I’ve been retained as a regular columnist by Retail Week for 25 years, half my career. Following my 50th work anniversary this week, my columns will become more ad hoc. This is not my swan song; my golden milestone is but a staging post on a retail journey that’s far from the finish line.

On October 6, 1969, I began my retail career as a graduate trainee in the European empire of the Brenninkmeijer family. The next nine years with C&A in England, Scotland and the Netherlands gave me a meticulous grounding in the rudiments of keeping shops pertinent to their customers, across numerous European markets.

I’ve much to thank this mercantile, rigorous but caring family for; not only for the immensely thorough training it afforded me but for instilling a deep passion for the rich cultural diversity of my continent.

Europe has been my homeland, my workplace and my playground throughout my adult life and it will remain so, regardless of the purblind machinations of those who believe that making little England great again is best served by amputating it from the European body politic. John Bullshit!

“The new priority consuming the customer mindset is the why: why do I need this? Why has it travelled so far for me to dispose of so fast?”

As a menswear buyer at C&A, I was, from the first day, an integral member of a cross-border team: Belgian, British, Dutch, French and German buyers collaborated across all sectors and markets, from purchasing pullovers in Prato to sourcing skiwear in Suomi. We worked for a private European company that embraced variety within uniformity. We pooled not just volume but insights, data, creativity and heterogeneous cultures.

Fifty years on, such pooling processes have gone viral; digital is now literally the finger on the button. But some verities are truly eternal. Retailers still rightly define the key driver of success as knowing what their customers want. It’s not just about the what, of course, but also the when, the where and the how – and fundamentally, the how much.

However, the new priority consuming the customer mindset is the why: why do I need this? Why is it made from dubious or even odious content? Why has it travelled so far for me to dispose of so fast?

Value retailing has always seemed a quaint euphemism: after all, every retailer is a value retailer; it’s just that there’s good value and bad value. But the lowest price is unambivalent and its power has often been invincible as WalMart, Aldi and Lidl, Primark and Action, entre autres, undeniably testify.

Values are the new value

Nonetheless, the precedence of price is now genuinely being challenged by questions about traceability, sustainability, planetary welfare, ethics and social responsibility. These issues have long been on our radars but, they are now flashing the strongest lights on our screens. Values are the new value. Vegan products are no longer consigned to the fringe. The tributary has become the mainstream.

So the importance of knowing what customers want must now be matched by knowing what they care about. Paying lip service to CSR won’t suffice. It must be shouted from the rooftops as it no longer falls on deaf ears.

“The greatest lesson I learned was the value of conversations with sales assistants, directly interfacing with the customer, on the shop floor”

Fifty years ago, the manager of C&A Manchester said to me “retailing’s a selling business, not a buying business”. The buyers reigned supreme at head office at that time. What the buyers wanted to purchase was more important than what the customers wanted to buy. The greatest lesson I learned was the value of conversations with sales assistants, directly interfacing with the customer, on the shop floor. 

The advent of Primark – a price-led fashion powerhouse par excellence (whose 50th anniversary also falls this year) – put paid to C&A in the UK. They both continue to grow across the rest of Europe. Maybe they’ll both thrive. But to do so, they will have to be singing from the customers’ hymn sheet.

My song is sung. Bonne continuation to all my readers. I won’t be leaving retail though. I’m still a senior adviser to Royal Bank of Canada and AlixPartners and, alongside my independent activities, remain fully engaged.