Blog
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Article for Retail Week, December 2012
01/02/2012
As is fairly obvious, I don’t need my looks to earn my living, if I did, I’d have been through a CVA sometime ago! However, I do try my best to look after myself.
After receiving it as a Christmas gift, for the past couple of years or so I’ve spent an inordinate amount of money every month on skincare products from Lab Series, yes I’m not ashamed to admit it.
I reconcile this with the fact that I’ve given up lots of bad habits that I spent more money on previously.
For 18 months, John Lewis was the beneficiary of my monthly expenditure. However, I could…
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Article for Retail Week 27th January 2012
01/02/2012
Mary Mary quite contrary, how does the high street grow?
Mary Portas is Queen of shops, but is she queen of multi channel?
While her recent report on the challenges facing the High St. mentioned the web and mobile, not one of the 28 recommendations made referenced how they can compliment the high street. It felt like a single channel view driven by an old school retail perspective, demonstrated by the statement that “the web was one of the biggest threats to retail on our high streets.” To the contrary, for every person that buys online, around five people are…
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Insights
01/02/2012
Multi-Channel:
Did you know that 69% of companies surveyed have only “just started developing” their multi-channel strategy? Of those companies which have started developing a multi-channel proposition, the lack of ownership is the biggest challenge to delivering a customer enhancing multi-channel experience; 65% of companies surveyed either, could not identify a clear owner for their multi-channel proposition, or acknowledged confused ownership of the program. In contrast only 34% of companies cited a lack of budget as a problem to…
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Article for Ragtrader in Australia
01/02/2012
Whether a retailer should go online or not is really a rhetorical question. Of course they should. The only question is what the business model should be.
In the fashion industry there are a number of routes to market, and having your own site or making a large investment in technology aren’t the only ones.
You can outsource your e-commerce operation to a supplier like Practicology. We trade the channel for a number of our clients under their brand (including Myla.com). They benefit from having to make a lower investment in the start up costs and having very experienced…
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The best strategy to ensure business survival is to invest for growth
12/07/2011
I’m no cliché king by any manner of means, but I do think that the old football expression, ‘the best form of defence is attack’ is a very relevant strategy for the current business climate. And the retailers who are prospering are continuing to innovate and reshape their value propositions.
We all know it’s an extremely tough economic climate right now, and a whole host of household name retailers have recently gone to the wall. And according to PWC, at least 15% of retailers are in imminent danger of going out of business.
And while I’m not here to discuss each…
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Good usability + rich content = A good brand experience
31/05/2011
It’s hard to be critical of the web channel of a brand that’s so financially successful as Burberry clearly is, as they continually and consistently post an ever-increasing uplift in sales and profits.
But when it comes to the web, I don’t do subjectivity. My job is to help client’s take a completely objective view of the performance of their e-commerce channel. I use analytics, I use benchmarks, and I use a tried and tested template that works through the customer journey on the client’s site focusing on usability, user experience and the ‘blockers to…
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E-commerce recruitment and skills development
06/04/2011
Following on from my session at the recent Drapers e-commerce summit where I discussed some of the challenges around recruitment and skills in e-commerce, I thought it would be worthwhile discussing this in a little more detail and highlighting what I see as being the key challenges and opportunities.
And to support my credentials for talking to this specific subject matter, I am working with a number of retailers to help them address these challenges. And I can also talk from first-hand experience having headed up the e-commerce function in both interim and permanent positions for…
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Social media: A tactical tool or a core business strategy?
21/03/2011
By my reckoning, social media has been all the rage for the last two to three years. Yet the abiding question on everyone’s minds still is how to monetize the social space.
It seems as though every week I speak to one or two different retailers who have yet to ‘monetize’ social media, or at least, work out how they can monetize it.
And really that’s where the issue lies. They have yet to determine what role social media should play within their business. They know they need a presence on Facebook, and most have that already. They know they need to somehow engage with…
