Customer behaviour has completely changed, borne out of: Necessity – closure of brick and mortar restricting choices. Scarcity – panic buying of national brands forcing private label substitution. Accessibility – avoiding exposure to large groups of people is steering them to new channels. The pandemic has increased demand for private label products across many sectors, outpacing […]
True customer centricity must reach far beyond the roles of‘Chief Customer Officer’ and ‘Data Scientist’ to avoid organisations being ‘data rich’ but ‘insight poor’. Many who create these roles are often merely following a competitor who got there first; adding a‘customer at our heart’ slogan to the company mouse matt or corporate coffee mug, whilst […]
Cataclysmic events have accelerated digital growth; jumping from 18% to 28% of total retail sales*, and whilst the re-opening of non-essential retail will re-balance this mix, we will never return to pre-covid levels. Retail leaders are being forced to re-focus their digital strategy and re-visit investment plans. __________________________________________________________________________ Julian Grindey is an energising and inspirational MD/COO/Trading […]
Non digital retailers face catastrophic failure in the evolving competitive environment. E-commerce giants Amazon, Alibaba and ebay owe their meteoric growth to marketplace models, and in this new era retailers and brands are chasing with their own platforms, responding to their customers expectations on choice, value and service. Digital marketplaces are accelerating faster than other […]
Based on Retail Executives Retail Breakfast Presentation January 21st 2020 Retail trading in each of the past five or six years has been more challenging. I see no evidence to suggest this year will not continue this trend, and next year. In almost 40 years this is by far the most difficult market I have […]
Richard Hyman, Board Advisor Retail Executives Limited and RAH Advisory Limited We have all grown up in an era of upward-only economic growth. The rate has varied and we have had the odd short-lived recession. But in the consumer economy, growth has been almost guaranteed for generations. For most of this period consumers’ spending power […]
Small business lender, 365 Business Finance, has created a timeline detailing the appearance and disappearance of retail stores on the British High Street from 2008 to 2018. The timeline serves to provide a visual depiction of a changing high street against the backdrop of recent media coverage of store closures. The timeline lists 46 retailers; […]
Everything in retail is turning upside down. For generations, the key to growing a retail business was to open more and more stores. Getting physically bigger was what it was all about. The size of a retailer’s store estate was a proxy for its strength – several hundred stores or more always impressed, and ensured […]
Retail Executives, a specialist retail executive search and advisory firm, has appointed Richard Hyman as board advisor. Richard Hyman is a world-leading expert in the retail industry, having provided top-level analytics, insight and thought leadership on retail intelligence to hundreds of businesses over the past four decades. Hyman’s role will include offering strategic advice across […]
Retail Executives Limited a specialist retail executive search firm has appointed Matthew Parry as Partner. Having started his career as a graduate in the UK retail sector, Matthew joined an international executive recruiter to help launch their retail business. He subsequently joined a prominent International search firm to head up its Consumer Practice in the […]