My name is Melissa Moore, The Retail Advisor and Rethink Retail Top retail expert for 2024. This season I’ll be joined by industry experts, retailers and brands to dispel the myths, share their knowledge and give you an insight into the retail industry.

Coming up on season 6:

• This season opens with an incredible ecommerce expert; it’s an unbelievably honest conversation with best best practice, fantastic examples and great ideas for you to take away.
• I speak to one of Ireland’s leading fashion designers who wants to help retailers with the massive issue of returns! This seems to be a common theme on season 6 as we talk about how shoppers and retailers can do more.
• I delve into leading frontline retail with a retailer who’s made loads of brilliant mistakes
• We go back to basics
• There’s a fantastic story about how design and retail can really bring a brand to life.
• Of course we have lots of retail innovation, supporting online sellers and senders, and tech helping us understand pricing.
• There’s insights into retail media, customer discovery and so much more!

In the meantime, listen back to previous episodes on your favourite podcast platform or YouTube and while you’re there please subscribe to the podcast so that you get to listen to it first every week.

So get ready to grab that cup of tea, sit back and listen in- to season 6 of the retail tea break podcast! 

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/

Each week on season 5 of The Retail Tea Break podcast, I’ve be joined by industry experts, retailers and brands to decode the myths, share knowledge and give you a better insight into the retail industry. In this final episode of season 5, I give you a quick recap of key moments from 2023. So grab your cup of tea, sit back, relax and listen in!

If you have enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe and share it. 

Remember you can also listen back to previous Retail Tea Break episodes on your favourite podcast platform or on YouTube. You’ll find full transcriptions of each episode on www.theretailadvisor.ie.

See you in 2024 for season 6!

On this week’s episode of The Retail Tea Break Podcast I’m joined by a guest who has a retail framework that boils down to implementing the basics, focusing on cashflow and profit. Alvin Narsey is a business coach and consultant with over 25 years of experience in the retail pharmacy industry. He has bought, grown and sold large pharmacy businesses in Australia and is now passionate about helping retailers achieve their business goals. 

Grab a notebook, Alvin shares lots of golden nuggets in this episode. So grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen in!

Topics:

• The true importance of understanding cash flow
•  Which is more important: profitability or revenue
• Discounts eating profitability
•  Shopper price sensitivity
• Recommended KPI’s
• Coming up in 2024

For more information visit: https://www.alvinnarseycoaching.com/

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/

In this week’s episode of The Retail Tea Break podcast, I’m joined by a guest who is passionate about taking a consumer centric approach. Ciara O'Keeffe is Chief Operations Officer at Peachylean. Over the last few years she has ensured brands make the right decision to drive consumer awareness and reduce friction in the shopper journey. 

Ciara has worked with a broad number of B2B retailers across EMEA; focusing on being where the consumer shops, and bringing the best of the brand to life across those touchpoints, to complement their D2C offering. She’s currently working for a fantastic Irish female focused startup bringing an inclusive athleisure proposition to women, not currently provided by mainstream brands. Ciara’s shares lots of insights in this fascinating episode. So grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen in!

Topics:

• Customer centricity, in the post Covid era 
• Exploring B2B at Nike
• Utilising the D2C route with Peachylean
• Smaller brands with big brand loyalty
• Top tips for brands who are starting to scale their business
• What’s coming up over the next 6 months.

For more information: https://peachylean.com/

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/

This week’s episode of The Retail Tea Break podcast is sponsored by Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM. I’m joined by two amazing guests to discuss how employee experience together with customer experience supports the growth of incredible brands. Sarah Esler is the Digital Product Lead at Brown Thomas Arnotts and Natasha Beegan is a Principal Solution Engineer at Salesforce. 

Looking through the lens of digital transformation, Natasha explains the research that supports the need for retailers to have an ‘EX+CX=Growth’ agenda. Sarah describes how Brown Thomas Arnotts are utilising an opti-channel experience to meet the needs of all of their customers. 

This is a must listen to episode, which is packed full of inspirational insights and thought provoking data. So grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen in!

Topics:

• Why the Employee Experience (EX)  together with Customer Experience (CX) is so important.
• Switching the mindset to include EX alongside CX.
• ‘Opti-channel’ experiences
• Collaboration leads to centricity.
• The NEW Brown Thomas & Arnotts apps.
• Retail digital transformation can’t stand still. 
• What’s next for Brown Thomas Arnotts?

For more information visit: 

https://www.brownthomas.com/

https://www.brownthomas.com/services/brown-thomas-app.html

https://www.arnotts.ie/

https://www.arnotts.ie/arnotts-app-info.html

https://www.salesforce.com/eu/campaign/salesforce-ireland/

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/

This week’s episode of The Retail Tea Break Podcast is sponsored by TruRating, unlocking the voice of every customer.

I’m joined by a former lawyer, who became fascinated with how to measure, understand, and predict human behaviour. Georgina Nelson is the CEO and Co-Founder of TruRating, the award winning, rapidly growing, global tech start-up. Retailers and brands using TruRating average an 80% response rate on questions asked. This is accomplished by asking a single, rotating question directly on the POS pin pad, making it a seamless part of the shopper's checkout experience. 

This is a fantastic conversation full of incredible insights from half a billion responses that TruRating has collected. Georgina takes us through the key themes from the data that has been gathered across various retail verticals including grocery, clothing and pharmacy brands. So grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen in!

Topics:

• Half a billion customer responses
• Your people are your power
• The emotional connection
• Tasking, store operations and a lack of customer focus
• Retail media, strong communication and in-store signage
• What’s next for TruRating

For more information check out: https://trurating.com/

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/

In this week’s episode of The Retail Tea Break podcast, I’m joined by a true retail people expert. Maeve McCleane is Chief People Officer & Board Executive for Lidl Ireland and Northern Ireland. She is a passionate, commercially focused and experienced leader with huge expertise leading and developing a range of teams across operational, technical and strategic retail topics.

She has headed up a number of industry-leading initiatives within the retail sector, many of which she talks about in this episode. Maeve discusses growing the business with Lidl’s colleagues, by nurturing and upskilling them and in turn they deliver the service and sales that the business needs. This is a fascinating conversation, full of golden nuggets and thought provoking ideas. So grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen in!

Topics: 

• Hiring and retaining staff
• The Leadership Academy for everyone
•  Lidl’s initiatives and benefits supporting inclusivity
• What smaller retailers could do
• Company culture versus company policy
• What’s next; Christmas is coming…

For more information check out: https://jobs.lidl.ie/

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/

On this week’s episode of The Retail Tea Break Podcast I’m joined by a guest who is a gift-maker and a businesswoman. Maria Porter is one half of Duffy and Porter, an Irish family run business specialising in personalised gifts.

Having started her career in a very different field, Maria and her husband Melvin realised that they were not happy with their jobs. They wanted to do something more meaningful and fulfilling, something that would bring joy to themselves and others. This episode is full of those meaningful moments, as Maria describes the highs and lows of running a retail store and ecommerce business while making so much of the stock. This is a wonderfully heartwarming episode, so grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen in!

Topics: 

•  Starting and growing Duffy and Porter
• From online to physical store
• The importance of customer relationships
• Lifetime value of the customer
• Top tips for makers considering scaling up or branching out
• Christmas is coming….

For more information visit: https://www.duffyandporter.ie/

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/

Today’s episode of The Retail Tea Break Podcast is sponsored by Salesforce, who bring companies and customers together. I’m joined by an incredibly experienced businessman, who’s company provides the backbone to the retail industry. Niall Rock is Managing Director of Storage Systems Limited, one of Ireland’s largest commercial fit out companies. Founded in 1979, the business has grown to be the leading provider of storage solutions that make the maximum use of space. 

Over the years, Niall has met the customer at every touchpoint from design through to implementation and he firmly believes in customer centricity. He describes how storage solutions are normally an afterthought for retailers and brands and how he can guide them to solutions that ensure retail staff are more customer facing, which leads to a greater ROI and increase in sales. This is a fascinating episode, so grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen in!

Topics: 

• Bringing the stock room to the shop floor 
• Solutions that enhance the customer experience
• The explosion of ecommerce and click and collect. 
•  Inefficient stock rooms- top tips for saving time and delivering a return on investment.

For more information visit: https://www.storagesystems.ie/commercial/

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/

In this week’s episode of The Retail Tea Break podcast, I’m joined by a guest who is a global eCommerce and digital transformation leader. Dean McElwee is the author of ‘eCommerce for CEOs’.

From omnichannel to marketplaces, B2B eCommerce, and Direct to Consumer, Dean has had a varied career covering local, regional and global roles across both emerging and developed markets. Before joining The Stanley Black & Decker Company, Dean held roles at The Kellogg Company, The Coca-Cola Company, Mastercard Advisors and Nestle. All this experience gives him a unique perspective of the eCommerce landscape across the world, how it is evolving and what to do about it. This is a fascinating conversation, full of golden nuggets and thought provoking ideas. So grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen in!

Topics: 

• Writing the new book ‘Ecommerce for CEO’s- what every CEO and C-Suite leader should know about ecommerce’
• The seismic shift in consumer buying behaviour
• Ecommerce isn’t the magic solution to grow a brand or drive sales…    
• The explosion of D2C brands
• Measuring ecommerce performance
• What’s next in the world of ecommerce?

To purchase the book visit: https://amzn.eu/d/0UNYATN

Transcription and show notes available at: https://theretailadvisor.ie/