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 and Michelle Grant.
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 and Michelle Grant.
Learn more about the book and hear our guests drop some wisdom about what's next for retail.
To order Remarkable Retail click below.
Note: The audiobook version will be available soon.
Steve Dennis is an advisor, keynote speaker and author on strategic growth and business innovation. You can learn more about Steve on his website. The expanded and revised edition of his bestselling book Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is now available at Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior contributor and on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel here.
Michael LeBlanc is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. You can learn more about Michael here or on LinkedIn.
Michael LeBlanc 00:07
Welcome to the Remarkable Retail podcast season two, Episode 12. I'm Michael LeBlanc. On this episode of the podcast, we're mixing up the format of it. Our episode showcases highlights from Steve's virtual events celebrating the release of the second edition of Remarkable Retail: How to Win and Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption. I serve as MC and we're joined by special guests Seth Godin, Sucharita Kodali, Carl Boutet, Olly Banks, and Michelle Grant. So, let's give it a listen.
Michael LeBlanc 00:32
So, listen, welcome everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today from wherever you are around the world. We're here to celebrate and support the launch of our good friend Steve Dennis's release of a second edition of his bestselling book, ‘Remarkable Retail’, available for order in North America today. Europe, shortly and around the world as well shortly. We'll talk a bit more about that a bit later in the show.
Michael LeBlanc 00:52
So, we've got an action packed hour plus for you, hour plus. With special guests joining us to celebrate together and share their insights as well, from the UK, Canada, US give us a fulsome view of their part of the globe through the Remarkable Retail lens. We'll also have some time towards the end to answer questions there, ask Steve some questions, so get comfortable. Let's jump right in and, Steve, let me ask you a few questions. Let's talk about the book for a bit. So, what's the premise, who's it for, you know, what makes it different, there's lots of books on the shelf as a retailer, you know, you've got to fight for shelf space, whether it's in the mind or online.
Steve Dennis 01:27
Right.
Michael LeBlanc 01:27
So, take us through the book and, and, and what you thought you were going to kind of dent the universe with so to speak, by writing red powder.
Steve Dennis 01:35
Now, you know, it's, it's very much a strategy book in that it covers kind of a wide a wide view and really, I talked about business design, what I was really trying to do that I think is different than some books is to try to make it as both provocative and pragmatic. At the same time, the fundamental premise, we'll have stuff going on in a little bit. But I was very struck by Seth's work on purple cow back in 2003, 2004, about this idea that brands organizations needed to be fundamentally remarkable. Some of you are probably familiar with that, by that he meant both very unique, but also literally that people would talk about your brand that it would stand out that it would really make a big impression on them, and they would tell their friends, and I started to think about that in the retail context a bunch of years ago.
Steve Dennis 02:27
And really, the fundamental premise in the retail context is that in a world of abundant choice, access to products, anytime, anywhere, anyway, all this information, all this connection, that we're no longer in a world of scarcity, which defined retail for a long period of time, we're in a world of abundance and the challenge is how to stand out amidst all the noise, all the all the choices, we have to be really, truly remarkable and so, one of the things I say in the book is that even very good is not good enough anymore. So, the premise was to talk about how we got to where we are, what are the most important things going on today, why we have to choose remarkable, that's really part one and then part two is this eight essentials of remarkable retail framework that I've developed over the years, which lays out a framework and some of the steps to take to bring that vision to life.
Michael LeBlanc 03:22
It, you know, it's one of the defining characteristics I find of the book, it is a very, it's both, as you say, written at a strategic level, but also a practical level. In other words, there's some tools, these eight essentials now, getting into the eight essentials we've described, or you've described six of them, this kind of table stakes, do them well, and you can achieve parity, the final two really could differentiate you and as you say, make sure that customers remark upon you which you don't I love about this framework, talk about a little bit about that for
Steve Dennis 03:51
Yeah, so you know, the first the first six, I think will probably be, you know, generally familiar people as key strategies. The last two, number seven is memorable. And number eight is radical. What I sometimes say is memorable is the one that kind of really hits at the heart of what remarkable is about, you know, it's creating that experience that's intensely customer relevant, truly unique, you know, resonates strongly with the customer is very true to your brand. But there has to be an element or two that are really, sort of, wow worthy, you know, that secret sauce or X factor that are really going to cause people to develop loyalty to your brand and, and talk about it.
Steve Dennis 04:32
So, I say number seven is often the thing that's really critical to creating that remarkable strategy. You got to do the other things just to kind of stay in the game. And then the last one radical is this idea of fundamentally building a culture of experimentation, a habit of innovation. So, I think you'd need to have that to not only sometimes get to be remarkable if you're in mind, but it's the key to staying that way because I'm sure everybody who's listening knows that you can have a really great idea that Yeah, Good for a while, but competitions will be on your heels and you got to keep, keep innovating and stay ahead.
Michael LeBlanc 05:05
Yeah, right on. That goal line's always moving right, that goal line's always moving forward, you release the first edition a year ago, pretty much a year ago. So, you know, I asked you in another forum, we were on clubhouse yesterday, I said, what's changed, what's different and Trevor, Trevor Sunder made me laugh. He goes, did you actually just ask that question. So, I guess.
Steve Dennis 05:25
I think it was in the context of my book, rather, but hopefully everybody is pretty, pretty aware what has changed in the world. You know, unless you do, kind of, Kindle Direct Publishing, writing a book, you've got to really be done with the, the core of the writing about six months before, there's a little bit of opportunity to change some things in the final editing, but I basically was done before Thanksgiving, you know, with COVID, not on my radar screen at all and then obviously, COVID happened and so it's pretty unusual to write a revised edition, so close to the first one, but I felt that, you know, COVID was so game changing, I guess, for lack of a better term.
Steve Dennis 06:01
That, number one, I wanted to really start the book from that reset that we've all lived through. Number two, there are some particular things coming out of COVID that weren't anticipated in the first book, but the fundamental advice in the book is really similar. I've just, kind of, updated the timetable, dealt with some of the fallout from, from COVID and talk about a few particular things.
Steve Dennis 06:27
The one thing I'll say about it is when I was thinking about the audience, and really audience is pretty broad one, I think anybody in retail, whether you're a retailer, vendor, service provider investor can get value out of the book, but, kind of, the center of that bull's eye was really, those brands that needed to mount a significant transformation to thrive, and in some cases merely survive. Genuinely, I thought that there might be 2, 3, 4 years for some of these brands to mount the transformation. And then unfortunately, in a lot of cases that COVID really collapsed, right, those timelines. So, so unfortunately, you know, we've seen obviously, a lot of retailers file for bankruptcy, close stores, and some are kind of just breathing fumes at this point.
Michael LeBlanc 07:09
For some, and whether that's a category, no fault of their own, or the circumstances. Certainly, you know, we've talked about on our Remarkable Retail podcast that we have together, you know, why it takes a crisis sometimes to create change. Goodness knows, this is a pretty epic crisis. Not that anyone would have willed it, but I get now why and we'll pull on those threads throughout the hour, but for now, let me welcome Sucharita Kodali to, to our show. Sucharita Kodali and I have known each other for years, and I know you've known her as well, Vice President, Principal analyst with Forrester and analysts who's a, a clear eyed take on retail, if you don't follow Sucharita on Twitter, you know, you're, you're missing out because it adds so much to the richness and dialogue of any development. You've, Sucharita, you've always got something, you know, really interesting to say. So, thank you so much for joining us.
Sucharita Kodali 08:00
Well, thank you for having me, Michael and thank you, Steve, for letting me be part of this, this awesome project. I'm excited to have been asked to write the foreword. So, thank you.
Michael LeBlanc 08:11
Well, let's talk about the foreword for a little bit. Thanks to you for, again, thanks, as Steve was about to thank you for writing, taking the time and writing the foreword, but let's talk about what when you read the book, and you've got the perspective of your broad range, both data that you've got analytical data, you've got all kinds of information at your fingertips. What perspectives did you take when you, when you thought about how you would approach writing foreword for, for a book like this?
Sucharita Kodali 08:37
Yeah, well, what was interesting, of course, about this was you, we have the pandemic and, you know, was taking the pandemic into account, but also recognizing that everything about Remarkable Retail, these are principles and concepts that extend beyond the pandemic. I mean, they have to extend beyond a pandemic. I mean, certainly there, they were, you know, kind of it's important to ask the questions about how does the impact the pandemic impact their framework, but, you know, the framework still needs to last long beyond that, you know, what it took me to was, well, what else has been happening in retail and how is that, how is that relevant to the challenges that the retail industry is facing and the way that, that companies need to be thinking about surviving and thriving in such competitive times.
Michael LeBlanc 09:34
Well, as speaking of that, what's your assessment about? You know, we look like we're on the road to retail recovery. I mean, the miracle, the vaccine is, has come, thank goodness, I can't imagine a context without even having the vaccine at our disposal. Talk about the retail recovery from a strategic perspective. I mean, they, do you think, retail and the retail industry may regress to the mean, or even consumers may regress to the mean and by that, I mean just resumed the behaviors pre COVID from the before time, and do you think there's some real changes, structurally, that you might think of that, that are going to happen as a result of these, you know, what it's going to be 18 months, almost two years of the COVID era in North America.
Sucharita Kodali 10:14
Yeah, I mean, there, there are certainly some things that will be absolutely different, and I would argue, on the retail side, it seems that retailers have discovered their inner agility, right.
Sucharita Kodali 10:27
**Like, for the first time that they discovered that they can actually, you know, get things deployed in a few weeks, and, and it actually stands up and, you know, doesn't fall down. So, that was, I think, a huge learning for them, because they've been so inhibited by departments of no, I think that what they've also discovered is that they, that there are a lot of orthodoxies that, that they need to let go of, and, you know, kind of one of the things that, that I talked about in that foreword is, even in the '90s, the general consensus was that, you know, we've held over, it's, you know, Walmart's won, and there's nowhere else to go and then in the next decade after that, or you know, decade and a half after that, it's been the Amazon story, that Amazon's won, there's nowhere else to go and, you know, we need to, you know, you just need to buckle up and, and, you know, kind of capitulate, and you know, get on the Amazon platform, and, you know, join them because you can't beat them.
Sucharita Kodali 11:30
And, I think that what the pandemic very interestingly exposed is that even if you're on the Amazon platform, they can kick you off, or you know, kind of you're, you're at their mercy, because if they decide they're only going to sell essential goods, and you're not essential, you know, there's nothing that you are going to be able to do about that other than to own your own destiny and, and I think that, that is, that's really, you know, some of the, the insight and where we, where we come, where we shake out is the sense of sense of empowerment, and, you know, kind of leveraging these principles of uniqueness and specialness, and, and thinking through, you know, what is the unique role that you play and how can you connect with, with consumers in achieving those goals. So, I think that is, the companies that will have made it through the pandemic, I think, are going to be stronger than ever, they are going to be more confident than they, they've been, I mean, if they can survive this, they can, they can, they can survive a lot. So, I think that that will, that's, that's one of the, the, you know, silver linings, I think that's come out of this time.
Michael LeBlanc 12:42
You know, as I think about the COVID era, and just you something you said got me thinking because, you know, during the COVID here, I think two interesting things happen. One is I think consumers had a bit more forgiveness for, if not mistakes, you know, as you said, You people would stay stood up things like curbside very quickly, it wasn't a flawless process and there's a bit more forgiveness, I think, for consumers.
Michael LeBlanc 13:03
And, then on the second part, from an employee perspective, there was a mission, you know, we're gonna get together, we're gonna get through this, you know, as a company, everyone had a unified mission, we need to survive, right, or there's an opportunity. Are you worried when you think about what's new and next about retail that as those two things fade, thankfully, the mission, but also perhaps the forgiveness that, that, you know, how do you see that? How do you see that turning out is in the years to come post COVID post vaccine?
Sucharita Kodali 13:33
I think that retail, what, what retail, what will happen in the industry next is, you know, kind of the further embracing of innovation and, you know, what that means is recognizing, you know, that maybe new business models are in order, or there are new ways to think about monetization. I mean, one of the things that has really, really grown in the last several years and even especially during the pandemic, the essential retailers are the first one to embrace it and I think it will go even further to vertically integrated retailers, specialty retailers, is this idea of retail and media networks, which were essentially alternative monetization, right.
Sucharita Kodali 14:20
It's advertising on retailer sites, and it's at this interesting confluence of consumers shopping online, you know, kind of, potentially heading toward a cookie-less world, traditional advertising and traditional digital being challenged, and retailers recognizing that they are at the bottom of the funnel, you know, so all of these things together, put them in a really, really interesting position to take some of that advertising pie and that can potentially offset you know, some of the competitive challenges they may have with, you know, access to inventory or pricing or, you know, all the free shipping that they have to offer. It's part and parcel of that, you know, I see new partnerships, like, you know, I mean, new, you know, kind of, you know, we always talk about strange bedfellows and politics or media. You know, there's, there's no reason that we couldn't, you know, and I'm curious, you know, Michael, you probably have a perspective of being Canadian. I mean, you know, the Canadians have some of the best coalition loyalty programs in the world. Right, so,
Michael LeBlanc 15:21
Yeah.
Sucharita Kodali 15:21
But, that's something that other than in airlines, you know, in markets like the US we haven't embraced as much and, you know, kind of, do we see that potentially, as something, a change for the future and then the other big area of change that I see in retail that I think is going to, I think the for the benefit of a lot of really special brands, is this push toward social responsibility, this push towards sustainability, is becoming incredibly important to customers and it's more important, even more than customers, I would argue, it's becoming important to investors, and there are, you know, kind of organizations where, you know, the SEC is talking about putting standards in place for ESG reporting, and that will have all kinds of downstream impacts on, on ultimately, you know, what brands sell and how they choose to message that, you know, their products and, and that gives consumers a much better way to assess and, you know, kind of, you know, make their decisions.
Michael LeBlanc 16:27
Well, it's such an interesting time in retail, it's almost, if you're a golfer, it's like a mulligan, right, do you get a do over for about 18 months, but I think that time is coming to an end. Sucharita, thanks so much for, for bringing your insight and, and, and for lending your wisdom to the forward and bringing your insight here today. So, thanks for joining us.
Steve Dennis 16:45
Yeah, thanks so much, Sucharita.
Michael LeBlanc 16:48
Steve, back to you, I want to pick up on a couple of threads of what suture he was talking about and as we think about what you wrote, new and how you thought new about the COVID era, you've been talking about six new forces of the COVID era, what are they and, and, and why should we you know, what should we think about them, why are they important?
Steve Dennis 17:07
Yeah, so the, there's several places where I have greatly expanded content, I guess, and this is one of them. So, the six new forces I'll just touch on quickly, I'd like to maybe spend a tiny bit more time on one. So, the first is something I've been talking about a lot and usually get made fun of, for saying bifurcation at every opportunity,
Michael LeBlanc 17:26
An angel gets its wings, an angel gets its wings, every time you say it.
Steve Dennis 17:28
Well, yeah, I call it bifurcation 2.0. So, this is, this is really the phenomenon that I go into in quite a lot of depth about the, so called, collapse of the boring run remarkable middle. So, where we've seen success on the value, convenience, sort of, side, whether that's Walmart, Amazon, Costco, dollar stores, etc. And then success on the higher end with specialty stores like Sephora, or more high-end stores. It's really been this middle ground, that has been shrinking for quite some time, but I think the forces of COVID have really, you know, basically given them no place to hide, frankly, I think it's a lot of the federal stimulus, at least in the US that's kept even some of these pretty much walking dead retailers.
Steve Dennis 17:31
So, that's the first one. Second one. We'll have Carl here join us in a bit, but I call the accelerating acceleration because Carl coined the term great acceleration, and I didn't want to have to pay him a licensing fee. That is, but it's really the acceleration of, certainly, ecommerce and all things digital that's been going on, as I'm sure everybody knows for a while, but that was taken to a whole new level, but a lot of nascent technologies, contactless payment, appointment shopping, live streaming, personal shopping, those, those sorts of things, all got, got greatly accelerated, that's having a pretty big impact.
Steve Dennis 18:50
The third is reallocation of spending and, kind of, redefinition of essential. So, there's certain things in the COVID times I'm sure we can all relate to that became more essential to us than perhaps in the before times, as you like to call them, but you know, this incredible, I hope in this next little section we can talk a little bit more about what we think is going to persist, but you know, you have this explosion in grocery at the expense of restaurants.
Michael LeBlanc 19:15
Yeah.
Steve Dennis 19:15
Anything kind of worked from home related work out at home, and then apparel, accessories, anything kind of related to travel, really hit it hard. So, that's pretty big for us.
Steve Dennis 19:27
The fourth is power consolidation. So, certainly we've seen as obviously retailers go out of business as they close a lot of stores that market share has to go somewhere so it's migrating to the stronger players. But we're also seeing stronger players acquire weaker players often at fire sale prices or acquire their brands and you know, seen several retailers that had physical presence become online only brands now, and that kind of thing.
Steve Dennis 19:54
The fifth is the great rewiring which I borrowed from Russia tobacco while I'm talks about how this As far as you said, we'll be almost 18 months in this in this crazy world has fundamentally changed the way consumers do things the way we think about work in home and entertainment and like, the last one, which I'll just spend a tiny bit more time on, trying to watch our time and keep this fast paced.
Steve Dennis 20:18
But the sixth is, is one that not only do I talk about in this part of the book, but I get into a little bit more into some other parts is what I'm calling the hybridization of retail, which, you know, is not a new thing from the standpoint of physical and digital blurring and the shopping experience becoming more hybrid, you know, whether you want to call that omni channel or permanence.
Steve Dennis 20:40
What I think is really moved to the forefront by virtue of it's going on a little bit beforehand, is making it more obvious the hybrid nature of stores. This idea that stores for the longest time were for the most part places for consumers to go see stuff, pick it up and take it home with them and it was about maximizing selling square footage, maximizing sales, productivity of the transactions run up in the store. Again, we've, we've seen this, this progression, but I think it's become much more obvious the role of stores is advertising the role of stores as pickup points, whether that's curbside or buy online, pick up in store, return and store ecommerce fulfillment, maybe a role of service.
Steve Dennis 21:24
And, then we're just starting to see, and I think this is something to really pay attention to, what I would call the hybrid deployment of stores. So, rather than having one format that is pretty much blown out everywhere, maybe you have a city version or a country version. Thinking about stores where you have maybe a flagship store and a satellite store kind of what Nordstrom is doing with their full line stores and other Nordstrom Local concept or Whole Foods, taking some of their stores and making them dark stores with woman only stores, so I think we're just seeing the beginning of this, but I think a lot of investment, a lot of rethinking operation is going to have to go into how stores an individual basis operate, whether they're new or relocated or just remodeled as well as real estate deployments. I'll stop there in the interest of time, but that's definitely something I've been exploring, I think is pretty interesting to watch.
Michael LeBlanc 22:19
Yeah, and in the interest of time and as a teaser right get the book, you'll hear the rest of it,
Michael LeBlanc 22:22
The book launch. There's, wait, there's more. You know, let me jump off it's a good jumping off point, Carl Boutet has, you mentioned him already, he's talked about and coined that term, the great acceleration. Carl is with us today, a great friend from Montreal. Carl is a retail strategist, we're gonna have him back a little bit later to talk about, to talk about the situation in Canada give us a kind of, part of the global update. Carl, are you there with us?
Carl Boutet 22:51
Congratulations buddy. I'm happy, I hope we do this every year now because, I mean, this is a blast.
Steve Dennis 22:55
We are absolutely not doing this every year.
Michael LeBlanc 22:58
Carl, we're going to get to, as I said we're going to get back, bring you back on as part of our global tour of what's happening, but talk a little bit about this idea of the acceleration, I mean, I guess the principle is you know now seems very straightforward that there are things already happening that were just moved forward in terms of you know pick a number of years months, you know, who knows what well just touch on that for a little bit for us.
Carl Boutet 23:22
So first, I mean, I got to recognize that it was here, exactly a year ago, so it feels like groundhog year, that we, that the term, we love when, when Scott joined us and we were talking about the word acceleration kept on coming up already and I, the, the idea of the great acceleration, there's been a lot of greats since then, that are probably more great than the acceleration itself. I think the acceleration is, sort of, the, what, what, what is the underbelly of all the other, stuff, all the other dispersions and bifurcations and all these other things that are, that are happening on top of it, the acceleration is great.
Steve Dennis 23:23
A random name generator.
Carl Boutet 23:24
Yeah, we're loving it, so I just, I own the great acceleration, but what, what we have come to realize it's sort of two, two main things that are happening. So, one is it was like a wakeup call and you guys were just talking about that, for executives to dump, to go to speed up their investment processes around technology adoption and use the crisis as sort of that jolt that they needed, but I think more importantly for them is the acceleration was like a portal, that's more and more how I'm seeing it because it really was like sort of a an opening and a closing, you know, this time last year, we were all a little freaked out and I think that's we were sort of seeing the future what was going to happen we were you know, the reason why it's an acceleration was all things that we were predicting to happen 10 plus years from now, we sort of glimpsed and saw that we saw what 35, 45% ecommerce adoption could look like in certain categories and they close back up when as shops reopen and depending where you are in the world have to reopen right now or not.
Carl Boutet 24:47
So it was really sort of it was startling and every conversation I would have afterwards including our friends at Canada Post they were telling me that they were hitting parcel volumes that they're predicting for 2029, you know, around that time, so there's, there was a lot of data points that are, sort of, backing up the acceleration, now is that the, we, did we go in that line and are we maintaining it, not at all, we did that, we dropped, backed off, the portal close back, but it showed us, it showed us a lot of things, showed us a lot of weaknesses and now, you know, we have to, sort of, now we're catching up and we're trying to make sure that God forbid, if we have to go through these much more that we're not going to be caught flat footed as much as we were the first time.
Michael LeBlanc 25:24
Well, it's, it's an anniversary in many ways and let me, let me jump now from that. Thank you for just kind of giving us that overview. I think you will get as I said, we'll get you back talking about the Canadian situation, but right now we're gonna do a bit of a global tour, global recovery outlook tour, and again, through the lens of the Remarkable Retail lens. What do we start with Michelle? Michelle Grant is a seasoned retail analyst who helps global organizations build the future their businesses at Salesforce blends data and analysis with great thought-provoking content. Michelle, welcome, and thanks for joining us today.
Michelle Grant 25:58
Welcome. Thanks for having me. It's such an honor. Congratulations, Steve, on your second book.
Michael LeBlanc 26:03
Michelle, the US looking outside and the US consumer, to me, looks like a Timex watch takes a licking and keeps on ticking. I mean, you know the retail environment and that's, you know, whether it's the stimulus, I mean, certainly there's some stimulus checks whether it was January or now but, but really a resilient consumer base, but what's, what's your outlook and how, give us some sense of the of the US retail, the state of retail in the US and, and how you see it evolving over the next eight months?
Michelle Grant 26:32
Yeah, definitely. We are surprisingly optimistic for 2021. When it comes to, to retail, the industry as a whole I should speak. We actually commissioned a survey of American consumers last month in March, and we asked them what they were going to spend their disposable income on over the next three months and shopping was the number one category. 40% of Americans said that they were going to spend their money on shopping, just slightly behind savings. So, there's enough to go around to spread the money across a lot of different both product categories, but also services and saving. So yes, like you said, the American consumer does took, took a looking last year, but things are looking better this year.
Michelle Grant 27:21
Although all retailers have a unique situation, and everyone has to deal with their COVID comp in a different way. So, we're a bit more bullish or bearish, I should say on grocery, right, consumers are not stockpiling products anymore. Restaurants are reopening and people are going out and dining. So we don't think that the, the grocers are going to experience the growth that they saw last year, and they might even see some declines, but still be elevated compared to 2019. We're not going back all the way to the behaviors that we saw on that year and then on the other hand, we're very bullish about ecommerce across all categories, but again, are we going to see some of the near 100 triple digit growth rates that some of the retailers experienced, no, but we are going to see that these digital habits we adopted last year are sticking to degrees.
Michelle Grant 28:16
So we're gonna see sort of a spike, I think the first half of the year due to the stimulus due to our hesitancy around going back to the store still, but probably normalize in the second half as people do get vaccinated and return to the store and then two other trends that we're keeping an eye on, that Steve alluded to, as well as these products that are essential now for your going out lifestyle, right. So, apparel and footwear is going to have a resurgence as we go from comfort to style. And then another trend is the housing market is very strong, people are buying new places and that's likely to drive demand for home goods and so, if you're a retailer that pivoted your merchandising to embrace the home, you'll do well, in addition to the specialist retailers that had a pretty strong year last year.
Michael LeBlanc 29:07
So, it could all end up to be a pretty remarkable recovery. Do you buy into this, I've heard it a couple of times of the roaring '20s are back, like 100 years later for a whole bunch of different reasons. I mean, there's, there's pent saving-, there's savings, there's pent up demand, it'd be a big shift, no doubt into services. I know. I'd love to be at a restaurant, and I think, you know, there'll be a shift from services, as you said food service, but a shift from stuff but also a shift. Do you see that, that recovery as strong and sustained for this year maybe into, through next year, 2022?
Michelle Grant 29:39
Yes, I agree and at first, I thought, you know, always well I guess in the previous year’s your retail was competing against experiences for what wallet share and we do expect that travel dining out. We'll see a big boom especially in the summer when, when it's you know, I'm in Chicago. It's really nice to be outside and on the patios. So, but because of the high savings rate because employment is in a much better place than it was last year because of the stimulus, there may not be a competition between the services and products in the short term, both types of spending could be winning, because people have a lot more money to spend in general.
Michael LeBlanc 30:24
Right on. Well, Michelle, thanks so much for joining us and lending us your insight so valuable as we kind of traverse the globe. So, thank you for telling us about the US consumer. All right, now I wanted to introduce and welcome Oliver Banks. So, Oliver is a retail transformation consultant based in the UK helping retailers to deliver transformation programs, and a fellow podcaster. He hosts their Retail Transformation Show podcast, Oliver, welcome.
Oliver Banks 30:51
Well, first off, congratulations, Steve. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me on
Steve Dennis 30:58
And are, you're going to expect to come every year because you were here a year ago as well.
Oliver Banks 31:03
Yeah, I'll check my diary
Michael LeBlanc 31:05
Well, listen, thanks for joining us. It's a little later at night you're, you're in, in the UK, London. Give us a sense, I'm going to burden you with both just London and the entire EU responsibility. You've, you've, give us a sense of the state of retail. I mean, at the beginning, in the before-time, a little bit, I suspect that the trends were not dissimilar, but you tell me and then I really wanted to hear from you, particularly in, in the UK, you had a double whammy, right. You had both Brexit and you had COVID. You know, it's the, it's the imperfect or perfect storm. So, give us a sense of, of how things have evolved and are shaping up in, in the UK?
Oliver Banks 31:44
Yeah, definitely. Well, you're right on the money. Michael, we were, sort of, certainly pre COVID you know, rewind, also 15 months now, similar place, similar trends. And then obviously we've, we've played quite similarly over the past, past few months, where we're at now in the UK, is we're actually at quite an optimistic point. So, just yesterday, in England, we had all of the, the non-essential stores reopen. So, this is all year, sort of non-grocery stores, and so on, and so that's, that's a really optimistic point. Some of those stores have been closed now for months and months. So, it's a really big, big point.
Oliver Banks 32:25
And, of course, there's lots, lots of questions that we just don't know the answer to yet in terms of how much of the habits that we've formed over the past year, how much have they become locked in place and will we return to that, what's, you know, what has worked from home mean, in terms of where we're based, and how we live and how we shop, and also how we socialize as well, of course, so I think all of those things are coming through.
Oliver Banks 32:50
We’ve of course had some retailers that were in challenging situations, pre pandemic, face to face up against the wall and that's unfortunately, an inevitability that we've, again, seen around the world actually, when you hop across the channel, Europe's in a slightly different place than the UK. So, the vaccine position is not quite so strong as, as we are in the UK. So, some of the approvals and supplies have been a bit hiccupy and different countries are working through it at different paces. And of course, they're still just going into lockdown. So, France has recently gone into, for example, another lockdown, I think it was last week. So just as the UK is coming out, just literally next, next-door neighbors are going straight back in. So yeah, it continues to be that yo-yo-ing struggle that we've that we've seen over the past, past year.
Michael LeBlanc 33:51
And, of course, so important and just to put some numbers to it, I just looked up today, you know, the, the percentage, 15%, 15.6% of Europeans have at least one jab, as you might say, compared to North America at about 24% and the North American numbers brought down by Canada, Canada slightly ahead of where the EU is. So, it is a bit of an, and of course, big trading partners, right, so, I'm sure that has, that has very material impacts on movement of goods through, through over to the UK and also as trading partners, right, very important for, for your retailers.
Oliver Banks 34:24
Absolutely and, you know, you touched on Brexit very quickly and that has been a struggle and continues to be a struggle as you know, companies of all sizes of all industries find a way of working and importing and exporting and what the rules are. So, I think that, that's put a bit of a, bit of a limiter on but for me, I think fast forward a few months that the whole Brexit thing will just be a bit of a hiccup. It will be a hassle, but it will just be forgotten about, and I think that will continue to be more collaboration going on. Which is only a positive thing and will continue down the trends that we've already seen around sort of data around digitalization around many of the key themes that Steve so clearly lays out in the book.
Michael LeBlanc 35:15
And many of the transformations that you help and guide from, from your clients. So, listen, thanks for bringing us up to speed. I gave you a lot, a big mandate from a lot of countries and a lot of ground to cover, but thanks so much for joining us and giving us that overview.
Oliver Banks 35:31
It's a real honor. See you next year.
Michael LeBlanc 35:35
All right, Carl Boutet. Come on back and let's talk about Canada. You're in, you're in Montreal, I'm in Toronto. I often say that the Canadian retail is vastly more similarities than the differences from, from the US retail, but give us a, give us a sense,
Steve Dennis 35:52
Unless your Target.
Michael LeBlanc 35:53
Unless you're Target, like, I just said vastly, but not entirely. Carl, give us a sense of what's happening in Canada.
Carl Boutet 36:00
So, I was just saying, you know more about this than, then all of us put together. So, I mean, as far as Canada goes, you know, I think we're, we're very much parallel with Michelle, what Michelle was saying, and except for the fact that our vaccine rollout, obviously, to what, Olly's point, we're more closer to what you brought up, we're closer to the European dynamic, just quickly, maybe beyond Canada, let me go even further for two minutes. Let's look at you know, how India, sort of, emerging markets are getting propelled and spending a lot more time focusing on those because I think this pandemic is going to do what, what SARS did to Aliba-, to China and created Alibaba, I think we're going to see that in markets that we, we still don't understand the concept of informal markets, we think that the rest of the world is formal like we are. So, it's going to be really fascinating to watch these markets formalized really, really quickly.
Carl Boutet 36:43
And, what I mean by formalize, is simply the idea of just having to payment process becomes more formal, or there's a lot less cash going around. So, I was speaking at a group in Nepal a couple of months ago, they had the two largest ecommerce players there, they went from 3% transactional payment to 92 in like four and a half months
Michael LeBlanc 37:06
92, wow.
Carl Boutet 37:07
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it, because, you know, there was, you know, contactless payment. So, this is going to, you know, these sort of places, and these are, you know, okay Nepal's not, maybe not the largest country, but India is still 80% informal economy. I mean, think about these, these, all these places that have had to formalize quote, unquote, really, really quickly. It's going to be, it's going to be amazing, so.
Michael LeBlanc 37:26
Well listen, thank you, you've brought it in and, and Carl, you almost better get going, get home because where you are, there's an 8pm curfew, just to let everyone know what the state is, where, in Quebec and, and I'm on a stay at home order in, here in Ontario. Things are, you know, things are pretty dire from a retail perspective,
Carl Boutet 37:44
Michael, it's called like, it's called like a stay in your basement order for the past 14 months here, so it's not that different. All right, thanks a lot. Congratulations again, Steve. Thanks for having me. See you next year.
Steve Dennis 37:55
Thanks, Carl and now it's time for honorary Canadian, Seth Godin.
Steve Dennis 38:00
Welcome, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us. I, I feel like you know, there's a saying about rock and roll that you know, all of rock and roll comes from a few chords from Chuck Berry, it feels like, you know, you take ideas, and you release them into the universe and watch them grow and evolve and certainly Purple Cow was one of those. I mean, it was transformational for me. So, it must be welcome, and it must be, it must be something to see your, your friend release into the universe ideas that have a germ of an idea that, that you, that you started and really that, that provided a foundation for it.
Seth Godin 38:36
I learned at least as much from Steve, as Steve has learned from me and watching him.
Steve Dennis 38:42
That's demonstrably not true, so.
Seth Godin 38:44
Well, I think if we went back into a time machine to 1979 and did the compound interest of who was teaching who, multiplied by 45 years of nurturing, I think it's going to even out, it's like buying Bitcoin at $3.
Steve Dennis 39:03
Well, that's very nice of you, Seth.
Seth Godin 39:04
Here's the deal. Retailers don't read. This is worth reading. It's the number one best retail book of all time, but I think that what I would love to chat about is chapter 19, which could be an expression, right, what, how are you dealing with chapter 19, better than chapter 11. Here's a Seth Godin isn't for you, which is revolutions destroy the perfect and then they enable the impossible and there are all of these things around us happening now and I hope everyone is reasonably healthy and finding peace of mind but surrounding us for the last 10 years that were demonstrably impossible. Billionaires coined because they traded some digits online. The idea that I could go online on Tuesday at four o'clock and order some fancy solder and it would be delivered to my house Wednesday morning for free.
Seth Godin 39:57
I mean, we can go down this endless list of impossible things. The fact that we are having this conversation without getting on an airplane or taking a horse and buggy is impossible and all of these impossible things occur by destroying things that were perfect and the thing that was the two things that were most perfect economically, were advertising, and retail and advertising got destroyed 10 years ago, and now retail is getting destroyed and being replaced by something that is impossible, which is no longer is average, the standard, that the standard is weird, that normal is for distributions, that what we have instead are humans who are speaking up about what they want, and how they want it and they're getting it.
Seth Godin 40:43
And, there's still opportunity to widely unfairly distribute it, there's still too many people who are left out of the benefit of the doubt bargain, but at the same time, this shift, it's not going back, just like we're not going back to CBS Evening News, it's not going to happen and so it's fun to talk about, when Are things going to go back to normal, and then people are going to flow back into malls and do the grew and transfer and the rest of it, but this is clearly a five year compression of the future. And the future is about abundance, not scarcity, not scarce shelf space, not scarce ad space, not scarce merchant choice, it's about an abundance of all, abundance of all those things, which means that the power is going to shift, and the respect stack is going to shift. That's my rant, and I'm sticking with it.
Michael LeBlanc 41:37
Yeah.
Steve Dennis 41:37
Can I ask you one question now, Seth, about?
Seth Godin 41:39
You can ask me as many questions as you want, you're paying for this zoom call.
Steve Dennis 41:42
That's right, so, chapter 19 is, is about essential number eight, which is being a radical, and I feel really good about the chapter. A little inside baseball here, when I wrote the first draft of the book, there were three parts not to, and there were about four or five other chapters, and they basically, were trying to get at expanding on this idea of radical, how do you change culture and all that kind of stuff and my publisher, who I believe is listening, hi, Maggie, very wisely said, no, cut that, that you're, you're like, we're landing the plane, and then you sort of started up again and maybe that would be a good other book, etc. And so and, and she was absolutely, right and I think it's a better book for that, but I always felt a little bit like I didn't say enough about how to change how to get unstuck. A lot of the things that you talk I see the practice, I think in the background, you talk about the practice, but have talked about in all, in all your work and any just in, you know, 95 seconds or something, advice on, on how to make change happen, how to get unstuck, how to, how to shift, work, that's.
Seth Godin 42:47
Yeah, so the subtext of the question, when it's asked by people who aren't as brave as you is, how do I make change happen and not fail, how do I make change happen and not give up my power, how do I make change happen and be sure that I will sleep well at night because I am attached to an outcome and the answer is you can't and so, no one wished for this pandemic, it has been, you know, the cataclysm of our lifetime, but it's here, okay, that happened, now what and what that means is change isn't up to you, change is coming, will you choose to be resilient, will you respond or will you react and what it means to be resilient is not how do I ride this out so I can get back to normal. It's how can I say goodbye to normal and accept the fact that this is going to cost me something and the less attached, I become to an outcome I have imagined, the easier it's going to be for me to be the cause of change, not the victim of change.
Seth Godin 43:51
And I can tell you, so you know, it cost me how much $40 billion to be wrong about this. In 1992, I was the dominant creator of online games. I had Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve as my clients, I had Microsoft waiting in the wings to work with us. As long as online services worked, I was going to be fine. And the World Wide Web showed up. I looked the World Wide Web in the eye, and I said doesn't make any sense. It's not going to work. It's like prodigy, but it's slower and there's no business model go away, and I will get to go away and I believe that if I left it alone, it would wither without me and that's why Yahoo was started by David and Jerry, not David, Jerry and Seth because while they were busy building Yahoo, I was building a book called Best to the Net. And the thing is the world's going to change with or without you and they learned this at Sears and they learn this at Neiman Marcus, and they learned this a (inaudible) Burrell and they're going to learn it everywhere else. It's gonna change with or without you. So, you might as well enjoy the ride.
Steve Dennis 44:58
Thank you.
Michael LeBlanc 44:58
Well, you know, it's, It's fantastic advice and Seth, you've done 19 of these, I think if I, if my count is right, so, such a tribute and such a testament to your insights. So, I think I see it reflected as I talk to Steve, but such a treat to have you join us and, and chat with us and just connect the dots and help us frame up, frame up the book and you know, listen, just it's great to see and thanks for joining us.
Seth Godin 45:24
Well, thanks for having me, guys and one last tip. One of the reasons I write books, is because a book is a really cool package, it has pristine value, and it doesn't run out of batteries and one of the ways that I've figured out how to spread the ideas is, I encourage people to buy six, you buy six, because if you can get five people to read the book with you, you can have a conversation that's impossible to have if they haven't read the book. So, I am the hype man for Steve Dennis today. Buy five more copies.
Steve Dennis 45:55
All right, Remarkable Retail book club, coming soon.
Michael LeBlanc 45:59
Fantastic advice. Thanks again for joining us, Seth.
Michael LeBlanc 46:01
It's a great jumping off point, Steve, where and how can people get the book. Talk a little bit about that and then we'll get to questions. We've got questions coming in. So, give us a little bit of the 411 on the, on the essentials, so to speak.
Steve Dennis 46:15
Well, just very quickly. So, the book was released today in most major markets. I think the UK is a couple weeks from now, there are few other worldwide markets, but you can get the hardcover or ebook version just about anywhere. If you want to support the man, you can get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indigo, if you want to support independent bookstores, I'd send you to bookshop.org or a lot of your local bookstores can help you help you get it and the Audible version will be out soon. I can't quote a date because we are going through the review process. So, it could be tomorrow, could be a week, but there will be an audio book version, so.
Michael LeBlanc 46:54
Yeah, I mean, any number of different ways and I know I was experienced with you, as you read through the book, it's a whole different experience to read a book, but thank you for doing it in your own voice because I find those, you, just more authentic. So, you know, I do, I do and I encourage everybody, you know, then
Steve Dennis 47:11
Every hour I was working on it, I thought now, why did I not hire a professional?
Michael LeBlanc 47:16
The best spends my time. All right, let's get to a couple of questions. Scott has asked a question of us all, really and his observation was during the COVID era, the big retailers started to pull their teams together in an integrated whole. So, you know, they pulled merchandising marketing supply chain together. I mean, we talked with Sucharita about the mission and coming together and do you see that unification continuing, post COVID Or do you see, kind of, the Saks thing, where they take advantage and actually go the opposite direction, they kind of completely even half off the whole saks.com?
Steve Dennis 47:53
So, I do, I do think there's been an acceleration of that. I mean, I will say, and I talked about this a lot in the book, I don't understand why it's taken retailers so long to, to eliminate the silos and see the customer as the channel and try to create one holistic, omni channel harmonized, whatever you want to call it. Experience me now that was stuff, you know, I was working on. I know plenty of other colleagues, plenty of other companies have been working in that direction for 10 plus years. So, I just think that the obviousness of the growth in ecommerce, but also the interplay between channels, just hit people in the face, and all the change that they should have done in many cases several years ago, they were just basically forced to deal with it.
Steve Dennis 48:45
You know, one thing I think is really interesting, is companies like Target, Best Buy, Tractor Supply, Lululemon, companies that were already breaking down those silos’ years earlier. They really were able to pounce on this much quickly. You saw a bunch of other brands, including some very big ones that shall go nameless, that basically cobbled together some stuff, and it worked okay and I think, Michael, you said earlier, you know, maybe there was a little bit of grace extended to some of these brains because of the crisis, but you know, as we start to move back to a little bit more, the new normal, the new weird, you know, there's not gonna be as much tolerance, I think, for that. So, ao I do think it was accelerated, but I think actually, it's boards and management teams should really ask themselves what took them so long, because it's been, to me, really obvious for a long time.
Michael LeBlanc 49:38
Question around the responsibility of, of boards, and maybe even not the competence of boards, but their ability to move organizations or help move organizations forward. I mean, if you looked at the average Board of Directors today, they're probably staffed or with, you know, people with a lot of experience, perhaps a lot of tenure, maybe not, so oriented to the new whatever is the new, do you think there needs to be a revolution in at the board level that, that will need to make many retailers move and take advantage of the opportunities?
Steve Dennis 50:12
Well, absolutely at the risk of getting some flack, I mean, most big company boards are a bunch of old white men and, you know, being an older white man, I'm not against all men, but, but, you know, you just don't, you don't see a reflection of most company’s customer base. You know, there isn't good Gender Equity, and Diversity around, but also, you know, aside from people of color, gender differences, you know, you don't see a lot of not necessarily younger people, I mean, could be younger people, but people with diverse experience.
Michael LeBlanc 50:46
Right, diversity of views, right, diversity of views.
Steve Dennis 50:49
I've had some dealings with several corporate boards, fortune 500 sized company boards as an executive and as a consultant and it was shocking to me, the lack of understanding that some board members had about what was going on in the company and some of that is the way boards operate, you know, they may have six meetings a year or whatever and it's, and you know, these are very busy, high prestige people for the most parts time. But in a lot of cases, they haven't had the experience.
Steve Dennis 51:16
One thing I talked about in the book, which I think is related to this is and we talked about this on the podcast, we had Brendan Witcher, Sucharita's colleague at Forrester on, and I was at a conference a couple of years ago, where he said to the audience, you know, even if you got 20 or 30 years’ experience in retail, only the last three years count, and his point was making is that you got to unlearn so much of what made you successful and I think as you look at the sort of folks that are on a lot of boards, they've had great success, perhaps in a different industry, but you know, they came up through the ranks in the '90s in the, in a different world.
Michael LeBlanc 51:51
Different time.
Steve Dennis 51:52
So, I think boards in general are making a very sweeping generalizations are problematic in many cases, and we need to see a lot more diversity and new ideas and I don't know maybe even different ways of governing because it's just been too many failures in many respects on boards.
Michael LeBlanc 52:10
The next question actually picks up on, on the thread you're talking about, what, what years of experience matter anymore. I mean, the data is so different than what we've experienced in the past eight months. Is it relevant, you and I've talked about this a couple of times that, you know, what we've seen the past 18 months is, is almost you know, how do you learn from it, the behaviors were so odd, you know, Carl is, you know, Carl can't go out after eight o'clock, I can't go to a store, stores are closed, stores are open, stores are closed. Can we really learn, the question for you and anyone else on the panel who would like to, kind of, chime in, any of our guests, what can retailers really learn from the past 18 months of watching consumer behavior?
Steve Dennis 52:50
Well, the one thing, first thing I'd say about it is that, you know, you're never going to be able to plan for every eventuality and hopefully, this pandemic is such an extreme situation that the takeaway won't be Oh, we've got to just build up a cash reserve and take no risks, because there might be horrible pandemic, a year from now.
Michael LeBlanc 53:10
Don't stock up on toilet paper, yet fill the warehouse and toilet paper
Steve Dennis 53:13
Yeah, a warehouse full of toilet paper in every home. But I think the lesson, for sure, is, you've got to be more agile. I mean, people have been saying that for a long time, but building agility in your business model is incredibly important. You know, the volatility, the uncertainty that we've been, complexity, we've seen in retail and retail for years, is, is just getting more and more so, irrespective of whether we have some sort of Black Swan event. So, I think agility is the main thing.
Steve Dennis 53:46
The other thing, which is such a cliche to say it, is really, really understand your customer, you know, if you really, really understood your customer five years ago, you would have broken down those silos, you would have invested, you know, you would have, you would already have curbside pickup, there are companies that have curbside pickup because they were close to the customer and they were willing to experiment before they were forced to. So, I think those are, those are some of the keys. I wonder if Olly wanted to jump in, I hate to put him on the spot, but as a transformation guy, I wonder if he's got anything else he wants to weigh in on.
Oliver Banks 54:20
Well, I think he made an excellent point about agility. I mean, for me, what we've seen over the last year, I mean, we've all heard the stories of, you know, years and years’ worth of change in days, weeks or months, whatever. I think what that has done, is it's shown us all that we can do it, right. So, for me the lesson is that it's not even so much about agility. In my view, it's about just getting on and doing stuff because we all put in these reasons this sort of blockade or administration and bureaucracy and nervousness over, thankfully making a decision, but we have shown we can do it and we can adjust and evolve it along the time, which is absolutely in line with, with that sort of agility principle.
Steve Dennis 55:12
Yeah.
Oliver Banks 55:12
Yeah, that's absolutely the key learning, we've got to get on and we've got to do stuff.
Steve Dennis 55:18
Another thing I'd add to that is, which is a slightly different idea, but one of the things I talked about in the book is that we, we really misunderstand risk a lot of times. I have a section called the Opposite is Risky, I also talk about, you know, this kind of cultural bar-, about cultural barriers, the defenders of the status quo, but Sushmita referred to as the Department of No, and you know, not taking risk is actually the riskiest thing. So, that's why I'm worried that if, if what we get out of this is, oh my god, we just got to be ready for every possible eventuality that, that will actually make us more risk averse and that just is, sort of, the slow the, you know, the frog boiling slowly to death and water, you know, the drip method of irrelevance or whatever you want to call it.
Michael LeBlanc 56:05
Listen, listen, so, we're on 6:15, we've had a fast pace to, man, an hour and 15, an hour and 15 minutes has just flew by. I hope everyone enjoyed. I wanted to thank, Michelle, Olly, Carl and Sucharita for joining us, of course, Seth as well, thank you so much for joining us and Steve thank you for being my partner on, on the Remarkable Retail podcast. I, I learn so much from you, I've kind of been like a, like a, like watching the, you know, the evolution of the book and listening to the evolution of your thinking so it's kind of a privilege for me to, kind of, go alongside. So, thanks for inviting me for hosting today. Last words, last words back to you.
Steve Dennis 56:40
Well, I just want to, I mean, I know time and attention are precious assets. So, I know there's lots of competition for, for your time. So, I just want to thank everybody for joining and for the panelists and guests for, for coming in and I hope to see many of you in person at some point in the not too distant future. So, thanks for your support. Thanks for everybody. You know, my ideas look better through questions and connecting on LinkedIn, and Twitter and Instagram and all those things. So, I hope everybody stays safe and be careful out there. Have a good night.
Michael LeBlanc 57:15
All right. All right. Good night, everyone. Thanks again, be safe and see you on the other side.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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