Movers & Shakers Q&A with Mark Lewis of CollectPlus

Brought to you by Retailinsider.com and K3 Retail

Mark Lewis, chief executive of CollectPlus

1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business?

The rapid rise of Click and Collect services presents the biggest opportunity for our business. With over half of online consumers already using the service, this take-up indicates that customers are rejecting a one-size-fits-all delivery approach - that they don’t want to wait in for delivery nor do they want the hassle of missing the parcel. It was the realisation of this shift in consumer attitudes that led to CollectPlus being set up in 2009.  

2. What is the biggest challenge to your business?

Our biggest challenge is supporting the growth of our business, which grew at 250% last year. However, I like to see this more as an opportunity than a challenge!

3. With the benefit of hindsight what would you have done differently so far?

In any innovative business, it is important to test out approaches and quickly learn from both the successes and failures.  Fortunately we’ve had more of the former than the latter, but getting the balance right between the number of parcels in the network and rate of store growth was a critical learning for us.

4. What is the future of the physical store?

It’s is difficult to predict what is going to happen, but it is clear that both offline and online retail are increasingly being presented as one, to the point where they will no longer be seen as different shopping channels. Customers expect a seamless experience across every touch point and CollectPlus can help provide this.

5. What will the high street look like in a decade?

I would expect to see many of the same retailers on the high street, but for the format of their shops to be very different. I think there will be more collection points and opportunities to order online within the store environment.

6. Will mobile devices be the primary sales channel in the future?

I think it is likely that this will be the case. Over 20% of online traffic already comes from mobile devices, and it is widely believed that m-commerce is influencing a much higher percentage of overall retail sales.  

7. What other retail business do you admire?

I admire John Lewis because they consistently perform well and I consider them to be trend setters by embracing a 360 degree multi-channel shopping experience.

8. If you hadn't been a retailer/provider-to-retailers what would you have liked to do?

My mum used to run a market stall, so I developed an interest in retail from an early age. However, I have been told that as a child I said I wanted to design roller coasters when I grew up!

9. What marks out of 10 do you give yourself so far for achievement?

I will leave that for others to score, but I’m very proud that CollectPlus has grown so rapidly over the past year and has been recognised by the industry for our innovation in delivery with a number of fantastic awards.

Tesco fighting for price consistency

The recent revelation that Tesco has been selling goods on Amazon's site under the name Oakwood Distribution at prices that undercut its Tesco.com website is hardly surprising [This is Money article]

AKA Tesco.

The brouhaha seems to surround it doing so in a name other than Tesco. Anti-Tesco campaigners cite this as an example of the company's sharp practice. This is not really the case. What would have been really suprising would have been if Tesco had been using its own name to sell through Amazon.

Goods have been sold this way for many years by all manner of operators - big and small. That's why the likes of Lastminute.com and now Amazon and eBay have flourished.

Players like Tesco, the hotel chains, airlines, and clothing brands can offload specific goods at cheaper prices on these sites than through their own businesses without apparently damaging their brands and/or their credibility.

For the likes of Tesco it is beneficial to have these various routes to market for its goods - should it want to get rid of a block of products at short notice for example or sell end-of-line goods. Yes, it also enables it to sell standard products cheaply while maintaining higher prices for these same goods on its own website and in its own stores, but what exactly is wrong with that?

The nub of the issue is that in this increasingly multi-channel age Tesco and other retailers are recognising the importance of offering consistent pricing across all their channels - whether that be in-store, online or via mail order. If they want to sell specific number of goods down a certain channel at lower prices then use a third-party like Amazon.

Testing price consistency.

With the likes of Click & Collect and 90-minute deliveries playing increasingly big roles the need to shift stock across various channels is becoming ever more important for retailers. But keeping a handle on this stock - ideally via a single view - is proving a tough task for retailers.

If you threw in having a variety of prices for the same product in each channel then the whole picture becomes even more complicated.

Consider a customer buying a product online at one price and collecting it in-store where it is priced differently, and then to top it all refunds are required. The complexity of managing that stock and its pricing would be a headache for sure. Such hot topics will undoubtedly be under discucssion at the forthcoming Internet Retailing Expo on March 21-22.

Tesco was probably foolish to defend itself by lamely suggesting it was widely known that Oakwood Distribution was part of the group. But as far as flogging goods at a lower price on Amazon - what's the big deal and where's the problem?

Innovative Retailers - The Sampler

Brought to you by Retailinsider.com and PCMS

The Name: The Sampler

The Place: Kensington, London and Islington, London.
The Story: In a normal wine retailer you go in, you look up and down shelves in a pseudo knowledgeable way and you eventually pick one based on a)cost 2)type or c) because you like the label. But not here.

The Sampler store: all kitted out in South Kensington green.

What happens here? The clue is in the title. Chances are you take it home because you have tasted it. And you actually like the taste. Revolutionary.

Indeed. Whose bright idea is this? The founders are one Jamie Hutchinson and Dawn Mannis and their Islington and Kensington branches have been going since 2006 and 2010 respectively.

No doubt a pair of old time wine buffs with 50 years in the business between them? Think on. Hutchinson has a background in finance, a venture capitalist to be exact, for whom wine was previously merely a ‘hobby’.

So the other one is the wine buff? Sorry. She was a TV producer. But that lack of wine retail experience doesn’t seem to matter a jot. Because what they did have was one supersonic idea.

And that was? The Sampling Machine. First spotted in Chianti country where tourists go and try hundreds of chiantis at a sip a time. They’d never seen one in this country so decided to be the first.

Expensive? Sit down. They’re £10k each.

Blimey. Just one per shop then? Keep sitting down. Each shop has 10 of these gleaming silver beasts. So you can imagine they need to earn their keep. Actually according to Hutchinson it’s not the big capital outlay that really hurts, It’s their effect on rents.

This is what it is all about.

Howso? These things take up half the wall space of the outlets. Wall space which could be stocking wine from floor to ceiling. ‘You have to sell a lot more wine for this to make financial sense.’

And do they make sense? Absolutely. A staggering 60 % of the sales in any one week are thee wines being sampled on the machines. Amazing when you consider that only 5% of the total wine stock can be on sample at any one time.

What do you pay? You pay a percentage of the retail price for a whole bottle. So the cheapest could be around 30p for a swig up to… wait for it…. £90.

No one would pay that for a mouthful of wine? You are so wrong. Over Christmas 2010 a wine sampled at £70 a time. The sample bottle was finished in a day.

I thought there was a recession on. In addition, two of the three bottles The Sampler had in stock sold.

I don’t even want to know the price of the bottles. £1,500 a piece. So I think we’ve established that the machines pay their way. According to Hutchinson the majority of people who sample on a visit will buy something. And an awful lot of wine traders will come in for the chance to try a sample of wines they will never buy a whole bottle of. The point of the expensive sample is not to sell lots of it but to allow people to use it as a reference. The whole cost-range of wines are on sample at any one time. And the machines strip away branding and marketing and can make a totally unknown wine very popular very quickly.

So, should I ever have that spare £90 what do I do? Simple. You ask for a sampling card, you charge it with whatever amount you like and then get swigging in either shop. 10,000 cards are issued per annum.

Who are the customers? Definitely locals. It takes time to build up and Kensington has only been going a year but Hutchinson says he could seem himself opening 5 to 6 in London in the medium term and sees no reason why the concept shouldn’t work anywhere.

No one else doing this? Not quite in the same way. Selfridges have their Wonder Bar and in fact The Sampler recently teamed up with them to force a change in the law on selling ‘sips’. But they’re not quite competing yet.

Yet? The Sampler opened a wine bar in its Kensington shop six months ago. You pay £7.50 corkage and drink the wine you have bought. According to Hutchinson there’s no table service as such but your wine will be served properly which might make a nice change.

Successful? Early days. But the end of the week is already pretty busy and early week beginning to go the same way. ‘There are plenty of pubs in Kensington but the only good wine is to be found in restaurants’. This wine bar changes all that.

Any other excitement? There’s always the Wine Club. The Sampler put together unusual cases of wines and changes them every three months. The most popular combo is £150 for 12 bottles on a quarterly basis or six bottles for £100 monthly.

And who decides what are the unusual wines? It’s down to the staff. When they join they are assigned a geographical area of wine expertise to make their own. Then they pore over local wine magazines, talk to local drinks journalists and local wine makers to find out the rare and wonderful.

So as a wine seller and wine buyer what does he reckon to the state of the UK market? Well, supermarkets are very good at selling wine but are never quality driven. They are discount and brand driven. It’s hard to compete against when they are selling, Champagne, for example, at zero margin. But they will never be able to stock small interesting estates as a wine producer needs 100 hectares to be of any interest to them. And in addition the top French estates ‘would rather die’ than be sold in a supermarket anyway. In contrast UK wine producers ‘have no idea whatsoever of a distribution strategy’, selling all of their stock to supermarkets and leaving nothing for anyone else is just silly.

Anything bubbling under for 2012? Oh yes. And funnily enough it involves bubbles. The Sparkling Sampling Machine is coming. Currently in development and having only 4 plugs to sample from it will nevertheless retail at around £13k but Hutchinson is very excited about it. He claims Champagne is the ‘most skewed in price/quality ratio’ of all products with huge industrial producers spending massive budgets on big names. The Sampler will be changing all this. But of course that’s what they‘re good at.

PCMS Group is a leading independent supplier of software and services to the retail industry; PCMS Store and Multi-channel solutions have been chosen by over 98 retailers including Arcadia, John Lewis and M&S.

Banks squeeze retailers on card fees - yet again

More than ever before retailers are being taken to the cleaners by the banks and card schemes. It’s always been the case but today it is fair to say that all the banks are at it, along with the card issuers.

It might well be.

Their appetite for seeking out new ways to line their pockets is being driven by the potential that the UK government and EU community could put a squeeze on the levels of card payment fees that they can charge retailers.

This would affect the ‘interchange’ part of the fees and so the banks have sought to offset any potential EU legislation by devising ways to crank up their revenues in new ingenious ways – all at the expense of retailers

One way they have found is to change the classifications on many cards whereby the banks and card schemes can claim they are a premium variant and not a plain vanilla product even though they are technically no different and offer just the same functionality.

Another wheeze is the explosion in cash-replacement payment cards they are bringing to market. The vast majority are pre-paid cards, with most of them being classified as credit cards, and so have much higher fees attached to them than non-credit cards.

They have double the interchange fee of debit cards for instance. The problem for retailers is that they cannot distinguish this new breed from any other card type. They only find out the onerous fees attached to them when they get their statement from the bank.

MasterCard and Visa have also introduced a ‘card scheme fee’, which they argue has always been charged but they are now splitting it out from the interchange. By doing so they claim that any EU reductions on card fees will not be applicable to this part of the fee.

Anybody got a clue as to the charges on these cards?

The splitting out of this new fee makes it tougher for the EU regulators to get a handle on what exactly is being charged to retailers and therefore where any future restrictions can be applied. This move has also made this new fee visible to retailers for the first time. Although it is charged at only a modest level at present the worry among some of the UK’s largest merchants is that it will only go one way - up.

These various fee hikes go completely against the ongoing lowering of the price of technology and the cost to the banks of processing electronic transactions. Remember Moore’s Law – which states a doubling in IT performance is achieved every two years – well the banks have hijacked this and seem to have their own More-for-Us Law.

Despite the various manoeuvres by the banks and card schemes the OFT simply states that it has to wait for the EU before it can take any action to address the issue. Why is this when it has nothing to do with the EU? The OFT could and should stop it right away.

It’s all rather perverse because on the one hand the government is saying the banks should be constrained, but with card fees they are letting them profit heavily at the expense of retailers, which you could argue is a tax on consumers. There is clearly no willingness to tax the banks despite the rhetoric we hear from politicians.

The problem for the retail industry is how to shame the government into doing something about this rip-off that is being perpetrated by the banking industry and the card schemes.

Retail Species - The establishment - Michael Wainwright of Boodles

The Person: Michael Wainwright

The Company: Boodles

The Job Title: Joint managing director

So, I’m guessing that running a family jewellery business means a lot of tantrums and tiaras? Boodles is certainly overrun with Wainwrights. Michael Wainwright’s brother Nicholas is the other managing director, his nephew Jody Wainwright is the diamond expert and another nephew James Amos also works there as a director. The brothers' father, Anthony Wainwright, ran the company from 1945 till 1992.

Doesn’t  that cramp his style? Not so as you’d notice. Nicholas is based in the company’s northern sites (Chester, Manchester and Liverpool – where the company began) and Michael down in London. He says decisions are made on the phone and they speak every day. Decision making is very quick and people are trusted to make good calls. For example Nicholas recently bought a £250,000 sapphire in Bangkok and you won’t find anyone saying it was a risky move. If they thought it was a good idea, then it is a good idea.

All sweetness and light then? It would appear so. And the employees love working for a family firm too. Wainwright maintains that they know all employees by name, and the names of their partners too. At the annual staff party in Liverpool recently our guests were bowled over by how committed the staff are to the business. He’s only ever worked in one place so it was a welcome surprise to see how much the employees treasure the special feel. Staff retention at the firm is based on passion.

So, who’s buying jewellery in a global downturn? Wainwright admits that in the past Boodles had a blinkered view that such out and out British jewellery was really for British people. But no longer. Now the company is saying a big hello to the Middle East, Far East and the Chinese. The latter apparently like a bit of diversity and there will be something like eight big jewellery brands on their radar. But Arab customers like niche and Boodles is a niche they like. Overseas business now accounts for 20% of total revenues – a huge jump in the past five years. London is seen as a safe place to bring your money and the family solidity and history of Boodles all helps bring in business.

New Bond Street great for brand standing

Well, enough of nephews then. Are there no thrusting M. Wainwright sons? Oh yes, but he’s only 16. Wainwright says he would never push him into the business although he seems keen at present. And he would like him to do some other things first.

As he did? Kind of. He trained as a chartered accountant on the grounds that it is fantastic way to tread water for a bit and a good training for all business. He started working at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. but four years later the call of the diamond proved too strong. Although actually aquamarine is his own personal favourite gem – but he concedes they need diamonds to bring them to life.

I know the feeling Mr W: But it wasn’t always about high-end was it? Certainly not. Boodles has carved itself into a fully-fledged designer jewellery brand over the last 20 years under the Wainwrights' guidance. There are now five internal designers and they also do bespoke pieces. Wainwright thinks that to be a genuine brand you need your own products. When the company was just up north it was simply selling bought-in pieces so was never going to make a big name for itself. The move down to London also contributed significantly to its standing.

Aha. I knew there had to be a divide somewhere. North and South? Well, not actually in quite the way you might think. It’s true that 65% of UK business (around £30 million) is done in London but forget notions of mean northerners. Boodles sells more £100,000-plus pieces up there than it does in London becausse he says there is virtually no competition up north. The market in London is much bigger in the £10,000-£60,000 bracket.

Cheapskates. But it is all about location non? You are so right. It was Champagne all round the day that Boodles moved into New Bond Street in 2007, their fifth London showroom. In fact it is one of Wainwright’s few regrets that they did not get in to the global superbrand street earlier. They could today easily get £5 million for their lease if they chose to give it up, but wild dogs wouldn’t tear them away. They’d like more frontage and more space but Wainwright figures there’s only one bit of the road worth being positioned on so they have to wait and see what comes up!

Blimey, that is specific. Any shareholders to run these theories past? Only two. They are err... Nicholas and Michael Wainwright. And that is the way they like it for now. Nobody to impress and no short-termism. He is not accountable to anyone other than himself day-to-day. But the youngsters are snapping at his heels and shares may have to be given out to other family members in due course. But that is fine with him because ‘if the family get on well you can see a bigger future picture – like a marriage.’

Talking of marriage there seems to be a lack of women in the Wainwright family? Not really, its just that they keep getting bought out. Wainwright’s father Anthony bought out his sisters from the business and history repeated itself when M and N Wainwright did the same thing.

Women leaving diamonds behind. I can hardly believe it: Well, its got them to where they are today which is fifth generation ownership and only two shareholders. When he’s not got his nose to the grindstone Michael Wainwright is gardening and possibly listening to Cockney Rebel. But when Monday comes, it’s all about two things. Family and integrity.

Guinness' past does not indicate its future

Who would have thought that after many years of very successful trading we would no longer have Woolworths on UK high streets and that the once-mighty HMV would be a shadow of its former self. And in the US the leader of the photography pack Kodak would now be effectively dead.

Kodak: shuttered

There is no guarantee of immortality for any brands - even for those that appear to have unassailable leads on their competitors. Guinness is one big-time brand that has dominated the stout market in the UK and a large number of overseas markets for many years.

It has held on to power in its key markets for centuries and still reigns supreme. It is a must-stock brand, which is why you'll find it on almost every bar throughout the UK. And with its strong negotiating position it has given little away on margin to bar owners and pub operators.

But it is coming under a tad of pressure from a variety of competitors who want to introduce an alternative - which will likely be more profitable to bar owners. Among the bigger players taking on Guinness is Greene King-owned Belhaven that has just launched a Scottish stout and Wales-based SA Brain that has its Brains Black stout that hit the market a year or so ago.

The latter cheekily took a few kegs over to Dublin for the Ireland V Wales Six Nations match and made it available in the Jack Ryan pub very close to the famous Landsdowne Road ground.

The brewery had originally stated that its plan had been to brew a beer that was identical to Guinness and to then hopefully wean people off its better known rival.

Wales v Ireland or is it Ireland v Wales

Unfortunately when doing a taste test in the Jack Ryan it undoubtedly failed. In this head-to-head challenge it simply had a lot more flavour than Guinness. In comparison, the Irish stout was shown to have very little characteristics at all - beyond its smooth, inoffensive drinkability.

Brains Black won hands down in terms of the flavour it provided. The same can be said of the recently introduced stout Ink from Camden Town Brewery in London that has plenty more flavourful aspects (including espresso, chocolate and a touch of hoppiness) than the incumbent Guinness.

This is very good news for these new beers, but lacking in the taste department will have certainly contributed heavily to Guinness's success over the years. It arguably does not have any features that will likely offend the mainstream drinker.

But whether this will continue to provide it with a safe harbour in the future is debatable. The willingness of drinkers to embrace fuller flavoured beers and look for less ubiquitious products is growing - especially among younger consumers who find little appeal drinking the same beers as their fathers and grandfathers. And in the case of Guinness, their great, great, great, great grandfathers probably.

While it's this very history that provides the iconic stout brewery with much of its appeal, a rich history - as shown by Woolworths, HMV and Kodak - gives little indication of a brand's future prosperity.

Movers & Shakers Q&A with Joe Murray of Worldstores.com

Brought to you by Retailinsider.com and K3 Retail

Joe Murray, co-founder of Worldstores.com

1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business?

Our intention is to become the definitive online destination for furniture and homewares - our mission is to sell "everything for the home". Currently we are very strong in some categories such as beds and outdoor living, but we have a huge opportunity in many other areas - especially in some of the domestic furniture, homewares and home improvement categories. Historically we've benchmarked ourselves against the competition that is bidding in paid search for the main terms in each of our product categories: where we cannot bid in the higher positions in these areas, we have the largest opportunities. The second greatest opportunity for us is to introduce our customers to the other 79 categories in which we currently operate that they didn’t buy from; until recently we've very much focused on killer customer acquisition, but now we're beginning to see some fantastic results on retention through the use of tabs that drive customers to either other niche stores, or to our umbrella site www.worldstores.co.uk.

Co-founders: Joe Murray (right) and Richard Tucker 

2. What is the biggest challenge to your business?

When you're growing at the rate we are, an awful lot seems like a challenge. While acquiring more customers at a reasonable cost has never been a problem, offering consistent and excellent customer service can be tough when every year at least 50% of our suppliers and products are new to us. We're investing heavily in IT systems and supplier relationship management to bolster this area of our business, and are seeing marked improvements in net promoter scores, reduced returns and cancellations.

3. With the benefit of hindsight what would you have done differently so far?

A couple of years ago we began the implementation of new Accounting and ERP system. When you're running 80 niche stores, 70% of the stock is held at partner locations dispatched directly using our bespoke carrier-collect model, and 80% of orders are available for next day delivery you need a very robust ERP system. Our bespoke internal order and supplier management tools are incredible, giving very accurate visibility of all stages of the process right from customer checkout to carrier label print and scanned POD, but integrating this with a third party accounting system has been a challenge and if we're honest it could have been planned a lot better. Thankfully the pain is over, but it caused quite a bit of distraction and frustration in the last 2 years.

4. What is the future of the physical store?

In our market, furniture and homewares, you often don't want to or cannot carry the goods home with you. It's hard to fit a wardrobe in the back of the car! So the physical store becomes in effect a showcase for an online offering, with a small product selection on display combined with self-serve terminals where customers can browse and order from a colossal online catalogue. With the advent of the Internet shoppers are no longer satisfied with the limited range of products that can be displayed in a limited retail space, even Ikea only has a very limited selection of beds compared to us (they had 22 double beds at last count vs our nearly 800), and as this desire for product choice translates to more traditional shopping habits it's inevitable that physical retailers will need to offer much more. This year, after a number of approaches from both large retailers and high street independents, we're considering offering physical retailers the solution of all or part of our product range using in-store terminals.

5. What will the high street look like in a decade?

I have no idea, I don’t go there that often.

6. Will mobile devices be the primary sales channel in the future?

In our categories, where the goods we're selling are often pretty large, you'll normally want to see them on a bigger screen than just a mobile, such as a laptop or Tablet. So for the foreseeable future I see mobile as a forming part of the sales funnel, but not the primary channel. Having said that we want to develop an web app that uses your mobile phone camera to scan competitor product such as a bed in the high street and offers our alternative products (which will almost always be available to the customer faster, cheaper and in many more colours or design options).

7. What other retail business do you admire?

It's not quite retail, but I love Shutl. Their technology connects individuals who can offer delivery services (taxi firms, individuals with a scooter etc) to physical retailers, allowing the retailer to offer sub-1hr delivery times from its website.

8. If you hadn't been a retailer what would you have liked to do?

A farmer.

9. What marks out of 10 do you give yourself so far for achievement?

3/10. So much to do, this is just the beginning for us.

10. Who would you place in the Top 30 Multi-channel/e-commerce Movers & Shakers?

Argh, we (Richard, co-founder and co-CEO and me) aren't the best networkers in the world.

Guest Slot - Analysis Insider - Sue Grist

‘New Look may close 100 stores’ ran the headline in the Financial Times recently, highlighting an increasingly common story of major retail chains off-loading stores as the internet continues to impact on revenues from their physical units.

Just one of numerous store closure headlines.

But it would be far too simplistic to think that rationalising store estates is the catch-all solution for every retailer. We are in an increasingly multi-channel world and there has to be a major re-appraisal of the role that stores now play in cross-channel shopping experiences.

Ten, or maybe even five years ago, the store portfolio for the majority of retailers could be managed as a distinct entity, with decisions on design and ranging being made according to store location and customer segmentation. Today the store is just one of the channels and such decisions need to be made by retailers from the viewpoint of the varying roles the store plays in a multi-channel estate. It would be a costly mistake to think that we can continue as we have always done so, with just a bit of tweaking, or to believe that the answer is just shutting stores.

The demands on a store can be very different depending on the category and whether customers have a need to visit outlets for brand, service and product familiarisation or whether their need for physical contact is low. Where the latter is the case, stores can still play a valuable role in hosting Click & Collect-type services. Argos has seen rapid growth in Click & Collect sales because of the benefit to customers of online ordering matched to freedom to collect from store when it suits.

Vital component of any multi-channel retailer.

Although a range of other “dropbox” solutions are emerging, direct pickup from store has advantages for customers who can get any queries or issues addressed immediately. We should expect to see more Click & Collect-only stores in the portfolio, like those being opened by House of Fraser.

For other categories where expert advice is as much a part of the shopping experience as feeling and trying out the products, the store has an altogether different role. This is why the likes of online-only retailer Wiggle plan to add stores to the mix. As a bike retailer these will be monster-sized stores housing a huge range of products and will particularly appeal to first-time buyers who need educating and require a personal service that pure play online retailers cannot provide.

There is a further important role of stores in projecting the brand values and allowing customers to familiarise themselves with the offer prior to moving to online ordering. Clothing is an example of this, where customers will become familiar with brand, size and fit in-store and then order online, but with the confidence that it is easy to return products to store if they want to. This change in behaviour is reflected in the increasing online dominance of multichannel retailers at the expense of pure-plays.

The successful multi-channel brands will be those with store estates that are designed to reflect the multiple roles that stores will play for customers, where they can start their shopping experience in one channel and move between channels with ease, supported by technology.  For example, using the likes of mobile QR codes, kiosks and iPads along with cutting-edge initiatives such as the ‘magic mirror’ employed in N. Brown’s trial Simply Be stores. 

Simply Be: recognising the new role of the store.

 This is a great example of in-store and on-line integration.  The magic mirror takes photos of customers wearing their selected clothes in the changing room and lets them send these to their friends via the likes of Facebook, for instant feedback.  Many of these emerging technology solutions will be allowing customers to bring the responsiveness and personalisation of the virtual online world to their physical shopping experience.

Even today, youngsters toting smart-phones in-store should not be seen as disengaged with a retailers’ proposition. It could be quite the opposite, as these internet natives increasingly blur the channels by using technology to enhance their in-store experience. Offering free wi-fi in-store is a first step for retailers to embrace the changing role of the store.

A failure to recognise how these new technologies are affecting the customer shopping journey and how the physical outlet’s role is therefore changing will likely lead to more, potentially unnecessary, store closure headlines.  Stores will change in size and purpose and play multiple cross-channel roles, but will remain an essential part of the retailer’s strategy.

Sue Grist is owner of consultancy Egremont Group