10 Retail Archetypes for the Post-Pandemic Era

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2021

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As retail stores begin to re-open this summer after a year of lockdown, Doug Stephens shares strategies for post-pandemic success from his new book, Resurrecting Retail.

Retail’s Darwinian shakeout over the last year has consolidated market power in the hands of dominant e-commerce players. But a brand, even if small, can still be mighty. The key is focus and finding a relevant niche, Doug Stephens said at VOICES 2020, previewing his new book, Resurrecting Retail, out on April 13.”

In the post-pandemic retail era, purpose will be the new positioning,” Stephens said. “What will be your brand’s reason for existing?” he asked.Stephens outlines 10 reasons why retail should exist in 2021 and beyond, from product education to activism.

“I see Covid-19 not as a mere accelerator, I see it as a threshold,” said Stephens. “As a unique wormhole in time where society as a whole is being pulled out of the industrial era and across the threshold of the digital age.” Though 2020 was challenging for a lot of retail companies, it has made the big ones like Amazon, Alibaba, JD.com and Walmart even stronger and better prepared to capture more of the global retail economy.
Brands must think about purpose: what is the question your brand answers? Companies that succeed in the marketplace do this well. “When we buy Nike products, we’re buying a cultural point of view, and Nike answers a very specific consumer question. The question, of course, is ‘Who inspires me?’” Stephens said.
In the post-pandemic world, the media will no longer be just the message. “Every form of media now, that the consumer has exposure to, is no longer simply a call out to go to the store,” Stephens said. “Every form of media must be the store.”

Take a Look Inside The Post-Pandemic Store

The New Rules of Brick-and-Mortar Retail

Tapping Into the Future of Physical Retail

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion.
0:13.1	Welcome to the Bof podcast.
0:15.0	It's Friday, April 9th.
0:17.1	Here in the UK, things are starting to look up on the retail front. After months and months of
0:23.0	the third national lockdown, stores are set to reopen this coming Monday, April 12th. In other
0:29.5	parts of the world, of course, in Canada, in France, in Germany, in Italy, new lockdowns have
0:35.4	been instituted to contain a third surge of cases of the
0:39.5	coronavirus. But overall, as we look to the summer, with vaccination programs well underway,
0:45.0	retailers are thinking about their post-pandemic strategy. Back at Voices 2020, our retail columnist
0:51.4	Doug Stevens shared some of the insights from his new book, Resurrecting
0:56.0	Retail, the Future of Business in a Post-Pandemic World.
0:59.7	Doug's book will be coming out soon, both in Europe and North America.
1:03.2	We thought it was an opportune moment to share some of these important insights about how
1:07.5	the retail industry might work in the post-pandemic era.
1:11.2	Here's Doug Stevens at Voices 2020.
1:14.6	Hi there, everyone. It's fantastic to be with you. And I just want to send a thanks out right
1:18.6	off the top to Imran and the entire team at Business of Fashion for having me as part of today's
1:24.0	event. You know, it seems almost inconceivable to me now that about 11 months ago,
1:29.4	myself and 37,000 of my colleagues from around the retail industry converged on the Jacob
1:35.5	Javitt Center in New York City for the annual pilgrimage known as the National Retail Federation
1:41.0	Show or the big show as it's known in the retail industry.
1:45.1	And little did any of us know at that time that the entire global retail industry was about
	...

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