As I write this fourth edition of Smart Retail, I’m 13 years further along from the first. So much has changed in those years, not just in retail terms but also in my own confidence in a career and my understanding of the world in which I operate. It happens to us all and is one of the positive benefits that come from doing a thing long enough that you get really good at it. I’m sure it’s happening to you too.
Some ideas I included in previous editions were originally informed hunches based on observing the world’s best retailers, and most of these hunches have gone on to be proven correct many times over. During that time I’ve had the opportunity to refine my ideas and my professional practice with many great clients, an opportunity that came from the original Smart Retail’s big success. Lots of readers have told me how useful the book has been for them. I love hearing that feedback; knowing that something you’ve slaved over is actually of benefit to another person feels great. Subsequent editions have outsold the previous ones, which is apparently unusual in business publishing. New editions normally serve to squeeze the stone till the last drop of revenue reluctantly slithers out of it until some tastier flavour of the month comes along.
Why does this book sell more copies each time? I believe that is in part a function of retailing in general. We retailers are hungry for ideas and inspiration but our market changes not just in time with product and technology but also with changes in social norms and human behaviours. As our customers change and grow and the societies we operate in transform, the opportunities to feed retail consumption also change and fold and morph. The fundamentals are consistent: find ways to put stuff in front of people to whom it is of interest and work out how best to engage them in that stuff and to swap it for a commercial benefit. What changes is the way in which we can do those things, and the attitudes and needs of the people we hope to engage.
Who is Smart Retail for?
Over the previous three editions, I firmly placed Smart Retail in the sphere of an enterprising store manager or owner. This time I need to adjust that positioning. The rate of retail change has developed over the last half decade at an unprecedented pace. I will explain the impact of this in more detail in the Secrets section, but that change has produced one development so fundamental to what we do, that it overwhelms almost everything.
It is the word “almost” that is one of the biggest benefits of reading this new edition. I promise to help you avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water and identify the right relationship for your business between technology and emotion, such that you keep the critical things and develop the right solutions to the new realities around those.
This massive rocking of our retail boat has meant that I’ve needed to bring to the surface some significant chunks of the supporting theory. Times are more complex for us now as there are lots more balls to juggle, but there are also many more opportunities to put our formats in front of the right customers at exactly the right moments.
So for the first half of the book I have moved the emphasis to retail leadership, to those developing new formats, running sparky new independents, integrating new technologies and those whose livelihood depends on them backing the right horses. I am presenting a collection of new fundamentals that have never before been put together in the way I have: this is your headstart, right here in this book.
Despite this, Smart Retail remains a holistic book on retailing. I want as many of the answers to be in here as possible, so as well as exploring, for example, the psychology of choice, you’ll look at motivating a retail store team on a tough Saturday morning. But if you’re not a CEO or keen commercial director but are an enterprising store manager, I believe it is critical that you too should also be aware of the theories that will have such a profound impact on what you do day in and day out. You are the future of this industry, always have been and always will be. You and your teams continue to be the most efficient and productive interfaces with customers: you are the ones who know customers.
So why shouldn’t you also be in on the future? Understanding the tools that come your way, in a fundamental machine-under-the-hood fashion, will make you better able to get the most from those tools as you make your way along a retail career.
Scribbles and coffee stains
When all is said and done, this is still a working book. I invite you to flick through, to cherry-pick the bits that suit you best, scribble on the pages, tear stuff out, and share it. If I ever came into your office or store, I would love to see that your copy has a broken spine, page corners turned down, a forest of Post-it Notes sticking out the top, and coffee stains on the cover. Some readers send me photos of their dog-eared, well-used copies of the book, which I love seeing. They make my mum proud.