Retail Transformation maven Oliver Banks is back on the podcast live from the U.K., discussing his new book, "Driving Retail Transformation: How to Navigate Disruption and Change." Using a clever set of automotive metaphors, Oliver takes us through his retail transformation steering wheel tool. He takes us to a better place in our journey to becoming a high-performing retailer.
Retail Transformation maven Oliver Banks is back on the podcast live from the U.K., discussing his new book, "Driving Retail Transformation: How to Navigate Disruption and Change." Using a clever set of automotive metaphors, Oliver takes us through his retail transformation steering wheel tool. He takes us to a better place in our journey to becoming a high-performing retailer.
About Oliver
Oliver Banks is an expert consultant working with senior leaders to transform retail businesses and operations. One of the most influential voices in retail, Oliver is author of the new book, 'Driving Retail Transformation: How to Navigate Disruption & Change' a LinkedIn Top Voice, host of the Retail Transformation Show podcast and keynote speaker, and advises on navigating transformation and the ever-evolving world of retail.
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Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael LeBlanc, and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Retail Transformation maven Oliver Banks is back on the podcast live from the U.K., discussing his new book, "Driving Retail Transformation: How to Navigate Disruption and Change." Using a clever set of automotive metaphors, Oliver takes us through his retail transformation steering wheel tool. He takes us to a better place in our journey to becoming a high-performing retailer. Let's listen in now.
Michael LeBlanc 00:37
Oliver Banks, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast, my friend or welcome back, I should say. How the heck are you?
Oliver Banks 00:42
Hey, Michael. Well, it's fantastic to be back. Thank you so much. I'm doing really well. How are you?
Michael LeBlanc 00:47
I'm great. Better for being able to talk to you. It's been a minute since you and I have been on the mic together. It's been too long; a lot has happened in retail and a lot has happened in your life. You got an exciting new book we're going to talk about and we're both, we should probably both give a shout out to Rethink Retail. We used to be influencers and now we're experts. So, I guess we got promoted, I think, is what happened there?
Oliver Banks 01:10
Indeed, we stopped shouting and started using our brains, it feels like.
Michael LeBlanc 01:13
I guess so. So anyway, so listen, for those listeners of mine that may have not heard our first conversation, which is, you know, probably now almost 18 months or maybe even two years ago. Give us a sense of who you are and what you do for a living.
Oliver Banks 01:29
Sure. So, I'm a retail transformation specialist. I'm a consultant and I work with senior leaders to help transform retail businesses and operating models. I'm a fellow podcast host, and it was wonderful to have you on my show equally a long time ago, which we should probably resolve soon, Michael.
Oliver Banks 01:51
It's called the retail transformation show. I'm a LinkedIn: Top Voice for Retail and general all round retail transformation nerd, I suppose you could say, and an author.
Michael LeBlanc 01:51
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 02:03
And, and I guess just judging by your accent, you're from South Carolina, I would say are you living-, where am I finding you today?
Oliver Banks 02:14
I am from just outside London in England.
Michael LeBlanc 02:18
Well, there's a bunch of stuff I do want to talk about. I can't have you in the microphone talking about how retail is going in the UK. I think we talked about that a little bit. So, I'll get to that, but first and foremost, you've got a new book. Congratulations, I barely have time to, you know, I barely have time to read books, let alone write them. So, congratulations.
Oliver Banks 02:38
Thank you.
Michael LeBlanc 02:39
Tell us-, tell us about a little bit about the book and then we'll kind of peel back and tell us about the book the title and then you know what-, what-, what-, what got into your head to write a book and-, and who did you write it for?
Oliver Banks 02:55
Sure. So, thank you. The book is called, ‘Driving Retail Transformation: How to Navigate Disruption and Change’ and really, it's a recognition that, you know, in the retail industry, there is disruption going on everywhere. There's all these shifts and evolutions happening all of the time, and we need to evolve and change and transform, but it's definitely one of those areas where saying it is a lot easier than doing it and despite all of that we talk all the time about the watts of transformation. Yeah, we're talking about omni-channel this and AI that and everything, but realistically, we don't ever talk that much about the how of change, how do we actually transform, and I suppose this book was-, was-, was my answer to that it's the 'how' of transformation.
Oliver Banks 03:51
So, it's thinking about how do you understand the problems or the challenges or the opportunities that your organization faces, how do you define the appropriate solution that makes sense, how do you manage your own mindset, and how do you lead the change across the company and ultimately, how do you make progress and deliver an implement an excellent change that improves your organization and hopefully the world for the better.
Michael LeBlanc 04:22
So, I'm going to-, I'm going to, you know, inflict upon you and the listeners upon it's called driving retail transformation. Can you, can we see it as a roadmap? When you started to put pen to paper or fingers to keys, is that what you were thinking? Like, I need to put together a roadmap and structure a book in such a way that that people can follow it and kind of get their heads around these big like as you said we all understand there's big things happening but how do I take it into my workplace or my, my life and actually make that change and transform?
Oliver Banks 04:54
So, I'm glad you picked up on the-, on the puns because your driving metaphor flows through the entire book and you know, I call it the journey of change, right? So, I draw lots of comparisons to going on a physical car journey, right, everything from looking in the mirror through to the steering wheel through to roadblocks and everything. So, I do, I have a bit of fun, but it works really well actually and there's-, there's lots of comparisons to going on the journey of transformation versus a literal journey that I believe we can learn from, and it helps us to understand what it is we're doing and why.
Michael LeBlanc 05:39
And, you know, was this book a culmination of all your experiences and consulting work and great work that you do, that's just been kind of building up and say, I'm gonna-, I'm gonna just do a big data dump. I'm just gonna basically, you know, I'm just gonna-, everything I've been saying, everything I've been hearing for the-, my whole career I'm just going to articulate in the book. Is that-, was the book, they're ready for you to write or did you have to work and start to put some new models together to frame it up in the way that you want it for the book?
Oliver Banks 06:09
So, I have certainly played my time with post it notes literally all over my office in the house and everything. So, I've certainly done my data dumping, but actually, you know, I needed a huge amount of processing to work out what actually, what are the patterns, what are the relevances I spent, it was actually really wonderful, Michael, the opportunity to reflect has been enormously valuable for me. You know, we reflect, and we do lessons learned and stuff at work and that's great, but it's very much on the short term reflection, usually.
Oliver Banks 06:47
So, for me, what the Pope did was this opportunity to step back and really think, you know, much more expansively about reflection, and think, well, here is this change over here and my experience, and that worked really well and yet, here's this other change, which looks and feels fairly similar, but it didn't, it stuttered, it stumbled, it stalled. To use a driving pun, what was the difference and what was-, why did-, why did those two, in a very basic example why did-, why did they differ, and it really allowed me to step back and, and soak all of that in and absolutely have developed new models. There are models that I've been using for many, many years and there are patterns and opportunities that I suppose have come out as part of that reflection. So, a mix of the two, if you will.
Michael LeBlanc 07:37
Interesting, and-, and who should read your book? You know, when you're writing into Do you have someone in mind? Is this book for C level executives, mid-, mid-level executives, people just starting out, the answer could be yes.
Oliver Banks 07:51
Well, it's for retail leaders and I'm going to expand on that, because in the retail industry, we have so many brilliant, genuinely fantastic experts in their field, you know, supply chain gurus, you know, creative product designers, you name it, we've, we've got people that know everything about everything for that area, and they work within our retail organizations and ultimately, they do fantastic work, but the challenge is Michael, is those individuals who were being functionally brilliant at what it is they are doing. They're not also change and transformation professionals at the same time, yet.
Michael LeBlanc 08:33
Is that a-, you know, we might describe that here in North America, as you know, when your hammer everything looks like a nail syndrome kind of thing?
Oliver Banks 08:41
Yeah, to some extent, but, but you can't be the hammer that can also screw in the screw to your point, and also measure the shellfish straight. So, you can't be all things to all people. So, I suppose the book is there for those functional experts that need to change and need to lead change, but they're not necessarily experienced in that world of change and transformation and I use the term leader because it doesn't need to be someone with you know, 'Chief someone officer' as their job title, right? They don't need to be in the C suite or higher up in the organization, they can be someone that wants to take responsibility for driving their organization forwards they, you know, early on in the book, actually, Michael, I asked the reader if they want to be a passenger or the driver and this is absolutely the book for those that want to be the driver.
Michael LeBlanc 09:42
Now, I often ask this question of authors like yourself, you know, the shelves are pretty crowded with books on every kind of subject in business including transformation. You know, where did you see a gap when you-, when you sat back as a good consultant that you are and say, I think there's a gap, there's an opportunity. What-, what gap was that? Was it in the structure of the book or the approach? Talk about that and your thinking there.
Oliver Banks 10:06
Yes. For me, it's, you know, transformation. We talk about it all the time, and arguably, is an overused word, right, but for all of that, many of us don't have books on it yet, perhaps we do it all day long, which is quite a peculiar place really and I believe many of the change and transformation books after now have been sort of steeped in, how shall we call it, always project management over bureaucracy, right, in terms of, you know, very-, very detailed, and, you know, there's, there's lots of discussion around project management versus change management, just to put it out there as well, which is different.
Oliver Banks 10:47
But I think people, you know, general, people don't have that intricacy in terms of that, you know, what is project management versus change management, I don't see a difference because I'm, you know, as I say, endless supply chain expert, and I've got to transform my organization in this way. I don't need to get into the, the intricacies of all of that I just need to be able to make it happen and I suppose the gap in the market is actually how do you have a pragmatic guide to help people understand very simply, when you are likely to be doing a million different things all at once, not exclusively focused on a transformation, right, lots of day jobs, stuff still to do, how do you go about this in a simple, lightweight, but effective way to the works in real life?
Michael LeBlanc 11:36
Let's talk about, let's get into the nuts-and-bolts sort of see, I'm coming along with your theme here. Let's get into the nuts and bolts, the gears, the transmission of the book, the retail transformation steering wheel, it's a central tool in the framework. Elaborate on-, on how you develop that and-, and how it aids in the navigating the complex transformation journey?
Oliver Banks 11:56
It's a really interesting area, because it was one of the areas that I realized early on, you know, I'm sure you've heard the phrase. What gets measured gets managed?
Michael LeBlanc 12:08
Yeah, yeah.
Oliver Banks 12:09
You've probably also heard the phrase, you measure what matters, yeah. Hopefully, transformation matters and hopefully, therefore you would want it managed, but do we measure transformation, was this big question and we might say, oh, yeah, of course, we measure transformation, you know, I can show you the sales uplift, or you know, the cost saving or the conversion boost, true and those are the outputs of the transformation. You say, okay, well, maybe you know, I'm being agile, and I'm looking at bug fix rates and, you know, maybe I'm measuring velocity and that's also true, that's good and pulling back on the metaphor, when you're driving a car, you can't drive purely reading the velocity, you can't drive purely on the speed, right, you would very quickly have a crash and so I realized, actually, how do we measure-.
Michael LeBlanc 13:07
Except in Germany, by the way, Germany-, Germany, actually, they just-, they just press the gas pedal and go. So anyway, there's some exceptions to every rule.
Oliver Banks 13:15
Indeed, indeed, but you know, how do we measure transformation was this-, was this big question in a really wholesome way, there's so many different elements to what makes successful transformation. So how do we measure that and therefore how do we manage it so that was the whole idea around the, the retail transformation steering wheel, it's there to act as a guide and just like you're driving a car, you don't wait until you know driving in a straight line, you don't wait until you've veered into the ditch. Before taking some remedial action. What you do is you're continually tweaking steering left and right, braking a little, accelerating and so on, that's what I want the steering wheel to act as for someone embarking on transformation. It's a way of guiding you that allows you to make small tweaks rather than waiting for the transformation to proverbially veer into the ditch and have this great big oh my goodness, everything's out of control all hands to the pump. I'm sure we can all reflect.
Michael LeBlanc 14:16
Or down the wrong-, or down the wrong side. Like if, you know, the-, if you take a fork in the road, take it and you've taken the wrong fork, both things can be true, right.
Oliver Banks 14:25
Exactly, the metaphor keeps on giving, you see Michael.
Michael LeBlanc 14:28
You-, you're gonna regret starting me on this, by the way.
Oliver Banks 14:34
Keep it coming, man.
Michael LeBlanc 14:38
So, you know, you referred to something that's interesting. I wanted to chase it down a little bit. So, there's very, very few people who will be listening to this podcast whose role is transformation.
Oliver Banks 14:48
Yeah
Michael LeBlanc 14:48
Like there's very few individual leaders. I mean, in very large enterprises, you might have an executive whose role is transformation or leading transformation. So, it's really a component or part of, of many people's jobs and, and, and you know, retail moves pretty fast. That's, you know, that's often said now, but it's-, it's very true. That each individual listening to this they've got their own transformation, but they've also got a day job so to speak and how do they, you know, how does how do you balance-, how do you suggest leaders balance the need for immediate change with the vision for long term transformation, because you're always, you know, you'd love-, everybody-, everybody who's listening to this would love to be thinking farther out and stare out the window for a while and so we understand that everybody has a day job, so to speak, but transformation is vitally important. How do you balance those two?
Oliver Banks 15:37
Well, I think that's it, right? Balance is the key word and just like a work life balance, it's about give and take, right, you can't, let's say you can't just focus on your day job all the time and it's very-, very easy to ignore the transformation, but actually, what's going to happen then is, as an organization, you're going to age and you're going to become irrelevant, and it's going to throw up all sorts of future business problems, and then suddenly, the business will need to change urgently and drastically and everything gets out of sorts.
Michael LeBlanc 16:11
You're in a crisis.
Oliver Banks 16:11
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 16:12
And then you-, you got, then you've got a big problem, right?
Oliver Banks 16:14
Exactly but equally couldn't flip it the other way and so I'm just going to focus on, you know, as you say, a big, big picture thinking and focusing on the transformation, because actually, the day job then gets massively out of control, and actually suddenly, turns out, you're in a storm once again. So, it's about how do you balance both at once and how do you, you know, properly keep all of the plates spinning and that's why I believe it's really important to be really pragmatic with your transformation. This is not about, you know, doing project management to the millionth degree, right?
Oliver Banks 16:51
This is actually about how do you really engage in conversation, how do you think about the communication and the collaboration across the organization, because have you ever stopped to think about just how unproductive we are, when we don't communicate, and it causes all of this conflict and this misalignment, and actually, how much of our day is spent on sort of this wasted time, essentially, because we've not been intentional with our communication, for example, and focused on how do we push all of this forward together as one team. I'm a huge believer that actually, if we, within an organization, we pulled together as the whole department or division, which-, we could have a whole separate conversation about the term division. How do we-, how do we work together for a 100% unified purpose, you know, suddenly, great things happen.
Michael LeBlanc 17:46
So, let's talk about, I was intrigued by your chapter, chapter nine, which was what got-, got me thinking about resistance. Right. Resistance is, is-, it exists in organization, sometimes based on, hey, we've tried that before, I mean, there's a million things that can come up with. And, you know, we tried that before it didn't work, or whatever it is, and what-, what effective strategies do you recommend for what you call winning the hearts and minds, winning your transformation, large, small or somewhere in between?
Oliver Banks 18:17
Yeah. So resistance is a really fascinating area was one of the areas where when I was doing researching, it was, it's just so fascinating to me learning more about science-, the neuroscience, essentially the science of the brain, and learning more about how we, as humans have evolved from cave people, shall we say, and some of the weird intricacies that exist within us that ultimately, lead us to find resistance in the modern day world in particularly change, you know, fear is such a huge emotion that really drives that resistance actually, truly fascinating.
Oliver Banks 18:59
So the first piece is to understand what's, what's going on, because when we can start to understand what's going on why we, ourselves are reacting in a particular way and then why are other people reacting in a particular way, suddenly, we can work out how-, how do we do this differently? How do we alter how we're approaching this; this change and I think there's-, there's so many different elements here that we could dive into as you think about winning your own heart and mind. I use that term quite often. Are you familiar with winning hearts and minds, does that, does that translate, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 19:37
Yeah. For sure, for sure.
Oliver Banks 19:39
You know, I firmly believe that actually-
Michael LeBlanc 19:42
Hard to win without it, right.
Oliver Banks 19:43
100%, 100% and that's, you know, to the point of measuring transformation, how do we measure hearts and minds, right, we've never traditionally done that. So that's what I wanted to get into, in more in more detail, but actually, really, that all starts with you, you as an individual, you as the driver of transformation, how do you win your own heart and your own mind, what are the attitudes and the behaviors that you can adopt to, to encourage that in yourself, and then encourage that in others as well.
Michael LeBlanc 20:16
So, your book also talks about the importance of aligning, you've been talking about the importance of aligning the thinking behind the plan, could you discuss an example, perhaps take us into some of your work where it flowed into the book where strategic alignment or not some alignment impacted a retail transformation?
Oliver Banks 20:34
Yes, certainly. So there's absolutely some great examples, right and, you know, the chapter is called aligning the thinking behind the plan and it's very much-, my view is, you know, rather than having a project management plan for box ticking, right, actually, the plan is a communication tool, and it is a communication tool to say, Hey, Michael, here is my prediction of the future. What do you think and then we can have an open conversation, right, and so many times, I've, I've seen this fantastic tool, this plan as a communication document, essentially, to say you want to here's how we're going to play this out, this is what's going to happen in any suddenly, you know, I'm thinking of-, of some examples, right, where, you know, here's his plan, we're developing a brand new site and a whole new channel for a company, here's how it's gonna play out and talking that through with all of these different functional experts, right.
Oliver Banks 21:37
And suddenly, you get all of the inputs, well, that's not going to work because of this. And this isn't going to happen because of that. Great, suddenly, we've we're building up the reasons why this particular plan wouldn't work, but actually, we're also identifying all of the-, the activities that need to happen to get it to work at the same time and that creates the path forward, right, that says, right, this is what we need to do to be able to get it to that place, and it will be very easy otherwise to have this misalignment that exists and, you know, it's a great way of finding out all of the things that-, organizations are so complex, right, so many different moving parts, and no single person understands it all, but often for transformation, you need to understand quite a lot of it, right? So actually, how do you open up those conversations to say, tell me what we need to do differently?
Michael LeBlanc 22:34
Let's-, let's turn our minds to the future. So you know, listen, we've got a lot. It's often said that I'm gonna go into the, you know, the sky versus the road, or whatever the transformations are, like, you know, changing the tires on a car going 60 miles an hour or changing tires on a flight between two places that there's always change, consumers are changing technology's changing. How do you see the principles of retail transformation evolving, as you as you think, within this maelstrom of change? How do you-, do you see it as a constant throughput with your model, that kind of overall engaged model?
Oliver Banks 23:11
Yeah. So again, that was one of my ideas was to make the book timeless, right, it would be very easy to write a-, here in 2024. Let's write a book and we're going to talk about Unified Commerce. We're going to talk about AI and everything. Suddenly, by 2025. It looks like it was written 100 years ago, right? So actually, what I wanted to do is to create this timeless approach to the how of transformation that as long as we've still got people in our organizations, then communication, for example, is going to be an important part, winning hearts and minds, for example, is going to be an important part.
Oliver Banks 23:52
There are elements around understanding the business challenge. Now, this is going to be the same whether, you know, if you were to rewind the clock 20, 30, 50 years ago, or push it forwards, we shouldn't be transforming if we do not truly understand the challenge or the opportunity that we want to-, to-, to face off and to resolve as an organization. So, I hope that the principles of retail transformation stay the same. And then as you apply the-, the what, you know, we're talking about new AI, we're talking about Metaverse, whatever other things we're going to be talking about in let's say, 10 years’ time, right. You can still apply them in-, in the same way, is my view.
Michael LeBlanc 24:37
Super interesting. Alright, so I can't have you on the mic. Last couple of questions. Can't have you on the mic. Without talking about the state of retail in the UK. I mean, you guys drive on the wrong side of the road, and you have these funny, these funny things called roundabouts instead of intersections. So there's always differences now, you know, the UK came into the Canadian retail context with the sudden bankruptcy and shady dealings I would say with the Body Shop, wrapping up, they suddenly wrapped up, took all the money out of Canada bankrupted it closed the stores, they've shut the-, the US, so of course the UK is foremost in our minds this week, but what's going on in retail in the UK? I see high-, high food inflation. I mean, that's kind of a global thing, but you guys are tending towards the higher end of that. You still I think, recovering from-, from Brexit, and all that, so what's-, what's the state, what's going on, what's going on?
Oliver Banks 25:32
We're coming at this from this quite a significant period of volatility and uncertainty. You know, you touched on Brexit, you know, that's been happening now for nearly 10 years ahead, since that whole conversation started. Which for-, for the retail industry is colossal, right.
Oliver Banks 25:51
Obviously, all the stuff we know about COVID, the Ukraine crisis and war, cost of living, etc., etc. So, I think we're now in a place where we've always got this, to use our good friend, Steve Dennis' term, bifurcation of the retail market and as much as we've got those companies that are firing on all cylinders, you know, acquiring lots of companies and building these large groups, really large groups, companies like Next and Frasers Group that really, really sort of mopping up the market, so to speak, and then you've got the other side of the market where some real fundamental challenges that exists, everything from, you know, increased costs, and balancing those we've just had a significant movement in our government suggested payout guidelines. So suddenly, labor for many retailers has shot up quite, quite significant jumps and we've seen companies investing to stay ahead as the employer of choice and be a, you know, preferential place to work because I get, you know, x-, x pounds more,
Michael LeBlanc 27:10
Which-, is it the case, let me ask you about that. Is it the case in the UK that you can't find enough people to work in retail, and that any kind of minimum wage is really not really relevant because you can't pay a minimum wage you won't attract anybody is-, is that the situation there?
Oliver Banks 27:26
Well, it's a-, it's a bit of a yo-yo situation, right? So, you know, again, rewinding a couple of years back to COVID times that was absolutely a real challenge where, you know, eCommerce warehouses were really striving for-, for people on every front because suddenly everyone wants it, right. We're also at a place where high street vacancy rates and sort of physical stores have been arguably emptier than they've ever been, but we've got large stores doing really well. Supermarkets in particular, companies like-, like I said, Next and Frasers Group, as I mentioned earlier, IKEA doing really well so, really, are really stringing ahead.
Michael LeBlanc 28:13
Are the hard discounters making an input, the Aldi and Lidl's of the world.
Oliver Banks 28:16
100%, 100% they are, and we've also got a whole-, a whole sort of group of discounters across different categories as well. So yeah, that they are absolutely doing very well, but it's really interesting, certainly in the supermarket sector and the grocery sector. We've got a real fight back, of course, on price, but also on propositions as well. So it was, you know, again, a few years ago, we had this place where Aldi was doing superb prices, but winning a lot of the taste tests for product and people were very surprised at the quality of it and we're now seeing more and more companies really stepping up their product quality, as well as investing in price. So it's-, it's boy oh, boy, is it a fierce market out there, really fierce.
Michael LeBlanc 29:07
Yeah. I-, Steve-, You mentioned Steve, Steve and I just interviewed Michael Ward from Harrods, actually, for the Remarkable Retail podcast and I, we were struck by the same thing. I mean, he's talking about how excited he was to open up the new Lola Qurate or Morton Chandon Champagne room and you'd look at it, you're like, wow, what a-, talk about bifurcation and it's doing really well, right. And-, and-, as you said, the larger enterprises do well, and they kind of over invest in a, I don't know, I guess that's accessible luxury or even more luxury. So it is really a-, it's a fascinating market. What do you think this year, 2024? Are you gonna see some growth in the retail sector or what do you-, what do you think-, we're thinking here, low, single digits, you mean taking out a bit of inflation on the food side, is that is that where you guys think you're gonna wind up?
Oliver Banks 29:58
I think if you average out an overall industry, yes, I agree. I think actually, if you look in the detail of the data, I think you'll see some companies that are really surging ahead, as we've just been speaking about. Some companies, you know, flat would be wonderful.
Michael LeBlanc 30:14
Flat would be the new up for them. Yeah, yeah. It's like the Body Shop, right? I mean, you know, what a, what a transformation, what a transformation retailer 20 years ago, but to your point, and I mean, really getting back to our discussion, kind of watching the last 15, 20 years happen to them and everybody kind of picked up on the thing.
Oliver Banks 30:33
It's, it's a challenge, so that that particular brand has been, you know, had this superb reach, right, very ahead of its time, actually.
Michael LeBlanc 30:44
Very.
Oliver Banks 30:45
And actually has been passed around different companies over the past few years and each of those companies is gonna have its own strategic vision for where they want to take that and it's worked out or not worked out, whichever way you want to play it and actually, now we've, we've kind of been left with actually a brand that is lost, you know, you can't, you can't just go out there as a beauty brand and say, oh, we sustained but that's not enough anymore, right?
Michael LeBlanc 31:10
It feels like-, it feels like the vision picking up on the whole theme is stripped for parts at this point.
Oliver Banks 31:18
Unfortunately, but for me, the brand, The Body Shop has still got such a huge reputation to feed off. So, I'm really hopeful that actually, there will be a solution that says, actually, let's bring the Body Shop back. Let's get back to the heritage and actually amp it up a bit more, right. How do we-, how do we do that and then, as an organization, in its new lean format, after it's gone through the various administrative processes, how do we actually make that happen because, again, you know, having a customer proposition is one thing, having a business model is another, but actually, how do you build the operating model that ties those two things to have together to say this is realistic and viable and can be consistently deployed?
Michael LeBlanc 32:12
Well, my recommendation to the folks if they're listening today, from The Body Shop, or wherever the hell owns it now. Buy your book by Oliver Banks book and that will be your roadmap to turning that business around.
Oliver Banks 32:23
Absolutely.
Michael LeBlanc 32:25
Oliver, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, learn more, find out more. Where do they go and how do they get in touch?
Oliver Banks 32:33
So probably the best place is Find me on LinkedIn. My name is Oliver Banks. I've got a little green circle around my profile picture. So, you know, it's me, or find out more about the book at drivingretailtransformation.com.
Michael LeBlanc 32:49
Fantastic. Well, such a treat to get you on the mic. Doesn't happen often enough. I hope we get to see each other perhaps. So, in Barcelona at Shop Talk, we might cross paths there, but whatever.
Oliver Banks 33:00
Indeed.
Michael LeBlanc 33:01
It's been a treat to get you on the mic. Congratulations again, on-, on the book, and I wish you continued success in everything you do and safe travels and thanks for joining me on the pod.
Oliver Banks 33:12
It's always a pleasure, Michael, thank you so much for having me. What an awesome conversation.
Michael LeBlanc 33:17
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, follow us on your favorite podcast platforms so new episodes will end automatically each week and be sure to check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis, and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast.
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and ReThink Retail: 2023 Global Top Retail Influencer. If you want more information, content or to chat, follow me on LinkedIn.
Safe travels everyone!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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