Desert Island Stores: Peter Cross
In his latest Desert Island Stores interview, Glynn Davis chats with Peter Cross, former customer experience director at John Lewis Partnership.
The store you remember from childhood?
Retail was in the genes. Many generations of Cross’s had grocers shops in the North West of England and my grandfather spent his entire career at the Co-op. He made his mark launching a dividend stamp scheme – an early foray into loyalty – distributing profit to customers based on purchase volume, who dutifully collected stamps and redeemed completed books for cash or goods.
I was the awkward child model in some of his early campaigns. The reveal of the then iconic Co-op Christmas ad – always a massive family moment – turned out to be a precursor of things to come later in life.
Most inspirational store to your career?
John Lewis of course. Never knowingly pretending to be the most avant-garde, but always way ahead of the pack from a human and service perspective. The people I met during my time there, left a lasting impression, particularly the store managers – many of whom seemed to effortlessly manifest the spirit and essence of the brand in human form.
John Lewis has clearly had its challenges in recent years (thankfully the brand appears to be getting back on the rails) but the lessons it taught me, in how to build a world class service culture, punctuate every chapter of my latest book ‘Start with the customer’.
Most frequently used store?
Without wanting to sound too fancy, I’m lucky enough to split my time between London and Barcelona. Food shopping is constantly improving in the UK (M&S Food and Waitrose being notable players) but food shopping in Spain takes things to another level.
Putting all the street markets to one side, there is a fabulous Catalan food store called Amettler Origen, which leverages a family farming tradition to produce and distribute scarily fresh, locally sourced fruit, veg, dairy, meat and organic product by controlling the entire value chain. So it’s a toss-up between them and Mercadona.
Spain’s leading supermarket, which has just announced record turnover of €42 billion, has the freshest, tastiest range of own-brand, keenly priced private label food and drink in the world – served by a hard-working, highly motivated and empowered team. My partner Alvaro and I enjoy every minute we spend in both.
The store you wished you’d created?
Wallapop is the leading Spanish second-hand marketplace that emerged 10 years ago as a crazy idea to bring the thrill of a typical Spanish flea market to your mobile phone.
Today they have 21 million monthly users who love its hyper-local, mobile-first, user-friendly interface, to facilitate circular shopping. I am somewhere between moderately and acutely obsessed. Its financial performance has been less spectacular, but under new owners, they hope to turn things round.
Your overall favourite store?
Hard one. I spent many years on retail safaris extolling the virtues of Le Bon Marche and Selfridges (the world’s most outrageously exciting department stores), ABC Home, Colette (when it existed), IKEA (for the brilliance and bravery of the concept) Liberty, Daunt Books and the Louis Vuitton Maisons. I was working in fashion for many years so the greatest fashion stores always dominated my choices.
Today, I’m a home-bird, so my favourite shops are those which sell homewares. The sheer breadth of brilliant homewares retailers across the UK and Spain, makes choosing an outlier impossible.
I am currently blown away by the quality, range and storefit at the newly revamped Zara Home and H&M Home if I’m looking for bargains, but my current favourite if I feel like splashing out, has the world’s most beautiful ceramics – Maora Ceramica, based in Valencia.
The store you’d like to take to the desert island?
I would presumably need to ship in food and sustenance on the island, so while I would miss my homewares, I probably ought to be sensible and take Mercadona with me.
