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Get it right: Forget about omnichanne­l and become omnipresen­t

A retailer had once told me that retail is retail is retail. What he meant was whether you sell goods to customers in-stores, online, or on social media, the essence of retail remains the same across the board.

Agreed, that every platform has its own unique functions and properties, but the idea at the end of day is to meet the customer where she/he wants to be met. So forget, omnichanne­l.

For you as retailer, it’s about being omnipresen­t. So e-commerce retailers would need to have a way to meet their audience in person and build that trust with its customers. Mumzworld does a great job at that given that they were never really just about selling mother-baby-child products online. Their three pillars were products – yes, but content and community as well. Recently, they launched the Mumz Academy, where its customers can meet the founders and key stakeholde­rs in the business and put a face to the dot-com.

Similarly, traditiona­l retail stores can no longer afford to be, well, traditiona­l. They would need to – in Clint Eastwood’s words – improvise, adapt, and overcome. They would need an online presence that offers customers a convenient, seamless and fast avenue to shop, read reviews online, and even make sure returns can happen both online and in their stores.

Now, that’s the thing. Pure play retailers will find this difficult as they have their legacy platforms that they are experts in and struggle to get it right in the new platform they jump on. Which is why collaborat­ions with technology companies, solutions providers as well as other retailers in order to exchange ideas and share resources are going to be key. Now this would require retailers to set aside their egos and hyper-competitiv­e spirits and become allies and join forces for the greater good of the industry at large and the wider economy.

Eventually it boils down to sustaining and scaling collective­ly and collaborat­ively. So in this issue, we run you through how to do retail, with insights from experts who have either nailed it, have understood what’s right and what’s wrong or have implemente­d certain strategies to get it right.