The new retail landscape

I spent the first 10 years of my working life in fashion retail on the shop floor, managing various fashion outlets in the Midlands and London’s West End. That was back in the day when the ordinary customer used a landline, didn’t have a computer at home, watched a TV programme at the same time as everyone else, got your films at the local video shop and we carried copies of the A to Z London in our handbags or pockets to work out our way around London. It’s not actually that long ago.

At the time, we couldn’t have imagined how the retail landscape would change. I remember when I was part of the launch team at Episode’s flagship store in Knightsbridge, our tills were actually laptops with printers built in and these were hidden neatly by custom made cash desks. We just kept the cash in a drawer with a lock. Those laptops were the height of modernity in the fashion retail sector. I’d never seen anything like it at the time (we’re talking 1993/4). I’d been used to the tills that you still see in the likes of House of Fraser. I’d never seen a laptop so small or one with a built-in printer in my life! It was kind of a big deal for us. I was used to filling in forms in triplicate to keep tabs on sales, targets and stock.

But times, they have changed. Albeit the retail future is very unevenly distributed. This cartoon from marketoonist sums up the current retail landscape as many of us can relate to.

Except, most customers aren’t always online or obsessing about their phones. At least, not yet. And therein lies a big challenge. How does a retailer cater for the customers who operate in the old way – i.e. don’t tend to shop online, have a basic distrust of the likes of eBay and haven’t yet tried Amazon – and cater for customers, like me, who operate in the new way – checking prices, avidly ebaying, have been using Amazon for years and for whom shopping online is completely normal?

And not only that, but there are differences geographically. Go to Worcester, Winchester, Warwick or Wigan, and you won’t find people glued to their phones in the same way they seem to be in London. This might be down to lack of connectivity (mobile signal in Worcester, even in the city centre, is woeful) so they don’t even bother exploring the world of the web when out and about and don’t miss it. Or it might be that they just don’t see a need to constantly check Facebook and twitter to see what their friends are doing as they’ll be seeing them later, or the chances are, they’ll bump into them on the way home.

Nevertheless, retailers do have to face this challenge – independent stores and big chains alike. The future may not be here in Worcester, but retailers are feeling the pain and we’re struggling to keep our High Streets alive with more and more shops closing. I noticed another shop boarded up in my local neighbourhood this week. They say we’re a nation of shopkeepers. Can we hack it as shopkeepers in this digital age?

Further links and reading:

Discussion on my Facebook page about ‘showrooming’

Discussion on my Facebook page about online shopping, price comparison, High Streets and value 

Discussion about mobile data usage based on location, type of job etc.. Highlights a potential digital divide and lots of differing opinions and anecdotes about usage and connectivity.

P.S. There’s a mobile retail summit on in London on Wednesday 24 April. Get 50% off by using code MRS50. I’ll be there discussing this and other issues.

Tesco supports m-retail... or does it?

For those of you who don't know already, I spent the best part of 10 years of my working life in retail - mostly fashion, and mostly in and around London's Oxford Street and Knightsbridge. Later on in my career, I worked for ZagMe, the location based marketing company who marketed to customers via SMS at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls, and much of that time was spent working with retailers creating and running campaigns for them. So I have more than a passing interest in things retail.

So I've been keeping an eye on the m-retail or m-commerce world and was very interested to see that UK grocery retailer, Tesco has joined the world of m-retail after successful trials of ordering flowers via mobile for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.

As an aside, Tesco also claims that it's wap portal is a great success attracting over 300,000 customers in December last year. And not only that, but that's it's customers are hungry for ads.

"Banner advertising served up on the portal delivered a click-through rate to tailored WAP campaign sites of between three and seven per cent, said Tesco. Brands advertising on the portal included Bee Movie, ITV, Nivea and Teletext.

Tesco said the user-base of the portal has a strong segment of female household budget owners with an average age of 36 - a demographic it said is particularly valuable for fast-moving consumer goods such as toiletries and cleaning products.
According to a survey commissioned by Tesco, more than half (60 per cent) of portal users are female and the same percentage said they visit the portal at least once a month, while 69 per cent claimed they would click on a relevant advert."

So this all bodes well for entering the world of m-commerce. So I thought I'd check it out.

Alas for me, going to http://www.tesco.com/ from my mobile takes me to the main Tesco website with no adaption for the mobile screen whatsoever - large file sizes (well comparatively large when dealing with mobile), navigation required up/down and left/right so you can't actually see anything properly.

It occurred to me that they'd probably done a mobile specific site so I also tried http://www.tesco.mobi/ and http://m.tesco.com/ and neither of those worked.

So it looks like I can't do a review of the service for you.

I then thought, well maybe it's for Tesco Mobile customers only (Tesco Mobile being the pay as you go MVNO with O2), especially since their wap portal has been such a success.

And then I saw how much data charges were on Tesco Mobile... £4 per megabyte. Yes, that's right, a whopping £4 a megabyte. And there's no mention of whether or not access to the Tesco Mobile Portal is free of charge or not. In fact, there's no mention at all of any Tesco Mobile Portal or any Tesco mobile shopping service.

There's a free Tesco sim offer on at the moment, I may give it a go although I really don't fancy spending £4 a megabyte to check out their mobile portal and m-commerce offerings.

On the commercial side of the equation, I know that 02 is heavily pushing mobile retail services and is touting Tesco as it's major success story and case study (there's even a video I've seen about it). But if you're going to make your shop invisible and then charge for entry, isn't that just a bit daft?

Hmm. What's going on?

If anyone can shed any light on what's going on with Tesco m-retail and Tesco's wap portal and relevant data charges, please let me know either via the blog or via email.

And on a parting note, I think this quote (via Silicon.com) from Ashley Schofield, head of customer management at Tesco Mobile, is somewhat ironic:

"Our customers are showing a real appetite for more products and services
through the mobile internet. Delivering more great experiences and value through
our portal is a priority for this year."

Ashley, I'm not sure how you can deliver more great experiences and more value through the portal when you're charging £4 a megabyte.