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Donny Askin: “Stores are not dead”

Posted by Marcus LaRobardiere on Feb 23, 2021

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While the pandemic and subsequent shifts in consumer behavior have affected retail stores’ foot traffic and profits, stores are by no means obsolete—even with Amazon and other ecommerce giants occupying a larger portion of consumers’ wallets. Stores must adapt to consumers’ expectations and current society dynamics by incorporating more omnichannel capabilities into their brick-and-mortar locations, including contactless payments and buy online, pick up in store options.

According to Donny Askin, partner at Newmine—an AI-driven, predictive analytics platform that provides corrective workflows and total closed-loop and holistic analysis of returns—retailers with physical store locations must be willing to undergo digital transformation by examining how their own infrastructure and processes match up with consumer expectations. The ability to pivot and embrace omnichannel features will secure their survival.

Donny, who has helped start and build many SaaS companies during his career and currently holds an advisory role at NewStore, recently sat down for an Endless Aisle podcast episode with NewStore’s Senior Director of Marketing, Marcus LaRobardiere. Read on for several highlights from Marcus and Donny’s conversation, some of which have been edited for clarity.

On what stores need to focus on to survive

“Stores are not dead. Anybody that says that are maybe the same people that said traditional retailers were dead in 1998. In terms of what stores need to be focused on, number one is survival. And to survive, it requires digital transformation. I think there’s a unique window of opportunity to take a hard look at systems, infrastructure, the cost of all that, the business processes that go along with that, and rethink them, because the way people shop—the demands put upon that infrastructure—is changing.

“Even something as simple as point-of-sale. We go into contact with payments and we go into the Amazon Go-type stores, where a lot of the things that were critical and in the aisles for checkout will become moot in the not-too-distant future. The ability to service that customer no matter where their journey started is critical. If you don’t have that right, you won’t be around very long, in my view. 

“Another key area, which was just highlighted in this past shopping season, is the whole shipping and last-mile delivery issue. You’ve got a handful of carriers, and they have been overwhelmed with what happened during peak season.”

On how Donny views omnichannel

“I look at it in two dimensions. One dimension is from the customer experience and the other dimension, which has to relate to the customer experience, is really focused on the retail or brand owner. From the customer experience, I think it’s creating this experience—irrespective of channel—that the customer can just weave and bob through without any constraints. They may walk into a store, and they may return online, or they may return back to the store, and it shouldn’t matter. There’s been an enormous amount of maturation in that aspect of it, but frankly, there’s still a long way to go.

“From the business side, one of the greater challenges is creating the seamless, frictionless business set of processes between all of the channels that are viewed holistically, aimed at meeting the customer wherever and whenever that customer wants to interact. The challenge there is that, historically, retailers have been siloed. They had online, they had offline, and those worlds actually competed with each other. They had separate P and L’s—oftentimes, separate merchandise.

“I think the enlightened retailers, and certainly, NewStore, [have] gone a long way to provide the tool set to create this unified experience. You don’t have competing factions within the organization, but actually, factions that are tightly coupled and working together to create a great customer experience, which drives top-line and bottom-line results. So, omnichannel, to me, is the seamless, frictionless architecture from consumer experience all the way back to organizational structure within the retailer and brand owner.”

On the brands covered in NewStore’s Omnichannel Leadership Report

“You brought up the NewStore report, which is very comprehensive. I looked at the players that you noted, [including] Louis Vuitton, Nordstrom, Saks, and others. The experience I’ve had with those retailers [has] been positive.

“With the advent of COVID, you had this thinning of the herd, where everybody hit a brick wall, pretty much at the same time, spent the summer focused on existential issues of ‘how are we going to be in business,’ position themselves to make the pivot to primarily e-commerce go-to-market. Those that made it to the fall then set their sights on getting through the shopping season, and those that have made it through the shopping season are the ones that are going to thrive and go forward—primarily because of their nimbleness and ability to pivot.”

On the future of retailing

“One of the things I think is so advanced in NewStore’s thinking is creating this associate-centric point of view, where we’re enabling people no matter where they are—offline, online—[by] giving them the tools to provide a very personalized, almost clienteling experience. A consumer wants to be taken care of. To the degree that you can automate that and do it in an intelligent way with the supporting infrastructure is part of the future of retailing.”



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