I write these words somewhere over the Atlantic on the way back from NRF – the US ‘Big Retail Show’ which is increasingly the big ‘Global Retail Show’ in New York. 

As usual my feet hurt and I am somewhat bewildered by the immensity of the whole thing.

The programme doesn’t say how many exhibitors were there, but there were hundreds ranging from all the big boys and girls like Oracle, IBM, NCR, TCS etc to all sorts of niche players and start-ups camped out on others’ stands.  So many good ideas mixed up in a very American dish, like breakfast with grits, eggs and jelly all together on the same plate!

“To succeed in a retail world that is changing faster than ever, you must really know yourself as a company”

Paul Coby, John Lewis

How do you make sense of them? Well the answer is you can’t. 

There were umpteen implementations of iBeacons, big data, security, mobile apps to do everything and screens, scanners and tablets galore – a sort of ‘Toys R Us’ for retailers.

It convinced me more than ever that to succeed in a retail world that is changing faster than ever, you must really know yourself as a company – what you stand for and of course of supreme importance to know what your customers do and don’t want from you.

Then you can start to pick and choose what new technologies, tools and apps you might want to implement in the real world.  It would be a fatal mistake to start with the technology.

Tracking customers

I was privileged to talk about the John Lewis story and our innovation in IT leading up to our Incubator JLAB. I was able to show the US audience Monty the Penguin and his ad drew a round of applause!

There was great interest in JLAB and our own incubator and what we had learned, and I was able to ask the winners Localz who were at NRF to join me on stage to say what it had been like for them. 

There was also great interest in John Lewis’ 36% online sales and 56% of online sales as click-and-collect over peak, which seems to be quite a lot more than most US bricks and clicks retailers.

The more I visit the US and see US retailers, the more I think that the retail business and the way people shop are radically different there – not least because of geography.

“I feel many customers will be concerned that they are being tracked”

Paul Coby, John Lewis

Finally I was surprised by the enormous enthusiasm among the tech companies there for tracking customers, whether it’s by using customers social media, our purchases picked up through loyalty cards and credit cards, or customers tracked through the store.

There are multiple big data engines, face recognition, phone tracking mechanisms being pushed to do this. While some people are going to expect this from retailers, especially the young and tech savvy; I feel many customers will be concerned that they are being tracked.

It’s a very personal thing and it seems to me essential that customers are asked to approve and made aware of any such use of technology, which they might see as infringing their personal privacy.

I’m not sure that many people were asking this question at NRF in the enthusiasm for the tech, but maybe that’s another transatlantic difference?

  • Paul Coby is IT director at John Lewis