The World Retail Congress came to the city of Paris this year where it attracted 850 delegates representing 400 retailers from 60 different countries who spent three days considering the major themes and topics impacting the retail industry. 

 

There was an overarching positivity to this year’s event as it was evident from the presentations of many retailers that they have finally adapted to the ongoing disruptive nature of the industry. 

 

Turnarounds of major players.

 

World Retail Congress was notable this year for the number of large, established retailers who were highlighting how they had successfully undergone transformations amid seismic change in the industry – encompassing the advent of digital, Covid-19, wars, economic troubles, and cost-of-living crises. 

 

Thierry Garnier, CEO of Kingfisher, cited how Covid-19 had enabled him to hone his skills in running an agile business that can navigate ongoing change. He recalled how the company had quickly mobilised the store teams to launch a click & collect service for 6,000 SKUs overnight as lockdowns closed stores. It showed how the large business could be run nimbly and move fast. 

 

It is a similar story at Carrefour Group, according to Alexandre Bompard, chair & CEO of Carrefour Group, who says the digital transformation over the past 20 years has been a game-changer for the retail industry.

 

With the Carrefour business six years ago “coming to a standstill”, Bompard says he took some difficult decisions as a part of a turnaround plan. His strategy involved: becoming customer-centric; changing the organisation to boost productivity; partnering with entrepreneurs for dealing with the most problematic stores; blending digital and physical with seamless integration; and initiating an ambitious CSR policy.

 

“It’s been a tough battle transforming the 60-year-old company, navigating new trends including digital and climate change,” he says, but adds that by 2022 he believed the company was “back in the race”. Bompard is now implementing a Carrefour 2026 strategy that leverages the business’s strengths of own-brand, new store formats and maximising synergies across the organisation that includes implementing a common purchasing platform.  

 

France-based Printemps, which operates department stores, had suffered from the downward trend for department stores over recent years and also its lack of digital capabilities but under the leadership of Jean-Marc Bellaiche, CEO of Printemps, has been undergoing a turnaround.

 

Although he admits that Printemps was late to omni-channel the company has implemented click & collect and ship-from-store capabilities that have pushed up online sales from 6.5% to 9% of total revenues, which Bellaiche says indicates success but also highlights that there is still a “long way to go”. 

 

“We went into deep introspection and needed to innovate again. We looked to bring back the wow to the business. We brought back restaurants and intimacy with greeters [deployed] at the doors. We also doubled down on personal shoppers,” he explains. 

 

Return of physical stores.

 

Despite the rising role of technology in retail the physical store has been enjoying something of a revival since the pandemic. Ethan Chernofsky, senior VP of marketing for Placer.ai, says: “In 2019 there was the view that stores were going away then this thing [Covid-19] that was going to kill the store led to its renaissance. The store was a given [part of retail] but then omni-channel came and credit was all given to digital channels but not to stores.”

 

He says a fundamental re-imaging of the store has been taking place with the likes of click & collect being introduced and the new phenomenon of retail media that is currently exciting much of the retail industry.

 

“Stores have a much bigger role to play and we need to recognise all channels have advantages and disadvantages. How do retailers maximise in-store and digital experiences. Stores drive online sales and brand value?” he asks.

 

For Guillaume Motte, CEO of Sephora, stores are the “heart-beat” of the global beauty retailer. “Sephora is [about] stores and we have always invested in them. The growth engine of the business is stores and we open 200 per year. But they have to be lively and interesting,” he explains.

 

They have helped the business deliver sales now 50% above pre-pandemic levels, and major growth has been experienced around the world at its 3,500 stores where it sells products from 500 brands of which many are exclusive to Sephora. As well as unique products Motte highlights that another key pillar of the company is the community it has built with its customers. As many as 160 million have given the company their details and as many as 60 million are described as hyper-loyal and active.

 

Stores also remain vitally important to Crate & Barrel even though it has undergone a digital transformation under the ownership of Otto Group, with 60% of sales now generated through digital channels. 

 

Janet Hayes, CEO of Crate & Barrel, says the performance of the stores has being boosted by the introduction of The Design Desk, which allows customers to design the interiors of their homes with the help of design specialists. As much as 40% of revenues in-store are now generated via this service and the average order value is $3,000 versus $1,000 for regular orders even though it was only introduced three years ago. 

 

Rising role of marketplaces.

 

Marketplaces featured prominently at World Retail Congress this year, with Kingfisher highlighting that the launch of its marketplace has proven to be a key initiative for the company. It has grown into a division with annual sales of £200 million in only two years, with a product range encompassing 1.2 million SKUs in the UK. 

 

Marc Vicente, group digital director at Kingfisher, says the move has been part of the group’s strategy to become a leader in digital and the platform is being gradually integrated with the UK stores business through returned products being accepted in its outlets and a click & collect service is being tested along with shop-in-shops for selected sellers.

 

For Kingfisher as a retailer the marketplace has enabled it to massively boost its range while for the likes of Moses Rashid, CEO of The Edit LDN, his platform for the resale of sneakers and collectible streetwear has been created to provide brands with an opportunity to access a large customer base and to scale their businesses. “We’ve got the technology, logistics and a go-to-market strategy,” he says. 

 

Trust is also an important aspect of the business and this drives value. “We’re 10-20% more expensive than other marketplaces but we can leverage the trust,” says Rashid, which has helped The Edit LDN to work with a variety of brands and sports teams in the UK and US to bring rare, collectible products to the market. This also generates lots of valuable content for pushing across social media channels, which fuels the appetite for the products and drives strong customer engagement.

 

Christina Fontana, senior director of brand operations at Shein, says the engagement with consumers through the likes of video is a vital component of marketplaces and that brands have to work hard at this in order to drive sales: “It won’t look after itself. It requires a lot of attention from a brand to give customers a great brand experience. We have partners who can manage the marketplace for brands.”

 

Through generating rich engagement it is possible to build a community around the marketplace. For Albert Larter, CEO & Co-founder of Wakuda – a marketplace for African and Caribbean brands, this is a crucial aspect of the model: “Building a community sets us apart. We’re helping build a community of brands that are making these products. They now have a place, a home. We target the customers they’ve struggled to reach and we look to keep the human connection between buyers and sellers.” 

 

Squaring the circularity puzzle.

 

Circular models are becoming a feature of the retail industry as sustainability and the appeal of buying second-hand is embraced by a growing number of consumers led by the younger demographic.

 

Pioneering in this field has been ThredUp that was founded 15 years ago and is now benefiting from the realisation within the retail industry and also wider society that circularity is becoming an imperative, especially for the clothing industry.

 

James Reinhart, CEO & co-founder of ThredUp, says: “Brands and retailers had never thought about circularity but they now realise you can do something else with the [used] clothing. There are also changes in consumer behaviour around recycling and circularity. There was a stigma around second-hand clothing but it’s now cool and it will only grow in terms of market penetration.”

 

One of the major appeals for consumers is the uniqueness of the products, which differentiates it from fast fashion, according to Reinhart, who says fast and ultra-fast fashion have won on freshness but resale platforms win on uniqueness, with Thredup alone adding 150,000 new pieces per day on its US platform.

 

Although the customer appetite is already there for buying second-hand clothing Justine Porterie, director of sustainability and DEI at Depop, says one of the challenges is driving greater numbers of sellers onto marketplaces like Depop.

 

“There is a layer of story/emotion to garments. When emotion comes into play then people keep hold of products because of their memories. We need to highlight there’s an economic and social benefit for person-to-person circularity models. We all sit on underused capital,” she explains.

 

Growth can be further accelerated by the retail industry making circular options more appealing to shoppers. But, Porterie says, this requires a mind-set shift by many retailers and brands when calculating the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer. This involves disconnecting LTV from being just about the buying of new goods but to also include recycling, repairing and reselling in the equation. 

 

Another challenge for the clothing industry is changing the established trading models of the large players such as Primark. Lynne Walker, director of Primark Cares at Primark, is all too aware of this scenario and is working hard to change the thinking within her organisation.

 

“Getting people internally to understand what circularity means has been a struggle. It’s about re-educating from within about how do you design a garment so it could be recycled? It’s that sort of thinking and then how to scale it up. Then we can go out to our supply chain [of manufacturers].”

 

Nurturing personal relationships.

 

One-to-one interactions with customers are a vital part of the proposition at Harrods where Michael Ward, managing director of Harrods, says successful department store businesses must prioritise long-term relationships over quick transactions and leverage data in order to truly know their customers.

 

Ward revealed that Harrods has invested millions of pounds in data scientists and its Insights team in order to gain valuable insights into its customers that he reckons is “as good as Amazon”. 

  

Nicolas Houzé, CEO of Galeries Lafayette, describes data as the “gold mine of the 21st Century” and highlights how Galeries Lafayette recently joined Publicis and Carrefour to create a retail media-focused joint-venture that he hopes will enable it to establish it as the luxury leader of this data alliance.

 

However, he adds that the differentiator between his business and data-centric global players like Amazon is the ability to deliver world-leading experiential luxury with the development of services further enabling them to build long-lasting, authentic relationships with local audiences.

 

Harrods also leverages in-person events in different markets, which centre on brand education and awareness to help create what Ward describes as “communities of passion” with potential future customers.