John Lewis, Tesco and B&Q bosses: Lessons from the year that changed retail forever

If you’d asked a year ago what the most frequently heard words of 2020 would be, there are few that would have expected tier, furlough, lockdown or bubble to feature quite so prominently – or for protective face masks and hand sanitiser to be the most in-demand products.

2020 has been a year of unprecedented (another of the most overused words of the last 12 months) change as retailers and shoppers alike grappled with coronavirus and a glut of ever-changing rules and regulations. 

The impact of this pandemic has left an indelible mark on so many aspects of our lives, and it has upended retail.

John Lewis executive director Pippa Wicks says: “We’ve seen almost five years’ worth of change in our industry happen in under a year – and one of the biggest challenges we’ve had to face is being there for our customers no matter what changes have occurred.”

Fenwick chief executive John Edgar concurs: “2020 has sped up the change in retail that was inevitable anyway and exposed the soft underbelly of the weaker businesses. It’s not been an easy ride, but I’ve been in retail 25 years and it’s never felt easy.”

So what are the big lessons chief executives have learned that they’ll be taking forward in 2021?

Think fast

In a year when government guidance around whether shops could open, social distancing and what constituted safe operations were continually changing, retailers had the monumental challenge of responding to fast-moving customer expectations and behaviour in real time.

While this presented significant operational challenges, it allowed many retail leaders to take valuable lessons about how to operate and change strategy at pace.

Wicks says: “The need to think differently and rapidly respond, often at scale, to customers’ changing needs, while also operating in totally unprecedented circumstances, has been really important. 

“Through a determination to move at pace we have not only continued to be there for our customers, but also ensured we are now a more resilient business.

“Our shops were shut for the first time in 100 years in March, and in just three weeks we launched our virtual services”

Pippa Wicks, John Lewis

“For example, our shops were shut for the first time in 100 years in March and, in just three weeks, we launched our virtual services across home design, nursery and personal styling. 

“We’ve also had to think more broadly about how we get our products to customers, introducing even more locations where customers can pick up their click-and-collect purchases.

“The lead-up to Christmas is always a key trading period for us and other high street retailers and, with shops closed again in November, we built extra capacity in our online operations to help us manage additional demand and get our customers and their loved ones products.”

The Very Group also ramped up its new state-of-the-art warehouse, which was scheduled for a soft launch this year, to full capacity with only hours notice after the prime minister announced the first lockdown in March.

“In volatile and changing times, speed of execution really counts”

Henry Birch, The Very Group

For boss Henry Birch, the white-knuckle ride this represented offered a valuable lesson on the need to move at pace as a business more generally.

“In volatile and changing times, speed of execution really counts,” he says.

“Throughout 2020, we have planned carefully, but we have always mapped different scenarios and been ready to pivot and change plans rapidly.”

Edgar says that, for all its challenges, lockdown also provided a valuable perspective for Fenwick’s whole business, which he believes will change the culture of the company long term.

“It really helped change the culture of why online is important to our business,” he says.

“Having worked in other department stores, the cultural acceptance of online from stores is much harder than you might think and, bizarrely, the lockdown helped us get through that very quickly.

“Nothing focuses the mind like a crisis.”

Get the basics right

In recent years, many retailers have made high-profile investments in driving innovation across their business – a trend that is unlikely to go away given the step-change in online shopping that the pandemic has triggered.

While Edgar acknowledges the importance of such investments, he believes getting the basics right – such as having the right stock in the right place – has been more crucial than ever. 

“It’s really easy as a business to say we’re going to invest in this fancy thing, and that’s great, but if you haven’t got the basics right nothing works,” he says.

“You need to have a strong foundation and then you can build on it. There are areas of our business where we’ve not had the basics right, and we’ve tried to do something too sophisticated and failed as a result.

“All we do is buy and sell stock, as I keep telling people – all the other stuff just helps us do that”

John Edgar, Fenwick 

“Some of the retail basics will never change, whether it’s online or in store: have I got the right stock? Is it in the right place? Do I know how much I’ve got? Is it selling?

”All we do is buy and sell stock, as I keep telling people – all the other stuff just helps us do that. 

“There are lots of fancy things people try and sell you as a business, but they don’t work if you don’t have the principle right. This year has really emphasised it. Situations like these expose the issues.”

People are your most important asset

Retail staff may be viewed as both a cost and a resource under threat as automation drives efficiencies across many retail businesses, but 2020 has showed bosses that their people are their most valuable asset, particularly in uncertain times.

“It has proved your biggest asset is your people. If you can’t get the people behind you, then you cannot respond to a crisis because you cannot do it all yourself,” says Edgar.

As an example, he cites his decision to restart online when he took the helm at Fenwick in April. This reversed a previous call to stop selling online when coronavirus hit in March and required shopfloor staff to take on new tasks, such as picking orders in store. 

“It meant we were asking people who did a certain job to do a different one and understand how important things like accuracy were, and people just really embraced it.

“There was Dunkirk spirit to it, whatever makes the boat go faster. It was incredibly encouraging to see how people responded to that.”

Staff were critical to Tesco’s ability to feed the nation during lockdown and throughout this difficult year.

Boss Ken Murphy says that, in turn, the retailer has prioritised staff welfare to help retain its dedicated workforce.

“We looked after colleagues. Any colleague that was vulnerable was given 12 weeks’ paid leave and we continue to give everyone full pay from day one”

Ken Murphy, Tesco 

“We looked after colleagues. Any colleague that was vulnerable was given 12 weeks’ paid leave and we continue to give everyone full pay from day one,” he says.

“We welcomed nearly 50,000 temporary colleagues at the peak, and I’m delighted that thousands of them have chosen to continue their careers with us on a permanent basis.”

2020 was the year that retail staff, alongside NHS employees, earned the rightful title of key workers – those at the coalface of responding to this crisis.

Their monumental effort has been called out by many as one of the defining characteristics of this year.

“I’m really proud of the enormous efforts of our Partners,” says Wicks. 

“Their positivity, flexibility, willingness to support each other, such as when 1,800 John Lewis Partners transferred to Waitrose in the peak of the crisis to help, and determination to be there for our customers has been inspiring.”

Keep listening and learning

In a year of relentless uncertainty and change, it was inevitable that businesses would make some flawed decisions in the heat of the moment.

For B&Q’s chief executive Graham Bell, listening to both customers and staff and adapting plans based on feedback was a key learning from 2020.

“It’s taught me that you’ve got to be close to your customers and your colleagues, and you’ve got to listen to them,” he says.

“You’ve got to face the criticisms when they come, because when you get things wrong you must face up to it. 

“We extended our opening hours at one point and hadn’t consulted with colleagues. Problems emerged with shift work and childcare issues, and we had to put our hands up and say sorry.

“It taught us that you get a better result if you consult the wider business”

Graham Bell, B&Q

“It taught us that you get a better result if you consult the wider business.”

Bell says this same principle of taking feedback on board and changing plans was also relevant for how it interacted with customers throughout the pandemic.

“The fear of coming out for older customers was definitely something we had to learn. Delivering a kitchen in the middle of a pandemic, with two people carrying units into the house, you really have to get down to the nuance of what we called a ‘white glove service’.

“You had to be so respectful of what you were doing, and we don’t get it right every time, but we’ve learnt a lot.”