The Risk of Not Taking Risks

Andrew Goodman (00:00):

Wanted to welcome everyone this morning to Recession Retail. We are live from my basement in Denver, Colorado. I am Andrew Goodman. I am the head of marketing at Convictional and we are the supplier enablement platform that helps retailers onboard drop-ship vendors in just minutes. It has been 13 years since the end of the Great Recession in June of 2009, 13 years of retail growth, 13 years of e-commerce evolution and unfortunately 13 years of muscle memory loss where retailers operate in an environment when cash is tight.

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(00:32):

In this series, we're chatting with retail experts like Rick Watson, Liza Amlani, Neil Saunders, Jason Goldberg, and Brian Lange about navigating the current state of retail. Our guest today is Neil. Thanks so much for joining us, Neil. He is the managing director of GlobalData's US Retail and Consumer Division, where he oversees research and advises global retailers on strategy. For my audience today, Nikhil is keeping an eye... Sorry, my colleague Nikhil is keeping an eye on the chat. So please use that generously. We would love your participation. Today is all about risk and great to have you Neil on the show. Appreciate you taking a risk on the show.

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Neil Saunders (01:12):

You're very welcome. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on.

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Andrew Goodman (01:15):

Oh, of course, of course. Speaking of risks, the bigger topic we wanted to cover today is let's talk about the risk of not taking risk in retail right now. Can you just comment on, we're obviously in an environment where cash is tight, risk taking is not the default behavior that retailers are opting for right now. What's the danger in that?

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Neil Saunders (01:38):

I think the real danger is stagnation because although things are very difficult at the moment, things are also changing at the moment and that's common to all areas in retail. There's always been change. But I think one of the things that's peculiar to now is the pace of change is so rapid and it's so difficult to predict what comes next. In a way, what a good retailer needs to do is to experiment a bit, to take some risks on things, calculated risks maybe, but still risks on things in order to future-proof the business.

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(02:14):

And it's really interesting when you look back through history because you can spot retailers that didn't take risks and what happened to them. And probably the most iconic example of that is Sears. At one point, Sears was the largest retailer in the world. It occupied that position until 1992 when it got overtaken by Walmart. But to get to that position, Sears took a lot of risks. It did catalogs, it introduced insurance, consumer credit cards to the market, it even sold people complete home kits so they could build their own homes. It was an exceptional retailer.

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(02:50):

But then at some point it stopped taking risks and it didn't really play as much of a bet on the internet despite the fact it had fantastic logistics. It didn't really spot consumers were starting to shop at big-box stores more and it stood still. And if you think about where Sears has gone from, the largest, one of the most successful innovative retailers in the world to today, where it is a footnote in retail if that. That's the risk. It's actually existential. If you don't take those risks and keep innovating, you risk extinction. So I think that applies as much today as it has done throughout history.

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Andrew Goodman (03:33):

Absolutely. Of course, Sears being one of the prime and key examples of stagnation over the years. I'm curious, fast forward, I think you said they were overtaken by Walmart in 1992. Fast forward 20, 30 years to where we are today, who's showing some early warning signs of some of the behaviors that Sears was engaging in, in terms of not introducing new product lines, not paying attention to where consumers were going next?

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Neil Saunders (03:59):

One I always like to quote and I always feel a bit unfair because I always pick on sometimes the same retailer, but I do think it's a very good case study is Gap and specifically the Gap brand rather than Gap Inc. I think Gap Inc. is a bit more interesting. But the GAP brand itself. The Gap brand again is a retailer that has just stood still and it doesn't innovate very much. It seems to actually have an aversion to innovation and the results are really telling. If you go back to 2001, I think Gap had about 2.5% share of the clothing market in the US. Today it hovers on about 0.5% of the clothing market. It's gone from over 2000 stores to around 550 stores today.

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Andrew Goodman (04:44):

A fairly precipitous drop,

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Neil Saunders (04:46):

It's a very precipitous drop, but one of the worrying things apart from the thing they did with Kanye, which was a very big risk, but I don't think it was a properly calculated risk. I think it was just a very opportunistic, let's throw something at the wall and see if it sticks type risk, which is not very sensible. Apart from the thing with Kanye, they just don't do very much. You go into a Gap today, it looks very much like a Gap of the 2000s and the 1990s. The product lines don't look very different. It doesn't do anything that's particularly exciting and fresh. And the worry is that it has been on this trajectory of decline. But in today's environment where it's even more punishing in terms of trade and consumer spending and all of those things, it risks further decline. And I think from here, unfortunately if it continues at the same pace, the eventual destination is oblivion. And so they're one of the great examples of a retailer, it doesn't really have much appetite for risk or innovation.

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Andrew Goodman (05:46):

Makes sense. I want to perhaps fast forward a little bit into a situation that Gap could find themselves in, in a scenario that one retailer that is very well known in a challenging, tight financial situation right now is Beth Band & Beyond. They're obviously in a more advanced, or if you could call it, that stage... A more advanced stage if you could call it that, of financial challenges. You made commentary recently that their restructuring plan wasn't compelling or wasn't very compelling at that. I'm curious, in light of your recent comments on the Gap, what could Beth Band & Beyond add to that plan that you feel would make it compelling?

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Neil Saunders (06:29):

Beth Band & Beyond is very interesting and it is very interesting for the topic of risk because to be fair, if you go back to Mark Tritton and those days of change, they took an enormous amount of risk. But I think the tail from Beth Band & Beyond is that risk needs some guardrails in place. And one of the guardrails is if risk is very experimental, you try it on a small scale first. You don't place the bet on restructuring and changing the whole business. I think risk also has to be informed. You have to understand the customers, the marketplace, you have to understand the competitive dynamics and you place your bets in line with those things. And I don't feel Beth Band & Beyond under that previous plan did any of that, which is why they found themselves in the position they are now.

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(07:17):

The current restructuring plan, it's not terrible. It's based on common sense, things like getting back to selling more national brands. The problem is that Beth Band & Beyond is in such a parlor state. It's in such a difficult position that there really isn't enough runway to remedy things. And the big question that comes out of their plans is, "Okay fine, you're going to put in more branded products, you're going to try and put more interesting things in there, but how are you differentiating from anyone else in the market?"

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(07:50):

Because quite frankly, I have a choice between, say, going to Beth Band & Beyond or Target to buy things. Target is the most compelling retailer. Have a choice between Bad Bath and beyond and Amazon, Amazon is a much more convenient retailer. Beth Band & Beyond just doesn't have anywhere in the plans, anything that says, "Hey, look, this is how we are going to stand out and get people to come to us rather than to competitors." And for me that that's a very big challenge, especially in the current environment because the home sector, it's not in the doldrums, but the growth has gone out of the market. And if you want to grow organic... If you want to grow, you can't grow organically, you have got to steal share from someone else and Bed Bath an Beyond just isn't in a position to do that, quite frankly.

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Andrew Goodman (08:39):

Makes sense. Yeah, a return to national brands is not indeed differentiation. It's not providing something that you can't get at other stores. You're right, it makes perfect logical business sense that return to better margins, perhaps their core promise to their consumers that they would carry those national brands in a pretty wide selection. But you're right, it's certainly not a point of differentiation.

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Neil Saunders (09:05):

It is in the name, isn't it, national brands. They're national, you can get them anywhere. Great to sell them, but it's not that unique.

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Andrew Goodman (09:13):

Yeah, absolutely. I want to go to the other side of the spectrum, of course Beth Band & Beyond being on the kind of most financially challenged side of the spectrum. I want to talk about leading indicators of risk. Loyalty programs are generally targeted and filled up at retailers by some of their most loyal consumers. It's in the name. It's part of their loyalty program. McKinsey came out with a report this past week showing that 37% of consumers shop at a different retailer this month that they had in the past and that was a rise in past switching behavior. I'm curious if you see that type of behavior as a leading indicator that loyalty programs are at risk and just wanted to stop there. Do you see that as a risk that retailers should be paying attention to?

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Neil Saunders (10:00):

First of all, I think on the shopping around, that is definitely something we are detecting in our data. And I think it is a trend in the marketplace because what people are doing is saying, "Look, our budgets are extremely tight. We don't have as much spare cash as we used to. We are looking for the best bargains, we're looking for the best price, the best value for money. And if that means going to a retailer than we usually shop at, we will do that." And we are seeing a lot of switching behaviors. People search around for the best bargains. Now as regards to loyalty programs, I have a view on loyalty programs, they're not really very much about loyalty. And the reason I say that is because the average American at this any given point in time is a member of about 6.9 loyalty programs, two of which are from groceries, the grocery sector or grocery store.

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Andrew Goodman (10:54):

Sure, makes sense.

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Neil Saunders (10:55):

And if you were genuinely loyal, you'd only be a member of one loyalty scheme. And I don't think that loyalty schemes are really about true loyalty. That doesn't mean, say, they don't have use, I think they do. But I think the two things that they're really used for is a slight nudge. It's saying like "Well, what can we do just to make someone maybe shot with us on a few occasions as opposed to going to another retailer?" They do work on that level if you offer good rewards, but the biggest thing they're about is customer data and insight because you can get an enormous amount of value from understanding what customers are doing if you connect their transactions to the loyalty scheme. And that's why most retailers have them, to be quite honest.

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Andrew Goodman (11:38):

Absolutely. It's a data play. And perhaps they can use that data as more folks join their loyalty program, make higher use of it to take increased amount of risk and perhaps lessen the risk profile of some of those bets. We had a question from the audience on risky tactics we think retailers should be taking right now that maybe they're not as risky as we think they are.

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Neil Saunders (12:05):

It's a really good question. What should retailers be doing with risky innovations or things that are a bit different? And I would identify too, and they're quite big, broad brush things, they would apply differently in different cases to individual retailers. But I think the two things that retailers should be trying to do more of, first is store and format innovation. Because there are big changes in the way in which we shop. And it goes well beyond just shopping online and offline. We are frequenting a lot of different stores. The dynamics of shopping have become very different. They've become a bit more local as people work from home more, those underlying trends are still playing out. And there's a lot of things that intersect with that. The type of things we buy is changing, we're buying more secondhand, more resale type products.

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(12:55):

So retailers need to experiment with different formats, different types of stores in different locations and not just keep to that old agenda of, "Wow, we operate these stores in malls and we operate these stores in strip mall." You still need those things. No one's saying throw the baby out at the bathwater, but try some new things as well. And to be fair, some retailers are doing that. Macy's is trying Market by Macy's a smaller format. Dick's is trying a lot of new formats for sporting goods, some more focused on outdoor pursuits. So we do see that. But I think there could be a lot more format innovation in retail.

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(13:31):

And the second thing is really what goes in the stores, it's with ranges. I think there's a tendency as times get economically difficult, there's a tendency to play it a bit safe with ranges and to stick to what we know the traditional model, the more basics.

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Andrew Goodman (13:47):

Of course, core assortment, real focus on making sure we get it right for the consumer they know and not necessarily for the one that they want to acquire.

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Neil Saunders (13:56):

Exactly. And that's a problem. But at the same time, in this kind of environment where people are umming and ahing that, "Oh should I buy this? Should I spend the money on this?" You sometimes need to have at least some bold bets in the store because what you want to have is something that people walk in and say, "Wow, this is really good. This is something new, it's fresh, it's interesting. I really want to buy this." And most people, not everyone because there are some people very badly affected, but most people still do have money to spend.

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(14:24):

What the current environment is about is a greater reluctance to spend with a lot of consumers. So you have to work harder to make them part with their money and part of that means having compelling ranges. And quite honestly, I do store checks at least twice a week and a lot of the stuff in stores, especially in fashion apparel, it's what I call meh. It's bland and that's not going to move the dial. I think more risk taking around ranging and merchandising is really important.

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Andrew Goodman (14:52):

Absolutely. Makes perfect sense. I would say it's especially important right now in a period where we've got some forecast data coming up for the holiday season that says consumer spending will shrink. There was a report that Deloitte came out with, I believe it was last week, that says retail spending's going to shrink 17% this holiday season. I'm curious consumer data that you might be able to share on that topic, and how can retailers think about how to differentiate their assortment when you've got about 20% less money in the pot?

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Neil Saunders (15:27):

Sure. I think those Deloitte numbers were for Canada, specifically the 17%. To be very honest, I would be very shocked if retail sales in Canada collapsed by 17%. I think what Deloitte has taken the reference from is a consumer survey that they ran. I don't think consumer spending overall will fall by that amount. But what the data show from the consumer survey is very, very clear. It's that people are feeling constrained and they are much more reluctant to spend. And I think that is a particular problem in Canada with the state of the economy and with consumer confidence. If we go to the US, I think we are in a similar position, but I think we are a bit better off. I think the US consumer is much more resilient, is much more spend thrift than the Canadian consumer. And what we are looking at is about 6.6% growth this holiday for US retail.

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(16:27):

Now that sounds okay and especially it sounds okay because it comes off the back of 13% growth last year, which is fantastic. But what you mustn't forget is inflation is included in those numbers. Actually most of that, well, all of it in fact is inflation. Our forecast for volumes is holiday season is that they'll be down in the US by about 1.1%. Now, that doesn't sound terrible, you think "Well, 1.1%" but we're talking about billions and billions of items that are bought. It's actually a very, very severe volume decrease. It's not a disastrous holiday season, but it is going to be a very constrained holiday season.

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(17:05):

The other problem is, and what we're detecting in the data, which goes to the point we just made, is that people are shopping around a lot more and they're going to spread their spend across more retailers. That means inevitably some retailers are probably going to lose out, retailers are going to have to work very hard to secure customer loyalty and customer growth. And I think the biggest thing that will come out of that, partly because they're also going to stimulate growth or try to stimulate growth through discounting, both because they've got excess inventory because they want to get good sales results is on margins. I think the top line numbers will, they'll look all right, especially with the inflation in there, the bottom line numbers I think are going to look very, very compressed and in some cases depressed as we come into the first quarter of next year when the retailers start to report the holiday results. And I think that's where—

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Andrew Goodman (18:03):

Absolutely. One thing I wanted to touch on there is that you've noted, and I think everybody's noted given the inventory glut, there is likely a cascade of promotion and discounting ahead during this holiday season. As you mentioned, top line revenue number is likely to be okay. But what can retailers do to maintain margins in a climate like this? Assortment differentiation is one of them. Curious if you could dive into certain types of assortment differentiation that they could take or other investments they could be making.

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Neil Saunders (18:35):

I think with the inventory side, it's actually a very difficult decision as to what to do for a lot of retailers because inventory is already committed. They've got a glut of inventory coming into the season, they've got inventory coming in that was ordered a long time ago. And to be quite honest, when you're in that situation, you don't have very many choices. You can either pack away the inventory and leave it till next year. And some retailers did that last year so they won't really want to do it again. Or you can try and sell it through which most retailers have said, "Look, it's better to try and get stuff on the sales line, get a shot at this inventory and we'll take a hit on margins." And a lot of retail guidance that has come out has indicated that that is what retailers are going to do. When you're in that situation, there are no easy answers, there's no magic wand to wave.

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(19:25):

What I think you can do though is just try to move the dial slightly, make sure you are getting the sales and not someone else. Starting early is absolutely critical because we know shoppers are going to spread the holiday spend over a longer period of time. And of course, Amazon's already had its pre-Prime event and I forget the curious name of it, it wasn't the Prime event, but it was the Early Access Prime sales. And Target's got early deals, Walmart's got them. Everyone has to have some of those headline deals to get people in.

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(19:58):

Great customer service when people are in store, help them find the things they need, make it easy for them. Don't put friction in the way because if someone is a bit uncertain about spending, doesn't take much to make them go elsewhere or not spend at all. Make sure you have the inventory there, the customer service levels there, all of those things are very important. In some ways for me, this holiday is what I call a back to basics holiday. It's getting all of those basics right so that the customer journey is smooth and easy and you're not throwing any obstacles in the way of people buying because people want to enjoy the holidays but they're very cautious about spending.

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Andrew Goodman (20:38):

Absolutely. And we had a comment in the chat, is the question, "Will the consumer bite, or will they hold off for further reduction in prices?" The Prime Early Access event is a great example of retailer putting out discounts and promotions. Were in October, almost two... October, November, December, two and a half months before the real holiday season. I think there's a lot of time between now and then for consumers to say, "Hey, target, Walmart, other big retailers are going to continue having these events. Maybe I'll wait until later in the season."

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Neil Saunders (21:12):

Oh, for sure. Every year we have a game of cat and mouse between retailer and consumer and consumers try to hold out in the hope the retailers will offer them better bargains. And I think that will happen again this year and it will probably happen even worse because consumers are much more receptive and much more in need of bargains now than in previous years. But what retailers need to do is keep the interest across the whole of the holiday season and I think Walmart and Target do have the right approach. Their approach is not about going on sale for everything, it's about selective deals over a period of time. And what they're hoping to do is get people to come into stores quite regularly, look around, say, "Oh that's a great deal, I need that for the holidays for a gift or for something at home. I'll buy that now because it's on offer." That's the kind of pattern of behavior they want to encourage.

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(22:04):

And I think consumers are reasonably receptive to that because they want to spread the cost of the holidays across a longer period of time. We hopefully will see some of that early activity. But again, you have to think very carefully, what does the consumer want to buy at this stage? What are they looking for? Just having a generic sale, you put some stuff on offer, that isn't intelligent enough. You've really got to think and look at those purchase cycles, how did it pan out last year? What do people buy early? When is the peak time for buying holiday decor? When do people buy the outfits for holiday parties and things? Use that intelligence to match up with when you do your offers and deals. Just offering general discounts is helpful but it isn't really an intelligent enough solution for the current environment.

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Andrew Goodman (22:54):

Yeah, I agree. It's interesting how retailers will choose the categories and products that will drive traffic to their stores for those promotions. I'll put out an example there that I observed yesterday. I was on Macy's website and so often with retailers like Macy's, it's 40% off the whole store. So you don't necessarily have a reason to come in to say, "Hey, Macy's never discounts in this category or this product." It's just so often it's 30% off everything or 40% off everything and really training consumers to just wait for the store-wide sale. So I think there's a lot of room for improvement there.

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(23:32):

Want to talk about a different type of risk that has been in the news lately. Kroger and Albertsons obviously announced the merger recently and their play there is lowering risk by merging to gain scale efficiencies. Of course, to better compete with Target and Walmart wherever they can. What risks are they introducing to their business models through this merger?

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Neil Saunders (23:59):

It's a very interesting question because they have taken a risk in coming together. We urge risk and it's a very interesting combination. I think I saw someone yesterday, someone called it Krogersons, which I thought was just an awful name. But I think the rationale for the deal is very clear. It's about economies of scale, it's about creating a bigger, more efficient business that can cope with the inflationary pressures, can hopefully enhance margins a bit because margins are extremely low in grocery. The risk is actually coming together because quite honestly you can put in a kind of manifesto or a prospectus how great this is and all of these synergistic savings that you can find by coming together, it is much, much more difficult to realize those savings and it's much more difficult to engineer the growth that you promise off the back of coming together as two businesses.

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(24:56):

And don't forget, these are two ginormous businesses. They are colossal. They'll have around 5,000 stores when they combined. They will reach 85% of the US market in terms of households. So this is a massive, massive merger of two giants. That is really complicated. You have systems, you have operations, you have cultural differences, you have differences in approach, you have differences in customer targeting, you have numerous fascia because both Kroger and Albertsons have a bunch of their own fascia that do different things. It's really difficult to come together and we've seen in the past it doesn't always deliver on the promises.

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Andrew Goodman (25:40):

No, it doesn't. Certainly doesn't.

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Neil Saunders (25:43):

Look at Walgreens. Walgreens brought Boots in the UK to great fanfare. It's now looking to sell... Well, it was until it found it couldn't get a good price. It's now looking to sell off Boots. Walmart, a fantastic retailer, bought Asda in the UK. It's since sold it off because whilst it wasn't a disaster, they never quite got the traction with Asda that they wanted to. They got some great things out of it but then never quite got the traction they wanted to.

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(26:09):

Look at Dollar Tree and Family Dollar. That was a disaster arguably. It's really interesting because Dollar General wanted Family Dollar at the same time and both Dollar General and Dollar Tree were battling out. And Dollar Tree won. And I think now Dollar General probably it's wiping its brow saying "Phew, we got off there. That was a good thing we didn't win that." Because Family Dollar has been an absolute nightmare to integrate and it has caused Dollar Tree no end of problems and difficulty and has resulted in it having to spend a lot of capital to try and bring that business up to scratch.

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(26:43):

That's the danger. It's in the bringing together to try and deliver all these things you're promising. As I say, it's so easy to put on paper how great it is, it's something else to deliver it for businesses of this size and that's what both Kroger and Albertsons have really got to look out for.

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Andrew Goodman (27:02):

Absolutely. Risks when they're in the multi-billions of dollars, of course the payoff can be somewhat magnified when you're considering risks like that. We have just a couple minutes left. I wanted to hit a question that is perhaps on the minds of most retailers out there right now. Inventory risk seems almost obvious at this point. Morgan Stanley just came out with another gut punch data point that there's a 19% discrepancy between inventory levels and sales growth at retailers this point average. It seems like everyone went all in. Did anyone see this coming?

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Neil Saunders (27:41):

No, very few saw it coming. And I think it stems from two issues really. One of which is very excusable in that supply chain disruption. COVID caused enormous disruption with container shipping, with manufacturing in Asia, and really no retailer could have predicted that. It was enormously difficult. No one even really knew COVID was coming until it was here. That is excusable. I think that just meant that things were arriving late, that there was too much inventory relative to some demand in some periods. That was a risk that I think nobody really could have identified. The part that could have been identified I think was forecasting that 2021, which was an enormous year for retail, it was a boom year, it was forecasting that the growth would just keep going like that.

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Andrew Goodman (28:35):

Yes, optimistic exuberance is the term that a lot of folks are using.

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Neil Saunders (28:41):

Exactly. It was a lot of exuberance and it was always very unrealistic. And I think what a lot of retailers did is they just scrambled to get in tons of stock to meet this demand, not really thinking about will this demand continue on this trajectory? Because it hasn't, it's come down to earth with a bump. And what that means is a lot of retailers are over committed. But it is interesting because some are better than others. I think if you look at, and to be fair, Macy's did manage inventory better. I don't think their inventory levels are quite as good as Macy's make out, I think there's some shenanigans going on with some of the calculations and prior year periods and the fact they've closed some stores. Of course inventory numbers are going to be down in relative terms. But they did, to be fair to them, manage inventory better than most.

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(29:28):

A retailer like Target, which comes in for an enormous amount of praise, usually was absolutely disastrous at managing inventory. They just went all in on ordering and even in their stores today they've sold some of it down, but there's still an enormous glut of stuff that they haven't sold through. And so I think that headache will continue. I think no one really saw it coming, but some I think have managed slightly better than others. And interestingly with Macy's, they do use a lot of data science and algorithms to try and predict demand and I think that probably helped them a little bit. They didn't come off scot-free, but they relatively did better than others.

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Andrew Goodman (30:05):

Absolutely. Yeah, makes perfect sense. Wanted to talk about a tactic that some retailers are taking in order to test new categories and assortments so that they don't end up in excess inventory scenarios. How can retailers, in your opinion, use inventory fulfilled by their vendors to lower some of that risk?

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Neil Saunders (30:24):

I think that is a very interesting model, and I think the margins for most traditional retailers, it works. You can try it with new assortments and things that perhaps you are a bit unsure of. And it's a great way of testing because you take some of the risk out of having bought that product and then having the responsibility to sell it through. It's almost you buy the product as you sell it. And you don't even necessarily have to fulfill it, it can be drop-shipped from a third party if that's the arrangement you have. It is a sensible model for new things. It doesn't work in total for most traditional retailers because they operate stores, they need to have inventory in those stores that's available for people to take away.

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(31:06):

The other risk of course is that if you do use that model, you de-risk in the financial sense, but you take on extra risks in that you are then very reliant on the third party you're partnering with. Suddenly if you get an enormous spike in demand, because the product is really, really popular and the supplier cannot meet that demand or is very, very slow at shipping or isn't very efficient at shipping, that alienates your customers. Because customers still see it as a transaction with you as a retailer. They don't say, "Wow, we paid you but we know a third party's doing it so we'll excuse you for messing up." It doesn't work like that. So I think that it's a very interesting model and it definitely works at the margins, but there are some inherent risks, especially for the big established retailers.

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Andrew Goodman (31:52):

Yes, makes sense. Sounds like volume and continuity of customer service are two things that really need to pay attention to in that model.

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(32:02):

All right Neil, we are just about out of time. Wanted to thank you for coming on the show today. Really appreciate it. Very insightful conversation. I'd encourage all of our listeners to follow Neil on LinkedIn and on Twitter, he is @NeilRetail.

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(32:15):

This has been the third episode of Recession Retail. We've got Jason Goldberg coming on next week and we're going to be talking about retailers leveraging private labels and third party data to win. Thanks so much everybody.