Resurrecting Retail With Doug Stephens - Episode 187
INTERVIEW WITH DOUG STEPHENS
DESCRIPTION
This week on the Ecommerce Braintrust podcast we’re joined by Doug Stephens, international best-selling author, and one of the world’s foremost retail industry futurists. In today’s episode, you will learn about Doug’s most recent book, Resurrecting Retail, which provides a vision of how COVID-19 will reshape every aspect of consumer life, including retail.
Doug Stephens is one of the world’s foremost retail industry futurists. His intellectual work and thinking have influenced many of the world’s best-known retailers, agencies, and brands including Walmart, Google, Home Depot, Disney, BMW, Coca-Cola, and Intel. Doug is also listed as one of the industry’s top 5 global influencers by Vend.com.
Prior to founding Retail Prophet, Doug spent over 20 years in the retail industry, holding senior international roles including the leadership of one of New York City’s most historic retail chains.
He is the author of two groundbreaking books, The Retail Revival: Re-Imagining Business for the New Age of Consumerism (John Wiley & Sons 2013) and the international bestseller, Reengineering Retail: The Future of Selling in a Post-Digital World (Figure 1 2017).
“Products on Amazon are just breadcrumbs to get customers in the door and learn their habits.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Resurrecting Retail is not just a riveting story of the unprecedented crash of industry but a roadmap for its rebirth.
Retail imitates life, life doesn't imitate retail.
COVID-19 has altered the future of retail, it hasn't just accelerated it.
The retail industry is going to have to completely rethink how to now reach consumers with messaging.
COVID-19 pushed us across the digital threshold. Some brands didn't make that transition, others have struggled, and some have been quite successful. For brands like Amazon, Alibaba, jd.com, Walmart, this has been literally a steroid drip - 14 months of steroids that has made them stronger, infinitely more powerful, and far-reaching.
Amazon evolved from being a retail competitor to becoming an “apex predator”, to becoming essentially a utility company in the consumer's life. They are moving into categories like healthcare, education, and transport.
Amazon unveiled a new tool to help brands connect with customers on Amazon: you can connect with shoppers who have followed you, via your Amazon store.
Alibaba has been much more open with brands about the sharing of data, the sharing of the customer relationship, the ownership of that customer relationship, and the ability to build their own brand presence in keeping with their brand values on the platform.
In 2020 Amazon made a play in the luxury fashion space, offering a more branded experience to a small number of luxury brands. It was also a gated experience in that Amazon only allowed customers to shop there on an “invite-only” basis.
There are two pretty new concepts: Private Label Brands that are developed by retailers like Target or Amazon, and the Direct-To-Consumer business model.
In order to withstand the future, and the competitive landscape that brands are going to be emerging into, every brand needs to revisit its fundamental purpose.
In the book are represented 10 retail archetypes, archetypal business models that are not only going to be resilient against competitors, like Amazon and Alibaba, but will actually allow brands to begin to thrive by focusing very clearly on what question consumers are asking, and on being the answer to that question.
COVID-19 created an uncontrolled burn, perhaps of the old-growth forest (retail industry). We have lost a lot of the deadwood in the retail industry. Unfortunately, through this crisis, we also lost a lot of green, young businesses that just couldn't withstand it.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
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