Latest / The Retail Podcast / Loyalty 2.0, Autonomous AI Agents, Luxury Pop‑Ups, Mega Athleisure Stores

Transcript

Loyalty 2.0, Autonomous AI Agents, Luxury Pop‑Ups, Mega Athleisure Stores · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to our fantastic first edition of five
• 0:05
  things Friday UK. And I'm privileged enough to
• 0:09
  have a wonderful Co host special guest Co host Simone Olleman,
• 0:14
  who I have seen talk on stage at 2 conferences and was also
• 0:19
  privileged enough to share the stage with their E tail.
• 0:23
  But when I saw when I saw Simone learn about need it for tonight,
• 0:27
  got that passion, the the the depth, the the intelligence, the
• 0:32
  intellectualism, I thought, Oh my God, what a fantastic and
• 0:36
  ideal Co host. And and I think we'll have a
• 0:40
  completely different angle. This is going to be a little bit
• 0:43
  different from the normal, you know, looking just at tech.
• 0:46
  So Simone, why don't actually, why don't we do this?
• 0:48
  Why don't you just give us a one minute headline on who you are?
• 0:51
  Obviously the Co founder running this wonderful new start up, but
• 0:55
  just give us give us an overview.
• 0:57
  Yeah, One minute pitch. Hello.
• 0:59
  Super excited to be here. I'm Simone.
• 1:02
  I'm the founder and CEO of Need It.
• 1:04
  It's Night, also known as NIFT. I always say the easiest way to
• 1:08
  describe NIFT is kind of like delivery, but for quality
• 1:12
  fashion. So we've built a marketplace
• 1:14
  that partners with some incredible brands and boutiques
• 1:18
  in London to facilitate 90 minute delivery.
• 1:21
  On the side of that, we do also have AB2B product that plugs
• 1:25
  into retailers checkouts, enabling them to have 90 minutes
• 1:29
  and same day delivery as well. That's my 32nd pitch.
• 1:34
  I think you're the future Jeff Bezos, right?
• 1:36
  He started in books, ended up with this whole software.
• 1:40
  So I can see where you're going. Future Jeff Bezos.
• 1:44
  Would you? Would you get married in in
• 1:47
  Venice? No, no, no.
• 1:49
  That wedding was a little bit too big scale for me, not mine.
• 1:53
  Anyway, OK. Alex.
• 1:56
  So on that bombshell, tell me something.
• 1:58
  What are the five things? Sorry, what are the two things
• 2:01
  that are top and five? 01, which I was reading about
• 2:04
  today and it's actually been a topic this week within our team
• 2:08
  and just other retailers I'm speaking about was the topic of
• 2:11
  loyalties. Air source have just launched a
• 2:14
  new loyalty scheme. This has come after banning
• 2:18
  quite a lot of UK shoppers after having too many returns.
• 2:21
  I think their loyalty scheme is free to join, but it's clearly
• 2:26
  designed to encourage progression like a status
• 2:31
  ladder, you know like things like the air and the obvious
• 2:34
  points that's. What I was thinking is I think
• 2:37
  it's really interesting how schemes really evolving, you
• 2:41
  know, it's less about points and basic discounts and vouchers.
• 2:46
  I think now it really is a lot more about belonging and
• 2:50
  recognition and, and really about experience and community.
• 2:56
  Yeah, I think there's been a bit of an evolution of, of loyalty
• 3:00
  to almost lifestyle, you know, before it would be vouchers or
• 3:05
  it might even just be 10% off or it might be refer a friend and
• 3:08
  you get, I don't know, £5 off. Where now it's more like it
• 3:14
  feels more like a membership. It's like excuse perks.
• 3:18
  It's early access. It invites to events that not
• 3:22
  everybody has access to. Yeah, I think it's really
• 3:25
  interesting seeing the shift. I know Selfridges do it quite
• 3:28
  well, especially for that kind of younger millennial Gen Z
• 3:33
  audience, which is very much their audience.
• 3:36
  If they are angling it like this community and tiered access.
• 3:41
  I do think they will do very well at it.
• 3:43
  You know, it doesn't seem like it's just money off.
• 3:48
  I I think they'll do well from it.
• 3:50
  I do. And I think the retailers that
• 3:52
  have done it that way, like Selfridges, I know it is a
• 3:55
  slightly different audience, but they create this like formal
• 4:01
  effect whereby you want to spend more because you earn access to
• 4:07
  these special things. And they're very good at
• 4:09
  creating the formal. I think it is really, it's the
• 4:12
  the psychology of being a part of something.
• 4:15
  Yeah, that is really key. I got you.
• 4:20
  OK. What's your?
• 4:21
  What's the second one? The second is a scary topic.
• 4:30
  I find this a very scary topic is agentic AIA lot of people
• 4:35
  talking more and more about the rise of agentic AI.
• 4:39
  And you know, if you like the, the LVMH group, for example,
• 4:44
  piloting these AI agents. So it's obviously it's AI
• 4:49
  systems that can make decisions, take actions without needing
• 4:53
  human instructions, unlike things like ChatGPT, which is
• 4:57
  obviously prompted by a human. But yeah, there are a lot of
• 5:01
  retailers that are exploring this.
• 5:03
  I know the LVMH group piloting these AI agents.
• 5:09
  And yeah, we're starting to see this shift from, I guess,
• 5:14
  passive AI to identic AI, which is really interesting.
• 5:21
  What are your thoughts on it? Yeah.
• 5:23
  I'm curious, do you look at it as identic AI as in like the
• 5:26
  business creating agents for workers within LVMH or for
• 5:33
  customers of LVMH? Which one do you think it is?
• 5:38
  I think it's. For what?
• 5:40
  Right because Because so Jetty PT It does have AI.
• 5:44
  Forget what it's called now articles.
• 5:47
  Is it articles where it goes off and it can do things like
• 5:50
  imagine if I wanted to buy some flowers, it will go off and buy
• 5:53
  the flowers for me. So the agent exists and chatty
• 5:56
  PT can do that. I think like just look at
• 6:01
  Microsoft. They've announced another 10,000
• 6:03
  redundancies today in the in in their global tech workforce.
• 6:09
  And it's no doubt that they can see that so many of these roles
• 6:13
  in the past where you had humans, you'll be able to have
• 6:17
  agents, you know, whether it's call centres, that's that's one
• 6:20
  of the major ones where you're seeing a lot of AI in there.
• 6:24
  Merchandising. I've seen less because I think
• 6:27
  humans are still deciding what to buy and whatnot.
• 6:30
  Although you'll look at the data, right?
• 6:32
  Or you'll look at the dashboard or you'll look at whatever is
• 6:35
  telling you, whatever the colours are.
• 6:38
  Yeah, it's like Uber. I guess in the early days people
• 6:42
  were like, oh, I can just raise my hand and and call a taxi.
• 6:46
  Why would I open my phone, get an app, then call Uber and then
• 6:52
  all of a sudden it's like Uber becomes the word, right?
• 6:55
  Let's just get an Uber home, right?
• 6:56
  It's no longer let's go to the street and hunt down a taxi.
• 7:00
  And I think agentic AI is in that phase where it's sort of
• 7:04
  finding those use cases. Will I buy more flowers through
• 7:10
  AI agents? Customer service 100% people are
• 7:14
  now used to IT or customer inquiries.
• 7:17
  I mean, I can definitely see from for a business like mine
• 7:20
  and for retail in general, you know, even things like deciding
• 7:27
  the order, the reordering of products before trends started
• 7:31
  or launching micro campaigns based upon the weather changing
• 7:36
  really instantly think when it comes things like that blows my
• 7:40
  mind slightly, I'll have to admit, but I think it could I
• 7:44
  think that's where it could get really interesting is just how
• 7:47
  responsive and personal that it could get.
• 7:51
  But it does still feel risky to me, but maybe that's because it
• 7:55
  is still it still feels very early and but I guess it's also
• 7:58
  a big dependence on data as well.
• 8:00
  And if you know you're you've got poor data, then you're going
• 8:05
  to get poor. Absolutely.
• 8:07
  I mean, there's so many retailers out there with so much
• 8:09
  data. But again, that's where agents
• 8:12
  will be able to. If you have data sets on your,
• 8:15
  on your sales force, on your SAP systems, on your Shopify back
• 8:20
  end or whatever front end, the agent can go off and do so much.
• 8:24
  I actually interviewed the Shopify Chief Revenue Officer
• 8:28
  yesterday and he was saying, because I said to him, what's
• 8:32
  the one thing that people don't get about Shopify?
• 8:36
  And he said that AI that we've embedded into our back end will
• 8:40
  just keep growing and growing and growing and people are not,
• 8:43
  they don't get it. They're not understanding that
• 8:46
  this. I think it's off on Anthropic
• 8:48
  clawed as as that model improves the Shopify I that's I think he
• 8:54
  may have just used that as an example.
• 8:56
  But anyway, that Shopify AI agent is just going to continue
• 9:00
  to become more and more powerful to empower business owners and
• 9:04
  merchandisers and category owners.
• 9:07
  And you know, I can only imagine how much data they have access
• 9:11
  to. So yeah, it's pretty incredible.
• 9:13
  He was a he was a really nice guy, really interesting.
• 9:15
  So listen, yeah, I don't know when we'll get it out there.
• 9:19
  We'll it'll be out there next week or so.
• 9:21
  But anyway, I'll be I'm conscious of time.
• 9:23
  So I'm going to talk super fast. So just quickly moving on to my
• 9:29
  ones. Go here, right?
• 9:32
  So I've I've talked about this on other shows.
• 9:36
  Luxury needs to stand out. The only way that they can stand
• 9:39
  that specifically in places like London, Paris, Milan is through
• 9:45
  pop ups. So yes, they're curating and
• 9:47
  beautiful, creating new beautiful stores.
• 9:50
  This is Mew Mews flagship store in central London, but they are
• 9:54
  still going after unique pop up experiences because they
• 9:59
  understand that this new generation doesn't just want to
• 10:02
  transact culturally. It's a movement to feel.
• 10:06
  And so that feel comes from engagement at pop ups and one of
• 10:11
  the people that I love. And you know, I was following
• 10:14
  this girl when she was, I don't know, underneath 1000 followers
• 10:19
  because I was looking for some things to, to actually talk
• 10:21
  about on the show. And she came up in Sani and on
• 10:27
  TikTok she I think she's on Insta as well.
• 10:29
  See you Sani. She's now got how many?
• 10:32
  Where's the number of followers? I'm sure it's about 60,000.
• 10:35
  It's almost 100,000 followers. But basically what she does, and
• 10:38
  I'm not going to play it, but you can, you can.
• 10:41
  As I go through, you can see these are all the pop up events
• 10:45
  in London today and the number of beauty fashion music
• 10:51
  collaborations that are just coming up time and time again is
• 10:56
  incredible. And I think this is we're just
• 10:58
  going to see more specifically in the UK.
• 11:01
  So you know my thing to retailers, if you're not
• 11:05
  curating community, if you're not curating community, if
• 11:09
  you're not creating these moments, then your competitors
• 11:13
  potentially may, you know, you talked about FOMO, it may move
• 11:17
  from FOMO to just they're not interacting with you, right,
• 11:21
  Because they're busy interacting with, with someone else.
• 11:25
  And again, in, you know, places like Shanghai where they have 22
• 11:29
  million customers, yeah, they know that it's not going to be
• 11:33
  tech that wins. It's going to be experience and
• 11:36
  connection and, and that sort of community that's going to drive
• 11:40
  that change. So I, I really love what Sani
• 11:43
  does as a, as a creator, but it also highlights this point of
• 11:48
  how many pop ups, retail pop ups are now appearing in London and,
• 11:53
  and what retailers can do to to do that.
• 11:56
  The second element that I'm going to talk about is this sort
• 12:00
  of battle in the athleisure world between bigger is better.
• 12:04
  Footlocker, I think last week opened their largest store in
• 12:09
  the Birmingham Bullring Shopping Centre.
• 12:12
  And obviously earlier in the month JD opened EU KS largest,
• 12:17
  not only, I'm sorry, the world's largest, JD Sports, which is
• 12:22
  42,000 square feet, which in in my mind I envisage like a
• 12:26
  department store, right? Yeah, but it's a department
• 12:29
  store for athleisure. And part of me says, hey, look,
• 12:32
  I I understand this. Bigger is better because you
• 12:35
  feel that you can stock more, stock more products, have more
• 12:38
  categories, bring more people in.
• 12:41
  But how are you going to maintain relevance because you
• 12:44
  know, you're relying on Nike, Adidas and on for JD's in JD's
• 12:50
  case and foot lockers are how that has a massive partnership
• 12:54
  with Nike Footlocker. Sort of had a little jibe at JD
• 12:57
  saying, hey, look, we're not about big, we're about
• 13:00
  impactful. We believe we're going to, you
• 13:03
  know, do more activations in store that community led and
• 13:07
  getting those sort of hype beast type shoppers to come in.
• 13:12
  But I don't know if this signals maybe the top of the market and
• 13:17
  we're going to see athleisure as a category struggle going
• 13:21
  forward. I could be completely wrong, but
• 13:24
  I'm not saying so I do believe sports, yoga, cycling, any type
• 13:29
  of sports that's just going to keep growing, right?
• 13:32
  Yeah, but that's technical sports, not athletic, generic,
• 13:37
  you know, loungewear, sportswear.
• 13:39
  And I think this and and I and I see it on Instagram or TikTok
• 13:43
  about aesthetics, right. You've got old money, new money.
• 13:47
  Who wants to Sorry, old. Yeah, who wants to look like
• 13:51
  old, old money? Yeah, Old money is when they
• 13:52
  look vintage and classic, and new money is like when they're
• 13:56
  in track suits and expensive sneakers.
• 13:59
  And I think people have sort of got to the to the peak of that.
• 14:03
  And yeah, and that's it. So they're my two things.
• 14:06
  And the final thing, because it's five things Friday is if
• 14:10
  people are interested in what's going on in Asia, what's going
• 14:14
  on in the Middle East, what's going on in Europe or France,
• 14:17
  they're coming out as different 5 Things Fridays.
• 14:21
  So we're going to have like a, a Friday radio station full of
• 14:25
  little news, news articles. But this is the one for all of
• 14:29
  those wonderful, beautiful people in the UK and we're going
• 14:33
  to have some special guests. So I look forward to sharing
• 14:36
  that with you. Simone, any closing thoughts
• 14:39
  before we shut down for the weekend?
• 14:42
  Oh God. Well, first of all, thank you
• 14:44
  for having me. Can't wait.
• 14:46
  It's OK. Yeah, like what am I signed up
• 14:48
  for? After I've met, I've got a bit
• 14:51
  of Friday brain. He's getting to me.
• 14:55
  I'm not used to to such weather in the UK.
• 14:58
  Super exciting. There was lots of very exciting
• 15:01
  things going on in retail, lots of exciting technology and I'm
• 15:05
  excited to dive in further next time.
• 15:08
  I mean, I'd love to unpacked need it for tonight, right?
• 15:10
  Your whole journey, what are you doing?
• 15:13
  How are you standing out because that whole sort of super
• 15:15
  convenience or hyper convenience, you know, getting
• 15:18
  it to customers? I'd love to sort of just
• 15:21
  understand the psychology why you went for it.
• 15:23
  I I know it's a personal story because it's something you
• 15:26
  shared on stage, but I'd love to share that with the audience as
• 15:29
  well. Yeah, I know, absolutely.
• 15:31
  And it's just an area that's really, really growing as well,
• 15:34
  that convenience and ultra fast delivery.
• 15:39
  Quick commerce, that was it. OK Simone, thank you so much.
• 15:42
  Have a lovely weekend and I look forward to speaking to you next
• 15:45
  week. Wonderful.
• 15:46
  Thank you, Alex. Have a great one.