The Retail Conference 2025 Review – Culture and people determine success
Retailers are awash with technology and currently grappling with the potential of AI but it is still a company’s culture and its people that truly underpin businesses and ultimately determine their future success or failure.
This was a recurring theme from the recent The Retail Conference 2025, organised by The Retail Bulletin, in London where Andrew Xeni, Founder & CEO of Fabacus and founder & Chairman of Nobody’s Child, told delegates that it is people who are vital to the successful adoption of technology.
Fundamental ingredient
“A fundamental ingredient is the culture of the business. You can have the best technology and tools in the world but if you do not have the team on-board then it is tough. Internally there will be battles. When I sit with leadership teams I try to understand when a company is not moving forward with a technology and there will be a need to have honest conversations,” he says.
Subscribe to TRBSuch conversations were essential for Eric Ledroux, CEO of Interflora France, who says the brand would have died had it not shifted to online commerce. It has moved from being 100% offline to 99% online in the last 20 years. “Such change needs to be embraced by the senior executives. You can’t blame a 50-year-old CEO for not going on TikTok but you have to decide as a senior management where to invest,” he suggests.
Selecting the technologies to deploy is certainly a challenge, with Ledroux adding: “We have to decide where to invest and do a lot of pilots. With AI there is some horrible stuff out there and some beautiful stuff too including chatbots, content creation, productivity and code writing solutions. Try stuff and see where you get value.”
Experimentation
Within N Brown there was some concern about using ChatGPT, according to Nuno Miller, former Digital Chief Operating Officer at N Brown Group, who says the solution was to create an AI incubator. “Rather than stopping its use we wanted to enable use-cases to happen. We’re here to find solutions [from AI], not to stop its use. We looked to support these people [in the incubator] and use them as examples,” he explains.
What Xeni is clear about is that such technologies will not replace people at Nobody’s Child: “I’ve no ambition to cut people. We want to double the size of the business but we won’t be doubling the headcount. There’s a huge opportunity from AI.”
Craig Jones, Chief Operating Officer at Angling Direct, says people need to see the technology as supporting them, not replacing them. “We’re trying to identify the operational pain points and see where AI can help. We’ll more likely then get buy-in from the team,” he says. The company splits these pain points into ‘Everyday AI’ such as using Microsoft’s Copilot – that helps show critical easy wins from the technology – and also into ‘Applied AI’ that are larger projects such as supply chain automation.
Even though AI has been around for years Julian Burnett, Founder of Quercus Advisors, says it is GenAI that has brought it to the “consciousness of everyone – including the board, CEO and investors” but care has to be taken because the technology can be used for “hundreds of things”.
Assessing exposure to risk
Teresa Long, Industry Leader – Retail, Leisure & Hospitality for GB Risk & Broking at WTW Willis, suggests this growing impact of new technologies on the retail sector presents challenges to a company’s exposure to risk.
“What risks they are exposed to is constantly changing. Retailers need to apply a thought process to risk. Previously it was floods and fire at distribution centres but today the risk is predominantly cyber so is less easy to visualise. It’s not easy to see where the critical crunch points are. If you do not understand the tech then you can’t have your arms around the risk. Having the right culture will enable teams to talk to each other.”
For Luke Phillips, IT Director at Townhouse, it was the CEO who suggested the company had to get involved with AI but Phillips has been uncertain about making such commitments until he can see clearly how it will improve the customer experience. Rather than investing in AI at this stage he has alighted on proven solutions h such as kiosks. “We have them front-of-house in all our salons. We’re premium, not McDonald’s, so the key for us was integrating them within our luxury brand.”
Trevor Gordon, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Save the Children UK, warns retailers to “beware of snake oil salesmen”. He points to Microsoft and Google who have invested billions and recommends retailers use these existing expert software vendors before going to other parties or trying to be experts themselves.
What’s the value exchange?
He also says that retailers need to be transparent with their AI usage. “There’s lots of talk about personalisation but we don’t want it to be creepy. Transparency is key – what’s your AI usage guidelines? It’s very important retailers look at the value exchange with their customers,” suggests Gordon.
This is recognised by Shetal Bhatt, Global Head of Digital Marketing, Loyalty & Consumer Engagement at Costa Coffee, who says: “There needs to be a fair exchange of value. People will give you their data if this is the case.”
The data also has to be accurate, according to Lavinia Dumitrache, Data Insights, Transaction Banking Solutions at Lloyds Corporate & Institutions, who says: “It’s a big responsibility. When we look at data it has to have accuracy. Our data is grounded in the transactions of our customers. We’re using data in an ethical way.”
With its communications and data-usage strategy Janis Thomas, Managing Director of Look Fabulous Forever, says the company works on the basis of four pillars. Firstly the content has to be useful and she reveals that 85% of its customers want to receive an email every day because it is useful. Secondly, personalisation, which ensures customers see products that are relevant to them. Thirdly, community is important and a dedicated area online enables the 10,000 customers in the company’s private group to discuss various topics encompassing their wider lives. Finally, listening to customers is vital and includes the creation of formal research groups that allow the company to make decisions on hard data.
Don’t forget the old ways
Having rich data, from which retailers can seek to drive personalisation only goes so far when you have a large stores-based operation, suggests Clare Olding, former Head of Loyalty at Topps Tiles: “Topps has 330 stores so a lot of the data is in the stores. You can have the best [tech] tools in the world but sometimes the best ways are the old ways. Our managers know the customers best.”
Olding adds that it is now accepted that Topps customers are not loyal to Topps but to the specific shop that they use. It’s the relationship they have with the people in the store that drives their loyalty rather than any data-driven communications they receive from a loyalty-type programme.
To boost the experience that people in-store deliver to shoppers Fortnum & Mason uses mystery shopping that is undertaken with its partner ABa. Danielle Sones, Managing Director at Aba, says the service “uses customer feedback to shape customer outcomes”. She adds: “It’s about giving people the tools to shine and mystery shopping highlights what they are doing correctly. It has to be used positively. It needs to be done regularly and we go to Fortnum & Mason weekly.”
Marrying people with data
Sones suggests that data informs the experience strategies of retailers but it is mystery shopping that could be a communications tool and used to take the company’s strategy onto the shop floor. “Mystery shopping is not a silver bullet and data is not a silver bullet either but they can work together,” she says.
Sean Ghouse, Director of Retail UK at Fortnum & Mason, says mystery shopping fuels the company’s Exceptional Service Programme that helps drive the business’s seven steps of service – welcome, approach, ask, select, highlight, introduce and thank. “It’s not a technical reporting tool. We curate and look after the brand for the next generation. We don’t want robots, we want personality,” he says, adding that such a programme enables the front-line teams and managers to build emotional intelligence, which he says is intangible.
Emotional connections are proving increasingly important – especially among younger consumers – and the best way to create them is through physical stores. Lucy Litwack, CEO of Coco de Mer that has a physical store in London’s Belgravia and an online operation says: “The store is crucial. It’s important for our brand to have a space where people can meet and talk. As we have got more open [in society] people want advice [in person] rather than going online. Also it’s about the touch and feel of the fabrics.”
People like people
She recalls the nine-month period during the changing of store locations when there was no physical outlet and this had a direct effect on sales because the physical store shoppers did not go online instead. Amy Green, Senior Insight Manager at SKY, recognises the desire of customers to deal with actual people from the continued appeal of the phone for contacting the company’s customer service department.
“Sky customers like to call us. We tend to see less people moving away from this traditional touch-point. All the new additional channels are only selected according to the customers’ circumstances at the time. App and live chat usage is going up but it’s not replacing the phone,” she says.
For Coco de Mer its store is also essential for hosting the company’s programme of classes and events that further contribute to bringing people together and “fosters a sense of community”.
This community aspect is also important to Catherine Loftus, Brand Director at Bird & Blend, who says like Coco de Mer it also hosts events in its stores – involving tastings. “Our brand was rooted in physical before going online. You can’t beat it for an experiential brand. We’re also independent and are investing in the high street. A physical presence is essential,” she explains.
The philosophy of the company is to encourage people into its stores without any pressure to buy. “It’s okay for them to come in for a chat even if it does not involve them buying. We assume they will come back so it’s no hard-sell. We had a quiet confidence [at the start] that it would work and now we know from the data that it does work,” says Loftus.
Although she says Bird & Blend has introduced a new Point-of-Sale system to link store to online sales – and is looking into digital screens that will pull the online content into stores – Litwack has no such plans: “At the moment it is difficult to see how technology and offering a personalised service would work.”
The future is not technology
Susannah Schofield OBE, Director General at the Direct Selling Association, recognises this questioning of the value of technology over people as she suggests: “To ensure retail succeeds we need to change the mind-set. The future is not technology, it’s about tone. Retail needs a relationship infrastructure, with data and emotion intertwined.”
She suggests young people in particular feel disconnected as there is too much technology: “We expect technology now but people feel disenfranchised. It’s not personalised, it is automation.” Against this backdrop Schofield adds that there is a major opportunity for brands and retailers to embrace direct-to-consumer (DTC): “DTC and selling direct is the oldest [way to sell] and yet the most exciting route-to-market opportunity today.”
She cites the examples of Avon, Nike and a major luxury car brand that are choosing to pay individuals to sell direct to customers by dealing with them personally – often outside the confines of a store environment. This represents a very different experience to the one they would receive when dealing with brands online.
Another exciting opportunity has been presented by retail media, which although it is not a new concept life has been breathed into it through technology’s ability to deliver metrics that proves a ROI (return on investment) and ROAS (return on advertising spend). Adam Smith, Head of Retail Media at Iceland, highlights that as much as 99% of brand advertising in the retail sector is online even though this channel represents only 20% of total retail sales in the UK, thereby presenting a serious opportunity to tempt some of this spend by brands into physical stores.
Proving the retail media ROI
Proving the ROI in-store is the key question, according to Smith, and Iceland is implementing a raft of technology in its stores that display brand advertising and can measure the impact it has on sales in its stores. Digital screens were trialled in 120 shops and by the end of 2026 there will be 7,000 across its 1,200 shops in the UK. The screens have sensors on them to identity people viewing them, shoppers are anonymously tracked around the stores, Bluetooth is used to identify products picked from shelves, and when Iceland loyalty members pass through the checkouts it ticks another box of in-store data collected.
This all combines to give Iceland the equivalent rich data in-store that it collects online.
Edward Hall, Strategic Partnership Lead at Iceland, says: “We will unlock revenues from brands and help the [brands’] marketing teams at a time when they are up against it to prove the spend of every pound [on ads].”
Smith compares the advertising-related data that is now available from within Iceland stores with that which comes back from advertising on bus shelters. “Brands spend millions of pounds on them and have no idea what return there is from it. You could instead run ads on digital screens in our windows and measure how many people actually saw it, and how it directly affected sales of the product.”
With margins in grocery retail notoriously slim the revenues that can be driven from retail media are a very attractive proposition that can add serious levels of profitability, according to Smith, who says: “With grocery margins where they are you have to go after this. Retailers need another way to balance the books.”
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