The final whitepaper in our series with Red Ant explores how bricks & mortar stores must evolve to become genuine hubs for fulfilment. The most successful retailers today are those that view their stores as assets not liabilities. As contradictory as it may sound, they understand that the key to growing Read more…
To be relevant in retail today, you have to acknowledge that stores are no longer purely about selling. I believe most high street retailers are on board with this concept, but few are comfortable implementing it. And that’s because for decades, we as an industry have obsessed over metrics such Read more…
How can retailers compete with Amazon? This is the question that my co-author Miya Knights and I get asked most since publishing our book earlier this year. First, let’s address the myth that Amazon is a retailer. It’s not. Amazon is a technology company with deep pockets, an appetite for Read more…
What a fantastic couple of days at The Retail Summit in Dubai. I had the pleasure of moderating two sessions on e-commerce and ‘new retail’ and interviewing a number of retail CEOs over the course of the event (to be shared in the near future!) Here are my 5 key Read more…
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 Read more…
It was a pleasure to work with Dropbox on this future of retail campaign. There’s a lot of doom and gloom out there, but I believe the future is bright for those retailers willing to reconfigure for the digital age. In the future, retail will be more blended in that Read more…
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 Read more…
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 Read more…
‘The Amazon Effect’ is one of the most widely used phrases in retail today. High street shops closing? It’s the Amazon Effect. Retailers investing online? The Amazon Effect. Acquisitions, CVAs, redundancies… These days, we can find a way to link, however tenuously, most retail developments to the Seattle-based behemoth. And Read more…
Weather. Calendar shifts. Experiential spending. Retailers have many “dog ate my homework” excuses for when trading is less than stellar, but when a late snowstorm forces you to temporarily shut over half your stores, it’s bound to impact the top line. While it’s important to acknowledge the impact of the Read more…