The Future of Retail? A Keynote for A Global Brand Leader in London!

My message on the speed of change in retail is drawing attention, further and further afield.

Case in point – yesterday, I was a keynote speaker for a global leadership meeting of Pladis held in London, UK. This is the newly merged entity of three iconic global brands — Godiva Chocolate, McVitie’s biscuits from the UK, and Ulker from Turkey.  I was asked to provide my insight to 300 executives from around the world in a morning keynote, and then followed this up in an intimate discussion with members of the board and the senior management team.

It’s hard to discount the speed of change occurring in the world of retail and consumer products. Consider this:

• e-commerce could be 25% of the retail – grocery and convenience — experience by 2021
• “shopper marketing,” which combines location intelligence, mobile technology and in-store display technology for a new form of in-store promotion, continues to move forward
• mobile payment involving Apple Pay and disappearance of the cash-register, providing opportunity and challenge with loyalty, infrastructure and disruption
• the continued migration to the same-day shipping model from titans such as Google, Amazon, John Lewis
• Amazon Alexa, AI and shopping bots! Simply talk and products are added to your shopping cart, and delivered within an hour
• the rapid installation of “click and collect” infrastructure (i.e. an online purchase, with same day pickup at a retail location)
• faster ‘store fashion’ with rapid evolution of in-store promotion, layout and interaction
• the arrival of active, intelligent packaging and intelligent (“Internet of Things”) products
• collapsing product life-cycles, rapid product obsolescence and the implications on inventory and supply chain
• the evolution of the automobile to an online shopping and credit card platform (yes, this is real….)

Here’s the thing – we are going to see more change in the world of retail in the next 5 year than we have seen in the last 100. Savvy brands, retailers, shopping mall and retail infrastructure companies are working to understand these trends, and what they need to do from an innovation perspective to turn them from challenge to opportunity.

That’s my role. This is all happening in the context of massive and fast disruption as new competitors enter the food, CPG and retail space. Consider this chart of players in 2016 from Rosenheim Advisors, and look at the players in each category.

The rate of change is going from fast to furious, and innovation is critical!

My keynote title for London yesterday? “Achieving Agility: Aligning Ourselves for an Era of Accelerating Change!” Learn more in the retail and consumer products trends section of my Web site.

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