Warren Richmond is a passionate storyteller, an ardent retail enthusiast, a progressive leader, and an innovative entrepreneur. Throughout his entire career span that mainly focused around retail industry, he has been driven by a desire to deliver the best possible customer experiences. As the founder and CEO of Situ Live, an immersive physical and digital shopper destination, Warren has remained an advocate of creating highly motivational environments and causing disruption in markets that need it. In an interview, he speaks on an array of topics. Excerpts:

Conception of Situ Live

Warren notes the existence of many trailblazing products in the market and the need to better airtime those cannot be truly demonstrated online, as reasons behind founding of Situ Live. “During my time setting up and growing field marketing agencies, I saw first-hand the problem lifestyle and technology brands have, showcasing innovation products through traditional retail and e-commerce. That’s why I founded Situ Live, an immersive shopper destination that brings products to life through experiential theatres, live demonstrations, and a digital discovery platform.”

“The first venue will open at Westfield London this September, showcasing a world-class collection of brands from the likes of Maserati, Oculus, Fitbit, and Bosch to cutting-edge companies with innovation you won’t find in other stores.”

Situ Live Product Experience Platform

With an aim to deliver an exceptional shopper experience, that engages customers long after they leave the store through an online community, Situ Live strives to create an environment that isn’t just about sales tactics, but about genuinely helping people discover and choose products that improve their every day. “This experience should also encourage the engagement and loyalty that empowers both consumers and brands. When people come through our doors, they’ll get the best of both worlds.”

Technology Vs Human Touch

Situ Live harnesses the power of emotional connections to help brands stand out in a competitive market, providing an economical way for them to present the true value of their products. “I think the main thing I want to get across is that while technology can undoubtedly enhance the retail experience, a human touch still matters. Modern consumers use a variety of channels, and so it is important for us to combine digital and in-store shopping practices in a way that suits them.”

Challenges Facing Retail

The recent lockdowns led to a surge in e-commerce and accelerated digital transformation and without a doubt, online sales will continue to rise, but that doesn’t mean people want the entire shopping experience to take place online, notes Warren. Businesses need to be investing in a seamless, omnichannel shopping experience and must be prepared to go wherever their customers are, and increasingly this is across a multitude of channels and spaces – both online and offline. “Unfortunately, very few businesses have been doing this, and there has been severe underinvestment in physical retail and customer experience. So, now is the time for brands to be bold, purposeful and evolve with the times, otherwise they will be left behind.”

Case Studies

Situ Live’s Westfield venue will showcase a range of products from premium, household names to emerging brands with ground-breaking innovation. “Each brand is charged a monthly subscription for inclusion in our fully managed experiential venues, on our online platform and for access to analytics. For established brands, it provides an opportunity to connect with a new audience. For instance, NordicTrack, who historically operated in the B2B space, are partnering with Situ Live as they want to increase their reach and sell direct to consumers.”

While for new-to-market brands – who may find it challenging to get into traditional retail stores – Situ Live is a flexible, low-cost entry point into retail. To find these innovative brands, the company recently partnered with small business support provider, Enterprise Nation, receiving over 500 applicants to its Spotlight initiative to find the next generation of high street entrepreneurs. “Ultimately the brands which benefit the most from joining us at Situ Live, will be those whose product value cannot be fully demonstrated online. Think VR headsets, sound systems, flat-screen TVs, and sofas” adds Warren.

Leadership Traits

“As a leader it is critical to set clear and consistent goals, and then to be persistent in achieving them. I need to have unshakeable self-confidence, particularly when faced with periods of uncertainty, and be able to effectively communicate this to my team. I would say I am authentic.”

“In my opinion, leadership and learning are intrinsically linked. I strive to learn something new every day. To do this, I surround myself with people with complimentary skillsets, and endeavor to learn through experience,” signs off Warren.

Galen Walters, CEO, Relationshop®, a leading digital shopper marketing company focused on the grocery retail industry delivers a retailer-proven shopper engagement platform to support personalized promotion and commerce. With more than 40 years of deep experience in the retail sector, he is creative, caring, authentic, and responsive. He believes that now is one of the most exciting times to be in the grocery retail industry, as it is undergoing a transformative shift from mass to 1:1 and analog to digital engagement.  Relationshop, with its integrated, digital customer engagement platform, and easy to use, big-data, analytics solution & eMarketing services, is ideally suited to meet what’s happening now and coming next. Excerpts from an interview:

Relationshop – The Concept

Relationshop® partners with retailers to grow sales and increase customer engagement through personalized solutions. Galen notes that the company was the result of a rebranding of their original company, Go Think! Retail. “In 2019, our digital platform (that we created in 2011) became the driving force for our company, so we changed the name from Go Think to Relationshop®, acquired our development team in Vietnam, and focused 100% of our efforts on developing the future of the digital experience for the grocery industry. Go Think! Started in 2007 as a consultancy, and quickly turned into a software company at the request of our supermarket clients, and the rest is history.”

The Digital Experience Platform

“After the rebranding of the company to Relationshop®, there was a need to clearly distinguish the web and mobile platform we had developed, so we branded it as the Digital Experience Platform, or DXP”, observes Galen. DXP, a SAAS product, is a fully integrated web, mobile, commerce, eMarketing, and analytics digital platform.  It manages the entire digital experience of the shopper for the retailer and is fully tied into their POS and loyalty systems, as well as pertinent customer and product data. “A light-weight personalization app (and there are plenty to choose from) can offer a shopper a coupon based on what they purchased historically, but can’t begin to address the broader digital journey, as our DXP does, to truly grow the relationship between the shopper and the retailer.  That holistic engagement with the shopper throughout their journey is the future of retail.”

Retail Challenges Galore

According to Galen, the primarily issues being faced by the retailers today is related to their historical investment into their digital and data infrastructures. “So much attention is placed on POS, and rightfully so, that it is difficult for chains to find the talent or the time for their teams to focus on building a solid and sustainable digital infrastructure.” There is so much changing so quickly pertaining to data and cloud services, and so many chains are stuck in the recent past and not looking at tomorrow due to resource constraints (talent and financial). Secondly, a lot of retailers were trying to play digital through the lightweight integration of widgets and personalization applications, and now find that they aren’t integrated as a platform and cannot support the more robust personalization now demanded by consumers.

Current Retail Technology Space

“It is the most exciting time to be alive in retail. Never has the retail industry had the impetus to change like they do today but, I will add that it is a bit later than it should have been. Had the industry taken the purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon, or the purchase of Unata by Instacart for the signal of change that they were, digital infrastructure changes should have been happening back in 2018 (or earlier) as technology became available and the convergence was clearly visible,” notes Galen.

The Success Mantra

Prioritization, setting great goals around People, Process, Partners and Performance to keep us intently focused, buckled to leadership framework of Why, What, How and Wow, have created a seamless management infrastructure that we all turn to daily for business continuity, adds Galen. “The team members are key to the technology advancement, the flawless execution, and customer satisfaction. I care about and for the team members deeply, and they then care about the product and customers deeply. It just works.”

Ziv Pitshon, CEO, Onebeat has strived to become an exceptional leader over the last 15 years. His excellent mentorship ways coupled with innovative ways of working has helped him carve a niche for himself especially in the retail industry. As the CEO of Onebeat, an innovative retail software that offers a robust and innovative platform for ongoing operational improvement, Ziv has been at the helm of affairs of the company. Excerpts from an interview:

Conception of Onebeat

Today’s retailers face an array of challenges: from dealing with an ever-growing demand for personalization and freshness from consumers, to handling new and fierce competition from e-tailers and global players, that need a new and innovative approach to retail planning and execution. “Onbeat is an innovative and consumer-centric platform specifically designed to help retailers face these challenges with a set of indigenous yet intuitive solutions. The company’s innovative and consumer-centric algorithms identify consumer patterns and market trends in real time, helping retailers all over the world to adjust their operations and react quickly and efficiently to changing realities in the market” observes Ziv. Its modules are seamlessly integrated to ensure the perfect execution for the retailers’ plan, while creating a direct feedback loop back to the planning stage to ensure continuous improvement in the next planning cycles.

“In Onebeat, we have created a unique value proposition. Our competitors, from the giants (SAP, Oracle, Blue Yonder) to the growing players, either offer high value with high cost of customization or offer low customization with small-medium value. We, at Onebeat offer high value with low customization cost. So, beside the fact that Onebeat has proven demonstrated results with its clients, it also gives a low-risk high-ROI offer to its prospects.”

Noting that the retail-tech providers ignore the relationship between processes and provide decoupled solutions, Ziv observes that only with profound system understanding of the retail processes, you can deliver immense value to the retailers. “In Onebeat, with our accumulated expertise, we have this ability and therefore, we deliver exceptional valuable solutions.”

The Platform

Noting that Onebeat follows a reversed approach, Ziv adds that instead of HQ->Stores, the company is working on Consumer->HQ module. “Now, every retailer will tell you that they are looking at trends and analyze their consumer data when they do the planning cycle. However, the lag between the study of the data until there is a feedback loop is too long- between 9-12 months. Instead of forcing the plan from the HQ to the stores and the consumers, Onebeat is putting the consumer as the engine of the whole process.” With the ability to read, analyze and calculate massive amount of data, daily, Onebeat can react to real-time actual signals from the consumer, helping the stores and the HQ to maneuver the plan to what is really needed, notes Ziv.

Retail Industry – Challenges Galore

Retail tech startups do not have the luxury of solving only the problems of today or tomorrow or next week. Retail tech startups should look at the trends of the market and vision the problems in few time frames (1 year, 5 years, 10 years) and make sure that their strategy is aligned across those time frames. Noting that some of their development effort will become obsolete in a few years, Ziv observes that the solutions designed should be flexible and relevant enough to solve the issues in the longer horizon time frames.

The Pandemic Effect

Ziv observes that COVID-19 has pushed the consumers to shift their consumption to online due to constant lock downs and social distancing norms. The brick-and-mortar stores witnessed a downfall in demand. “The challenge for the retail chains who were offering ‘hybrid’ operations is to combine them together and leverage on their physical presence too. Opposed to an online retailer, who has only few WHs to fulfill the orders from, the ‘hybrid’ retailers can use the store as a regional fulfillment center to ensure better delivery time. It is a paradigm shift, but retailers that won’t shift their mind, will stay behind and decline. The online retailers’ challenge is to improve the delivery time without increasing the cost to a dangerous level. The trend of delivery time reduction will continue and will set the ground for third party fulfillment that will have to solve the problem for the online retailers.

Leadership Traits

Excellence, modesty, resilience and being a visionary are few of the leadership traits that have helped him excel, according to Ziv. “I believe that the word ‘leader’ is the best way to describe myself. For me the word leader consists of two important aspects: the ability to dream and the ability to execute.”

Noting that failure is the key for success, Ziv adds, “fear of failure is natural and has roots in our biology. Nevertheless, in our modern world, if you haven’t failed, the meaning of it, is that you remained in your comfort zone, not exploring new possibilities, doing more of the same. If you fear of failure, you fear of being a leader. If you want to be a leader, you MUST fail!.”