RetailCraft - digital retail, ecommerce and brands - Retail Podcast

Three sides of the table: building a retail media business on a fashion platform

In conversation with Pedro Roche, Director, Strategy and Offering, Zalando Marketing Services

Positioning

This conversation is for brand and commerce leaders who sell through platforms and want to know how a retail media unit earns a seat with the CMO and CFO rather than staying inside the trade budget. Pedro Roche has worked on all three sides of the table: brand (L'Oreal), agency (L'Oreal's Website Factory programme, then AKQA) and now platform (Zalando). He explains how trust, a shared goal and measurement turn a media sales conversation into a growth partnership, where AI is making campaigns faster and more accessible, and what Zalando wants its partner brands to say about it by 2028.

Key themes

• Three sides of the table. "Pedro started in marketing at L'Oréal in Germany, then led UK sales at Schwarzkopf Professional, where trust with salon partners had to be earned through technical expertise, not pitched. He then moved to the agency side, and now sits on the platform side. Each position shows him what the other two need.
• Trust before pitch. He starts with the partner’s problem, not his own agenda. Next comes a common goal and a structured roadmap with a tangible outcome to work back from. His systemic coaching and mediation training is the toolkit to effectively lead through ambiguity and conflict. The ‘sell’ becomes a means to an end. 
• Fashion retail media is inspiration-led. In supermarkets, he says, retail media starts with the shopping list. Zalando shoppers arrive with a purpose (a child's winter wardrobe, new runners, an anniversary outfit) but first need inspiration. That gives brands the opportunity to present themselves in a curated environment. 
• From trade budgets to brand budgets. Trade terms typically fund lower-funnel sponsored ads and stay with trade teams. ZMS and the fashion store teams now sit down with CMOs, CFOs and trade together to orchestrate launches across the whole funnel, unlocking six- and seven-digit budgets for single campaigns.
• Measurement is the precondition. On-site measurement is strong and ROAS steers campaigns, but incrementality is what Pedro calls the holy grail. Joining up on-site, creators, CTV and offsite requires data clean rooms and integrations that need procurement, legal, security and engineering sign-off. After five-plus years unlocking on-site, ZMS is now turning to offsite and to media and performance agencies.
• AI as a second layer between tent-pole moments. Brands plan big seasonal campaigns about twice a year, so micro-trends and overstock go unserved. ZMS is launching AI-generated campaign assets that go live within six days as a managed service, launching  next year in the self-service space for immediate turnaround. Brands will upload their brand books to keep identity consistent and ultimately pay only for media, making smaller creative campaigns highly accessible and instrumental to better steer their assortment sellout.
• Always on is the upside. Pedro sees the value in staying connected to relevant shoppers all year without additional budgets, and in reaching revenue and GMV targets with more confidence.
• Agentic commerce looks different in fashion. An agent can handle a known pair of runners, but a wedding outfit still needs an inspiration layer. Agents depend on structured data, and Pedro points to Zalando's 18 years of shopping behaviour, its own AI assistant and partnerships with OpenAI and Google.
• The 2028 test. Pedro wants partner brands to see ZMS as Europe's strongest growth platform for fashion and lifestyle. That means giving them levers (a max CPC, the ability to exclude the 20 percent of articles with the highest returns) and delivering proof. He says ZMS's goal is the brands' profitable growth, not its own revenue.

What you'll learn

• Why a retail media pitch that starts with media space stalls, and what to open with instead
• How the buying conversation shifts when brand marketing and finance join the trade team
• Why fashion retail media depends on inspiration as much as intent
• What stands between a platform and credible cross-channel incrementality
• How AI is cutting the time and cost of campaign assets, and what that allows brands to do between big moments
• Why fashion agentic commerce still needs an inspiration layer, and what agents need from retailers
• The levers brands should expect a platform to hand them if profitable growth is the goal

Chapter structure

| Time | Chapter
| 00:00 | Welcome and framing: Zalando's scale and the Marketing Services unit
| 01:00 | Pedro's role and the numbers: 52 million annual customers, 7,000+ partner brands
| 02:37 | The route in: L'Oreal, Schwarzkopf, coaching, Hyper Island
| 04:32 | A digital layer on a physical business
| 06:25 | Brand, agency, platform: sitting on all three sides
| 12:51 | What brands need to hear: trust, listening, a common goal
| 15:49 | Why a fashion platform differs from a convenience marketplace
| 19:38 | The sceptical CFO: moving beyond trade budgets
| 25:31 | Measuring incrementality across on-site, creators, CTV and out of home
| 29:03 | What AI makes easier: micro-trend campaigns in days, then hours
| 33:44 | What gains value: always-on presence
| 35:50 | Agentic commerce and fashion
| 38:25 | Where ZMS wants to be by 2028
| 41:00 | Close

About the guest

Pedro Roche is Director, Strategy and Offering at Zalando Marketing Services. He has been at Zalando for almost five years and joined the retail media arm a little over a year ago. He studied business in Germany and France and spent about 15 years in consumer products, starting in marketing at L'Oreal and Schwarzkopf and moving into UK sales. He trained as a systemic coach and mediator, then took a second masters in digital management at Hyper Island in London. On the agency side, he led delivery of L'Oreal's Website Factory programme and later worked at AKQA Berlin (WPP).

Host: Ian Jindal is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of RetailX.

Quotes

"We do not see retail media as just the last click ROAS calculation." 

"I should never start with my own agenda. I should start by simply listening to what their challenge is." 

"I'm not trying to sell you media space, because that won't take me anywhere." 

"In supermarket stores, I think retail media starts with the shopping list." 

"It's the inspiration level that plays a foundational role for us." 

"We are no longer only talking trade budgets." 

"What is interesting long term is the view on incrementality. That's where we see the holy grail." 

"If I need to pick an outfit for a friend's wedding, the inspiration layer still needs to happen." 

"The agents will only be as good as the data that supports them." 

"Our goal cannot be our own revenue as a business at Zalando Marketing Services. Our goal needs to be profitable growth for the brands." 

--  Run time: 41 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

Zalando Marketing Services: https://www.linkedin.com/company...

This episode is for retail leaders who believe experience is not decoration on top of trading, but the trading strategy itself. Paul Porter runs global experience design for Hamleys, the 266-year-old toy retailer now owned by Reliance Brands, across more than 200 stores in 18 markets. Before Hamleys he spent a decade at Lego, joining just as the pandemic forced the question of whether physical retail was needed at all. The conversation covers what actually differentiates a toy store from Amazon, how a single Regent Street flagship became one of London's top ten tourist attractions, and how Porter keeps a consistent brand DNA alive across franchise partners from Mumbai to Dubai without producing either a cookie-cutter chain or an incoherent one.

Key themes

• Experience as the survival mechanism, not the garnish. With an estimated 20 to 40 percent of UK toy sales moving through Amazon, Porter is direct that experience is how a toy retailer differentiates rather than competes on price and convenience. Hamleys' answer has been to elevate the Regent Street flagship beyond retail into a destination in its own right, regularly ranking among London's top ten tourist experiences alongside the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace, with around 70 percent of its visitors international tourists.
• The generosity principle. Porter's central argument is that letting customers handle, open and play with product beats any other sales tool. Hamleys' daily 10am opening ceremony, in which a chosen child rings a bell to invite everyone into store, is offered as the clearest expression of this: adults arrive with visible trepidation and, within minutes, are joining in the magic tricks and drone demonstrations as enthusiastically as their children.
• Reading the room without becoming bland. Porter is wary of designing for every visitor at once. Hamleys' larger stores build genuinely distinct zones for different audiences, tracked through floor-by-floor footfall data, while resisting the pull toward a homogenised, inoffensive experience that "you can walk past and leave alone."
• A written brand manual as the tool for scale. On joining Hamleys, Porter's first act was to document what the brand stood for in writing, something that had never existed despite decades of franchise partnerships. That document now anchors a consistent design language, colours, typefaces and iconography, applied from Regent Street to Dubai Mall to Manila, while still allowing a London flagship to reference its geography the way Selfridges or Fortnum & Mason do.
• Owning enough of the story to stay Hamleys. With concessions and partner brands like Lego, Hasbro and Pokemon inside its stores, Porter is explicit about the risk of becoming "a warehouse full of other people's boxes." The balance he works to is Hamleys-branded product that exists nowhere else, plus a design language woven through every partner zone, so a customer in the Lego section of a Dubai Mall store still knows they are in a Hamleys store.
• A scorecard wider than sales, and a ruthless one underneath it. Sales matter, but Porter also tracks audience reaction and NPS as a read on brand warmth. Underneath that sits a genuinely industrial merchandising operation: flagship stores carry over 20,000 SKUs, closer to a supermarket than a typical toy shop, with constant, sometimes ruthless pivoting away from product that fails to resonate.
• The animation layer runs on both novelty and 30-year loyalty. Recent activations include a Namco Gashapon pop-up, a Pokemon summer takeover and silent disco shopping, sourced by watching trends in China and Japan. Alongside that sits Marvin's Magic, in-store magicians who have performed the same card tricks in Hamleys for over three decades, a deliberate contrast between what comes and goes and what endures.

Chapter structure

1. Introduction — Hamleys' 266-year history, Reliance Brands ownership, 200+ stores across 18 markets, and what a Global Chief Experience Officer actually does
2. From agency to toy retail — Porter's path through 25 years in agency planning, Whitbread, then a decade at Lego during its COVID-era retail rethink, to Hamleys three years ago
3. The generosity principle — the daily opening ceremony, hands-on play as the best sales tool, and why adults become "quasi kids"
4. Competing with Amazon by not competing with Amazon — toy retail's shift to online, and how the Regent Street flagship became a top-ten London tourist attraction
5. Reading the room — designing for tourists, families, self-buyers and task-focused parents without diluting the brand into blandness
6. Measuring the magic — sales, NPS and audience reaction as the scorecard, and the industrial discipline of a 20,000-SKU toy business
7. The animation layer — Namco Gashapon, Pokemon Summer, silent disco shopping, and Marvin's Magic's three decades in-store
8. Brand versus fandom — keeping Hamleys' identity intact inside a store built partly from Lego, Hasbro and other concessions
9. Flagship versus franchise — writing the brand manual, building the design language, and keeping the Hamleys flame alive from Mumbai to Dubai
10. The next chapter — empathy, collaboration, and building on 266 years without becoming a museum piece

Quotes

"Hands-on toys and unboxing and letting kids play is the best sales tool that you could have."

"You have to be very cautious about trying to be all things to all people, because again you start to lose what differentiates you as a brand and as an experience, and you tend to become bland."

"We're not just a warehouse full of other people's boxes." 

"The strongest skill, and perhaps to be a good marketeer, is empathy: being able to put yourself in the shoes of others, and just sort of transporting yourself a little bit into the shoes of a seven-year-old kid that walks into a store."

"I don't think anyone would say that Hamley's is the most convenient. But it's definitely the most entertaining." 

--  Run time: 43 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

Hamleys - https://www.hamleys.com/
[ 👨‍👧 ]
Paul Porter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-porter-241a66b/

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ 

[ 📷 ]
(c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

Positioning

This episode is for retailers who have ever had to sell a customer on an idea before they could sell them a product. Galahad Clark built Vivobarefoot on an inconvenient premise: that most modern footwear, including the technically sophisticated kind, actively weakens and deforms the feet it claims to protect. That's not a traditional marketing approach, and the conversation traces how Clark has spent years building the education alongside the retail, from a single Covent Garden store to concept stores now opening in New York, China and Japan. Along the way it covers the accidental origin story of the modern trainer, a circularity programme that resells shoes back to the customers who returned them, and a scan-to-print manufacturing model that is about to bring made-to-measure footwear into store.

Key themes

• A 100,000-year-old product category. Clark frames barefoot shoemaking not as an innovation but as a return: humans have made thin, flexible, foot-shaped footwear from local materials for roughly 100,000 years, across every inhabited continent, long before the modern shoe industry existed. The pitch for Vivobarefoot is a restoration of that baseline, not a new invention.
• How the modern trainer actually got its shape. Clark's account of Nike's early history is one of the episode's best digressions: Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight started by importing thin-soled Japanese running shoes, saw injuries during the American jogging boom, and were told by doctors that the problem was the mismatch between people's barefoot-style sports shoes and the pointy, heeled work shoes (descended from horse-riding boots) they wore the rest of the day. Nike's fix was to make the sports shoe look more like the work shoe: heel stack, visible air-bubble technology, raised toe spring. Clark's point is that most footwear technology since has existed to solve problems that footwear itself created.
• Selling a belief before selling a shoe. Clark is candid that Vivobarefoot's proposition runs against ordinary marketing practice: educating the customer on foot biomechanics before asking them to buy. The early retail response was experiential rather than persuasive, built around simply trying the shoes on, a 100-day guarantee, and in-store support to manage the physical transition, since walking in a barefoot shoe genuinely differs from walking in a padded, heel-raised one.
• Calling out "Big Shoe." Clark is willing to describe the mainstream footwear industry, half-jokingly, in the same terms as Big Tobacco or Big Pharma: an industry whose own executives privately accept the biomechanical science on children's foot development but continue selling shoes that constrain it, because, in his view, the consumer isn't yet ready to hear it.
• Circularity that costs more the more it works. The Revivo programme, over 100,000 pairs processed a year through a repair centre in Leeds and another in Amsterdam, with US and Japan sites underway, takes shoes back, repairs, refurbishes and resells them. Clark is unusually direct about the economics: the more repair work a shoe needs, the less it can be resold for, making circularity a cost centre he describes as "a penance we pay" rather than a straightforward business case, at least until EU legislation changes the calculus for the whole industry.
• Vivobiome and the return to made-to-measure. Vivobiome, launching in select stores, scans a customer's feet in-store (with mobile scanning coming) and 3D-prints a bespoke shoe to order, starting with a sandal. Clark's argument is that almost everyone currently wears shoes that were never made for their actual foot shape, and that a truly individual fit changes both the emotional relationship to the product and the willingness to eventually return it into the circularity loop.
• The store as diagnostic, not just point of sale. In-store foot scanning, plantar pressure plates, and health diagnostics are reframed as retail theatre with a purpose: most customers, on seeing a pressure map of their own stance for the first time, discover their weight sits entirely in the heel, with the toes doing almost nothing.
• Where it's heading: My Vivo. Clark's near-term roadmap includes new stores in New York, a China launch, and continued growth in Japan's concept-store network. The longer-term ambition, My Vivo, is an omnichannel system stitching Vivobiome's manufacturing, Revivo's circularity, the core shoe business, and AI-assisted personalisation into one customer journey, aimed ultimately at pulling people back toward in-person, in-community experience rather than away from it.

⠀

Chapter structure

1. Introduction — Galahad Clark, Vivobarefoot, and what "barefoot" actually means in today's shoe market
2. A 100,000-year-old shoe category — the deep history of barefoot footwear, from antelope-skin sandals to moccasins to Vivobarefoot
3. What makes a shoe "natural" — the foot's three systems, the role of the big toe, and the thin/wide/flexible test
4. How Nike got its shape — the accidental history of the modern trainer, and an industry built on solving problems it created
5. Selling belief before selling shoes — educating a market that isn't primed to hear the pitch, and the early Covent Garden retail model
6. Big Shoe — the public health argument around children's footwear, and why Clark compares it to the tobacco industry
7. Growth of the barefoot category — from Vibram FiveFingers and Born to Run to a post-2012 slowdown to today's near-100 barefoot brands worldwide
8. Circularity's hard economics — the Revivo take-back, repair and resale programme, and why it costs more the more it works
9. Vivobiome and scan-to-print — made-to-measure 3D-printed footwear, in-store foot diagnostics, and the theatre of the plantar pressure plate
10. What's next — New York, China, Japan, and the "My Vivo" vision for stitching the whole customer journey together

⠀

About the guest

Galahad Clark is CEO and founder of Vivobarefoot, a footwear brand built around restoring natural foot function through thin, wide, flexible shoes. He studied Chinese medicine at university, an interest he connects directly to barefoot movement's roots in Ayurvedic and Chinese health traditions. Under his leadership Vivobarefoot has grown from a single Covent Garden store into a multi-market retailer with concept stores in Japan and forthcoming openings in New York and China, alongside Revivo, its shoe take-back and resale programme, and Vivobiome, its scan-to-print made-to-order manufacturing initiative.

Quotes

"All footwear, once upon a time, pre the modern industrial age, was made person by person, foot by foot, from local circular materials, perfectly repairable and nearly always biodegradable."

"All the technology you talk about in footwear is there to solve problems caused by footwear themselves." 

"It is a massive public health scandal that the footwear industry makes footwear that literally weakens and deforms people's feet."

"The more you need to repair a shoe, the less you can sell it for. So it's a sort of business model that the more it costs, the less you can sell it for... it's a penance we pay to some degree to commit to these things."

"In the short term, we're cobblers, ultimately."

--  Run time: 37 minutes
INFORMATION:

This episode is for founders, brand builders, and retail leaders interested in how a genuinely accidental business becomes a credible, structured consumer brand. Lucie McLeod started Hair Syrup in her parents' conservatory while at university, posted one TikTok video that hit 600,000 views, and built from there — without a business plan, without investment, and without a roadmap. 

However this is no tale of luck, or a hapless fortune. To listen to Lucie it's clear that the brain, drive and character were ready for the tasks, the test and the chance to build her business. Cometh the hour, cometh the leader.

Ian Jindal chats with Lucie about what it actually takes to grow a DTC brand through social, how to respond to a very public rejection on Dragon's Den and turn it into a marketing moment, and where Hair Syrup is heading as it moves from a single hero product into a full wash-day brand with retail distribution through Boots.

Key themes

• Accidental origin, deliberate growth: Hair Syrup started as a personal solution to Lucie's own scalp problems, formulated using academic research and natural ingredients she sourced from health food shops. The first TikTok video was not a launch strategy. It was a genuine personal post that went viral from a standing start. The business followed the demand, not the other way around.
• Problem-led product development: Every product in the range maps to a specific, common hair or scalp problem — length, grease, breakage, dandruff. This was not a range strategy imposed from above; it was Lucie solving her own problems and extending outward. When she eventually worked with a chemist, he told her the formulas she had developed independently were already production-ready.
• Community over clinical claims: Hair Syrup has clinical efficacy data and dermatologist testing, but its primary marketing tool is customer before-and-after photos. Lucie is explicit that she dislikes prescriptive beauty content and avoids invalidating individual experiences. The community is built on openness and expectation management, not on performance guarantees.
• Dragon's Den as a marketing asset: Hair Syrup appeared on Dragon's Den in summer 2024, received six rejections, and then turned the episode's broadcast in January 2025 into one of the most-discussed brand moments of the year. The team trolled the dragons back on TikTok with memes — the sad hamster among them — generating 24 million profile views in under 48 hours and 100,000 new followers. The Sunday Times named Lucie Young Founder of the Year shortly after. The lesson she draws is blunt: you cannot engineer this. It worked because it was authentic.
• The hidden operation: The public face of Hair Syrup is Lucie on TikTok — informal, funny, behind-the-scenes. The private face is an SLT with experienced heads of sales, finance, and logistics, an in-house 3PL, and chemists with serious CVs. Most of their audience has no idea the latter exists. Lucie considers this balance a strength.
• Brand building beyond the hero product: Hair Syrup launched in Boots in late 2024. The NPD pipeline is structured around extending the brand's core peppermint oil product into a full wash-day system — shampoo, conditioner, scalp serum — all sharing the same scent, colour scheme, and purpose. Leave-in oils have not landed as hoped and are being rethought. The direction is deliberate specialisation rather than category sprawl.

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What you'll learn

• Why solving a genuine personal problem is still one of the most defensible starting points for a consumer brand.
• How to build a community that stays loyal even when the product does not work for everyone.
• What a rejection on Dragon's Den can teach you about the gap between conventional investment logic and TikTok-native brand value.
• How to structure a post-crisis response for a team that is depending on you, when you are not sure yourself what comes next.
• How to maintain creative authenticity and brand character while building a grown-up operational structure behind the scenes.
• Why gut instinct and structured decision-making are not opposites — and how to use both at the same time.

⠀

Chapter structure

1. Introduction — Who Lucie is, Hair Syrup's age and origin, and what the brand stands for today
2. The accidental start — A personal hair problem, lockdown, a viral TikTok from a standing start, and the slow realisation that this could be a business
3. Formulation and early product range — Research, chemistry, working with a professional chemist, and extending the range along problem lines
4. Brand positioning — Accessible, inclusive, mid-market, solution-driven, and community-centred
5. Dragon's Den — Six rejections, the edit, what it felt like, the conversation with the team, and the decision to turn it around
6. The TikTok counter-offensive — Trolling the dragons, the sad hamster meme, the BBC's reaction, 24 million views in 48 hours
7. Structure and scale — What Hair Syrup actually looks like behind the TikTok page, and the role of a senior leadership team the audience never sees
8. 2026 and beyond — Boots, NPD, the wash-day range, international ambitions, and staying open to where the brand might go

⠀

About the guest

Lucie McLeod is the founder and CEO of Hair Syrup, a UK haircare brand she started at 21 while studying at the University of Warwick, where she graduated with a first. She began by hand-making pre-wash hair oils in her parents' conservatory and built the brand through TikTok before establishing a wider social and retail presence. Hair Syrup now sells through Boots as well as direct-to-consumer, runs an in-house 3PL operation, and has a senior team spanning sales, finance, logistics, and product development. She was named Sunday Times Young Founder of the Year following the brand's Dragon's Den appearance in early 2025, in which she received six rejections and subsequently turned the episode into a widely covered brand marketing moment.

Quotes

• "I was ignoring all of the signs. I had people saying, you could sell me this, and I think if I was an entrepreneur, my business brain would have thought, right, I'll take 20 quid, let's do it."
• "The moral of the story is make the best of a bad situation. The moral is not: try and do really badly so you can redeem yourself."
• "Behind the curtain, it's a really serious operation — with a lot of extremely skilled people dealing with distributors, international expansion, NPD, chemists with impressive CVs. And people just have no idea."
• "I wonder if I didn't have a team, if I was doing this by myself — might I have given up?"
• "I don't like the idea that brands ever have to be pigeonholed. As long as you're open, honest, transparent and reactive, you can enjoy the ebbs and flows."

--  Run time: 44 minutes
INFORMATION:
[ 🖥️ ]
Hair Syrup - https://www.hairsyrup.co.uk/
[ 👨‍👧 ]
Lucie McLeod: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucie-macleod-775a60159/
Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ 
[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

This episode is for retail operators who believe that the store estate is an asset, and that the people running it are the brand. 

Ian Jindal chat with Shannon Osman, Head of Retail at Footasylum, who has built her career from shop floor to leadership and brings a practitioner's clarity to questions that often get buried in strategy decks: how do you actually recruit, retain and develop a predominantly Gen Z workforce at scale? The conversation covers Footasylum's distinctive hiring model, its social-first content machine, the Locked In franchise, and a franchise expansion into the Middle East — all through the lens of a retailer that has won Retail Employer of the Year while opening stores, not closing them.

Key themes

• Rethinking recruitment from first principles: Footasylum scrapped the CV-led process and replaced it with group in-store interviews. No CV submission, just availability, knockout questions, and a live group exercise. The best candidate on the day gets the job, eliminating unconscious bias and filtering for exactly the communication skills the role demands.
• Retention as proof of concept: Staff turnover dropped from 107% to 75% after the new recruitment model was introduced. Seasonal hires - historically the hardest to retain - are now routinely offered permanent roles at the end of peak. The data follows the culture, not the other way around.
• Progression without a title change: Shannon is direct that promotion is not the only form of progression. Recommending a book, setting personal goals alongside professional ones, giving people a voice in operational decisions - these are the mechanisms Footasylum uses to keep people invested. The goal-setting process (two work goals, one personal) runs from February, reviewed quarterly, owned by the individual.
• Communication at scale: With almost 70 stores and around 1,300 staff, Footasylum adopted Zipline as its internal communications platform - chosen because it looks and behaves like social media. Execution and readership rates are tracked, but the rationale was engagement, not surveillance. The platform was used to run a company-wide vote for Store Manager of the Year, generating 1,300 responses.
• Social as a commercial engine: 1.2 billion organic views across social media last year, up 35% year-on-year. Footasylum sits in the top 5% of TikTok users globally, alongside the BBC and Sky Sports. Its Locked In series - influencers and content creators in a house format, competing and generating content — drives 200,000 additional app downloads per run and feeds directly into in-store footfall and on-site conversion.
• Middle East expansion via franchise: Footasylum has signed a franchise agreement to enter the Gulf region. Shannon visited the Mall of Emirates, Mall of Dubai and Dubai Hills ahead of the announcement. The market's appetite for elevated retail experience - and the presence of a significant UK expat base - makes it a credible fit for the brand's positioning, which sits above the mass market without claiming luxury.

⠀

What you'll learn

• Why removing CVs from the hiring process can improve both the quality of hire and long-term retention and how to structure a group interview that actually tests for the right things.
• How to build a communication infrastructure that reaches every layer of a large store estate, not just the management tier.
• What "progression" looks like when you can't always offer a title or a salary uplift and why that matters for a Gen Z workforce.
• How a content-first social strategy translates directly into measurable commercial outcomes: app downloads, footfall, and omnichannel conversion.
• How to approach franchise expansion into a culturally distinct market while preserving brand DNA and why the right partner matters more than the right playbook.
• Why listening to store managers is not just good culture but good operations: some of Footasylum's most efficient decisions in the last 18 months have come from the shop floor up.

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Chapter structure

1. Introduction — Who Footasylum is, its 20-year history, near-70 store estate, and core Gen Z/Alpha consumer
2. The store in 2025 — Why physical retail still matters, and what it means to have Gen Z staff serving Gen Z customers
3. Rethinking recruitment — The CV-free group interview model and the results it has produced
4. Growth and expansion — New UK stores (including Merthyr Tydfil), and the Middle East franchise deal
5. Retention and culture — Retail Employer of the Year, goal-setting, and the meaning of progression
6. Communication at scale — Zipline, why it works, and how it changes the relationship between head office and the shop floor
7. Locked In and the social engine — The Locked In series, 1.2bn organic views, and the omnichannel flywheel
8. Shannon's own journey — From football coaching in the US to Head of Retail; the constants that haven't changed; what's on the learning list for 2026

⠀

About the guest

Shannon Osman is Head of Retail at Footasylum, the UK apparel, footwear and accessories retailer with almost 70 stores and a Gen Z–first positioning. She has spent the majority of her career in store-based retail, moving through the operational ranks to a leadership role with P&L responsibility for the entire physical estate. Since joining the role, she has overhauled Footasylum's recruitment model, introduced a scaled communications platform, and helped lead the business to Retail Employer of the Year 2025. She is also part of the team driving Footasylum's first international franchise expansion into the Middle East.

Quotes

• "The staff members on the shop floor are the most vital employees in the business. They are what represents you as a company — that's the face-to-face interaction your customers are having, ultimately."
• "Our staff retention has gone from 107% down to 75%. We are retaining people now because the people we're employing want to stay with us."
• "Anybody can open a door for you. It's up to you to walk through it."
• "Everyone thinks progression is going for the next job title. Progression is reading a book your line manager sent you that you never even knew existed."
• "Every single mall I entered just felt like Footasylum should be there." — Shannon Osman, on her first visit to Dubai and Abu Dhabi

--  Run time: 35 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

Footasylum - https://www.footasylum.com/

[ 👨‍👧 ]
Shannon Osman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-osman-84bbb2260/ 

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ 

[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

Tesco Media's Director Strategy, Proposition & Measurement, Florian Clemens, explains how a focus on win-win-win outcomes (value for shopper, advertiser, and retailer) guides the strategy for Tesco's retail media business. The discussion centres on measurement, omnichannel innovation, the legacy of Clubcard data, and Tesco's position as a market maker in UK retail. Practical examples highlight transparent loyalty incentives, creative brand partnerships, and the challenge of delivering differentiation on a large scale. The conversation closes with what's next for Tesco: building truly omnichannel, science-driven media and exploring the real-world impact of AI on habits and shopping behaviour.
 
 Points of Note on Tesco Media
 •Tesco holds 28% of UK supermarket sales, reaches nearly every UK household, and operates at a scale matched by few retailers.
 •Clubcard's integration with Dunnhumby's data science powers Clubcard Challenges; over 80% of in-store revenue is attributed to identified shoppers.
 •Tesco Media runs as an internal joint team: Tesco, Dunnhumby, and external talent.
 •More than 25 ad products: coupons, search, store screens, Clubcard Challenges - designed for relevance, transparency, and incremental value.
 
 Key Quotes
 "This win-win-win needs to be right for the shopper, right for the advertiser, and right for the retailer. That just takes longer to figure out, but it's what we're building"

“Clubcard changed the face of British retail… suddenly it was about data-driven engagement.”

“It’s only a real win if it’s truly better for people. I don’t think we’ve seen that at scale - yet.” “If I started making a list of all our sources of inventory, turning delivery vans into ad products would have been number 35… but being a UK-focused decision maker lets us try it if it feels right.” “With Clubcard Challenges, customers choose which brands to engage more deeply with, and advertisers only pay if people convert - a transparent, zero-risk proposition.” “Tier-one platforms can build direct relationships. Further down the list, you have to aggregate for economic reasons - otherwise agencies simply don’t have the bandwidth.”   

Episode Running Order • 00:00 — Introductions, context, Tesco’s leading market position • 01:00 — Tesco Media’s joint strategy, scale, and data science • 04:00 — Clubcard’s legacy and retail media’s evolution • 07:00 — Team structure: Tesco, Dunnhumby, and new hires • 09:00 — The win-win-win foundation; Clubcard Challenges as example • 12:00 — Differentiating Tesco Media from a decade of programmatic and performance marketing • 17:00 — Brand partnerships: creative campaigns (Christmas grottos, branded vans) • 20:00 — Complexity in omnichannel: 25+ ad products, need for self-optimisation • 23:00 — Future vision: scientific omnichannel planning and implementing AI in commerce • 29:00 — Price sensitivity, habit, and the real test for AI and automation • 34:00 — Closing thoughts, next steps, and invitation for a return discussion on AI 

--  Run time: 38 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

Tesco Media - https://www.dunnhumby.com/tesco-media-insight-platform/ 

[ 👨‍👧 ]

Florian Clemens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florianclemens/ 

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ 

[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

This episode examines how PerfectTed has introduced ceremonial-grade matcha to the mainstream UK market, covering product origins, retail strategy, lessons from Dragon's Den, and building a challenger brand in the FMCG sector. The conversation touches on the history of matcha, the reality of category management, and making niche products accessible to a wide consumer audience. PerfectTed (

www.perfectted.com) 

• Sold in major retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Holland & Barrett, Planet Organic, and Ocado.​
• Stocked nationally in coffee chains: Joe & the Juice, Black Sheep Coffee, and Café Nero.​
• Product range covers organic, ceremonial-grade matcha powders and sparkling matcha energy drinks (with three flavours, including Great Taste award winner).
• Sourced from single-origin growers in Japan, using young, shade-grown leaves.
• Every batch is handpicked, stone-ground, vegan, gluten-free, organic, and non-GMO, with 68mg caffeine per serving.
• The brand was featured on Dragon's Den in 2022, receiving investment offers from all five Dragons and accepting Steven Bartlett’s offer. Full episode on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpwc1GqehZU) and Stephen Bartlett's follow up video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCcDNArBASw).
• Co-founder Marisa brought her personal focus on ADHD and anxiety to the energy drink formula, aiming for clean energy without jitters or crashes.

Episode Topics & Timestamps 

• 00:00—Opening
• 00:59—Introduction to Shani, her career move, and the PerfectTed mission
• 02:34—History and basics of matcha; ceremonial vs. lower grades
• 05:00—PerfectTed’s retail and coffee chain distribution
• 08:30—Sales career progression and negotiation insight
• 11:00—Dragon’s Den: pitch day and investment outcome
• 12:30—Post-Dragon’s Den impact and rapid growth
• 15:30—Brand identity, consumer niche, and quality promise
• 16:30—Retail trading, innovation, and working with buyers
• 18:00—Consumer education, Instagram trends, and matcha recipes
• 22:00—Product range, taste profiles, and development stories
• 23:30—Purpose, clean energy, and values-driven marketing
• 24:30—Closing thoughts

Key Quotes
"Our mission is spreading positive energy through matcha products."
"Ceremonial grade is the first flush—the youngest leaves. You get that vibrant green and a sweet umami flavour rather than a bitter, grassy taste."
"You always have to prioritize quality. We focus on 100% pure ceremonial-grade matcha because if you have a bad experience, you won't come back."
"Dragon's Den was 90 minutes of filming that became 14 minutes of air time. We received all five investor offers and accepted Steven Bartlett's investment."
"You won't be liked by everyone. What makes you special is your niche."
"Matcha is like coffee—you can have a bad experience, or you can find a quality source and come back forever."
 
--  Run time: 39 minutes
INFORMATION:
[ 🖥️ ]
PerfectTed's website - www.perfectted.com
[ 👨‍👧 ]
Shani Higgs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanihiggs/
Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/
[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

In this short, sharp RetailCraft conversation, Ian Jindal chats with Timo Boldt, founder and Chief Executive of recipe-box innovator Gousto, to explore how a self-proclaimed “data company that loves food” is reshaping dinner for millions of UK households. In 20 minutes they unpack Gousto’s 13-year journey from kitchen table idea to profitable £308 million enterprise, its foray into B2B software via the Bento subscription platform, and Boldt’s ambition to raise Gousto’s UK “share of stomach” from 0.2 percent to 1 percent1. Listeners will enjoy candid reflections on everything from Netherlands expansion and AI-driven menu personalisation to the zen of walking factory floors at 5am.

Gousto’s path has tracked—with uncanny timing—every macro-cycle in ecommerce food: mobile adoption, pandemic surges, funding booms and busts, quick-commerce exuberance, and the current shift from growth at all costs to durable profitability. Boldt explains why Gousto remains “deeply profitable” while many peers falter, how its eco-design “Eco-Chill” packaging saves 23 percent CO₂ per meal, and why he believes Bento can do for physical-goods subscriptions what Shopify did for storefronts.

At the heart of the episode is the tension every modern retailer navigates: providing limitless personalisation while operating a ruthlessly disciplined supply chain. Gousto’s answer is a vertically integrated tech stack, four automated fulfilment centres, and predictive algorithms that cut food waste, hold gross margins above 53 percent, and power a menu now exceeding 200 recipes per week.

We also chat about Timo’s personal journey: leaving a hedge-fund VP role at 26, moving into student housing to save cash, running early routes himself, and leaning on “learn-a-holic” instincts to conquer operations, funding, B-Corp certification and, most recently, AI.

Timo Boldt

Founder & CEO, Gousto (2012–present) — certified B Corp meal-kit pioneer valued at over £1 billion in 2020, now refocused on profitability and mainstream mass-market expansion.

EY UK Entrepreneur of the Year 2022, World Entrepreneur Class of 2023.

Member, Unilever Digital Advisory Board.

Executive MBA, Cambridge Judge Business School; undergraduate training in statistics fuels his obsession with data-driven iteration.

00:00 – Cold-open & scene-setting

03:00 – Market purpose & climate math

05:00 – Growth vectors & 1 billion-meal TAM

08:00 – Personalisation at scale

11:00 – Founder back-story

13:00 – Ireland launch & localisation learnings

14:30 – Bento SaaS platform

16:00 – AI, automation & factory tours

17:30 – International options

18:45 – Subscription advice for brands

20:00 – Future vision (next 10 years)

22:00 – Favourite recipe & wrap-up

“Our share of stomach is 0.2 percent—a drop in the ocean. Getting to 1 percent feels eminently possible if we obsess over value for money.”

“Forty percent of UK food is binned. Every Gousto box saves 7 kilograms of CO₂ compared with supermarket dinners.”

“Quick commerce is gone. We’re sitting on a £400 million business, deeply profitable and cash generative.”

“Developer-to-domain ratio matters: don’t burn engineers on generic subscription plumbing—buy it off the shelf.”

“I view Gousto as a data company that loves food.”

“The pace of change will never again be this slow; it only accelerates from here.”

--  Run time: 20 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

Gousto's website - www.gousto.co.uk 

Gousto on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gousto/ 

[ 👨‍👧 ]

Timo Boldt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timo-boldt/ 

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ 

[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

What happens when one of the Nordics’ largest grocery retailers empowers 1,300 local entrepreneurs under a single national brand? In this episode, Ian Jindal chats with Oskar Jakobsson, Director of Customer Solutions at ICA Gruppen, to explore the unique federated model in Swedish grocery retail. Oskar shares how ICA balances entrepreneurial autonomy with digital innovation, discusses the challenges of unifying customer experience across diverse store formats, and reflects on the accelerating pace of change in retail technology. The conversation ranges from handwritten signs and local flavour to AI-driven personalisation, the future of agentic shopping, and the enduring joy of simply strolling through great stores.

Oskar Jakobsson is Director of Customer Solutions at ICA Gruppen, where he leads a team of nearly 200 colleagues responsible for all digital customer-facing touchpoints. With over 20 years’ experience in retail, spanning SaaS suppliers, H&M, and Sweden’s alcohol monopoly, Oskar brings deep expertise in digital transformation, customer experience, and the art of retail.

00:00 – Welcome & Introduction

03:00 – ICA’s Unique Model: 1,300 Entrepreneurs

08:00 – Store Formats & Family Businesses

10:00 – Digital Customer Experience at Scale

13:00 – Defining “Best Customer Experience”

15:00 – The Complexity of Grocery Shopping Journeys

17:00 – Retail Media, Promotions & Data

20:00 – The Pace of Change & Flexible Architecture

25:00 – AI, Agents & The Future of Grocery

31:00 – AI in Practice at ICA

34:00 – Advice for Retail Technologists

39:00 – Getting Re-energised by Great Retail

40:00 – What’s Next: Strategy & Direction

“ICA isn’t a chain. It’s almost 1,300 separate retailers… Each store is genuinely their own store, adapting to their local customer and community.”

“You always need to prioritize. You will never be able to do everything. It takes a while before you realize that.”

“If you have a monolith you can’t change, you need an integration layer that is flexible. Tech isn’t the problem-it’s prioritizing investment.”

“The pace of change will never be as slow as it is today. It will only be quicker.”

“Retail is a hobby. I’m fortunate enough to work with my hobby.”

--  Run time: 38 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

ICA Gruppen's website - https://www.icagruppen.se/ 

ICA on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ica/  

[ 👨‍👧 ]

Oskar Jacobsson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oskar-jakobsson-0b052810/  

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ 

[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

What does it take to be the number one premium beauty retailer both online and in-store across 22 countries? In this episode, Ian Jindal welcomes Philipp Andree, Chief Commercial Officer at Douglas Group, to explore how the company blends heritage and innovation in the fast-evolving beauty sector. Philipp shares how Douglas is redefining omnichannel retail, leveraging AI to enhance the customer experience, and transforming its supply chain for efficiency and scale. The conversation covers everything from Gen Z beauty trends to warehouse optimisation and the “Let it Bloom” strategy for future growth. Whether you’re fascinated by retail tech, operational excellence, or the art of customer engagement, this episode offers a rare inside look at a European retail powerhouse.

Philipp Andree is the Chief Commercial Officer at Douglas Group, number one omnichannel premium beauty destination in Europe. With a background in engineering, marketing, and digital transformation, Philipp brings a unique perspective to the intersection of tech, commerce, and customer experience.

00:00 – Welcome & Introduction

02:00 – Douglas’s Unique Market Position

04:00 – Understanding the Douglas Customer

08:00 – Balancing Scale and Specialism

11:00 – Philipp’s Career Journey

14:00 – Omnichannel Evolution

16:00 – The Role of AI in Beauty Retail

19:00 – Training AI with Human Expertise

24:00 – Supply Chain Transformation

29:00 – The ‘Let it Bloom’ Strategy

30:00 – Store Expansion and Refurbishment

32:00 – Standardization and Tech Across Borders

33:00 – Closing Reflections

“We are number one, both in-store and online, which is pretty rare.”

--  Run time: 38 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

Douglas' German e-commerce site - www.douglas.de 

Douglas Group's corporate site: https://douglas.group/ 

The "Let it Bloom" strategy (https://douglas.group/en/about-us/strategy)

[ 👨‍👧 ]

Philipp Andree: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipp-andr%C3%A9e-47b681253/ 

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ 

[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal