Remarkable Retail Podcast

This week our very special guest is Hubert Joly , former Chairman and CEO of Best Buy, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the author of the just released bestselling book The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism . In a wide-ranging interview we explore Hubert's storied career as one of the world's leading CEO's, highlighted by Best Buy's transformatio...

This week our special guest is Tom Litchford, Head of Worldwide Business Development for Amazon Web Services (AWS). We cover a lot of ground, touching on the key benefits of cloud-computing (turns out there are quite a few), how AWS fits into the Amazon eco-system (spoiler alert: quite nicely), why it takes a crisis for retailers to innovate (don't get us started) and why a culture of experimentat...

This week we celebrate the publication of the expanded and completely revised edition of Steve's bestseller Remarkable Retail: How to Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. On this special episode we share the (slightly edited) recording of our virtual book launch event, hosted by Michael, and featuring guests Seth Godin, Sucharita Kodali (who wrote the Foreword), Oliver Banks, Carl Boutet...

This week we welcome CNBC's ace retail reporter Lauren Thomas , who talks about the journey into her current position, what her beat is all about, and the trade craft of choosing and developing stories. We also dip into what's surprised her about the retail industry and the evolving nature of consumer preferences. Lastly we discuss the challenges of understanding retailer performance as we transit...

This week we welcome Forrester's Brendan Witcher for a wide-ranging, thought provoking and no holds barred discussion of what's most important right now in retail. Among the topics we explore are what strategies are working best, why it takes a crisis for retailers to innovate, the often critical role of physical stores, and the distinction between "disruption" and "destruction" (and why many reta...

This week we talk about the broader eco-system of last mile delivery and the role of 3 rd party services. Specifically, we go deep on Instacart, with our special guest Kiri Masters, founder & CEO of Bobsled Marketing and co-author of Instacart for CMOs (a follow-up to her 2019 book Amazon for CMOs) . We unpack the key elements of Instacart's business model, what's driving growth, the challenges th...

This week we welcome Ethan Chernofsky , VP of Marketing for Placer.ai , a leading analytics firm that harnesses mobile data from tens of millions of devices, to deliver visibility and insight into offline behavior. We discuss what changes in foot traffic across retail product categories and geographies suggest about the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and what it may all mean for the timing and magn...

This week we welcome Michael Schneider the Managing Director of a truly remarkable retailer: Bunnings Group, the leading retailer of home improvement and outdoor living products in Australia and New Zealand. In our discussion we discover how Bunnings became Australia's most trusted brand, the different ways they pivoted to deal with the pandemic and what lessons all retailers can glean to drive gr...

This week we delve into some of the new material in Steve's expanded and completely revised 2nd Edition of Remarkable Retail: How to Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption , which will be released on April 13th (see below for a special listener book offer). We dig into the effects of the pandemic and what retailers need to be doing right now to position themselves for the rebound. Steve out...

This week we welcome Emily Heyward, the cofounder and chief brand officer  of Red Antler as our guest to help understand what branding is all about, why it is so important and what it takes to build and sustain a remarkable brand. We discuss lessons learned from her career working with top companies such Casper, Boxed and Allbirds, and delve into the key concepts she unpacks in her recent book , i...

Product returns have always been part of the retail equation--and an often high cost of doing business. But over the years, free and easy returns have become a new basis of competition. As e-commerce typically brings with it return and product exchange rates 3-5 times as high as those in brick & mortar stores, the growing penetration of online shopping can create more speed bumps in the customer e...

"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."   - Mark Twain Not only isn't physical retail dead, but brands big and small are innovating in many ways to improve conversion, drive up average transaction value and create memorable moments that keep customers coming back for more. More and more, it's not about physical or digital, it's how they work together to create a harmonized and memorab...

Steve knows a thing or two about how hard it is to write a best-selling business book on retail. And our guest, Ron Thurston has done just that. ... on this episode we delve into a few of the key themes in Ron's great new book  Retail Pride: The Guide to Celebrating Your Accidental Career . We discuss why those who work in retail deserve to be celebrated, what it takes to deliver a remarkable, joy...

We kick-off Season 2 with a predictions focused episode, wherein we try to make educated guesses about what's likely to unfold in 2021 and our uncertain and volatile retail economy. Among the predictions we discuss are: The longer-term impact of work-from-home How cheaper real estate may spur a new round of innovation from legacy retailers, digitally native vertical brands and maybe even mall oper...

Get Ready for Season Two of Remarkable Retail debuting February 2, 2021! If you think the COVID era has brought the narrative of the retail apocalypse to life, you’re only half right -  retail isn't dead - boring retail is. As a C-level executive at two Fortune 500 companies, as a strategic advisor to dozens of retail, consumer and technology brands and as a speaker who has delivered keynotes on s...

“You can't stop the waves. But you can learn to surf.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn In the final episode of our first season, before delving into the key themes from Chapter 20 ("A Brave New World") of Steve's book , we share two pieces of big news.  The first is that an expanded and completely revised 2nd edition of Remarkable Retail will be released on April 13th, featuring a Foreword by Sucharita Kodali ....

“If failure is not an option then neither is success.” - Seth Godin We discuss the final component in Steve's 8 Essentials of Remarkable Retail framework: "Radical" with guests Pier Fawkes and Scott Lachut from PSFK, a leading retail experience design and innovation firm.  Being "Memorable" is what's what's needed to become the signal amid the noise in creating a remarkable growth strategy, wherea...

"Great brands don't chase customers; customers chase great brands." - Gary Friedman, CEO Restoration Hardware We are on to #7 ("Memorable") in Steve's 8 Essentials of Remarkable Retail framework. Being Memorable is critical to not simply offering a slightly better version of mediocre and competing relentlessly on discounts. Done right, it is the key to long-term growth, profits and customer loyalt...

We move on to the 6th Essential ("Connected") in Steve's 8 Essentials of Remarkable Retail framework, discussing how an abundance of connection and the erosion of boundaries between consumers and brands has fundamentally redefined marketing communications and created entirely new business models. We also investigate why attention doesn't guarantee engagement, the role of social proof and the conce...

"Without data, you are just another person with an opinion.” - W. Edwards Deming We move on to the 5th Essential ("Personal") in Steve's Essentials of Remarkable Retail framework, delving into the criticality of defining our core customer (including who are offering is NOT for), why the "1 to 1 future" envisioned by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in the mid-nineties took so long to manifest, import...

“We no longer go online, we live online” - Google In our discussion of the 4th Essential ("Mobile") in Steve's Essentials of Remarkable Retail framework we probe how smart devices have created a world where we can always be shopping and the new best location for our brand is wherever the customer happens to be with their smart device. Mobile is the ultimate silo-buster, allowing for an increasingl...

“Silos belong on farms.” - Bob Thacker, former, Sears VP Marketing We're moving on to the 3rd of the "8 Essentials of Remarkable Retail": Harmonized, which revolves around the idea that we must drop our channel-centric thinking, processes and metrics, embrace the blur that is shopping today and see the customer as the channel. "Harmonized" retail moves us beyond omni-channel. It's not about being...

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou We're moving on to the 2nd of the "8 Essentials of Remarkable Retail": Human-Centered, where we open the aperture on concepts of customer-centricity and explore why they might be limited. We consider the criticality of empathy and right-brained...

This episode we begin the journey to remarkable by digging into Essential #1 in Steve's "8 Essentials of Remarkable Retail" framework. And we've gone global with a great panel of joining us from New York City, Montreal and London. Our panel of experts, includes UNTUCKit CIO/CDO Lockie Andrews, digital strategist extraordinaire Carl Boutet and retail transformation consultant Oliver Banks. We unpac...

"The problem is, you think you have time." - Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan As we transition to the second part of our inaugural season, we take a brief look back at the core principles behind why even very good is not good enough any more and why we must choose remarkable. As the pace of digital disruption accelerates, consumers are faced with a plethora of choices, creating ever more pressu...