“Standing still is the most dangerous thing you can do in retail. You have to continuously evolve to stay relevant to customers. If you don’t, someone else certainly will.”
The above is a quote from an article I read a while back talking about the demise of the Body Shop – but it’s a message that also talks directly to the massive 🐘 in the room for retail currently – that the world is changing, but retail is (mostly) standing still.
It’s tough out there right now and retailers are feeling the pressure from all angles:
👫 Customers and stakeholders want brands to do better
🌎 The planet NEEDS brands to do better
🗣 Employees are actively choosing who they want to work for based on ethics and ESG policies
📉 Margins and profits are getting smaller
📑 And if that’s not enough, rafts of new ESG legislation are looming…
So how can retail weather this particular storm??
The rise of recommerce actually has many parallels with the rise of ecommerce, way back when I first started my career in digital. Back then, no-one really saw the value in selling online – it was too hard, it was going to cannibalise store sales, it couldn’t be profitable – and look what happened there!
The same arguments are being given now with the rise of recommerce – it sounds hard, it’s a distraction from the day job, it’s going to cannibalise sales of new products, it can’t be profitable.
💡 Sound familiar??
Change can be hard, but it’s time to be brave and recognize that retail is evolving and that to compete, you have to adapt. Resale is growing so rapidly that the reality for many retailers is that their biggest competition right now is their own products being sold on Vinted or Depop! 😮
Every retailer I know wants more new customers, deeper relationships with existing customers and to grow their revenue. Circular retail delivers against all of these AND helps the planet in the process. 👏 .
How?
– Offering buyback drives customer acquisition from the outset, and customer retention and LTV through the credit issued.
– Offering buyback can help build regenerative supply chains and reduce supply chain disruption risk – by breaking down preowned items and putting the components back into your supply chain or using them for spares and repairs.
– Offering new sales channels (resale, repairs, refills, upcycling) enables retailers to diversify revenue streams so they’re not solely reliant on selling new products to grow.
– Offering resale directly drives customer acquisition – opening up your brand to a customer that maybe couldn’t afford your products before, or prefers to buy secondhand so was buying your preowned product elsewhere.
Circular retail IS your future business model. It’s a model that’s good for people, profit AND planet.. 👫📈🌍
And in today’s world, surely that’s what every business should be aiming for??
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