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    Retail Rebooted: Reboot Your Business Model & Stay Relevant
    Retail Rebooted: Reboot Your Business Model & Stay Relevant
    Retail Rebooted: Reboot Your Business Model & Stay Relevant
    Ebook170 pages5 hours

    Retail Rebooted: Reboot Your Business Model & Stay Relevant

    By Maria Comfort

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    About this ebook

    A retail specialist recounts the state of the industry and brings attention to the changes impacting retailers everywhere. The author forecasts how we will engage in commerce in the future and proposes a roadmap to follow to achieve customer engagement and success in tomorrow's retail arena.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMay 22, 2017
    ISBN9781543901078
    Retail Rebooted: Reboot Your Business Model & Stay Relevant

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      Book preview

      Retail Rebooted - Maria Comfort

      impossible.

      INTRODUCTION

      It is rare to be aware in the moment of a personally defining experience. I was fortunate, years ago, to work for Les Wexner, and during that time I must have attended hundreds of meetings with him, but I remember one occasion and a wisdom shared that has defined my professional purpose. The lesson learned: the most important value comes from a passion for learning, and success is an output of maintaining intimacy with the customer. This TRUTH has been at the core of my values and the essence of the work I have done.

      The word retail was recorded as a noun with the meaning of a sale in small quantities in 1433 (from the Middle French retail, piece cut off, shred, scrap, paring).¹ Retail is a relatively simple business concept—it is the process of supplying a consumer with goods or services through multiple channels of distribution with the intention of earning a profit. In this book, I will illustrate that simple does not always mean easy, and I will bring to light critical disruptions that are shaping the face of the industry in the near term.

      Please don’t doubt that in our industry conditions are such that the result will be a complete remake of how we do business. First the consumer demographic is changing globally, which will test the relevance of many concepts. We are faced with a power shift in the geopolitical dynamics of regions, and at the same time we are in the midst of a most impactful force to the retail model, which I have labeled the technology disruption. The smartphone has proved to be as revolutionary in our time as the steam engine was years ago. It has eliminated distances as barriers and facilitated in real time a global community. If you have reservations about the significance of this, know that today alone we will communicate instantly by sending over 43 billion text messages through Facebook and WhatsApp alone.

      The impact on traditional retail and the opportunity for emerging new business models are daunting. The consumer today is seeking distraction. How long can you yourself go without checking your phone? We are all suffering from hyperactivity, and new ways of mental stimulation are being developed to satisfy us. Pokemon Go, an app taking gamers out of their living and working spaces and on to the streets as they compete to capture, train, and battle Pokemon characters, released to such acclaim it surpassed both Twitter and Facebook in online usage. In the first week more than 65 million people in the United States signed up to play the game on their mobile phones.

      Technology is changing behavior and lifestyles, and technology will create a very different future. In the near term your home appliances will operate utilizing a central artificial intelligence system. Your refrigerator will use AI to forecast your grocery purchases and prepare grocery lists that will be messaged to the best outlet for purchase. This is not science fiction—the technology is being tested today. Your washing machine will forecast detergent, bleach, and fabric softener needs, and a drone will deliver your purchases to your home.

      In the future, retail will be an experiential medium. Brands will create in-store experiences specific to a lifestyle. You will virtually create a wardrobe by dressing your avatar with garment choices to try out styles and outfit suitability. You will experientially simulate skiing down a mountain to test the comfort of the snow boots you are considering for purchase. AI will allow constant, on-target, predictive communication specific to you about products, activities, and experiences that are going to please, surprise, and delight you based on prior choices you have made. Omnichannel will be the only channel.² Trust me on this: the future isn’t going to impact a few retail sectors, it will impact all.

      My intention with this book is to get you to pay attention before you’re obsolete. I want to bring awareness, discussion, and new thinking to management teams. I want to encourage new ideas and warn you to avoid complacency at all costs. The choices are radical: stay in your comfort zone and risk going the way of the dinosaur, or focus on your customer, embrace disruption, and evolve your model. Be a memory, or bring change and choose to be relevant in the evolving marketplace.

      My own journey in this industry has been a magnificent adventure. I have been mentored by and learned from industry icons, for which I am incredibly grateful. My work life has offered me the opportunity to meet, work with, and learn from the most influential visionaries in the industry. I will also own working with disconnected leaders who did not have awareness of their own limitations and regularly failed, but there were lessons, albeit painful ones, in those experiences as well.

      In my career I have gained a reputation as a fixer. It was this standing that led me to the privilege of spending several years learning how to build sustainable brand value from the master, Giorgio Armani. This experience served as a personal awakening as I discovered the global consumer community and came to my belief that customer insight is at the core of any noteworthy retail story. I have now spent the last seven years in leadership roles mentoring, executive coaching, and learning and working with consumers across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, China, the Russian Federation, and Africa.

      In this book I will identify the most important changes you need to make in your organizations to be part of the future. I am and always will be a learner and want to encourage you to challenge, analyze, and validate your customer journey. I am suggesting a customer-centric approach to brand positioning, with multiple touch points of interaction as the most strategic avenue to successfully engage with consumers and achieve retail excellence.

      Maria Comfort

      If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.

      —Zig Ziglar

      Part One

      Don’t Become A VCR

      Chapter One

      Why Companies Fail

      The simple truth is that retail is an opportunistic business fueled by vision. The process requires three necessary steps: (1) you must successfully identify a product or unmet service that a group of individuals wants or needs; (2) you need to develop a model that can accomplish providing the product or service profitably for a price the customer is willing to pay; and (3) then you carefully implement and evolve the model by testing assumptions and making adjustments as you learn. This process is not easy, and very few actually succeed at it. The few that do must manage sustainable performance, which is another challenge that many fail.

      Alvin Toffler said: The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Meaningful innovation is a direct result of studying and understanding the consumer mind-set and taking disruptive action on those insights. The lack of awareness about this topic is evident in performance. I propose that success brings complacency. Unfortunately there are many examples that support my theory. There is a wonderful quote by Clayton M. Christensen: Motivation is the catalyzing ingredient for every successful innovation. The same is true for learning.

      History has demonstrated that retail models don’t live forever. Concepts are launched, aiming to capitalize on market opportunities, a small group succeeds, among those a sparse number develop into meaningful brands, but even these often lose relevance and disappear. I grant you those of us that love the business find it an amazing journey. In my experience the qualities in leadership that most impact successful sustainability are passion, vision, and being able to build a great team.

      Why should a simple business prove so difficult to consistently get right? In our time the combination of global economy, sociopolitical factors, and technological disruption are a unique set of influences that unfortunately many companies will fail to surmount. The fact is that for some there is wisdom in understanding your business model and knowing if its value is no longer commercial. Recent history has demonstrated that size and volume do not equate to infallibility. We have witnessed brands that were recognized as market leaders fail spectacularly. An unfortunate result of success is overconfidence and a general tendency to breed a culture that lacks curiosity with disastrous consequences. As a brand, if you lack connection with the consumers you serve and their needs, you are one step away from irrelevancy.

      Let’s consider some cases. In the United States in the late 1800s more than half of American families were still earning their living as farmers. These folks did business in small rural towns and obtained provisions from general stores run by independent owners. These shops had a narrow selection of goods and prices were not set; rather the shop owners assessed what the customer could afford and charged accordingly. In addition, transactions were done mostly on credit, and the amounts granted were arbitrary and influenced by the shopkeeper’s discretion.

      Meet Richard Warren Sears, a railroad station agent in North Redwood, Minnesota.³ Richard’s story is about capitalizing on opportunity, understanding possibilities stemming from the needs of consumers. Richard came across a shipment of watches from a Chicago jeweler that was refused by a local merchant. He purchased the shipment and promptly sold the watches to other station agents at a healthy profit. Soon he started a business selling watches through a mail-order catalogue, utilizing the railroad and Wells Fargo to deliver the purchases. A year later Sears moved to Chicago, partnered with Alvah Roebuck, and in 1888 they launched what grew to be an American legacy—the Sears, Roebuck, & Co. Catalogue, offering a great variety of products at clearly stated prices and delivering to homes all over the United States. By 1895 the Sears catalogue had grown to 532 pages and offered a broad variety of products from household goods to apparel to cars and even prefabricated homes. The catalogue was a brilliant piece of marketing. It held a special place in homes, and the models depicted in the pages served to inspire Americans, while the goods fueled many dreams.

      The mail-order business was a model built on providing goods to rural America. After World War I in response to increasing industrialization there was a significant migration to cities. American families immigrated to urban spaces to seek employment opportunities; by 1930, 56% of Americans lived in cities. In 1925 Sears built the first of many department stores. Sears again proved a pioneer by creating a store format aiming to engage the family. He catered to men’s interests by offering a broad variety of building and hardware materials, and for women a range of products to outfit the family in their daily lives. The model did not concern itself with fashion apparel but rather durable core products and self-assisted, in-store shopping experiences.

      The most important core value for any business strategy is to always focus on the business

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