so it turns out that you've been bad alright you were supposed to behave like an algorithm now let me explain a little just indulge me I need about 30 seconds of philosophy you see in the world's largest technology companies there exist armies of coders mostly in their 20s who have little experience of a world they're trying to change they live and work in an introverted Technology bubble all of their own making and Mozart like they write incredible magnificent lines of code designed to bend the world and dent the universe but in his book the seventh sense joshua cooper ramos says to us that mastery of programming is not the same as mastery of the systems of machine might influence and this is a remarkable quote program as he says should not think that the world is easily programmed as their computers so congratulations because it turns out that as consumers we are not easily programmed like a computer because after two decades of e-commerce we still overwhelmingly love to shop in physical stores so it's great to be here you know it's great to be a retail it's a great time to be a retailer there has never been a better time than now to be a retailer or be in retail and I really mean that we're entering some kind of retail Renaissance and I think that there's a lot of people who don't think this is the case and I'm sure you know about this narrative this narrative that online is is killing bricks and mortar retail that bricks and mortar retailers old economy that stores are closing and more will close that online is a low-cost model that consumers now use stores to choose things and then they go home and buy them online and that Millennials are doing all their shopping on their phones I'm sure you've heard this narrative before this is a very popular narrative and you know what I want to really do today is I want to unpack this narrative a little bit and I want to explore it there's a lot of smart people that believe this narrative and they've bet everything they have on it so let's explore it a little and maybe I'll propose to you a sort of a counter narrative which really is just a collection of ideas so think of today as a sort of a buffet take what you like and leave what you don't all right so I first started to become suspicious of the narrative when I noticed that it usually preceded a sales pitch for something you know the world is a scary place so you need our product your industry is dying but we can help you save it your business model is old but we can help you update it right and here was an army of salespeople from small startups to large multinational technology companies telling me that they knew retail and maybe I didn't of course technology is where it started the narrative that online is killing bricks and mortar has deep roots in Silicon Valley you know and it's frothy sort of startup culture time poor technologists who never liked retail to start with they never liked shopping to begin with mostly men were convinced that they could disrupt physical shopping were convinced that they could disrupt an old economy model and they invested everything they had in that you see technologists have this sort of defiant trendy job Xion belief that technology will disrupt all our economy models and they're absolutely convinced of it and you can't talk them talk to them about anything else so of course then the big money followed and we saw the global funds private equity that the Wall Street pile in with a multi trillion dollar bet and it is that it is a bet let's be honest it's a bet that the narrative is correct and that online and pure plan online particularly is enormous ly disruptive and so for instance the valuation of Amazon at three quarters of a trillion is effectively a bet right that P multiple is not justified by the profit it's justified by the narrative that one day something remarkable will happen and that Amazon will emerge hugely dominant retailers will mostly have died margins will go up and they'll make money by selling stuff don't be fooled Amazon does not make money selling stuff they're making money from Amazon Web Services and other activities their period into but they're not making money selling stuff so we have other situations where companies are valued on a narrative something like Tesla uber snapchat and you know it but if the narrative turns out to be wrong what happens to that house of cards that Nasdaq house of cards if those P multiples normalize so we're talking about huge money there's big money in the narrative the retail apocalypse is big business you better believe it it helped to sell fear it sells fear to retailers it's used to help underpin pure-play funding it's used to prop up stratospheric valuations and most of all it's very very clickable it makes a great headline to say that online is killing bricks and mortar retail it's very very newsworthy you know who doesn't want to watch a train wreck an industry-wide train wreck and this is why many journalists but not all go up it down like kool-aid because it's very very clickable so maybe I've offended you or some of the sponsors and I hope not but if I have you might not like the rest of what I have to say so let's let's explore some let's explore some facts around this and see where we end up right okay so a quick show of hands what percentage of retail in the u.s. is done online so if you think it's more than 50% put your hand up more than 50% of retail in the u.s. done online yes more than 40% keep your hands up if you said 50 40 40 30% put your hands up keep them all up 50s 40s 30s right we've got about half the room now 20 anybody last hands right you're wrong it's 9% so 9% of retail in the u.s. is done online now let's just stop and reflect let's park the nine percent reflect and for a second and let's reflect on the fact that half of the room thought that it was 50 40 or 30% that's the narrative the narrative is about misinformation disconnect between what's really going on and what we think or what the popular narrative is about what's going on so that that 91% of people or 91 over hundred people in the US that want to buy something get in the car drive down to a shop and buy it I've done that survey in rooms full of MBA students rooms full of academics rooms full of retailers and it's always the same I'm always stunned that there are hands the Garf at 50 percent 50% half of the retail being done online it's not even double-digit so let's explore that a little bit you might be thinking well their percentages you know he's being tricky with percentages so what about the actual amount surely the amount spent in dollar terms in bricks and mortar stores in the u.s. is going down well it's not it's going up every year since the GFC so people are spending more money in bricks and mortar retail in the US every year since the GFC this is in complete contradiction to the narrative the narrative that online is killing bricks and mortar is completely contradicted by this number now what about the online percentage it's about 9 percent that's about 450 billion then we're going to stick in the states because there's a lot of good US data it's a very good mark of the data and it's quite digitally mature so let's have a look at the online portion it's about 450 billion and let's talk about that now that that 450 billion of online well of course that grew as well so how much did that grow by you what did you think what do you think 200% 100% 50% even 40 30 20 so I hey Chel said that last year online retail in the u.s. grew by eleven point eight percent now that's a great growth rate eleven point eight percent but it's not unicorn territory so we have some things here that aren't starting to match this narrative let's have a look at the top ten online retailers in the u.s. let's unpack it and have a look at them right so the first one of course is Amazon no surprise there forty three point five percent I've read online retail in the u.s. done by Amazon may be the surprise for you is how dominant they are such a big market share of online what about the number two player or six point nine percent anybody it's it's eBay eBay with the number two chair now we're only at number two in the top ten hit list and already we're in sickness territory do you know why because eBay is turnover last year went down so that's number two who's number three we're three point six percent anybody it is in fact the grand old dame physical bricks and mortar retail Walmart largest physical retailer in the world it's the number three online retailer in the US Walmart in fact if we look at the whole top ten table six of these ten the top 10 online retailers in the US were born physical with bricks and mortar retail this is in utter contradiction to the classic form of the narrative which is that online is killing bricks and mortar retail six of the ten so this is just not matching what we think is going on and this sort of data is a huge surprise to a lot of people when they see it Barbara Thau from Forbes magazine said that in fact the online pure-play model might be the imperiled model evidenced by the fact that only Amazon and eBay have any heft an influence in the market this is incredibly insightful and we're starting to see commentators notice these irregularities let's talk Ireland because here we are in Dublin and in Ireland that we when there's a lot of distorted statistics any meaningful conversation in Ireland it's hard to have because there are a lot of confusing statistics some people want to quote some numbers are quoted at 9 billion some are quoted at 6 Simon quoted at 3 nobody's quite sure and and the problem comes from loosely interchangeable language so some people talk digital economy some people talk online spending some people talk online shopping and no one seems to really care which language is used it's all kind of loose and interchangeable but those three things are nothing like each other oh the credit card companies like to talk about online spend of course they do it's a nice big fat number it includes lots of stuff so let's talk it up if you're a credit card company you really want more people to shop online believe me because you're getting almost all of that business so big money behind the narrative so if you unpack let's talk online spend online spend includes booking a flight you can't book a flight in Ireland without doing it online it also includes walking a hotel booking a hire car booking concert tickets subscriptions for movies or music it also includes financial transactions like paying for your insurance house insurance car insurance or money transfers all that's in the online spend number so that's all rubbish we're gonna get rid of all that none of that is shopping and we end up with a much smaller number it's about 3 billion so about 3 billion is online shopping number in Ireland and that puts the penetration at about 6% so it's lower than the US and online is not killing physical bricks-and-mortar anytime soon in Ireland right but that doesn't match these headlines I'm always amazed at these headlines let's have a look at one from March now this was a press release put out by visa course they've got who've it up by most mainstream media you know and in some cases replicated in some other cases interpreted but have a look at this headline you are now armed with statistics you are armed with statistics and here's the headline from visa online spending overtook face-to-face spending in March what is what is Dermot on the street think that means Dermot on the street thinks that means that half of the shopping or more than more shopping was done online than in store this happens all the time these kinds of headlines start to watch for the headlines and unpicked the reality behind them what actually happened in March what happened in March was that Visa saw that online shopping grew at a faster rate than physical shopping well firstly that should be happening all the time given its only 6% and secondly in March if you lived here in Ireland you would know that Stormare my blanket at the place with snow and physical retails were closed for a quarter of the month and we all sat at home and drank wine and shopped online so it's not surprising this is just a total distortion this headline of what's actually going on let's go to the US and have a look at a headline from January so here's a headline from January January retail sales plummet now this was picked up by almost every major news article I think was picked up by Reuters and Bloomberg certainly all the major ones us USA Today so US retail sales decline in January horrendous some some some headlines went further and said that US retail sales plummeted by half a percent just Park for a minute where the half of the center's are plummet let's talk about the reality if you dig behind this they were comparing January sales with anybody with December and any retailer worth assault will tell you you cannot compare January sales with December that will always be down December has eight of the ten top trading days of the year so I'm surprised that they weren't down by more only half a percent but actually it's a false comparison so when you compare the January retail sales in the US with January retail sales the year before they were up 5.4 percent that's a cracking clip for a five trillion dollar industry so see this this is fake news folks fake news that's all about perpetuating the narrative is there an agenda in these articles not necessarily but there's certainly a lot of misunderstanding so the other thing that makes great headlines is high profile closures make no mistake and I'm sure you've seen them here's the brand's you would have seen headlines for all these and you know they're really really clickable you know these guys are going broke these guys are going broke everybody here closed stores some or all of their stores recently so let's see what's actually going on you've all seen photographs like this dead malls in the US right so here's a statistic for you in the US last year 4,000 more stores opened than closed so deep breath inhale that statistic in 4,000 more stores opens and closed in the US last year that doesn't include that does not include independence if you include independence it's more like 10,000 more stores opened and closed in the department store sector alone more stores opened and closed in the US last year the National Retail Federation estimates that this year there'll be 5500 more stores opening this is just a myth now if you don't believe this data let's try and look at it through a different lens let's look at property because if you're in the property game you'll understand that retail vacancy rates retail vacancy rates will tell the real story if more stores are closing and opening vacancy rates are we going up so what's happening with vacancy rates a big nothing burger nothing is happening with vacancy rates calm water no sign of the narrative this narrative we go looking for it everywhere and we don't find it it's not in the data so here's retail vacancy rates they are not changing those who believe the narrative breathlessly point to each new closure as incontrovertible proof that in fact online is killing physical retail there it is look look it's online what did it but if you dig under this you'll find more of a story in any industry there are always closures and failures it's a normal part of the business cycle its evolution it happens right and consumers today are more empowered than ever before they have access to more information they demand higher levels of service they want to be delighted and inspired when they come into stores that's a new high bar for retailers and if you don't jump over it you will die right and if you couple that with poor management and motivated staff high levels of debt and a tarnished brand you got a cocktail foreclosure and you're only going one direction and that's nothing to do with online so in fact of the of half the online or half of the physical closures in the u.s. last year over half of them were from only 16 chains and those 16 chains all had almost all had problems with legacy debt let's unpack two recent car wrecks of over closures and see what's going on let's talk about Toys R Us so conventional wisdom is that Toys R Us was killed by online that that was there there were definitely headlines that said that and a lot of people are walking around with that view Toys R Us is a quite a complex issue but in reality it died of a mix of self-inflicted wounds and structural changes in the toy industry toy the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates that between 1996 and 2016 took the average price of a toy dropped by 72% that's massive deflationary headwind for any any toy any industry at all and the toy industry has suffered dearly because of that deflation in addition to that you have debt Toys R Us was buried under a mountain of junk rated debt I don't know what you're thinking yeah fine because online was killing them so the debt was building up no most of that debt predates the rise of online 5.3 of that was loaded on by private equity during a leveraged buyout in 2006 so debt debt and debt and then they couldn't service the debt payments they didn't invest in the stores they didn't invest in staff the stores were tired cavernous and dingy which are imminent signs of a closure coupled with the fact that Walmart was now selling more toys than Toys R Us and now we're going for the skids Toys R Us was unsalvageable but if you compare that with Smith's toys in Ireland and Irish indigenous big-box toy retailer also active in the UK booming so here in the one sector retail in the one vertical toys we see somebody with the with the same business model thriving and somebody with the same business model dying and in a poetic footnote Toys R Us Germany Austria and Switzerland is being bought by Smith toys so this is none of this is about online and everything it back here is about really running a good business so look at another one of these failures Maplin poor Maplin well Maplin also buried under debt most of it from a leveraged buy it by private equity seeing a pattern but also Matlin had an outdated business model you see in its heyday matheran was a tech junkies heaven selling everything from multimeters to tools to components you know and later on the hobbyist and of technology products from mass merchants techno technology products but today's geeks are kotas they don't use soldering irons and buy components so lack of demand coupled with constrictive ly small store formats saw Maplin go the way of the dinosaurs this was a and it's a model due for extinction natural evolution and if you want proof go to the US and look at exactly the same business model RadioShack and go to Australia and look at exactly the same business model Dick Smith electronics gone gone gone right no narrative here and when we look at these closures there's always these patterns of debt or outdated categories with waning demand and there's something structural going on in that part of the industry or in that brand I want to talk about two of the myths that underpin and fuel this narrative that retail is being killed physical retail has been killed by online the first one is this this one is huge for me the idea that buying and shopping are the same thing believe you me buying and shopping are not the same thing they look the same they really look the same if you're in the technology industry but you know what they're not the same they're completely different so shopping is a recreational activity it's physical its tactile its exploratory it's experimental it's educational it's social right it's entertainment for most of us it's fun that's shopping buying is getting what you need it's functional I shop for a suit or I shop for a sofa or a shop for a TV but I buy my sandwich at lunch no one ever shopped for a sandwich at lunch right these two are different and the failure to understand this is one of the reasons that props up the narrative so there are many smart people that really struggle to get this distinction between shopping and buying and I find when you dig into it it's usually due to their worldview and their worldview is that shopping to hassle you know it's an inconvenience you might be like this yourself you might know people like this you know it's a pain it's a grind and technologists are often like this you know these time poor men we talked about you know the technology industry here they are and shopping it's all this parking and driving and fighting the crowds and dealing with other people and having a queue and pay and lug shopping bags and it's just a huge pain point and so technologists are like inventors all right they try to solve the problems of the world by investing brain cycles so here's this pesky shopping problem and we're gonna try and solve it and win every when when the only tool you have is a hammer technology everything looks like a nail so you bash that Niall there shopping now and and you fix it so so you know ma'am now you can just go you don't have to go shopping anymore you can sit at home press the red button and all these brown packages just turn up at your door and you've been spared of the indignity of having to ever go shopping ever again the world has been solved with a pain point do you see I'm exaggerating a little bit you see the misguided thinking here that's leading this idea that somehow online shopping was solving a problem and that's one of the reasons why after 23 years of Amazon many technologists cannot get their head around the fact that most of us overwhelmingly want to shop in physical stores overwhelmingly the majority of the time so I want to talk about the second myth and the second myth is very pervasive and that's this myth that online is somehow a low cost model you see in the early days that was the idea you know you could start a website anybody could from your garage and you could sell stuff cheap making a website was cheap so it was gonna be a low cost model you're gonna kill all those retailers cuz you weren't gonna have all those fixed costs like rent and all that sort of stuff so this was you know really attractive but the problem is today the emperor has no clothes online it's not a low-cost model pure-play online is definitely not a low-cost model and I'll show you why the first reason is that your store is located in the middle of a swamp that swamp it's called the Internet all right it's a swamp swamp we swamp swamp there's no trust lower levels of trust is fraud there's all sorts of stuff going on there now on trust anybody you don't know who anybody is and this comes with a cost I'm not just describing a neighborhood here this neighborhood comes with the cost javelin a us research company estimates that the average cost of dealing with fraud for online retailers is 8% of turnover that includes fraudulent charge backs on credit cards so you already got a cost base of 8% just because of the swamp and that 8% many retailers rents aren't 8% so you're already at a stage where you've got this big cost and the difference between that 8% fraud cost and rent is it scales with turnover so getting big is not going to help you so this is not the only trust issue there's all these privacy and data protection costs and their extraordinary GDP are we see all of this coming and the costs are growing so now we have to protect all this data and then what we don't trust who you are the more personal information we ask are for you to verify who you are and the more information we've got which we could leak one in three US consumers have been a subject of a data breach this is huge so you've got trust costs linked to fraud and privacy and data but you've also got distrust cutting both ways consumers not trusting retailers and this comes with a cost so let's start by trying to explore how swampy the swamp is let's talk about fake reviews and I'll explain why in a second The Washington Post did an expose on fake reviews and they used a company called review method review meta uses cut and paste phrase matching and pattern matching to identify fake reviews it's a very reputable service the Washington Post used them and found that two-thirds of the reviews on Amazon for the top 10 Bluetooth speakers were fake completely fabricated now there were 48 thousand reviews and two-thirds of them were fake they fell in over a hundred paid groups on Facebook devoted to buying and selling fake reviews one of them had 50,000 members right and why is this a problem well think about it if you miss describe a product you tell somebody this is wonderful when it's not or you get a fake reviews you're driving up costs for other retailers and order promote to get above you in the rankings in marketplace but you're also creating what false expectation which leads to refunds so we've got to talk about refunds because they're really expensive imagine this the average rate of refund an online retail in the US according to invest is 30% 30% almost one in three items ordered online come back think about that you've built a warehouse a Depot - ship and million packages and 300,000 of them come back in the bloke gets her out of the van says someone didn't want all this 300,000 packages and now you've got to hire a team of people to sort them and this is really expensive why is this stuff coming back firstly because it's not what I thought it was fake reviews misdescription or just false expectation not what I thought it was the second reason that that is that I'm sending it back might be that I used it or I wore it you see it's the swamp why am i sending it back after I wore it because I can write no questions asked and the third sort of thing is this new practice in apparel shopping called bracketing where I buy multiple sizes and send back the one that doesn't fit I send you back five that didn't fit and I keep the one that did guess what maybe you do that yourself 40% of apparel buyers on long and bracket 40% so the return rates of 30% you got half you got all that rolling back and gardener estimates to half of the returns for online retailers are unsaleable at full cost how you following all this maths 30% coming back half of it is unsalable it's got to go through Salvage divisions and been sold on flea markets outlets online auctions for pennies in the pound and this is totally unsustainable the refund rates are through the roof in the UK they're up to 40% with some retailers they're completely unsustainable so online much online brands like a sauce booooo-whoo and Zappos their dirty little secret is that these refund policies no questions asked which consumers expect now are totally unsustainable they're certainly environmentally unsustainable last year according to a company called opt or oh two point five billion kilograms billion kilograms of returns ended up in the solid waste stream in the US this stuff's going in landfill right biz it's cheaper than doing anything with it this is all unsustainable and if it isn't costs on your P&L now it's going to be costs later the environmental costs will eventually get charged correctly so we see all this cost we haven't even got to the biggest cost the biggest cost to stick and stuff on a rocket ship and getting it to you an hour after you ordered it and you know what I'm talking about Next Day Delivery same day delivery same ow delivery same minute delivery delivered to you five minutes before you even thought of ordering it psychic delivery it's really really expensive it turns out that shipping stuff fast is really really expensive Armstrong a supply chain consultancy said that the average price of fast delivery is going up a 10% every year imagine a cost going up a 10% every year and Mackenzie are saying that the last mile if you want to do it fast adds 50% extra costs to the delivery these are unsustainable Amazon last year alone sunk 10 billion 10 billion is the difference between what they charged for delivery and what they paid to do delivery in fulfillment 10 billion was the shortfall they've never made 10 billion if you add up every year that they made money it doesn't come to 10 billion and they sync that every year in filming costs this is one of the reasons they're not making money selling stuff they're making money elsewhere so we see these costs you know credibility and fraud costs you know returns cost data processing Salvage costs super super fast delivery and it turns out customers are pretty blasé about superfast delivery in a survey by McKinsey 70% of consumers said that they'd rather choose the cheapest delivery than the fastest and in another study by Deloitte two-thirds of consumers said that for day delivery for no no Nora was fast he sees that this is not about what consumers want this was all about getting more penetration and taking business off physical stores because physical stores you get it quick right so if we can get it to you quicker than driving into the top and coming back in the shop then we there's that hammer bashing that nail right super fast delivery it was all about taking business off stores it's hugely successful and it means that these cost bases are getting bigger and bigger they all scale would turn over the ones with asterixis you can't outgrow any of those and margins are squeezed because you're online hey you better have the best price in town you're the online site so you're getting low margin high cost you're making any money so you either losing money or you be any going broke or you're being bought by a bricks and mortar retailer or you're pivoting deftly type in your own stores aren't you and opening stores we have to talk about that because this is in direct contradiction to the narrative and if you want some sport Google articles about online retailers opening their own shops and watch the journalists struggle with the first paragraph this shouldn't really be happening and it's not really easy to understand but and the rest of the article is how fabulous it is so no one can get their head around this because it's indirect contradiction is a narrative because if online is killing physical stores online brands shouldn't be opening physical stores but they are lots of them are why would you want to play in the kiddies pool of 9% of online when you can play in the adults pool of 91% of brick-and-mortar retail right this is not a nice to have anymore for most online brands its core to their strategy all right here's all the brands a lot of them you won't know because they're us brands and this is a double an audience but here's a lot of brands that have opened physical stores so what's going on right and what's going on is this is actually an inglorious admission of defeat wrapped up in a warm humble pie of PR spin that's what's going on because it turns out the physical stores add legitimacy to a brand there's all this research that says that lowers return rates it increases conversion rates it makes for a more intimate customer experience between the brand and the product right stores work and also massively reduces customer acquisition costs bonobos an online clothing retailer reduced its marketing from 25 percent of turnover yes I know 25% of turnover - 4 % of turnover by opening shops and in another piece of research by some researchers called Wang in Farber good sir it's a academic piece physical stores operated as digital as billboards for Digital brands driving awareness who'd have thought what I find most interesting is the language used around these these shops they never called shops they never called shops they're not call stores they never want to talk about them like that they always have funny names like you know wobbly Park I call them Guide shops and bonobos call them I think but I almost call them showrooms they've always got these names and they're always talked about by journalists and analysts in these hushed tones like some temples to some new God right they're just stores funky trendy minimalist shops fine they're just shops right why because shops work so this is what we see is going on Amazon after their purchase of Whole Foods have made a big bet on physical retail they now have 495 shops and over 10% of almost percent of Amazon's turnover last year came from sharps it's come from shops right this is a huge pivot in the physical retail and the Asian players understood this entirely Alibaba has invested billions in a physical grocery chain and its own electronic consumer off bro offline consumer electronics brand $0.10 has over 800 stores in many ways the Asian players understood the nuanced interplay between offline and online better than the very us centric version of the narrative which was very binary it's one or the other will win and the Asian view is a bit more nuanced so they've got first mover advantage in that respect we see ultimately what's happening and let's be realistic is that there's a great convergence physical retailers are upgrading their digital capabilities digital brands are opening physical stores and we're converging in the middle aren't we it's all just going to be the same no it's not because running stores and online are two completely different activities one is about one is the technology activity the other is all about managing huge numbers of people energizing and inspiring them right and technology companies have zero zero historic capability managing large numbers of frontline consumer facing people this is something retailers have been perfecting for 50 years so you will get a front-row seat to watch technology companies try to manage armies of consumer facing people that's why Amazon is inventing its human --less soleus go store and saddle with no people it's all about getting people out people out of the warehouses with robots people out of deliveries with drones and people out of the shops because they don't want to have to deal with people because people don't behave like algorithms so you're gonna watch this right you're gonna have a front-row seat so buy some popcorn I don't want you to misunderstand me this is not some crusade against digital or online right ecommerce is hugely important to every retailer it's make-or-break for most brands but what I find toxic is this narrative that online is killing bricks and mortar that bricks and mortar is some kind of old economy model that fuel play online is is is game-changing lead ominous that stores are the past that the Internet is the future that shopping and borrowing are the same thing and that technology will save retail I find this to be a false narrative right and why is this important it's hugely important because without new voices we can't reframe the competitive landscape and get away from this current distorted view of what makes a good and a bad retailer in the space it's also creating a blind spot for us the false narrative creates a blind spot because we incorrectly diagnosed retail failures it's one-dimensional thinking to say they went broke because of online and it means we don't learn from what's really going on in the industry the other thing is that you as retailers will need to decide if you believe this narrative or not because it will make it'll strike at the heart of investment decisions that you will make will you invest that money you have in upgrading your stores and training you people or will you invest the money in futuristic smart mirrors digitization projects augmented reality apps and breathless stories about big data where are you going to put your money it's really going to matter so you're gonna need to decide and finally and most importantly for me this false narrative is very damaging to the idea of retail as a great career it stigmatized as the essence and legacy of retail and that's worth fighting for we need bright young people to come into the industry to make tomorrow's amazing consumer and omni-channel experiences and that won't happen unless we rewrite the narrative to say that people and stores are at the bleeding edge of disruption omni-channel is now definitely the dominant species people will move seamlessly online and offline offline online and they'll buy where they want but retailers of tomorrow will live and die on their in-store experiences right retail is not dying bad retail is dying I want to leave retailers with three three tips to take away from what I've said the first is ironically invest in technology you need to invest in technology however invest if you have to but use your intuition it will serve you well don't buy snake oil to invest in your stores your in-store experiences need to be remarkable or tweetable remarkable is then able to be remarked on worth remarking on if they're not you'll be irrelevant and you'll be forgotten and three invest in your people that are the walking ambassadors of your brand they are your competitive advantage they will make or break your business I want to finish with a quote from Elon Musk the great technologist who recently when deciding not to automate his Tesla plant anymore said this and I quote humans are underrated never have greater words been spoken the magic of retail of the human of human experiences that happen in your store every day never been a better time to be in retail thank you very much [Music] [Applause]
