Retail’s Big Show lands in the Big Apple

I’ve travelled to the NRF Big Show with my colleague Kaitlin Hastie to meet with retailers from around the world, gather unique insights, see exciting new tech, and draw inspiration from the best in the business.

While Omicron has certainly dampened the attendance a little, the turnout is still 15,000 strong and the presentations throughout the day have been fantastic.

The welcome speech from the NRF chair noted - of course - how different the past two years have been. Yet, despite the pandemic, US sales have grown at or around double digits for the best part of 20 months. Whilst Australian retail numbers have been a slightly different shape, the overall growth is similar. Clearly, retailers are RESILIENT.

The Keynote this morning was from Target CEO Brian Cornell. He spoke about how back in 2017 he and the Target team decided to make their stores the centre of the customer experience - at precisely the time when commentators were predicting a retail apocalypse and even the death of the bricks and mortar store.

The Target strategy turned out to be incredibly prescient. Store investments in team member development, safety, store-based fulfilment and contactless order pickup were able to meet the changed customer needs throughout 2020.

In 2021, sales grew at an incredible 15% and the business opened new stores and developed new partnerships with Apple and Ulta Beauty. Cornell expects these investments to be sticky going forward, with customers maintaining loyalty to the brand.

Cornell is adamant that Target’s focus on culture has been critical to its success: the retailer exists to add a little bit of joy to their customer’s lives. They are optimistic about continued good performance in 2022, despite ongoing supply chain challenges.

Across the United States, inbound container volumes have grown by 30% with an ageing infrastructure which is used to supporting just 3% annual growth.

We also heard from Sumit Singh, CEO of Chewy.com – a leading ecommerce retailer of petcare and pet products. Singh’s passion was palpable, speaking of “pet parents”, the “humanisation of pets”. Like Target, Chewy exists to bring joy to their customers/pet parents. Singh wants every customer interaction with Chewy to feel like a trip to Disneyland.

Chewy has enjoyed rapid growth in recent years, with sales approaching $9 billion – all of it digital. Despite its size, Chewy still maintains the passion of a smaller business, with Singh noting their investment in customer service. “Every customer care call is answered by a real human being”, he says.

And it’s more than just a hollow investment. The Chewy’s analytics suggest that customers who have experienced the customer care call centre journey add more long-term value that those who have not.

Another highlight was a session touching on future retail trends. We learned that Omni-channel is passé. It’s “Dad’s world”. We all now accept that stores are fundamental to e-commerce, whether supporting consideration and conversion through store experience or acting as stock hubs for online picking and fulfilment. We’re now moving into “alt-commerce”, where shopping exists within and entertainment and shopping experience – think gamification and social media purchases.

Finally, we are starting to explore “Metaverse-commerce”, where consumers spend money on digital items and experiences for their virtual avatars. There are retailers making millions of dollars from selling unique virtual sneakers, dresses and costumes for avatars. Amazing.

All in all it’s been a very content-heavy first day, and it’s now time to go and explore some of the shops in this great city.