results, but it’s clear that shoppers will rein in spending during times of political and economic uncertainty.

    What else is behind the high street’s woes? Although ‘the Amazon effect’ is often cited, what about ‘the Aldi effect’ or ‘the Primark effect’? There are a handful of very agile bricks-and-mortar disruptors that are weeding out the complacent incumbents.

    We are at the beginning of quite a fundamental shift in consumer values, as shoppers prioritise spending on experiences over simply acquiring more material goods. Are we perhaps nearing ‘peak stuff’?

    In any case, it’s clear we are at the intersection of major technological, economic and societal changes that are profoundly reshaping the retail sector.

    Amazon isn’t killing retail, it’s killing mediocre retail

    So it’s not all Amazon’s fault. In fact, in many ways Amazon has been a force for good. It has stamped out complacency and made everyone raise their game, all to the benefit of the customer.

    What would retail look like if Amazon didn’t exist? In a nutshell, consumers would be more tolerant of mediocre service.

    Amazon’s technology roots and passion for invention are what sets it distantly apart from rivals. Many of Amazon’s past innovations can, in fact, be easily forgotten because they have simply become today’s normal. Think back to the late 1990s: online shopping used to be quite a laborious process. Amazon cut the friction out by launching one-click shopping, personalised product recommendations and user-generated ratings and reviews.

    Delivery, meanwhile, wasn’t always fast and free. Prime significantly raised customer expectations, leaving competitors with little choice but to invest in their own fulfilment capabilities. Amazon went on to tackle one of the biggest barriers to online shopping – missed deliveries – with the 2011 launch of Amazon Lockers. Today, virtually every major Western retailer offers click-and-collect (though Argos was perhaps unknowingly ahead of its time).

    Most of Amazon’s innovations catch competitors on the back foot, leaving them in the undesirable position of reacting to rather than leading change. So what is ‘the Amazon effect’, really?

    It’s Tesco rolling out same-day delivery nationwide.

    It’s M&S trialling scan-and-go technology, allowing shoppers to skip checkout queues ahead of an impending Amazon Go launch in London.

    It’s Waitrose delivering groceries directly into your fridge.

    It’s Asos allowing shoppers to ‘try before they buy’.

    It’s Zara shoppers collecting their online orders through automated pick-up points in-store.

    And this is a global battle. ‘The Amazon effect’ is Ocado finally securing a string of international deals, as the Amazon-Whole Foods acquisition accelerates demand for online grocery shopping.

    It’s Carrefour partnering with Google to launch Lea – its answer to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. In the US, Walmart offers customers a far superior experience today thanks to Amazon breathing down its neck. The retailer has even had a name change: after nearly half a century as Wal-Mart Stores, in 2018 the world’s largest retailer dropped Stores from its legal name to reflect the new digital era.

    Amazon has impacted all aspects of retail, and now everyone is scrambling to either keep up with or distance themselves from the online behemoth. The link may be slightly more tenuous but it could even be argued that ‘the Amazon effect’ is Debenhams adding gyms and beauty bars to its stores. It’s John Lewis sending staff to theatre training and democratising personal shopping. It’s Next putting hair salons and Prosecco bars in its shops.

    The opportunity

    High street retailers are recognising that for all its perks, shopping on Amazon is still quite a functional, transactional experience. It has taken the touch and feel out of shopping and there is a massive opportunity for retailers to distance themselves from Amazon’s utilitarian image.

    There is an opportunity to inject some personality and soul back into their stores, providing an immersive, memorable experience that simply can’t be replicated online. It’s about WACD: What Amazon Can’t Do.

    This is why in the future, stores won’t just be a place to buy but also a place to eat, play, work, discover, learn and even borrow stuff. Retail space will be less about retail.

    In summary, Amazon is almost singlehandedly redefining retail, at least in the Western world. Yes, there have been casualties and the industry should brace itself for more short-term pain as it reconfigures itself for the digital age.

    But this is retail Darwinism, it’s survival of the fittest. It’s evolve or die. Amazon’s existence has weeded out those underperforming retailers who can’t deliver on the basic principles of being relevant to their customers or standing out from rivals. But those left standing will be stronger for having reinvented themselves in the age of Amazon.

    Amazon: How the world’s most relentless retailer will continue to revolutionize commerce, by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights, is published this month by Kogan Page.

      A version of this article originally appeared in Retail Week

    • Black Friday: Expectations & Amazon’s Pop-Up

      Black Friday: Expectations & Amazon’s Pop-Up

      Tonight, I had the pleasure of attending the launch of Amazon UK’s latest bricks & mortar experiment – ‘The Home of Black Friday’ pop-up in Shoreditch.

      This is the second year that Amazon has opened a temporary showroom in a bid to raise awareness of the 10-day discounting bonanza that is possibly now only trumped by the retailer’s very own artificially created shopping event – Prime Day in July. But I digress.

      Love it or loathe it, Black Friday has become a permanent fixture on the UK shopping calendar and we have Amazon to thank for bringing it across the Atlantic back in 2010.

      Three Black Friday observations for 2018:

      1) More like Black November. Black Friday is getting longer: Amazon, Argos and Debenhams are just a handful of retailers running week-plus long events. Consolidating the bulk of your Christmas trade into 24 hours tests even the most advanced supply chains. Doug Gurr, MD of Amazon UK, mentioned tonight that one of the reasons Amazon has extended Black Friday in recent years is to “take out some of the pinch points”, operationally speaking. So, although spreading the event out over a couple of weeks might dilute the sense of urgency traditionally associated with Black Friday, it should ultimately result in a more streamlined experience for both retailer and consumer and, ideally, lead to lower returns rates. Previously, many shoppers who got caught up in the one-day frenzy would end up with buyer’s remorse and by the time the returned product made its way back onto the shelf (particularly for an online order) it would have to be further discounted.

      2) Promotion fatigue/consumer scepticism. Consumer group Which? is warning shoppers not to get “duped by dodgy deals” since last year nearly 9 out of 10 Black Friday ‘bargains’ were cheaper at other times in the year. I’d like to think most consumers today are savvy enough to understand that Black Friday is mainly a lot of noise, with a few genuine bargains the mix. According to PWC, half of UK consumers are not interested in the event at all this year with 11% warning they would intentionally avoid shopping altogether.

      3) But peer pressure… Despite the many harmful effects of Black Friday – erodes margins, pulls spending forward, dilutes trust and credibility, etc – it’s equally risky to shun it altogether. This is the only time of the year when retailers genuinely have a captive audience. There is an appetite to spend, a reason to loosen purse strings, and not many national retailers are brave enough to miss out on the potential sales. B&Q is the only genuine exception I can think of (even Next took part last year). On paper, M&S is shunning Black Friday again this year but they have been running 20% off sales for Sparks members. Limiting the deals to loyalty cardholders is a more subtle approach, but a blanket discount can be just as effective when it comes to driving footfall.

      Amazon’s ‘The Home of Black Friday’ pop-up

      As with most of Amazon’s bricks & mortar experiments, The Home of Black Friday pop-up has very little to do with shifting product. In fact, it would be a stretch to call this a shop (to be fair, Amazon doesn’t). It’s a showroom designed to humanize the Amazon brand, to tempt shoppers into the retailer’s very sticky ecosystem, get them engaging with the app and ultimately driving adoption of its various devices. If you’re interested in why Amazon is pushing so heavily into bricks & mortar retailing, there’s a whole chapter dedicated to exactly this in my upcoming book which launches in just six weeks!

      The Home of Black Friday is located at 3-10 Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6PG and will be open to the public from 22-25 November.

    • Takeaways: Amazon UK Analyst Day

      Takeaways: Amazon UK Analyst Day

      I had the pleasure of attending the annual Amazon UK analyst briefing this morning where we heard from senior executives across various parts of the business. The event kicked off with UK Country Manager Doug Gurr dismissing the broader doom and gloom. According to Gurr, the fundamental basics of retail – selection, price, convenience – haven’t changed. However, the future will be a more blended retail experience. “There’s still no substitute for touching, feeling, seeing the product. We’ll see more merging in the future,” he said.

      There was lots to take in but here are my highlights:

      Amazon is quietly ramping up its private label portfolio in the UK. The big difference at this event versus last year’s was the sheer amount of AmazonBasics signs plastered around the room. In FMCG, the retailer has brought its Mama Bear, Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime over from the US. In fashion, the well-publicized launch of Find last year has since been followed by Truth & Fable, Iris & Lilly and Meraki ranges. It’s worth pointing out here that Amazon just quietly added new FMCG lines to its US site – Solimo and Mountain Falls (the latter is exclusive rather than owned by Amazon) and I imagine these too will eventually come to the UK as Amazon builds out its global grocery offering. Why the big push into private label? It will help Amazon inch closer to sustained profitability. With its own brands, Amazon can widen margins without raising prices. It gives them greater leverage over suppliers and allows them to sweeten the deal for Prime members, as many own label items are sold exclusively to them. With the sheer amount of customer data Amazon holds, no one is better positioned to understand customer needs and then develop ranges specifically for them.

      To disrupt fashion, Amazon must adapt. The big challenge in fashion, according to Head of Apparel, Nick Pope, is “balancing the discoverability and fun of fashion with the practical excellence that Amazon delivers”. For all its perks, Amazon is still a utilitarian shopping experience. Sure, they can shift a ton of socks and underwear (they’re expected to become the largest clothing retailer in the US by the end of this year) but, when it comes to customer perception, Amazon is simply not a fashion destination. Amazon is looking to change that by adding more brands to its site, ramping up private label, introducing a more visual layout, using its Shoreditch photo studio for consistency in imagery, and they’ve just begun integrating video on their UK site (piloted with the Truth & Fable range). 

      Higher-margin private label clothing allows Amazon to fill gaps in merchandising while simultaneously boosting the bottom line, which will become all the more important as they move further into groceries. At the same time, more fashion brands are succumbing to Amazon’s platform – they can no longer ignore Amazon’s incredible reach and many also want greater control over pricing and presentation (if their brands are already present on Amazon’s marketplace). In addition to signing on major global brands such as Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, Amazon is working with local brands in each market (ie Coast, LK Bennett in the UK). They’ve taken a similar approach in Italy, France, etc. There was no mention of initiatives like Prime Wardrobe or the Echo Look which are both currently available in the US, but these innovations will play a major role in Amazon’s plan to disrupt fashion so I’d be very surprised if these weren’t launched in the UK within the next 12 months.

      Amazon is getting more comfortable with the exclusivity of Prime. At its 2005 launch, Jeff Bezos described Prime as “all-you-can-eat express shipping”. Today, it was referred to as the “gateway to the best of Amazon”. Lisa Leung, Director of Amazon Prime, said that there are now millions of UK Prime members and that the major difference with this year’s Prime Day (details of which I won’t go into here) is that Amazon “wanted to make the benefits come alive”. As such, they’ll host an entertainment extravaganza on 15 July, the evening before Prime Day, with events ranging from a family screening of Paddington 2 to an exclusive Take That gig. Whole Foods Market stores will also get involved in Prime Day this year with special discounts and free instore massages.

      Prime Now serves three shopping missions particularly well: crisis, gifting, top-up grocery. I can personally attest to all three! Jason Weston, UK Country Manager for Prime Now and AmazonFresh, said that Christmas Eve is one of the most popular days for Prime Now. He gave the example of a Manchester customer placing an order for women’s jewelry, perfume and a PlayStation console at 10pm on Christmas Eve, which was delivered by 11pm. Meanwhile, cut-off times are getting later and later in a bid to cater to the ‘for tonight’ shopping mission. Today, customers can order by lunchtime and have their delivery arrive by dinnertime. In some postcodes, this can be as late as 4pm. I was surprised to learn that Prime Now covers 30% of the UK, although this is largely limited to cities. I asked Weston if he thought same-day delivery would become the norm in UK grocery (Prime Now has been such a catalyst for change as I describe here in this BBC article). His reply? “Time is becoming a more important commodity for everyone.” I couldn’t agree more.  

      Too early for a book plug? My and Miya Knights’ book on Amazon is now available for pre-order here.

       

    • Tesco can’t out-Amazon Amazon

      Tesco can’t out-Amazon Amazon

      One of the fundamental reasons for Amazon’s success is its unwavering commitment to a vision laid out two decades ago: to relentlessly innovate in a bid to create long-term value for customers. Amazon’s USP is disruption and they continue to finetune it. Every action is guided by a vision that hasn’t changed since Amazon’s inception.

      Most publicly traded retailers aren’t afforded the luxury of such long-term thinking, and turnover at the top often brings a change in strategic direction. However, retailers can compete with Amazon by honing in on their own strengths and streamlining anything that does not add value to their core proposition. In this climate, it’s differentiate or die. Being ‘all things to all people’ is no longer an option.

      The closure of Tesco Direct is an admission of defeat to Amazon: it was after all designed to compete with the behemoth head on by replicating their marketplace format, extending Tesco’s product range beyond the confines of their superstores. But if there is one rule in retail today, it’s this: you cannot out-Amazon Amazon.

      Aside from racking up Clubcard points on big-ticket purchases, there was very little incentive for shoppers to choose Tesco Direct over Amazon. Tesco’s site in comparison was confusing and full of friction. Pricing was inconsistent, it lacked product recommendations and reviews, and the range was neither broad nor compelling enough to make it the go-to destination for general merchandise. Let’s not forget that many shoppers today begin their product search not with Google but with Amazon. Amazon has become the first port of call for even the most obscure products – from silicone wine glasses to cat scratch turntables – which when combined with Prime delivery becomes a very compelling proposition.

      Tesco Direct was loss-making and contributed very little to the topline, which sparks a lesson to be learned from Amazon: admitting failure and swiftly moving on. Offering 94 types of treadmills online won’t help Tesco to retain its title as the country’s largest food retailer. There’s no time for costly distractions when Amazon is on your doorstep. Tesco will be far better off to merge grocery and non-food onto one platform, as some competitors did several years ago, and then focus on logical category extensions to mirror what shoppers would find instore.

      There is a renewed sense of urgency to strengthen these core non-food categories and it actually has nothing to do with Amazon. A combined Asda-Sainsburys-Argos will create a retailing powerhouse in toys, baby, clothing and home. Tesco needs to up its game fast in these categories and leave everything else to the specialists.

      The Direct business joins a growing graveyard of Tesco brands including Giraffe, Euphorium, Harris + Hoole, Nutricentre, Hudl, Blinkbox, Dobbies. What was once considered business-critical diversification is now seen as a pricey distraction. Tesco Direct won’t be the last of Dave Lewis’ and Charles Wilson’s strategic cull as they continue to tighten Tesco’s focus on food by offloading non-core assets. There is, after all, only room for one everything store.

      Article originally featured in The Grocer

    • INFOGRAPHIC: 2018 UK Retail Predictions

      INFOGRAPHIC: 2018 UK Retail Predictions

      NBK Retail launches today with an infographic charting the forces impacting retail in 2018.

    • Day one

      Day one

      After 15 years at two of the world’s leading retail analyst firms, I’m beyond excited to transfer those skills over to my new venture: NBK Retail.

      I have always been captivated by retail and the way we shop. I have fond memories interning at a Connecticut shopping mall, where my career in retail started out by counting cars in the parking lot and, on Black Friday, making sure the store managers had access to endless donuts and caffeine ahead of the 6am craze.

      Even in the quietest of times, retail is a fascinating sector. It is always evolving, becoming more convenient, more connected, more customer-dictated. But today, the scale and pace of change facing the sector is unprecedented.

      A decade ago, Amazon was the 47th largest retailer in the world. Today, they’re number 3 – and could very well become the world’s first trillion dollar company.

      A decade ago, online retail was the holy grail. Today, pure-play e-commerce is dead. As technology breaks down the barriers between physical and digital retail, having a bricks & mortar presence becomes vital for both brand engagement and ultimately driving online sales.

      A decade ago, multi-day lead times were acceptable. Today, Amazon wants same-day delivery to become the norm.

      A decade ago, we put the success of the discounters down to temporary effects of the recession. Aldi and Lidl’s share of the UK market has more than doubled in that time.

      A decade ago, click & collect was just something Argos did. Today, virtually every high street retailer offers click & collect, as it enables shoppers to marry the benefits of online shopping – assortment and price – with the convenience of collecting instore.

      A decade ago, the purpose of the bricks & mortar store was predominantly transactional. Today, the store is being reconfigured as a hub for both experiences and fulfilment. It must become a place not only to buy but also discover, play, eat, work, and collect.

      A decade ago, the thought of food in our cupboards being automatically restocked sounded like science fiction. Today, frictionless commerce is becoming a reality thanks to the rise of voice technology, simplified and auto-replenishment capabilities.

      And the list goes on.

      I’m looking forward to sharing my views on both UK and global retail via this blog. In the meantime, if you’re attending the Summit E-Commerce Scorecard event this morning, I’ll be there taking part in a panel debate. Please come say hello!