What: The former MD of Selfridges reviews the four points she believes are crucial for retailers willing to embrace the future

Why it is important: The speech is less a PR stunt and more of an open list of questions, revolving on 4 topics (business model, sustainability, metaverse and organizations) all approached honestly by a true retail veteran.

Anne Pitcher, former MD of Selfridges and new deputy chairwoman of Holt Renfrew, shnares some thoughts about what the future of department stores could be, at the light of the past 3 years, which, instead of providing a post-pandemic hedonistic framework, ended up with more stress and issues at the entire social level. She believes that the needed changes can also be brought by the retail industry, not only at the brand level, and identifies 4 challenges:

-    The structure of the business, from top-down leadership to something more collegial and based on teamwork, helping to collectively solve major issues such as sustainability (this is also a thesis we are defending in our most recent White Paper on sustainability, issued in Q4 2022),

-    The climate crisis, which once again requires new models (Selfridges expects to achieve half of its turnover through circular models by 2030). Pitcher goes so far as to envisioning a future where customers will be able to monitor in real time the evolution of their product’s value. Interestingly, she mentions that this obviously raises some pressing questions in terms of margin and profit.

-    The Metaverse: she turns down Meta’s vision of it (which is essentially a better version of Zoom) but remains convinced that the metaverse can create new opportunities for retailers who should be thinking outside the box (this also raises questions about the physical store and its purpose in the future),

-    Retailers’ obsession for control, all the more than working flows are increasingly stemming from ecosystems and not in a top down manner anymore. For her, this involves discarding the old ways of working.

Anne Pitcher about the destination of the future