Interview: Asda strategy boss Preyash Thakrar on turning supermarkets into retail destinations

Preyash Thakrar is overly apologetic when he logs into Zoom. It’s been a long day already and his WiFi at home isn’t really cooperating. “I’m not really sure what’s wrong,” he says, having turned his camera off. “It was working fine earlier”.

Given the amount of work the retailer’s strategy boss and his small corporate partnerships team have put in since the start of the pandemic, it’s perhaps no great surprise his internet is running a little slow. 

In 2020, Asda either struck or extended existing partnerships with the likes of The Entertainer, B&Q, Accessorize and Fragrance Point. It also opened the first three of its Asda on the Move convenience stores on new owner EG Group forecourts. 

Since the beginning of this year it has only ramped up its ‘test and learn’ third-party partnership strategy, announcing tie-ups with the likes of Missguided, In the Style, Lee, Wrangler and most recently specialist wholesaler Preloved Vintage Kilo.

This is without counting existing partnerships with Greggs, Sushi Daily and Subway, Decathlon and Music Magpie. 

“We knew there was space for bringing in very different retailers”

While Thakrar says the pandemic and Asda’s essential retailer status has helped accelerate some of its partnerships, he points to a different seismic event in Asda’s recent history that really pushed its nearly decade-old ‘test-and-learn’ partnerships strategy into overdrive. 

“Post the merger with Sainsbury’s, we recognised that there was a better way of delivering more missions for customers in our stores and online and delivering on truly compelling customer propositions that had authority in other categories. 

“The anchor tenant for this strategy would be our core food offer that we are constantly evolving and improving, but we knew there was space for bringing in very different retailers that could offer something different and on-trend for our customers”. 

Taking on the big four supermarkets

Asda has faced criticism in the past for not being as active as some of its big four competitors in the convenience and c-store space. While Thakrar says the Asda on the Move format will address that in time, he also argues that bringing partnerships into supermarkets offers customers a different kind of convenience. 

“I call it ‘convenience with a small c’,” he says. “Where as a customer you can go to one of our locations and fulfil multiple shopping missions. The pandemic has made customers reappraise what grocers can offer them, particularly in that non-food space.

“It’s about combining our core food and George offers with category specialists that know exactly what customers are buying in that space, have the scale in the range and can curate it in a good way. If you can do all that, there’s absolutely value in that offer.”

On paper at least, it does look like Asda are effectively putting together a food offer-driven department store, an interesting strategy given the well-publicised downturn of the format both in the UK and US. 

A ‘curated mall’ for the whole family

However, Thakrar prefers the term ‘destination’ and the successes of the existing partnerships has been hailed by The Entertainer founder Gary Grant and Music Magpie chief executive Steve Oliver to name a few. 

Asda are so enthused by the success of the trials across their various stores, that Thakrar says it plans to bring all 13 store-in-store partners into two of its largest supermarket format stores in Wigan and Derby later in the year. 

“We’re going to bring together our partnership trials into one location. So we will bring together the general merchandise and clothing partnerships and have up to 13 together as a one destination for non-food.

”We’ll effectively become a sort of curated mall, where people will be able to do their core food shops and their frequent shop. Customers will know that if they come to Asda, and particularly a large Asda, it will become very much a destination for more missions. And we’ll include some services within that too [such as a Post Office].”

In terms of where Asda is looking next in this space, Thakrar hints at a possible tie-up in the health and beauty category. Although he says at the same time Asda is looking into whether launching its own brand range in this category will be more cost-effective in the longer term. 

The big question that remains though is what Asda’s new owners, the Issa brothers and TDR Capital, make of its ‘test and learn’ strategy. Having agreed to divest 27 petrol stations as an olive branch to the Competition and Markets Authority earlier in May, it’s now a matter of when, not if, the Issa’s will finally complete the acquisition they first struck in October 2020.

On the topic, Thakrar is somewhat less forthcoming. “I think they’ve been very supportive [of the strategy]. If you look at how they’ve created EG Group, it’s all about creating multiple customer missions”. 

Asda has built a reputation as being a testbed for new innovations under its previous owners Walmart, with its smart trolley trial at its designated tech hub store in Stevenage being just the latest example. The trolleys take a leaf out of the science fiction pages of Amazon, scanning products placed in them by customers automatically. 

The customer will dictate the future for Asda

Earlier in May, Asda also became the first supermarket in the country to test unattended delivery boxes. Set up at customers homes, the boxes allow Asda drivers to make deliveries when the customer is out.

As far as Thakrar is concerned moving forwards, the only limit to the strategy is ultimately what the customer wants. 

“The key for us is where is there a customer need, and how can we best fulfil that need? We’re never going to stand still, and there are always going to be forward-thinking retailers out there we’d be interested in working with”.

Despite the shift to online seen across many categories due to the pandemic, it’s clear Asda and Tharkrar are betting heavily on the draw that diverse and well-curated retail destinations will still have on consumers. Given the number of brands already on board, you’d be hard-pressed betting against them.