Just as thousands of retailers descended on New York for the NRF’s ‘big show’ last month, the business pages were overtaken with news first of Tesco’s problems and then Carrefour’s.

Just as thousands of retailers descended on New York for the NRF’s ‘big show’ last month, the business pages were overtaken with news first of Tesco’s problems and then Carrefour’s.

One conclusion drawn from both companies’ statements was that the hypermarket could be in terminal decline.

Its decline or even death is being attributed not so much to recession-strapped consumers, but the structural change brought about by online shopping for non-food.

Then, just days later, Kodak, the giant American corporation whose name became synonymous with anything to do with photography, filed for Chapter 11 protection.

This is being held up as a classic case of a company that had made many mistakes over recent years, the biggest being its failure to respond fast enough to how digital technology would change its world.

It doesn’t always have to end this way. Walking down Park Avenue during my trip to New York, I passed a branch of Wells Fargo bank. In its marbled lobby was an original Wells Fargo stage coach from the days of the Wild West.

Over 100 years later, Wells Fargo proved that it continues to move with the times and adapt, resulting in one of the strongest performances of any US bank when they reported their quarter trading figures.

Being able to recognise key changes and trends and how best to respond has to be the over-arching issue for retailers.

There is little room these days for sentiment or a ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mentality. Just look at Apple’s 5th Avenue flagship. It is enormous and completely full of customers browsing and buying.

But try and find the product that started its incredible renaissance, the iPod, and you will struggle – it now has just one table dedicated to it. Time and Apple have moved on, as have customers.

As one of the speakers at NRF put it, in this new era of retailing “it is more dangerous to be irrelevant than not to be innovative”. Keeping up with the pace of change is only going to be achieved by the very fittest.

  • Ian McGarrigle, Chairman, World Retail Congress