Movers & Shakers Q&A with Simon Leesley, MD at Stitch Fix UK

Simon Leesley, MD, Stitch Fix UK 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Stitch Fix is able to offer personalisation at scale, which given recent moves in consumer behaviour, habits and expectations due to the pandemic, is more important than ever. The seismic consumer shift from offline to online shopping presents an important…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Tom Broughton, founder and CEO, Cubitts

Tom Broughton, founder and CEO, Cubitts 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The world is now almost eight billion humans, of whom most will need spectacles at some point. We can help. 2. What is the biggest challenge to your business? It’s an obvious answer, but navigating Covid-19 – it’s been pretty brutal for a…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A: John Roberts, CEO, AO World

  John Roberts, CEO, AO World Where did it all begin? John Roberts is resolutely from Bolton and is usually characterised in the press as either a “no-nonsense” or “loud-mouth” Northerner. He still lives in Bolton with his family comprising wife and their five children, some of whom are grown up and some of whom…

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Movers and Shakers in Retail : Tim Steiner, Founder and CEO, Ocado

Tim Steiner, co-founder and CEO, Ocado Where did it all begin? Back in the winter of ‘69, one Tim Steiner was born into a fairly affluent middle class family and went through the education system via Haberdasher Aske’s in Hertfordshire before completing a degree in Economics at Manchester University. An aptitude for knowing what the…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A: Jim Buckle, COO, FeelUnique

Jim Buckle, COO, FeelUnique 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The global beauty market is massive and, relatively, we are still a tiny pinprick.  We have the opportunity to double or triple the business in the next 5 years and still be tiny. 2.What is the biggest challenge to your business? The…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Nick Thomas, founder, Built

Nick Thomas, founder, Built What is the greatest opportunity for your business? E-commerce in the building materials sector has many challenges and complexities, not least that most building products are heavy, bulky, low margin and costly to move. To resolve these difficulties, we devised a new builders’ merchant format which supports an assisted, time of…

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Movers and Shakers Q & A: Paul Hornby, director of e-commerce, Matalan

Paul Hornby, director of e-commerce, Matalan 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? We have a real opportunity to become the most trusted omni-channel retailer of family value. Nobody has – yet – truly nailed the omni-channel customer experience in my opinion, and this is especially true in the value sector. Considering how…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Charlie Pool, Stowga

  Charlie Pool, CEO of Stowga.  1.What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The big goal is to change the entire way people think about their supply chain. Right now the warehouse is the weak link in the supply chain: everything else in a supply chain (i.e. transportation) is short term variable costs for…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Tugce Bulut, founder, Streetbees

Tugce Bulut, founder, Streetbees What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The extent of change in the retail sector is enormous, and presents us with an incredible opportunity to disrupt an entire industry. New methods of consumption – online, via social media, even on TV – require a completely new way of understanding consumers.…

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‘Movers & Shakers in Retail Top 100’ 2018 report launches

Retail Insider has launched the 2018 edition of the ‘Movers & Shakers in Retail Top 100’ report highlighting the key individuals in retail that are most effectively using the power of digital to push their organisations forward. This is the ninth year that we have produced such a report, with the sponsor K3, and as always the findings shine…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Richard Longhurst, co-founder, Lovehoney

Richard Longhurst, co-founder of Lovehoney 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The sexual wellbeing market is growing and online shopping continues to get more popular – a double whammy of good news for Lovehoney. We’ve also noticed that the internet goes everywhere and people have sex everywhere so the international opportunity for…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Ben Francis, founder and director, Gymshark

Ben Francis, founder and director, Gymshark 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The biggest opportunity for Gymshark at the moment is to harness the potential of GSHQ, our new Birmingham-based office. The 42,000 sq ft space gives us the opportunity to expand our workforce to help us continue on the growth trajectory we’re…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Craig Smith, digital commerce director, Ted Baker

Craig Smith, digital commerce director, Ted Baker 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Contrary to popular belief it’s not opportunity based upon other businesses not being around anymore as busy shopping destinations works for everyone. The big opportunities for us are around evolving our product offer in the right direction and wrapping…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Philippe Chainieux, CEO of Made

Philippe Chainieux, CEO, Made What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The market in furniture and homewares is seeing the same transition from high street to online that the fashion industry has gone through. As the digitally-native, leading design brand, MADE is best positioned to benefit from the opportunity the transition presents. What is…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Jacqueline de Rojas CBE, president of techUK and non-executive director & advisor

Jacqueline de Rojas CBE, president of techUK and non-executive director & advisor 1. What is the greatest opportunity for consumer-facing/retail businesses? Once upon a time the retail industry was all about selling, now its biggest opportunity is providing unparalleled, interactive experiences to customers. The rise of subscription services and the pervasiveness of connected devices such…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Simon Calver, partner, BGF Ventures

Simon Calver, partner at BGF Ventures 1. What is the greatest opportunity for the retail businesses you are involved with? We are all beginning to collect more data but the biggest opportunity now is to use that data to build customer insights that can differentiate your own proposition and create really sticky customers. 2. What…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Tony Mannix, CEO of Clipper Logistics

Tony Mannix, CEO of Clipper Logistics What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Agility is a word we’ve lived by at Clipper since we started, and it’s a concept we believe has been key to our own success. It’s allowed us to develop award-winning solutions, such as our Boomerang™ returns service, and our recent…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Edwina Dunn, CEO of Starcount

Edwina Dunn, CEO, Starcount What is the greatest opportunity for your business? When we started work in the industry we used customer transaction data to understand what customers did – what they bought (classic recency, frequency and value analysis). This still dominates the whole industry and continues to consume millions of pounds in investment. But…

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Retail Insider Breakfast and Launch of Movers & Shakers Top 100 report

Retail Insider held its latest breakfast event with Tatiana Fokina, CEO of Hedonism Wines, and Elizabeth Layne, chief marketing officer at Appear Here, who helped launch the ‘Movers & Shakers in Retail Top 100’ report for 2017. Senior executives from John Lewis, Karen Millen, Tesco, Hotel Chocolat, House of Fraser and WH Smith were among…

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‘Movers & Shakers in Retail Top 100’ 2017 Report Launched

Retail Insider has launched the 2017 edition of the ‘Movers & Shakers in Retail Top 100’ report that highlights the key individuals in retail that are harnessing the power of digital to push their organisations forward. The constituents of this year’s publication show the dramatic shifts that are taking place in the retail sector as…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Emma Heal, MD for UK Retail at Graze

Emma Heal, MD for UK Retail at Graze 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Whilst technology has changed the trajectory of various industries over the last few years, the FMCG/CPG sector has historically lagged behind in this development. Graze saw an opportunity in the many ways tech could enable growth in the…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Colin Porter, CEO of Joules

Colin Porter, CEO of Joules 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The same as it has been for the last few years – UK and international growth. What’s fuelling the UK is recognition of the brand and our multi-channel approach. A pillar of our growth is the eight to 10 stores per…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Doug McCallum, chairman of PhotoBox and Trainline, and non-executive director of Ocado

1.What is the greatest opportunity for the retail businesses you are involved with? Offering richer, faster, easier and smarter, as well as more personalised, customer experiences. 2. What is the biggest challenge to these businesses? Establishing employee value propositions that are compelling to the best talent, with open, transparent, and fun cultures combined with technology…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Steve Baggi, co-founder of Green Park and leader of its Retail and Consumer Practice

Steve Baggi, co-founder of Green Park and leader of its Retail and Consumer Practice What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Helping retailers understand the impact of digital transformation on the organisational design of their businesses and what that means for the leaders they employ and the retail estate model they follow. It’s all…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Sara Prowse, CEO, Hotter Shoes

Sara Prowse, CEO, Hotter Shoes 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? International expansion, with continued growth in the US in particular. We are approaching this opportunity in two ways: through digital expansion; and through retail partnerships. 2. What is the biggest challenge to your business? External pressures. Consumer confidence is likely to…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Clare Johnston, joint-CEO, The Up Group

Clare Johnston, joint-CEO, The Up Group 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The Up Group is Europe’s leading digital executive search and networking firm, finding exceptional talent for companies across the growth curve. Our clients are fast-growing pure-play businesses and more established multi-channel organisations undergoing transformational change, and they all increasingly require…

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Movers & Shakers Q& A – David Lloyd, director, Alibaba Group UK

David Lloyd, Director, Alibaba Group UK 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Digital technology is creating something close to a borderless world, opening up new markets and new customer groups for the first time. As an e-commerce company, our biggest opportunity is bringing those new customer groups online and introducing brands to…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Virginie Charlès-Dear, founder, Toucan Box

Virginie Charlès-Dear, founder, Toucan Box 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Our biggest opportunity is to be able to deliver outstanding products to our customers. We use technology and personalisation to create hands-on creative arts and crafts projects, today focusing on children aged three-to-eight years-old and in the future developing to other age…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Benjy Meyer, founder of VenueScanner

Benjy Meyer, founder, VenueScanner 1.What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The UK market for events is valued at over £50 billion annually and there is very limited consolidation in the market. The current experience for discovering, comparing and booking venues and associated event services is not designed in a user-friendly way. It’s a…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Ross Bailey, founder, Appear Here

Ross Bailey, founder, Appear Here  1.What is the greatest opportunity for your business? If you look at what companies like Airbnb and Uber have done to the travel and hospitality sectors, I believe Appear Here has the potential to bring as much disruption to the retail industry. Lease lengths are falling dramatically, and retailers are…

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Retail Insider ‘Movers & Shakers in Retail Top 100’ report launch with Simon Belsham, CEO of Notonthehighstreet.com

Retail Insider celebrated the launch of the Movers & Shakers in Retail Top 100 report with an evening event involving the CEO of a leading online retailer and a tutored craft beer tasting. The event at Sourced Market Marylebone attracted senior executives from a variety of retailers including John Lewis, House of Fraser and Reiss…

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‘Movers & Shakers in Retail’ 2016 report launches

Senior Apple executive Angela Ahrendts sits atop the ‘Retail Insider Movers & Shakers in Retail Top 100’ report for the second year running as the 2016 version celebrates the achievements of retailers leading the digital transformation of the industry. [Link to the 2016 Movers & Shakers Report] The annual report, sponsored by K3 Retail, this…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Jon Owen, CEO of Ribble Cycles

Jon Owen, CEO, Ribble Cycles 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? At Ribble Cycles, we want to make it easy and enjoyable to build and buy a fantastic, customised bike online; avoiding the costs and hassle of the traditional store retail model, while delivering personalisation that stores can only dream of. The…

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Search for Digital Movers & Shakers 2016 underway

Finding the Movers & Shakers of 2016 in the digital space is firmly underway following the completion of the Advisory Panel morning this week that sits to deliberate who the most impressive people are in the UK. They are helping find the most impressive individuals who will take their place in the Retail Insider Movers…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Neil Sansom, CEO of Woolovers

  Neil Sansom, chief executive of Woolovers 1.What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Increasing the brands awareness as we are very much an unknown but have very loyal customers once they experience our product and service. 2.What is the biggest challenge to your business? We’re changing our IT infrastructure over the next 12…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Stan Laurent, group CEO, PhotoBox

Stan Laurent, group CEO, PhotoBox 1.What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The personalisation market is massive and is continuing to grow, with Europe alone believed to be worth £6-7 billion. We are only a £275 million business today, meaning that there is a huge amount to play for. As well as working hard…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Anthony Fletcher, CEO of Graze.com

Anthony Fletcher, CEO of graze.com 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The food industry is relatively underpenetrated by technology compared to most other major industries. By placing technology at the core of what we do, graze continues to disrupt the food industry and revolutionise snacking. Our intelligent use of data has facilitated…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Steve Rothwell, founder, Eagle Eye

Steve Rothwell, CTO and founder, Eagle Eye 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? As a software service business you’d expect me to say digital or wearable technology wouldn’t you. Actually I think the greatest opportunity is the high street. There was some Kantar research released recently showing that over a three month…

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2015 Movers & Shakers Multi-channel Top 100 report launched

The ‘Retail Insider Top 100 Movers & Shakers in Multi-channel’ report for 2015 has been launched to celebrate the stars of the sector that are making a difference in pushing their businesses to become more digitally focused. At the head of the report, which is sponsored by K3 Retail, sits Angela Ahrendts of Apple closely…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Tim Robinson, CEO of Doddle

Tim Robinson, CEO, Doddle 1.What is the greatest opportunity for your business? For us it’s about being the company that revolutionises the way people deal with parcels, becoming the parcel service you can’t believe you lived without. The quest to eradicate the ‘sorry you were out’ card is also a driving force for Doddle. We…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Simon Harrow, CEO, Elevaate

Simon Harrow, CEO, Elevaate. 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Elevaate has an exciting year ahead. Our core platform is delivering for our customers but there are so many legacy tools holding retailers back. The prospect of building an increasingly innovative and intelligent SaaS platform for retailers and suppliers to grow their…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Steve Robinson, CEO, Achica

Steve Robinson, CEO, Achica 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Younger business are fortunate not to have the same constraints as older ones; difficult to exit leases, hard to change cultures, historical pension commitments, expensive to change legacy systems etc. Starting with a clean sheet of paper allows you to be agile,…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – David Walmsley, director at M&S.com

David Walmsley, director, M&S.com 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? How we join together the physical and digital experiences of M&S for our customers. 2. What is the biggest challenge to your business? For the digital channels, the challenge remains being obsessive about listening to our customers and then turning the insight…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Alison Lancaster, interim marketing director, McArthurGlen Group

  Alison Lancaster, interim marketing director, McArthurGlen Group 1. What is the greatest opportunity for retail businesses? To digitally transform their businesses in order to better serve customers anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Digital transformation will be a brand differentiator and essential ‘enabler’ for retailers (new and old) to compete and win on a global scale. This…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Nadia Shouraboura, founder of Hointer

Guest international Multi-channel/e-commerce Movers & Shakers Q&A:   Nadia Shouraboura, founder, Hointer  1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Definitely to unleash the power of in-store shopping by bringing the best of online technologies to physical stores. It’s a great opportunity for Hointer and for my fellow retailers. While with Amazon, for many…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Neil Sansom, omni-channel director, Moss Bros

Neil Sansom, omni-channel director, Moss Bros 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Development of our single customer view across all our channels and between our retail and hire businesses. Hire is probably what Moss Bros is well known for but it represents less than 20% of the business. Customers tend not to…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Paul Coby, IT director, John Lewis

  Paul Coby, IT director, John Lewis 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? To test the boundaries of omni-channel retailing, all the while listening to what it is the customer wants and needs. 2. What is the biggest challenge to your business? To manage effectively the amount of technology enabled change we…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A – Joel Palix, CEO, Feelunique

Joel Palix, CEO, Feelunique 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Our greatest opportunity is to build our core UK market. It is the fastest growing economy in Europe with a booming beauty business growing by 6% a year and the most-advanced e-commerce market too. Feelunique is the leading premium beauty online retailer in UK, growing above 30% a year. We want to…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A Melissa Shackleton, head of marketing, Hotel Chocolat

Melissa Shackleton, head of marketing, Hotel Chocolat 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Hotel Chocolat is a multi-faceted, dynamic brand with numerous opportunities. Our vertical business model means that we can be developing new strains of cocoa on our cocoa estate at the same time as conjuring up new cocoa cuisine recipes in…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Chris Griffin, founder of Anatwine

  Chris Griffin, founder of Anatwine 1.What is the greatest opportunity for your business? To perfect the methodology of stock management and merchandising in order to drive increased revenues, profits and customer satisfaction, without increasing stock liabilities. 2.What is the biggest challenge to your business? Managing the different ways different organisations categorise their data. A…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Yossi Erdman, brand & social media, AO.com

Yossi Erdman, head of brand & social media, AO.com 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The biggest opportunity for our business is to change the expectations people have when shopping for electricals. Rather than experiencing painful customer service, they should expect and receive quite the opposite. This includes great web content, free…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Neil Ashworth, CEO, CollectPlus

Neil Ashworth, CEO, CollectPlus 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? When e-commerce first came to the fore, the accessibility and sophistication of a retailer’s website was the key to gaining competitive advantage. Now, with most of the UK’s major retail brands providing a digital commerce offering of some kind, the battleground for gaining…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with John Browett, CEO of Monsoon Accessorize

John Browett, chief exectutive of Monsoon/Accessorize 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Monsoon Accessorize is already an international business. Over half our retail sales and profits come from outside the UK. But, there is much more to do, particularly for Accessorize. If we could just get to the same market penetration we…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Orlando Martins, founder, Oresa

Orlando Martins, founder, Oresa 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business?  To further our reputation as a leading builder of top performing retail boardrooms. We love seeing what’s possible and being a critical part of our clients’ strategic success. For us, there is no better feeling than having put in a team that…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Ning Li, CEO, Made.com

Ning Li, CEO, Made.com  1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Scalability. Last year we launched the business in France and it has done incredibly well, now accounting for 20% of the total business. This success gave us the confidence to launch in Italy in September 2013, which is already doing well with…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Dwain McDonald, CEO of DPD

1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? As customers become more accustomed to internet shopping, retailers are looking to differentiate their home delivery service and significantly improve that part of the customer experience. We’ve invested heavily in technology, people and infrastructure to position ourselves as the delivery company of choice for e-tailers and…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Jonathon Brown, CEO of M+M Direct

Jonathon Brown, chief executive, M+M Direct 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? There are opportunities all over the place for us to expand and grow. For example, one we are driving hard is our international roll out strategy. We’re in the UK and four other core markets at present and we’ll be…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Andrew Livingston, CEO of Screwfix

Andrew Livingston, CEO, Screwfix 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Our growth programme provides the greatest opportunity to expand our offering. Screwfix currently has a store network of over 300, with 60 new openings planned for 2014. We are also building our EU shipping service and will assess the success of our…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Andy Harding, executive director of multi-channel at House of Fraser

Andy Harding, executive director of multi-channel. House of Fraser  1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Converting store-only loyalty card customers into multi-channel customers. 2. What is the biggest challenge to your business? Keeping up with the pace of growth in multi-channel sales – from both an internal perspective (i.e. systems, process, infrastructure,…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Matt Henderson, co-founder of Rangespan

Matt Henderson, co-founder, Rangespan 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? Predicting the future, specifically we predict which products will succeed online and which won’t out of the 200 million unique products available on the internet. To do this across such a wide range we need to track and make sense of a…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Tanya Lawler, VP of UK trading, eBay

Tanya Lawler, vice president of UK Trading, eBay 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? I see the greatest opportunities coming from emerging trends – especially the rising demand for both utility and engagement. At eBay we’ve been working to bring together the best bits of these two elements to help buyers and…

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Changes at top of eBay UK

Ebay’s desire to work more closely with retailers has led to a change at the top of the organisation with Tanya Lawler taking over the running of the UK arm from Clare Gilmartin who leaves the business. Former Sainsbury’s digital and cross-channel director Lawler joined eBay in October 2012 with lots of ideas that sought…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Harry Briggs, principal, Balderton Capital

Harry Briggs, principal, Balderton Capital 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business as an investor in the retail/consumer-focused sector? We don’t look for opportunities, so much as great, visionary entrepreneurs.  When we meet an entrepreneur who’s identified an opportunity that others have overlooked, and we believe the entrepreneur has the talent and energy…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Gracia Amico, e-commerce director, Hobbs

Gracia Amico, e-commerce director, Hobbs 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? International. Although we deliver to 50 countries from our website and have concessions in various countries, we have a very busy time ahead focusing on international expansion. We have just launched our German website and are three weeks away from launching…

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New – Movers & Shakers 2013 Top 100 Published

The Retail Insider Multi-channel / E-commerce Movers & Shakers Top 100 report for 2013 has been published. Its core aim is celebrating the achievements of the most influential people in this exciting part of the retail market and to also bring greater attention to the potential stars of the future. There remains great fluidity in…

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The ongoing lost opportunity

Online sales are growing. Fact. Store sales are falling as a percentage of total retail revenues. Fact. So why is that we still have many retailers who have failed to grasp the potential of online sales? Many do not have transactional websites, many do not have mobile-optimised sites, many do not allow goods to be…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Graham Cooke, CEO, QuBit

Graham Cooke, CEO, QuBit 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The greatest opportunity lies in the increasing realisation by retailers that data is the key to better business performance. Retailers have been collecting on- and off-line data for years and now they’re putting real effort into extracting value from it. That data…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Chris Morton, CEO, Lyst

Chris Morton, CEO, Lyst 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? The last ten years have been about proving that people will buy fashion online and changing the consumer mindset, done by moving offline retail models, like department stores and flash sales, online. The next ten years will be about totally new ways…

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Movers & Shakers Q&A with Jon Asbury, GO Outdoors

Brought to you by Retail Insider and K3 Retail Jon Asbury, multi-channel director, GO Outdoors 1. What is the greatest opportunity for your business? GO Outdoors is already a national brand and is by far the largest retailer of outdoor goods in the UK currently trading through 43 superstores and a rapidly growing website. Extending…

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