Responsive Retailing

I spent the last few weeks at my client's office at Liverpool in the UK interacting with my extended team and the client. My client is a leading home shopping group in the UK and the nature of their business includes serving the shopping aspirations of a large population of elderly and 'differently abled' people though the various ‘distance retail’ channels via the internet, mail order or telesales. Distance retailing has been seeing growth, with more and more consumers utilizing this convenient and efficient way of shopping. My client like any other responsive retailer continues to find innovative solutions for their supply chain, planning and replenishment systems, all with the view to ship faster and importantly ship accurately.

Retailing is a large and diverse industry that regularly and directly touches most people's lives. Understandably, it attracts a lot of consumer and media interest. I have worked for various retail houses in the US and Europe in the past both from offshore and onsite but this trip was special due to some new learning around responsible and ethical retailing. I was as curious when i heard this term first as retailing is known for its wafer thin margins and corner cutting strategies. Ethical retailing was mostly restricted to consumer protection, merchandise insurance, returns and education about product information and consumer laws. One development that caught my attention during this trip to the UK was seeing a customer invoice in Braille. This, to me is a very right step towards inclusiveness and being responsive to a section of the society that depends on Braille for transaction and access to information. Dave Prescott, my colleague from the IBM UK office later told me how the law in UK requires agencies to be able to present utility bills in Braille when a customer demands it. This is indeed coming a long way from having separate access points in buildings, embossed floor numbers on elevator switch buttons for differently abled people. While the SKU attributes themselves may not have much influence on the buyer psyche in this case, features such as tele-ordering, invoices in Braille will empower the visually impaired to be a part of the retail movement. The new responsive retailing - the new order..