Retail Success Relies on Customers, Employees, and Brand Image

No matter how large or small they are, retailers must grapple successfully with customers, employees, and their own brand image if they’re to emerge as leaders within the industry, according to experts who convened at the sixth annual Retail Conference at the Hyde Park Center November 9. Organized by the student-led Retail Group, the event featured several alumni and drew dozens of students who wanted to hear candid, in-the-trenches stories.

Keynote speaker Efraim Grinberg, CEO and president of Movado, described a brand as “an unspoken promise to consumers that it will not disappoint.” But, he cautioned, “Great brands must also remain businesses that continue to execute on all fronts, deliver on their promises, and perform at an appropriate financial level.”

The employee plays an important role in brand building, said Jeff Wilcoxon, ’04. The cofounder of Bobtail Ice Cream and Coffee Co. was among panelists who described the challenges of marketing an emerging brand. Wilcoxon said he shares the “Bobtail story” with employees and encourages them to care about the company’s vision. “It goes back to training your team and trying to replicate your own passion,” he said. Soliciting employee input helps, Wilcoxon said. “We let them feel heard, and let their ideas come to life, and that’s something you can’t get at Starbucks.”

The customer, too, can come to care about an emerging brand, Wilcoxon said. “At our level, there’s probably a lot more trial and error,” he said. “You can recover from a small mistake, and customers give you the benefit of the doubt because you’re a small company trying to figure it out.”

Even for successful chains, the retail world can be a rocky one, said Gap Inc. senior manager Amy Carr, ’04, one of the panelists who talked about established brands. “It’s finicky, and it’s hard, and it’s trendy and that’s hard to predict.”

Getting to know the customer is a challenge, she said. Companies can collect a battery of data on customers, “but it’s really hard to figure out what to say to each person individually. We have all this data and we still ask ourselves, ‘Now what do we do?’”

The main mistake retail executives make is to think they themselves are a typical example of their customer. “I think that is the number-one problem,” Carr said.

—Jenn Goddu