Retail Disrupted Natalie Berg

Brian Librach, former VP of Stores at Urban Outfitters, Pacific Sunwear and Old Navy, joins Natalie to discuss his new book: The Retail Leader’s Roadmap. They explore:
Why retail leaders get stuck and how to rewrite your career outcome. The evolution of bricks & mortar retail – what is the future of stores and how should we be measuring success? Which brands does Brian admire and what are they getting right? How can retailers ensure their staff are motivated and engaged? Cultural shifts: digital transformation journeys and the importance of taking your people with you. Upskilling and investing in digital competencies. Squiggly careers: why the path to success isn’t always linear. Natalie and Brian debate the key traits of winning retailers.  Brian’s bio: 
Launching his career at the young age of 21, Brian quickly established himself as a District Manager, rising to become a Regional Director by 25, a Director of Stores by 35, and the VP of Stores for Urban Outfitters at 38, running operations in the US and Canada. Since then, he also served as VP of Stores and Operations at Pacific Sunwear, as well as most recently running stores internationally in Canada for Old Navy.
Links:
Brian’s book on Amazon UK
Connect with Brian on LinkedIn
Retail Leader’s Roadmap
Register for Natalie's live webinar with Rethink Retail and Diebold Nixdorf on May 28, 2024
Learn more about Natalie's services: NBK Retail

James Keyes, Former 7-Eleven and Blockbuster CEO and author of EDUCATION IS FREEDOM: The Future Is in Your Hands, joins Natalie on the podcast to discuss:
Change equals opportunity – lessons from Jim’s career and how to avoid being disrupted during periods of turbulence. Dispelling the myths behind Blockbuster’s demise – why fear, not Netflix, killed Blockbuster. Why Jim believes we might see a revival of the Blockbuster brand. Diversification – with Netflix opening restaurants, TikTok opening shops and Amazon opening hair salons, just how far could and should brands veer from their core? How technology can empower staff and elevate the customer experience. Lessons from Jim’s new book – understanding the importance of collaboration, cultural literacy, continual evolution and character. Jim’s bio:
James Keyes is the former CEO of two internationally recognized Fortune 500 companies - 7-Eleven and Blockbuster. Jim is a global business leader, a philanthropist, educator, artist, musician, commercial pilot, and modern renaissance man. 
His other business interests cover a broad range of industries from retail, consumer products, technology, healthcare, cyber security, new space, energy, and advanced nuclear. He sits on several public company boards and serves as a board adviser to a venture capital firm and a number of start-up companies.
Keyes’s philanthropic initiatives have an equally broad focus, including serving a three-term seat on the Board of Governors for the American Red Cross, acting as the former Chairman of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and serving on the board of directors for institutions such as UT Southwestern Medical School, Cooper Institute, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Dallas Performing Arts Center, SMU Cox School of Business, Columbia Business School, and his alma mater, College of the Holy Cross. He has had a lifelong commitment to education, serving as a founding director of the Dallas Education Foundation and is the founder of the Education Is Freedom Foundation. Keyes is a personification of the American Dream, as he comes from humble beginnings. He was inducted in 2005 as a Member of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans.

More on Jim’s new book, EDUCATION IS FREEDOM: The Future Is in Your Hands:
Growing up in poverty in a small town in central Massachusetts, James Keyes seemed destined for a difficult life—one working at the local factory alongside his father and struggling to get by. Instead, he went on to become the CEO of 7-Eleven, where he increased shareholder value by tenfold during his tenure, and then CEO of Blockbuster, where he secured opportunities for the company even as the world wholeheartedly embraced streaming. How did he defy the odds?
In EDUCATION IS FREEDOM: The Future Is in Your Hands (Savio Republic; February 27th, 2024) with a foreword by Stedman Graham, Keyes shows how lifelong education and education access shaped his life and why they need to play a much larger role in in the public consciousness: because they empower us with the mindset to overcome adversity while preserving our democracy.
Order Jim’s book on Amazon UK or Amazon US.
Follow Jim on LinkedIn
 

Paul Wilkinson, Product Director at Deliveroo and former Tesco and Amazon exec, joins Natalie to discuss:
•    Quick commerce: what went wrong and how will it evolve?
•    Why Deliveroo won’t chase 15-minute delivery.
•    Learnings from the restaurant sector.
•    Why retail partners are more open to collaboration in 2024. 
•    Deliveroo’s move into non-food: “bringing the whole high street to the customer”.
•    Voice commerce: why hasn’t it taken off and is there a place for it in the future?
•    Frictionless checkout: are checkout-free stores the future or are there too many barriers to making it viable?
Connect with Paul on X and LinkedIn.
Learn more about Deliveroo.
This conversation was recorded in February 2024.

Former Tesco director and Nisa CEO Ken Towle joins Natalie on the podcast to discuss:

•    The retail and consumer outlook.
•    Why shrinkflation is not always a bad thing.
•    His experience running Nisa during the pandemic.
•    From self-checkouts to generative AI – how technology is changing the way we shop for food.
•    Grocery e-commerce and the importance of collaboration.
•    Lessons from his time as Tesco China CEO.

Ken Towle is a Retail and Wholesale CEO, Executive, Advisor and Trustee. He spent many years at Tesco where he led the international expansion and acceleration of the group’s multichannel capability. Some of his previous roles at Tesco include CEO of China, Internet Retailing Director and Managing Director of Central Europe, Ireland and Turkey. 

More recent roles include President, Fashion/Teens at Alshaya Group; CEO of Nisa; and SVP, Retail and Logistics at Asda.

Ken is also a Member of the Board of Trustees at Prostate Cancer UK and previously served as a Senior Advisor at the Boston Consulting Group. 

Follow Ken on LinkedIn. 

Have you been to Catford Mews or Peckham Levels? Then you'll know what can be achieved by transforming disused car parks and empty retail units into vibrant, community-led, cultural hubs.
Preston Benson, founder of Really Local Group and fellow American in London, joins Natalie on the podcast to discuss:
How Really Local Group is creating and restoring cultural infrastructure by regenerating disused high street locations.   Homogenous high streets - how to inject character and make our high streets relevant for 21st century shopping. Funflation - the Taylor Swift Effect and how cinemas will evolve in the future. Hyper-localism, community and the importance of financial inclusivity. Why Amazon has partnered with Odeon and what this means for smaller, community-led cinemas.  Catford Mews was RLG’s first site and they’ve since expanded into a number of locations like Ealing, Peckham, Reading and Sidcup with more venues planned throughout 2024 and beyond.
Connect with Preston on LinkedIn.
 

It's International Women's Day this week and who better to speak to than the iconic and wonderfully inspirational fashion designer Dame Zandra Rhodes?
This conversation was recorded live on stage at Springfair in February 2024. Dame Zandra tells Natalie about:
- The highs and lows of breaking into the US fashion scene in the 1960s.
- How she has spent her life rallying against what was expected of her – both as a designer and a female.
- How her personal image has led to the success of her brand and more recent collaborations with IKEA, Happy Socks and Poppy Lissiman.
- What it was like to dress Freddie Mercury and which cultural icon she’d love to work with today.
- Her rainbow penthouse and pandemic pivots.
- Fashion retail trends – from the rise of digital to the need for circularity. 
- What’s next for Dame Zandra?
 
Dame Zandra’s bio:
Known for her fabulously bold prints, the iconic British designer, Dame Zandra Rhodes, launched her eponymous fashion brand 56 years ago.
Nicknamed ‘The Princess of Punk’, Rhodes burst onto the fashion scene in the late 1960s and continues to work from her studio in London. Rhodes began as a printed textile designer and is renowned for perfecting the art-of-print as an intrinsic influence on garment shape. With dramatic designs and her own distinctive look, Rhodes paved the way for fashion as theatre and entertainment. Her illustrious career has seen her dress international stars including Freddie Mercury, Diana Ross and Barbara Streisand, and British Royalty, most notably, Princess Diana and Princess Anne.
Originally marked as creating designs that were ‘too extreme’, in the early 70s Rhodes left England to try and break the American market. Within a few weeks of arriving in New York she met Diana Vreeland who debuted Rhodes’ ‘Knitted Circle’ collection on Natalie Wood in American Vogue. The rest is history…
A pioneer of the British and international fashion scene since the late 60s, Rhodes’ career has seen her produce over five decades of fashion collections and more recently focus on strategic collaborations with fashion and lifestyle brands such as IKEA of Sweden, Happy Socks and Poppy Lissiman. In 2003, she founded London’s Fashion and Textile Museum, which to this day showcases some of the best in fashion and textile design.
More recently, in 2020, she formed the Zandra Rhodes Foundation, a charity that ensures future generations of designers, artists, researchers, students and educators are able to study her life and designs, with an emphasis on her methods and techniques. Dating from the mid 1960s to the current day, the Foundation is working to catalogue her six thousand garments, printed textiles, drawings, accessories, fashion films, kodatraces, silk screens, press cuttings, personal memorabilia and collected artworks. A central collection will stay with the Foundation and the remaining material will be donated to permanent collections of major museums across the world, including the Fashion and Textile Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
For more, visit: https://zandrarhodes.com/