I have spent the majority of my career to date firmly on the retailer side of the fence. I had technical and leadership roles with The Burton Group, Debenhams, Burberry and Harvey Nichols that then embraced Logistics, Digital, and Retail Operations as Group Retail Operations Director for Harvey Nichols. I will always remember sitting on the front row at New York Fashion Week feeling like an imposter, an IT bloke who had been let loose with ‘proper’ retail people (I still had a lot of fun of course).
Harvey Nichols making a move out of central London led me back into technical roles and an initial jump into the mysterious world of the supplier. Operations Director at Itim followed by a misjudged global role at NCR then gave me the necessary nudge to form Retail247 in 2015, my feet now firmly planted on the supplier side of the fence.
As we built Retail247, I tried to think about what had historically made me warm to a supplier and what had had the opposite effect. The obvious answer is people. People that genuinely want to do their best for you and who work for an organisation that doesn’t constrain them in putting the customer first. So many large companies are so obsessed with a prescribed sales process and fictional sales targets so that the customer’s actual needs take a back seat. I rarely thought I had achieved value for money at the end of a project. You can always tell whether a salesperson actually believes in the product they are selling or whether they are just thinking of the implications of missing this quarter’s sales targets. Much as Tesla has challenged the traditional barter car buying process, being offered the same product for half the price at the end of a quarter on a “if you sign today” basis is actually quite annoying.
I am a firm believer in ‘if we do good things people will want to buy stuff and will come back for more’ and I fail to see how we can operate in any other way. The customer obviously needs to buy into this approach – it has to be a ‘win win’ as we are sadly not a charity, but if something is overlooked during discovery that we should have thought of, this is not the customer’s fault, and they should not incur financial penalty. They are paying for our expertise and not just for showing up.
Of course it’s not just about people, our products and services must live up to, and exceed, expectation. The combination of the best people with the best attitude, empowered to do what’s best for the customer, as well as solutions and services that focus on solving real problems and delivering quantifiable benefit is surely the right recipe for success.
Over the years I have considered seeking investment for Retail247 to accelerate our growth. We have a whole treasure trove of ideas that I’d love to bring to market sooner rather than later, but I am fearful of the change of approach and emphasis that this could force. We want to grow and increase all the usual measures of success, but I am not prepared to do this at the expense of our people and our customers; and I do not see why I have to. So, a lottery win it is then.
We have managed to achieve this type of relationship with the vast majority of our customers and I believe this has led to our products being adopted by some fantastic high street names. I am proud of what we have achieved so far, and I know there is so much more to come.