5 Retail Moves You Need to Know: Gap, Morrisons, AllSaints, DFS x Pinterest, Gen Beta

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
It's the 24th of October. It's Friday.
Welcome to five things. Friday.
Yeah, what Simone and I have goton is called your dad or uncle

(00:20):
dance at the wedding where they're bopping a play.
It's the dad dance. Your.
Thank you for tuning this. I'm not calling you Dad, Dad,
but it's definitely that. It's in that Dad and uncle.
Yeah, exactly. You can just imagine them on the
side of the dance floor. Not enough courage to come in,
but they're popping away. My name's Alex.

(00:43):
I help retailers maintain their retail fortune by going to 13
conferences in 2026, bringing those insights and helping them
stay relevant in this beautiful world of retail.
And I'm joined by my fabulous Cohost, Simone.
Hi I'm. Simone, the Co founder and CEO
of Need It for Tonight, also known as Nerfed.

(01:04):
I always say easiest way to describe it.
It's kind of like delivery but for quality fashion.
So all about localised and very speedy delivery.
I have no idea but I keep wanting to sway and Bob like
there's no music now, but now it's in my head.
How are you feeling? OK, let's get so 5 things

(01:25):
Friday, we're going to focus on five interesting newsworthy
stories that we feel that needs to be a conversation on.
And hopefully we'll start the conversation, you continue it
and obviously you're more than welcome to continue it with us
on LinkedIn or any other platforms that you choose.
And we're almost 100,000 views on TikTok.
Sorry, on YouTube with almost 20,000 subscribers, which is

(01:49):
considering the conferences I goto, range between 5 to 7000.
That's enough people to fill Wembley Stadium.
That's enough people to deck outone of these conferences.
And with that, let's go straightin with you.
Simone, what's your story? And that's also amazing, very
amazing news. My story today is Gap is back.

(02:13):
It's a name that I haven't heardin a while, but it is one of
those brands that does make me feel very nostalgic.
I think of the there it is the Gap hoodies that I used to wear
when I was younger. I used to love the stars as well
but, and I guess I'm going to put a bit of a negative spin on

(02:35):
that is we something that we've just discussed before, Alex, is
nostalgia alone doesn't tend to keep the lights on in retail.
I think it's a plough and we've talked about it with brands like
Class where people remember themfondly but they're not
necessarily shopping them out. Me being one of them, loved

(02:56):
Class when I was younger, but not enough to continue shopping
that now. But that is they're bringing
back three London stores, one inCovent Garden, one in White City
and one in Wembley. And they're making a physical
return after pulling back from the UK completely in 2021.

(03:16):
At that point they'd closed all the stores and they shifted to a
digital only strategy. But now they're coming back and
this time it's powered by Next, which I think that part is key
because, well, next to obviouslythriving, really strong retail
footprint, good logistics backbone and obviously a deep
understanding of the UK consumerbehaviour.

(03:39):
So Gap gets to plug into that ecosystem and test out physical
retail again without taking the full risk alone.
Yeah. I think I'm intrigued to see,
you know, what are they going tobe doing different?
And I'm excited to see what they're going to be doing
different. So yeah, it's something that
I'll be watching closely on. Welcome back.
Yeah, I think. Yeah, I saw the CEO speaking at

(04:03):
one of the conferences and it was like they do want to bring
that nostalgia and it's just listening to you how you know
Next has and Next does so well because it has so much data.
But there would have been a point in time where gap price
range was sort of a little bit higher than the next price
range. And so I don't know if they're

(04:23):
aiming to be premium in, in, in the next ecosystem.
But I, you know, from a store's perspective, I think this is
just a sign of things to come. Brand is not enough.
And as you keep saying, neither is nostalgia, right?
So if your brand's not cutting it because you're not creating
social relevance apart from a marketing campaign and your

(04:46):
stores aren't cutting it becausethey're just product and, and,
and selling, what are you going to do?
Right? You're going to end up being
marginalised to being another, another brand in a department
store or in somewhere like Next or, you know, John Lewis, as we
keep saying, yeah, super interesting.
I love it. Staying with technology.

(05:07):
We have Morrisons like, you know, almost every other week
we've got a Morrisons neutral. So and we talked about every
time now I'm about to say kudos.I I think about the meme on the
LinkedIn or I think kudos to them.
LinkedIn language. What are people doing shelf at
dabling? What is shelf at dabling?

(05:29):
Basically, when you go in, you have digital screens that allows
you to have price elasticity that allows you to do pricing
throughout the day. So in the morning, you can do
offers on whatever sells best inthe morning and in the evening
when people are coming in, I don't know, after work, you can
promote those things. So it allows a lot of
flexibility. And, you know, they've just
announced that their partner Fusion Group, who one of

(05:52):
France's largest French ESL providers, have been given that
contract, 497 stores. So it's a major, major roll out.
And the reason why this is a newstory for me, veterans in the
industry have been pushing for this for decades.
And grocers have said it's too expensive, we can't do it, it's
not relevant, We're not going toget an uplift.
And the majority of the partnersin this world in ESL, the

(06:15):
technology, the little shelf thing comes from China.
And so finding an integration partner is interesting.
And I don't know if this is a trend.
Morrisons have got out ahead. And next we're going to see
Sainsbury's, Tescos and and the likes all follow.
So one to watch. Let's see what happens in that
world. Sticking with me, All Saints,

(06:37):
there's a story in Fashion United and again, I love All
Saints. I don't know if it's age
appropriate for me, but I love it.
You know, in the, in the fact that yesterday my, my wife
wearing her leather jacket that I got, you know, years ago and
she obviously picked it up and wanted to wear which, which
coincided with this story. They're opening 3 pop ups in
Bristol in Battersea Power Station and one other location

(07:02):
and you know, a brand that has its own stores that is sold in
John Lewis. Now going into pop up to me
signals that they're either going to experiment with
different formats. The pop ups apparently do stock
the their full range and so is this, is this a signal that

(07:22):
here's a really strong brand that may be losing its relevance
And so therefore they're trying to create physical relevance
with pop ups or it could just bea marketing activation.
But my gut feel is some of thesemature brands in the UK have to
think about how are they going to maintain that relevance to
this new generation. And we'll talk about generations

(07:45):
a bit later on. Moving on swiftly DFS now, I did
have a DFS sofa and it lasted mefor years.
So from my perspective, they've,you know, they've done all right
by me, so I can't knock them. They they're doing something
interesting with another brand that I love pin Pinterest,
although I always want to say pin interest Pinterest.
They're doing a gamification activation, which is quite

(08:07):
interesting. Basically you go on, it's if you
can get it to write, then it's achance of winning your dream
sofa. And who doesn't want a free sofa
or an upgrade to their sofa? And you click in, you go to
Pinterest and we have to match the things.
We don't have enough time to play it.
But you know, you, you put the things in the different things
and then that allows you to go through.

(08:28):
But at the same time, if you're looking for a sofa, you're
probably going to start thinkingabout getting ideas, getting
those design ideas. So I love this idea of bringing
people's creativity into your customer journey and keeping
that as part of the, you know, the shopping missions that
people are on. How can you influence it?
Great job DFS in showing us thatyou can create a bit of

(08:51):
gamification to get people sort of, you know, they're going to
get something for free. But ultimately what you want is
people creating these boards with things from your catalogue,
which then sort of we, we spoke about, or sorry we haven't last
week we spoke about how AI companies like Chachi PT are

(09:11):
coming out with their own browsers.
What are you going to do to stayrelevant when when all the
browsers are AI and agent LED? So, yeah, interesting,
interesting 1 coming on to you for our final one.
So when I saw this headline fromthe Business of Fashion.
This. Isn't the headline by the?

(09:32):
Way. This is just the ground.
I'll tell you the headline. When I saw this headline, which
I'm about to share, it made me chuckle and spiral all at once.
And the headline was Fashion is already preparing for Gen Beta.
Ever scary and weird thought. And just for reference, Jen
Neeta refers to babies born from2025 and onwards.

(09:56):
They're not even here yet, all they've just arrived.
And already brands are starting to wonder what will they wear?
Where will they shop? How will they be raised?
So it's obviously a bit of a mixof quite wild speculation.
I think for me this is about influence.
Influence is an important, important aspect.

(10:20):
Influencing the shopper of tomorrow.
Tomorrow is really important. But then how are you going to
create? Because I wrote about this in my
book and I spoke about K Pop demon hunters.
The missed opportunity of the summer that people are trying to
get onto now is the fact that all of this influence that
potentially you could be building relevance with through

(10:41):
all the things that Simone and Italk about South.
Do you have interest? Have you heard about the did you
say or the the term retail at the speed of culture?
Did I say the term? Have you heard of that term
before? I.
I haven't. I don't know.
If I'm, I don't know if I'm going to point it or not or

(11:03):
someone else. Yeah.
So in my mind, that's the era that we're moving into.
We are moving into this culturalLED retail relevance era.
And So what that means is if youare targeting and thinking about
five years from now and what your store looks like or what
how are you going to appeal to people from is how are you

(11:24):
culturally going to be relevant to them?
That's right. Apply that to the Gap
conversation that we had at the beginning of this talk.
There is nothing, I mean, they've got Denham, they've
gone, you know, they're going back for that.
They, they've got stores. They're a global powerhouse.
There's so much nostalgia that Simone has said is it enough?

(11:46):
Right. And so anyway, I think it's,
it's one that I, I think there'smore conversation to be had on
right, But maybe not on a Friday.
And you know, we'll let you actually, we're doing fantastic
for time. Well, we'll be at 10 minutes.
So that's super awesome. OK.
Have you got What's your plans for next week?
I have an event, we have a personal shopping event for men.

(12:09):
Any. Men.
I would like to get booked in. It's Auburn and Wills, which is
a lovely retailer in Soho. We've got that on one day.
Why? Do you get that so quiet?
Why is it on my style? Is it like Vera?
Have I got it wrong? How are you spelling it, Auburn?

(12:30):
AUBIN. AUBIN.
Really nice quality. They were, they used to be owned
by Jack Wills or they were like the parent company and then they
came back. Really nice brand.
Just yeah, Lovely. Good quality, reasonable.
Tell me why does that work? I'm really curious.

(12:50):
People so we have an in house personal shopper.
She worked at Farfetch for many years.
She's brilliant and she prefers styling.
Men and people can come in, they'll looking for a one-on-one
slot with her. It's a service that usually
costs quite a few 100 lbs. For that.
Day and she'll have a call with you prior to find out your needs

(13:14):
and then she'll do a one-on-one very educational appointment in
the store for you. It's do you know what I we
always get a lot of men and women that will try it for the
first time and you know I think it's quite daunting to them like
personal shopping. It's like, oh God, I can't
relate to that. I love it.

(13:35):
Yeah, Yeah. And actually, everybody deserves
to be educated on what they're wearing.
And so many people walk around feeling really pretty uninspired
with what they're wearing and shopping at the same brand,
wearing the same looks to work every day.
So yeah, she's just there to really educate and also
democratise personal styling. So I'm excited for that.

(13:57):
How does that work? So then if someone likes it, is
is is that where the NIFT promise comes in?
You'll get it to them within thetime frame.
I mean, we can either deliver itto the house or they'll take it
home there and then, and then itgoes through our lovely little
nift till. OK, I love it.
That's are you going to capture like anything on social.

(14:20):
We've done a little bit yeah, onso I'm not.
Gonna say I'd love to see like, what that looks like, you know,
like, Oh yeah. Simone, thank you so much.
Good luck with the shopping activation.
I look forward to speaking to you next week.
Wonderful. See you later, Alex.

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