S1 E3: Matthew Brown, Retail Futurist with Echochamber - CX Sells

Retail futurist Matthew Brown (Echochamber) guides Ger Keohane (StudioForty9) and Gordon Newman  (Omnichannels Stories) through excellence in retail customer experience.

Along the way, we unbox an absolutely lush gift package from Faerly, an Irish online retailer that specialises in local and sustainable products that deliver the right amount of happy moments.

But Matthew, Gordon and Ger aren't alone! Audio gremlins manage to slither in and feast on the audio in places. Does it stop the intrepid trio? It does not.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
This is Functional & Fabulous, the omnichannel podcast where we unbox tales of online retail and digital transformation.
In this episode, the boys aren't on the same page...
Is that where you were going, Gordon?
That is totally not where I was going.
There's a chemical leak...
I'm getting some smells.
Gordon invents a new marketing strategy...

(00:22):
They can think about you as they're slaving over the sink.
And audio gremlins at various points during the recording make everyone sound like Darth Vader stuck down a well...
I always think that...
It's a great touch, making sense of everything that I've seen.
Welcome to the Functional & Fabulous podcast.

(00:43):
My name is Ger Keohane, and I'm functional.
My name's Gordon Newman, and I'm fabulous.
And today we're joined by Matthew Brown.
Matthew describes himself as a bloke that travels the world, camera in hand, looking at shops and then talking about them.
More formally, he is a retail trend futurist and keynote speaker and conducts retail safaris, trend workshops, and best-in-class reports for retailers the world over.

(01:06):
Matthew is also the owner and founder of Echo Chamber, a London-based creative retail trend intelligence agency with a global reach that tracks global retail trends and feeds clients with information, best practice, and customer experience, store design, consumer trends and innovation, in order to help them future-proof their business.
I've seen Matthew in action as a keynote speaker at a number of events, and I love his perspective.

(01:29):
I love the energy, the passion he brings, his presentation of the trends of best practices of retail.
It's always really inspiring to see you talk, and I'm delighted to welcome you here today.
Great to have you, Matthew.
Have I accurately described what a retail futurist is?
Yeah, I think you've kind of done a pretty good job.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Pleasure to be here.
Tell me, what's your day-to-day like as a retail futurist?

(01:50):
I mean, on a weekly basis, what are you doing?
Yeah, I mean, look, it's a kind of mix of international travel and being stuck in the office, making sense of everything that I've seen.
So pre-pandemic, really doing a lot of travel.
2020 was shaping up to being a really busy year.
I think I was booked for flying three times a week for the entire year.
Then the shutdown happened, when I didn't get on a plane for two years.

(02:13):
Now I'm back again, not flying those same volumes, but the world's opening up and I'm back out traveling.
So I'm either talking at international conferences or running retail safaris, most of them in London, but also internationally, all going out and looking at retail and trying to see what's there on the shop floor, seeing innovation as it happens in the world's best shopping cities, and then feeding it back and talking about it.

(02:38):
It sounds like the travel is fabulous and the reports are a bit more functional there.
Well, I'm not sure the travel itself is fabulous, but being there is fabulous.
Travel is pretty grim.
Post-COVID, airports are still looking pretty sad.
It's the last sector, really, to be trying to push back.
And interestingly, obviously, airport retail was a huge growth area back from sort of 2010 onwards, so it's had a real, real hit.

(03:05):
So it's not quite as fabulous as it was before, but it's great being in other places and even just for a day.
What kind of cities are you going to?
Obviously, London, where you're largely based, New York.
Do you ever get over to the Far East at all, into China and so on?
I do, but I haven't been out to Asia since the pandemic.
I was hoping to get out at the end of last year, but it was still travel restrictions, obviously, with China.

(03:28):
Japan only just opened up, so I think it's going to be 2023, sort of towards the later half of the year before I can get back to Asia.
But yeah, no, it's a mix of the big, obvious shopping cities with actually what's also really nice is going out and looking at smaller towns and looking at retail in less obvious destinations.

(03:51):
I was out in Limerick for the day on Wednesday.
It's great.
What's really nice about it is that actually, it kind of indicates my philosophy, which is that retail trends apply wherever you are and whoever you are, whether you're a small one-man business in Limerick or you're a mega brand on Fifth Avenue, actually the principles of great retail experiences are the same.

(04:13):
And, you know, actually getting out there and looking at those small towns as they were, you know, offers that proof that I can photograph these stores and show them alongside the grand flagships of Champs-Élysées and Oxford Street and Regent Street and say, look, fantastic retail.
And as I've been saying for many years, because I've been working in the Irish market for more than 10 years, Irish retail is also absolutely world-class.

(04:38):
It's great.
It's great to hear.
So, yeah, sorry, Gordon...
Can I just ask, Matthew, you've mentioned your principles of great retail, what are your top three?
Well, I think probably, if I had to really distill it down, you're talking about the wow of products looking better in store than they do at home, because that's a huge job and that's done through design and through merchandising.

(05:01):
Curation is massive.
In a world where we can get every product online, it's how do you select and how do you present, how do you filter choice and make choice relevant to customers?
And then the final bit, storytelling, which is huge.
And there are a million different ways that you can tell stories in three-dimensional, tactile ways, up to graphics on the wall, through to staff telling stories.

(05:23):
But that would be really the three key areas.
It's the wow, it's the curation and it's the storytelling.
And then maybe the final bit would be the personalisation, creating products that are totally unique for you or services that are unique for you.
That's great to hear, because in the same way as we think about great retail being on a spectrum, where, you know, you're doing a kind of different scale levels depending on where you are in the world.

(05:46):
Equally, you know, when it comes to in-store and online, the curation, the personalisation, the storytelling, the wow factor, you know, it's all still retail.
And that's an area that we harp on about quite a lot.
And what we have today, we have a bit of unboxing from a business here in Ireland called Faerly.
I'd love to introduce this a bit.
I guess, Matthew, you should have received your Faerly box?
I got my Faerly box.

(06:08):
So Faerly, it is spelled F-A-E-R-L-Y, but pronounced Faerly, just like I'm Faerly looking forward to opening this.
I'm Faerly looking forward to what we've been sent.
It's entirely branded and it looks really lovely.
And on this box, I actually have Mr Functional.
Oh, and I have Mr Fabulous, to my point about personalisation.

(06:28):
Have you got anything on yours, Matthew?
I didn't.
I just got a very nice sustainability message, which I thought was lovely, which is previously shipped in twice-loved packaging.
And it says, please excuse, we like to reuse, which I thought was a really nice way of communicating that sustainability message, which is a nice opportunity for online businesses to show their kind of environmental credentials alongside physical ones.

(06:55):
It's a great touch because from a sustainability perspective, you do want to be able to reuse.
But obviously, if you, as a customer, get a battered package, sometimes it could be a bit disappointing.
But that little sticker is a lovely touch because it's a nice little graphic piece.
And at the same time, kind of gets across the sustainability message.

(07:16):
So let's have a look inside.
Well, just as we're about to rip open the box, we should probably talk about Faerly a little bit.
What we like to do on the podcast is talk about small or growing Irish businesses.
And Faerly's a recently launched Irish online business with a focus on product that is made sustainably and product that's Irish.

(07:39):
So to your point earlier, it's a curated collection.
The guys are based in Kildare.
It's a great story.
And I can't wait to see what's in the box.
I'm a bit of a Faerly fan.
So we have immediately as you open the box, it tells us that good things have arrived, which is a really nice touch.

(08:00):
The box itself is lovely.
It's a really simple package.
Again, all about sustainability, the brown cardboard, et cetera.
And what a burst of colour as you open up the box.
Yeah, I think what they do really well is this focus on the unboxing experience, which has been pioneered by our fruity computer friends.

(08:25):
But what they've done is really nice.
There's a handwritten card in mine and it's wrapped beautifully in some really nice tissue paper.
So the smell as well immediately is...
Yeah, I'm getting some smells.
And the other thing I have, which is really nice, is a lovely little truffle treat, which is beautiful.
That's actually, Matthew, you won't realise, but that treat there, it's called Nobó on the front of it, which is, a bó is the Irish for a cow.

(08:55):
So Nobó is a dairy-free treat.
Has no cow in it.
Just a little bit...
I have a beeswax reusable food wrap.
The smell immediately is beautiful.
It's really, really lovely.
So these are obviously all sustainable.
This I love, a wishcloth.
This is a really clever product that the guys have been selling.

(09:17):
I'll wave it up at the camera if you're watching it on the podcast.
But a wishcloth is a gift card that you can send to somebody, but afterwards you can use it as a dishcloth and it should last for about nine months.
So this focus on sustainability throughout all of the products is spectacular.
So you can send that to somebody, tell them that they're fabulous and then...

(09:37):
A multi-purpose greeting card.
And then you can wash your dishes with it and they can think about you as they're slaving over the sink.
And does it mean that the biro ends up on the dishes, the little greeting?
I love the matches.
We have matches here, which means there's a candle in here somewhere, I'm sure.
Yeah, these are a beautiful box of matches from a company called FieldDay.

(10:00):
And a beautiful candle from Folk.
I have, and I don't know what you guys have.
What do you have, Matthew?
Well, I mean, I've just opened up because there's a second box here, which is really lovely.
I do have the handwritten card, which I think is absolutely beautiful.
And then the way that it's actually presented, this is online done as a present, which I think is fantastic.

(10:22):
This is the real opportunity for small independent businesses to actually rethink that whole unpackaging experience, which is something, of course, that Steve Jobs took very, very seriously with Apple.
That actually product packaging was considered as much a part of the purchase as the actual product itself.
And so this is wonderful.
This is like opening a box of gifts, and I have the food wraps and the postcards and then, just a beautifully presented, fantastic sort of gift hamper of little socks and seed bombs.

(10:57):
It's magic.
I always think that it's really nice when you're unboxing something and it's packed full of joy.
And this is like a little joyful box of just good stuff that you would want to have.
So we've been sent some tea, some chocolate bars, some socks.
A fantastic set of gifts and fantastically well done.

(11:24):
It's really nice.
There's a couple of things here that the thought gone into this is great.
The candle for a start, it's by FieldDay.
I'm not even going to read out the notes here, but it smells absolutely beautiful.
And the instructions on how to use the candle end with the, basically the instructions are seed paper.
So once the candle is used, you can reuse it, put the seeds into the candle, I guess, into the jar and grow yourself some flowers.

(11:52):
It's quite a nice touch, isn't it?
That's incredibly clever.
And this is great.
This is for the wild swimmers of the world.
A pair of socks that looks like, it's a pair of socks with open water swimmers, people on the beach and all that kind of thing, by a lady called Marion Belliot.
So this is a really lovely package.

(12:13):
Beautiful, beautiful gifts.
A great little company here in Ireland called Faerly.
I really liked that.
It's very clever.
If you haven't visited their website, then we urge you to go along and have a look.
And thank you to the guys at Faerly for sending us our boxes this week.

(12:34):
Thank you very much.
Wow, what a treat.
This episode of Functional & Fabulous is brought to you with pride by StudioForty9.
Retail ecommerce experts, omnichannel growth consultants and cut-through performance marketing specialists.
StudioForty9, where your digital retail success is built.

(12:54):
Okay, so really enjoyed that.
Like you say, that's Mr Faerly all over.
The attention to detail is wonderful.
It's a really beautiful package.
So Matthew, I guess in your job as the, you know, the safaris that you do and that area of things, what are you looking for when you're doing a store tour with a group of retailers?
What kinds of things are you looking to point out to them?

(13:17):
And, you know, what are the retailers looking for on these safaris?
I think the retailers are wanting to know what's happening in the market.
The market's moving really fast.
They want to see innovation.
What's really interesting is that they're not just looking at their competitors.
I think they're actually looking a little bit more deeply into what are the principles of great retail that are not necessarily on their doorstep, you know, in terms of what their competitors are doing, but that they could apply to themselves to make better retail experiences for their customers.

(13:45):
So, you know, most of the safaris I do are generic ones, so they're cross-sectoral.
And I'm looking at innovations in store design, in merchandising, in communication, in technology to a certain extent, and also looking at how cities are creating vibrant, sustainable ecosystems.
That's the kind of, the other part of the puzzle, as it were.

(14:07):
You know, because on one level, you're looking at retailers and what they're doing inside their own stores, but it's actually equally relevant as to what's happening outside.
What are the neighborhoods?
What are the districts?
What makes a great, vibrant shopping district?
And I always say that the best shopping districts in the world did not come around by accident.
They came because it's a combination of retailers doing innovative things, but also councils, landlords, developers, actively sculpting and curating the mix as well.

(14:37):
Curation is super important, whether you're a retailer in a physical store, whether you're a retailer online, or equally, whether you're a developer that's trying to build a shopping mall or a shopping district.
It's about getting that right mix that fits with what customers want to create destinations that are going to get people out of their house and off their phones and out shopping.

(15:00):
And what makes a great shopping district, other than a curation of great stores?
What are the other things that councils should be looking to do?
Well, I mean, you've got obviously the streetscape, the architecture, you know, to a certain degree, you know, functional things like pedestrianisation is obviously a huge tool.
But, you know, otherwise, al fresco eating,

(15:22):
which is one of the things that we saw
after the pandemic,
which was a lovely innovation,
you know, reclaiming our streets away from cars
and, you know, dangerous moving traffic
to places where we want to wander
and sit and, you know, sit outside,
you know, safe, secure streets,
interesting shopfronts,

(15:43):
you know, a varied mix of retail
and hospitality and entertainment.
All of the things that go together to make bustling high streets, a mix of independent, of brands, all of that together, when you get that mix, you know, combining in interesting and unique ways, then you get a world-class shopping destination.
And if anybody who's listening wants to go and visit a really good shopping district, that's a shining example of this and probably a bit more accessible than China or Japan, where would you recommend that they visit?

(16:16):
Well, I mean, London is a fantastic example.
And mainly because a lot of people that don't know London would think it's a monolithic city.
It's actually a city of varied different villages, of which they all have their own character.
So what you actually have in London is you have Covent Garden, which is controlled by one landlord.
You have a lot of the West End, Carnaby Street, which is controlled by another landlord called Shaftesbury.

(16:39):
You've got The Crown Estate, who control Regent Street.
You've got the de Walden Estate, who did Marylebone High Street.
And then you have the fantastic new developments of King's Cross and Battersea, each with their own landlords and developers, each with their own flavour.
And they're all unique neighborhoods.
But, you know, if you were to go to New York, they're the places we all know because they're world famous.

(16:59):
It's the Meatpacking District.
It's Chelsea.
It's Soho.
It's Williamsburg in Brooklyn.
All of those places are iconic for a reason because they have this incredible concentration of activity and innovation and a sense of place.
So, you know, it's a global phenomenon.
But, you know, if you're based in Ireland and you want to see the best that's easily within reach, then London is obviously a world-class city.

(17:26):
So that's the outside.
What's going to pull you into a great retail store?
Well, I often talk about, you know, the different modes of retail.
Obviously shopfronts are huge.
Windows are huge.
You know, they've been the basics of retail forever.

(17:47):
And, you know, I don't think they're going anywhere during the pandemic.
Then you have that first look as you go into the store, which is what I call first bite.
And I actually think, you know, given our attention spans that are getting shorter and shorter, shopfront windows and first bite are the main power tools that retailers have to encourage people to actually walk in through the door and then to encourage them to go inside and explore.

(18:10):
And what about, what is it that retailers can do to make that first bite delicious?
Well, it's down to design and merchandising and, to a certain extent, communication, maybe also a sense of energy.
You know, I mean, there was, you know, a number of windows I've seen over the years where they have live window displays with people in there doing things.

(18:32):
You know, this is what we want as social animals.
We want to feel like there's a buzz, that there's an excitement, that there's, you know, that you'd be missing out, you know.
Retailers that can harness that sense of FOMO.
And the other very funny thing that I've been tracking for the last 20 years is this phenomenon of the queue that's outside the store, you know, and deliberately, you know, brands deliberately creating queues in order to create and generate that sense of excitement and purpose.

(19:03):
And it was a very Japanese thing.
You know, you'd get this walking through the streets of Tokyo and you'd be through Harajuku with these tiny little streets and you'd walk past and you'd see a street that you couldn't tell whether there was anything interesting happening, but you'd see a queue of people waiting for hours for stuff to happen.
And suddenly you're like, I want to get in on that.
Brands like Supreme, you know, have created those limited-edition drops that people are queuing out overnight for.

(19:28):
I remember being in New York a few years ago when they had the Yeezy drop.
You know, it was minus two degrees out there, snow on the ground and people were out there sitting on chairs and camping overnight to get their hands on the latest product.
So, you know, there's all this mix of the kind of, wow, the design, the merchandising, the windows and also that sense of energy and purpose that, you know, something great's happening.

(19:53):
And shoppers really are looking to be entertained.
Absolutely.
And after two years of lockdown or however long it was, we're absolutely up for that again.
You know, we're social creatures.
We want to be out, hospitality, events, learning, activations, all of that, super important.
What would you say, Matthew, is the biggest opportunity to take some of the learnings in terms of the retail experience from the physical store to the online?

(20:22):
What kind of crossovers are there and how do you draw the link between the physical retail experience and, let's say, the online experience, or what learnings can retailers bring from the physical to the online?
It's a very good question.
I mean, it's the hot question, of course, for online retail.
And I think online retail started as the digital version of a shopping catalogue, which was absolutely fine.

(20:48):
But I think future retail is going to be the future version of the physical store.
And so the big opportunities are to create three-dimensional environments that you can actually navigate and browse through rather than as a static 2D thing.
So we're absolutely seeing the rise of the virtual store.
The metaverse people are talking about, I personally think that a metaverse that doesn't have a crossover into the physical world is not the direction we want to be heading.

(21:13):
But a metaverse that connects the physical and the digital absolutely has power.
But I think all the principles of great retail, the things that I talked about, that wow, that curation, that personalisation and storytelling are all principles that are not only good for online retail, they're absolutely essential if you want to survive in that day and age.

(21:34):
But I think from a more exciting perspective, what could you learn from current trends in retail?
I think the move towards pop-up stores is something that retail could do as well, because retail, online retail is often the permanent catalogue.
They have new arrivals and hot drops, but they don't necessarily have themed environments, themed spaces within online worlds that we're seeing in physical stores.

(21:58):
And we're seeing, especially in the luxury market, these incredible collabs between artists and designers, or one product supplier and a luxury brand.
And I was outside Harrods last week, in fact, at the beginning of this week, with the incredible Louis Vuitton, Yayoi Kusama collab, where they've taken over the entire outside of Harrods.

(22:22):
This is happening around the world.
Louis Vuitton in Champs-Élysées has a huge, giant Yayoi Kusama bending over the building, painting dots on the outside.
They've done the same in Fifth Avenue.
They've got this giant, 15 metre-tall statue outside Harrods, again, painting dots on.
This is the kind of thing that's absolutely generating interest and excitement in the physical world.

(22:47):
Bring some of that online.
There are opportunities to do that.
Even yesterday, we were speaking with a retailer who would have a fairly large catalogue and every single product detail page on the website, other than the product that is being showcased on that product detail page, every single page is exactly the same.
But it's entirely possible to treat various categories of product.

(23:10):
Let's say, if you're in fragrances, for example, you could look to generate a more premium feeling still on brand in the overall website, we'll say, but generate a premium feeling in the fragrances, or in some of the make-ups and so on and then have a completely businesslike approach to some of the product that is a little bit more, you know, a little less inspirational and so on.

(23:33):
There's opportunities there.
And of course, Gordon, you've seen also the rise of the PXP.
We have the PLP, the product listing page, the PDP, the product detail page and the PXP, which is the product experience page.
Which I'm a huge fan of.
And I think some of the things that I'm keen to ask you about, actually, Matthew, is around how you create in a retail environment through merchandising that sense of premium.

(24:02):
Because you'll often hear people say, oh, well, we've a merchandising treatment for that.
But when a merchandiser talks about that in a store, what for you is good merchandising that looks premium, that makes a product really stand out from the other products in the store and the other stores on the street?

(24:24):
Because that's kind of the principle that we talk to retailers about quite a lot in terms of replicating that online.
On the most simple level, the difference between Penneys/Primark and Louis Vuitton is volume.
So it's the volume of product on display.
So the less product you have on display, the more premium it looks, simply put.

(24:47):
It's actually not even a question of materials and having fancy materials, because the funny world is that you have Comme des Garçons that's selling products, selling a jacket at £15,000 or €15,000,
and they're doing it in a pop-up store that's made of cardboard.
And you will have Pennys, or you will have value retailers, that have got marble-clad counters and shiny fixtures.

(25:14):
And they're selling products at a fraction of the price.
So even the old simple definition of the difference between luxury and value, value stores traditionally were ugly.
They had crowded fixtures, cheap fixtures, gray carpet, cardboard point of sale.
And fancy stores had lots of expensive, shiny materials.

(25:36):
That has actually broken down over the years.
And although clearly in the luxury world of flagships, they're still spending an awful lot of money on very beautiful, natural materials.
Actually, where the real energy is happening, particularly in the world of pop-ups, is with cardboard or temporary materials or stuff that looks from set design.

(25:59):
And they're not spending nearly as much capital investment on that environment as let's say, Sports Direct is with a £10 million flagship on Oxford Street.
But what they are all doing is giving the product space to speak, almost.
Am I understanding you correctly there?

(26:19):
Yes, they are.
They are presenting the product as though it's a precious and unique item, rather than as one of a thousand pieces of choice that you can have that are all packed in with different sizes.
And it's, again, one of those things, isn't it?
You know, if there's too much choice, it devalues what you think there is.

(26:41):
Actually, if you then present one item and you tell a fantastic story around that item, then you elevate how it looks.
In luxury, equally what's really nice is seeing that in technical wear.
So I actually just posted a review that I've done of the Norrøna flagship in Oslo, which is fantastic outerwear and skis and duffle jackets.

(27:05):
And they have this beautiful display where they deconstructed the jacket.
It's almost as though it's half exploded and it's been set in these glass panels.
And they're basically, each part of it is telling the construction of the different layers of that product.
And with every extra bit of information, it elevates the authenticity, the expertise, the desirability of the product.

(27:27):
And it makes you feel that the brand is passionate and expert.
And therefore you want that product that much more.
That is an absolutely premium approach.
I suppose it's the essence of curation as well, Matthew, you know, where you're not presenting everything you could possibly have and saying, look, here's a thousand t-shirts, go hither.

(27:49):
You're basically saying, you know, here are four t-shirts that I have curated.
I have hand-selected for you, my customer, who I know.
Can you speak a little bit about, in terms of the elevating the customer experience and for the retailers to get to know the customer better, what is the ultimate kind of best personal profile approach?

(28:09):
You know, have you seen really interesting ways or really good, let's say, get to know your customer type approaches in retail?
Yeah, well, I think again, this is one of the hot topics, isn't it?
And everyone's chasing the ultimate curated, personalised experience.
And what does that look like?
And what does it look like in physical retail?
And what does it look like as an online one?

(28:30):
I think the ultimate goal would be that you would work, as a customer, you would walk into an environment and you would only see things that were relevant to you.
That that combines not seeing products that are out of stock or that don't fit you or that don't suit you or whatever else it is.

(28:50):
And, you know, the suiting you takes things to a further level because it means the retailer needs to know you.
But certainly in terms of building profiles on what your sizes are, and, you know, what the current ranges are, those are things that retailers can do much more easily.
Certainly online, they can do with a personal profile, but even in physical stores.

(29:14):
But it's a very bold and brave decision to curate because the old adage of retail was very simple, which was if you don't have it out on the shop floor, you can't sell it.
So that was why there's the drive to putting more and more stuff out onto the shop floor because, you know, if customers can't see it, they don't know anything about it and they can't buy it.

(29:34):
In the modern world of online retail, things are a little bit different because you can have an endless aisle of the internet.
But what you're really trying to do is to get people into that ecosystem in the first place.
And you do that, again, by filtering and narrowing down choice, making those bold decisions about what you think customers will want without overwhelming them with too much choice at the beginning.

(29:58):
A retailer's role is almost to select, and the buyer's role is to select from that assortment what they think is going to work best.
And if you think about, I always talk about Amazon as being really, really great if you know exactly what you want.
But if you're looking for inspiration, then that's not the place to go.

(30:22):
And I think that's part of the retailer's role and the magic of retail and the buyer's role to actually bring that curated selection to a customer and then get them excited about it.
And similarly, one of the things, and I'm kind of backtracking a little bit, where you mentioned size and fit.

(30:45):
Ger and I, we were with a retailer a couple of weeks ago and we were talking to a member of their sales team.
And a member of their sales team in the store looked at Ger and looked at me and told us our exact sizes just by looking at us.
And he was like, you'll need this size and this type of fit will work for you.

(31:06):
And I think that was really interesting because I've yet to see that well replicated online.
That's retail experience.
How do you take that out of that store manager or that salesperson's head and bring that to life in a digital environment?
I haven't seen it done well.

(31:26):
And I know you feel quite strongly about that, Matthew.
Yeah, I guess we have seen certain elements of it during COVID with the appointmenting and going on Zoom and you get an element of it.
But I guess, Matthew, you've probably seen some kind of gimmicks around that in stores and body scanning and this sort of thing.

(31:48):
Yeah, I mean, I think body scanning does have the potential to add real value.
It's just wherever I've seen it before, it doesn't execute very well.
The problem is the fragmentation in the industry globally means that there's just not enough consistency between all of the brands.
Some are coming in small, some come in big.

(32:10):
You just absolutely don't know.
So even having an amazing scan of your body that's accurate down to the millimeter doesn't really help you when you do the purchasing.
So that's a huge problem.
But as you say, the very best retail is the traditional retail that we had.
And I had two occasions where I had exactly that same experience.

(32:30):
I went into Moss Bros many, many years ago and was served by a guy that had obviously worked in gentleman's fashion for 30, 40 years.
And he just took one look at me and knew exactly what size I was.
And he only ever brought me out jackets that fit perfectly.
And it was a magic retail experience because never once did I put on a jacket that was just a little bit too tight, that was uncomfortable, that immediately irritates you.

(32:55):
And all I was doing was really making a choice between fabrics and cuts and so forth, which is the nice part.
And I'm not worrying about fit.
And the question on how to replicate that online is a very tricky one.
I have seen a couple of retailers that I think do it rather well.
I think there's a men's retailer called Spoke, which I've used a few times and they're really focused on fit.

(33:21):
But there was also Bonobos that was of course the sort of darling of online retail back 10 years ago.
And they had a series of these fit shops, which were showrooms where you couldn't actually buy anything, but you'd go in there to try on the fit, to work out what worked, to build your profile in a physical store so that you could then shop online.
And it was great in theory, apart from the fact that I tried it when I was in New York and I went through the whole process and I found trousers that fit brilliantly.

(33:49):
And then I wanted to buy online and they said, well, we don't ship to the UK.
So it was a totally wasted physical experience for both the brand and for me as a customer.
Yeah.
And they didn't offer the purchasing inside a store.
And it just seemed perverse to me to have this concept that's all around fit and convenience, when you don't also offer the fit and convenience of a traditional store, where you can actually walk out with a product that you've paid for.

(34:17):
So again, when you say gimmicky stuff, Ger, it's exactly that.
There is a lot of attention on sort of trying to rethink retail, but a lot of the time they forget the basics of good retail.
And tell me just a little bit about going the, let's say, slightly the other direction.
So going from online to in-store, one of the great challenges we see at the moment is how to put forward a great proposition around click-and-collect.

(34:44):
So what kind of areas have you seen?
Like we've seen things like the Finpost experiment, which I think people in Irish retail could learn a lot about, or learn a lot from.
What's your general feeling around click-and-collect?
And where have you seen click-and-collect done really well?
Yeah, well, I think there's two examples I could tell you that I think are good.
I mean, I have to preface it with the sort of admission that I personally, on a personal level, don't really use click-and-collect.

(35:10):
I don't find it
that convenient for me, and it seems to me that it's very often a distress purchase for people that would much prefer to have something delivered to their home, but they live in a flat in a city and they don't trust it being left outside.
So click-and-collect is often starting from a position where people don't want to be there in the first place.
And so, you know, a lot of the time retailers are doing click-and-collect, but they want to make it a little bit sticky.

(35:36):
So they want to put it at the back of the store so that customers have to come in and, you know, look at the store because they're hoping there'll be an impulse purchase.
And I utterly understand that rationale, but it may have unintended consequences in the fact that customers are already in a hurry.
They don't want to engage in that way.
So I think, you know, if you're just doing click-and-collect as a functional approach, I think there's some challenges there.

(36:02):
But I think the opportunity for click-and-collect is to go above and beyond to provide services that you didn't know you necessarily knew that are genuinely helpful and convenient.
And so, as I said, two examples, Posti, which is a Posti box, which is a concept from the Finnish post office.
And they have this flagship concept in Helsinki.

(36:22):
So it was basically a series of click-and-collect lockers, which you would collect any online order from any brand, and you would go in and you would pick up the order.
But what they also had was you could unwrap the packaging there.
They would recycle and dispose of the packaging there.
You could also try on the products inside that concept.

(36:44):
So they had a fitting room space.
So if you were buying a fashion product, you could try it on there.
And if it doesn't work, rather than having to do that in home and then rewrap it and then take it back again, you could do that whole process inside the store.
And then they would provide the packaging for you to rewrap and to do the returns inside the store.
And I thought that was a really nice added-value idea.

(37:05):
It makes so much sense.
And an idea that we don't see really at all.
But no, I've not seen it.
I think it's great if you're under a bit of time pressure and it saves, like, getting something to deliver, getting something delivered to the office, which many of us aren't going to anymore, getting changed in the office toilets, deciding it doesn't fit and then trying to drop it into the post office before the post office closes at the end of the day.

(37:28):
Instead, you can just go and use this service.
I think that's a brilliant idea.
I'd love to see that popping up in Dublin or in Cork or, you know, even in Kilkenny.
Yeah.
So the other one I think is a really good case study is Nordstrom, which is the family-owned department store, sort of the John Lewis of America.
And they've been rolling out this concept called Nordstrom Local, which is a department store that's only about 3,000 square foot with no product in it.

(37:55):
And it's all about added value services, of which click-and-collect is the main hub of reason to go there.
So you can go and pick up any of your orders from nordstrom.com, but you can also do returns.
And not just for nordstrom.com, you can do it for any brand, which is a really nice, generous approach.
They have a tailor in-store so you can do in-store alterations.

(38:16):
They have clothing recycling so you can donate clothes.
They have all that upcycling.
And then they have in-store services as well that are responsive to the local neighborhood.
So they have things like stroller rentals on the Upper East Side in New York, where there's a lot of yummy mummies.
In downtown LA, they have a men's barber in there.

(38:36):
Kind of over in Hollywood in LA, they have brow bars and nail bars in there.
And they also have a personal shopping area where you can book an appointment with a stylist.
And that will come in, which is again powered by either the local Nordstrom flagship.
So it's kind of, it's a fulfillment hub where the main flagship is acting as a sort of warehouse.

(38:59):
Or it's run out from some of their subsidiaries like Trunk Club, which is their personal stylist.
So that again, really nice kind of rethinking what click-and-collect is within a department store.
Absolutely.
And it's just evolving things a little bit by saying, okay, we've gotten, we've taken things this far.
What's the plus one?
What's the next step up that we can do?

(39:20):
We've gotten somebody from online.
They've come to a location.
We know why they're coming to this location.
What's the next thing we can do now that they're in the location?
But let's say, stepping away a little bit from the standard online and the physical...
Let's talk a little bit about the metaverse.
Are you seeing a little bit of the rise of metaverse?
What would you say are the best and worst experiences?

(39:42):
And how does it differ from physical?
How does it even improve on physical,
would you say?
Yeah, well, I mean, I actually have been looking at virtual stores before I started looking at the metaverse.
And I'm not really sure where the difference is between a virtual store and the metaverse.
I'm not sure really what the metaverse is.
I don't think anyone really quite knows what it is.

(40:04):
You know, as a retail guy, if the metaverse is a place where all you do is you buy products for your digital avatar and then it stays online, frankly, to be honest, I'm just not interested in it.
It has no relevance to me.
You know, people are already buying and selling through the gaming world.

(40:24):
That is a different world.
That to me is not real retail.
I know there's real money involved.
What I'm much more interested in is where does the physical connect with the digital?
So where are you having retail experiences online that then connect through to products that you actually get, in person, in a home?

(40:44):
And there I think we're seeing some really interesting innovation.
And I thought Charlotte Tilbury did a fantastic virtual store for Christmas.
It was a Christmas gift store,
which was a series of
three connected rooms
with these walls of merchandise
with a really nice curated
selection of different products,
which you could browse,

(41:05):
you walk around
like it's Google Street View
and you can then buy,
you can meet the digital avatar
of Charlotte Tilbury
and play a little video
of her talking to you
and lots of digital
storytelling around there.
And I thought that was a really nice approach.
Equally, Bloomingdale's did a metaverse concept earlier this year to celebrate their 150th anniversary.
And that was quite nice.

(41:26):
It was this sort of floating...
It was this store at the top of a skyscraper, and it's a platform that opens out and you're above the clouds, and you can just see this floating Bloomingdale's brown blimp in the same colour as the big brown bag.
And you basically go in there and it's like a gallery with a bunch of different rooms.

(41:47):
And to actually access the experience, you have to collect these different tokens.
And so it's a sort of gamified approach to the retail experience.
And you take this subway that takes you through to a carrot wonderland.
But again, it was linked to real products, real hot anniversary products that were limited-edition that you could buy, that you could see, that you could walk and browse.

(42:12):
And that, I thought, was a nice example of it.
Whereas the one that got a lot of press was the H&M metaverse store, which I thought was the most laughably terrible idea I've ever seen, where it would look like an ordinary H&M store packed with rails and rails of product.
And it was the worst of physical retail translated to digital retail without understanding the potential of what you could do with it.

(42:37):
So, you know, the good and the bad.
You know, Charlotte Tilbury and Bloomingdale's nice, H&M metaverse, not so good.
For me, very much the jury's out on the metaverse.
I think it has a high degree of novelty.
I don't really think it has that greater degree of practicality yet.
And it'll be interesting to see how this develops.

(43:00):
But I think that there have been some very literal initial interpretations of the metaverse and what a digital store might look like, as in the H&M example.
But then there have been other things happening around the periphery that have been a little bit more interesting.
But they tend to cross over into gaming.
So for me, very much I'd let the metaverse do its thing and focus on some of the things that are a bit more actionable today for retailers that we're working with.

(43:33):
And back into the physical world again, let's look a tiny bit, just to wrap up towards the end of this podcast, on the sensory experience.
You know, how when we're coming from online, we had this wonderful example today of the unboxing of the Faerly gift box that we received.

(43:54):
You know, can you tell us a little bit about the sensory experience, where you think that whole thing started and who's doing it the best?
Sensory experiences are the reason for physical retail.
That's what we want.
We want that sense of buzz when we're walking in.
You know, a physical store offers you all those opportunities to tell deeper, richer, more tangible stories about the brand and even sort of subconscious ones setting the tone through the smell and through the music.

(44:22):
You know, some people did it in a less subtle way.
You know, Abercrombie & Fitch in the old days, back when they were still popular, their stores were dark nightclubs.
You know, they had the music pumping.
They even had, you know, gorgeous staff up there on balconies dancing.
You know, that was the kind of most egregious examples of retail theatre.
But then, you know, look, we're seeing that across in much more charming and authentic ways through to food retail.

(44:46):
If you take Eataly, which is the fantastic slow food supermarket, they have counters where they are making the bread.
They are making the pasta.
They are making the mozzarella.
They have restaurants in store where you can eat.
Every product has graphics, stories attached to them.
That, for me, is the ultimate sensory environment.

(45:06):
It is, it's smell, taste, eating, reading, learning.
They have a cookery school in there.
You know, that is covering all of the bases.
That, for me, is, you know, the ultimate example of how to create sort of tactile, tactile sensorial retail spaces.
And, you know, it's not not just in food, you know, Lush have built their entire store portfolio around these three-dimensional sensorial storytelling.

(45:35):
You know, again, with a big sustainability focus, but also a big sense of retail theatre.
You know, super inventive in terms of treating soaps like they're fresh fruit, you know, piled up in wonderful colours.
You know, all of these things are fantastic tools that retail can use.
And bringing it over to the online side, we talk a lot about the last mile in delivery, but of course, the box is the thing that you get into the hand.

(46:03):
And the impact that the box can make, even for a small business, it can be disproportionate.
You can have a very, very large impact.
Larger businesses like Amazon can't do a whole lot in terms of an unboxing experience.
So what you get, you get your book in a bag kind of a thing.
But smaller businesses can certainly put a lot more effort into the unboxing and get that, generate that experience and have the sensation, even though it's arriving in a small brown box.

(46:32):
So I guess just to wrap up, I would say thanks very much, Matthew.
It's been great.
I definitely think we could stay on here for a while longer.
I had a couple of other things that I wanted to get to.
Gen-Z - or Gen-Zee?
I don't know which way are we pronouncing it?
I'm probably too old.
Both of us are.

(46:52):
Are we Zed or are we Zee?
I'm a Zed.
I'm a Zed as well.
Matthew, are you a Zed or a Zee?
I'm a Zed, yeah.
That probably discounts us all from having any credibility talking about them whatsoever.
Yeah, absolutely.
So maybe best to leave that one kind of pass over in silence.
Matthew, thanks so much and really looking forward to seeing you again in the real world, in real life.

(47:15):
And it's been a great pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
Matthew, thank you so much for sharing your insight and your views with us.
It's been a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Thank you.
So that's Matthew Brown, retail futurist.
Wasn't he interesting?
Fascinating.
What did you learn from today?
I learned, there was a couple of bits that I learned.

(47:37):
It seems obvious, but it's completely forgotten about, and we haven't thought about it either, which is the click-and-collect experience.
We're so focused on the whole functional aspect of getting click-and-collect working, understanding where the stock is, which stores are we doing, media collection, order to collect.
We do kind of give consideration then to what the click-and-collect experience is going to be like.

(48:00):
Again, from a functional perspective, where we were arriving in with a scannable barcode on our phone and all of that kind of thing.
What we've completely forgotten about is that kind of a plus one.
What's the step-up experience?
Make it fabulous.
But the step-up experience...
What is the extra that you can put into this?
And the extra, according to Finpost, which is ridiculous that it's the postal service that comes up with this, but the possibility of trying it on when you arrive.

(48:24):
I mean, that's so obvious, but, I don't know...
Does anybody offer that?
Some retailers must have fabulous click-and-collect zones.
I can't think of any off the top of my head that, where they give you this holistic click-and-collect experience with great pickup, ability to recycle, ability to walk out, other than just taking something to the changing rooms.

(48:45):
I've not seen it.
I suppose I can say that in Ireland, at least, probably the best approach to click-and-collect is Lifestyle Sports.
I'm not sure who's involved in that.
I would absolutely concur.
I think Lifestyle Sports' click-and-collect is amazing.
It's probably the best, but still, there isn't that kind of encouragement to try it on when you arrive to facilitate the return there and then, or the substitution if needs be, to handle the return and to handle the packaging.

(49:15):
And we all know, nowadays people aren't interested in carrying home a load of boxes and so on.
So that's something that I've definitely learned and it's something I'll take away with me.
You know, we're focusing in, well, I'm focusing in a lot on the function, how are we getting it to work, where is the stock coming from and all of those sorts of things.
But really, we're forgetting about the customer, and it's the customer's experience that's really going to be the making or breaking of the click-and-collect.

(49:41):
Because, like, Matthew was right, people don't want to come in.
It's not that they want to come in.
They have to come in because it's a distressed purchase, or they have to come in because they don't want to pay for the shipping costs for some reason, or they need it very, very soon or it's that sort of thing.
But otherwise, you'd prefer it to be delivered to home.
So what can you add to it?

(50:02):
I took a lot of other stuff away from this conversation, and I think when I asked him about his top three, he was talking about that wow, that sense of curation, that storytelling, which is something that we talk about a lot.
But in practical terms, what can that look like above and beyond, and taking the click-and-collect example of what is that unboxing experience?

(50:25):
How do you bring those sensory experiences that you can have in retail that makes retail stores so magical?
How do you bring some of those in?
Like obviously, sound is quite difficult to do, but smell and scent.
We should have actually asked him what his favourite-smelling retail store was.
I know mine's, believe it or not, mine's Rocks Jewellers, but it really does smell good.

(50:49):
But how do you bring those...
How can retailers bring some of this sense of luxury through this, these sensory experiences in the end-to-end CX?
And the other bit around merchandising and giving product space, I thought was really interesting of, you know, should you be trying to fit 100 products onto your PLP or should you be taking 50 and giving them lots of space to breathe?

(51:17):
And that's something to take away and think about.
Yeah, and the one area, you know, it was something that we were, well, I was thinking about quite recently, but that whole separate treatment of, you know, if you're a retailer selling a number of different types of product and some of that product is premium product, why don't you give that a separate treatment?
A PXP...

(51:37):
A premium level treatment on the product detail page and the aesthetics go toward that and so on.
You know, there's no reason we can't do that.
So that for me made an awful lot of sense.
The metaverse, I think, is interesting.
Oh, the metaverse...
I know, I know, I know...
But it's interesting, isn't it interesting?

(51:57):
It really grinds my gears...
See? It's interesting.
Is it?
All right, then.
The metaverse is interesting.
Okay, that's all we need. We can stop the show.
We can't do the edit there.
The metaverse is interesting, but it's just not right yet.
Well, I love the H&M example.
I think it rings so true.
A company, I guess, I haven't seen it myself, but I understand exactly what he's saying.
A company who's taken all the effort of putting the thing on the metaverse and have just transposed all of the bad stuff from the physical world into the metaverse.

(52:26):
And in reality, like, you're in the metaverse, and in the real world as well, you want to front-face the product.
I mean, people want to arrive into the store and they'd like to see the product front-faced on the wall, hanging up at eye level, with other product around it that goes with it.
Not another 10 t-shirts, but other product.
But what we're forced to do is make people go through racks.
We're making the customer do all the work.

(52:46):
They have to push the rack back and try and pull it out and see it.
And that's because of space and, you know, all the rest of it.
And bringing that poor experience onto the metaverse just completely misses the point.
On the metaverse, we could totally have all of the t-shirts floating in front of us, front-on, rotating with other product next to it and so on.
I'm still not convinced.

(53:07):
I'm such a...
I don't know.
Maybe I'm a technical laggard on this one.
I just think go to a shop if that fully immersive retail experience is what you need.
But I also accept that sometimes you can't go to a store to get this.
There was one thing that really stuck into my head.

(53:30):
I was at a conference and there was a guy talking about the metaverse, and he was talking about using cryptocurrency to buy physical product.
And he was saying that, like, in the metaverse, you could buy the NFT and you could buy the physical product, but the physical product would just remain in the warehouse and you could then trade it on by trading the NFT.

(53:51):
But of course, this was a supply chain conference and you've just got a load of warehousing and logistics managers going, yeah, but that's going to be taking up, like, a pick location in my warehouse for like for decades and it might not ever move.
Who's going to pay for that real estate?
So I think there's some practical considerations like that for the metaverse?
But look, I'm looking forward to being convinced otherwise is what I'll say about it.

(54:13):
And I can't believe talking about, you know, maybe being a little bit on the older side, the Gen Zee, Gen Zed, Gen Zed conversation.
When I was speaking with Matthew, we were talking a little bit about sustainability and so on.
And, you know, I think there is still a situation where businesses are paying a little bit of lip service to sustainability.

(54:38):
Obviously, it's a critical issue nowadays.
The planet has arrived at a stage that is critical.
But in the case of, let's say, the lip service element, we have businesses who are kind of doing a fake-it-till-they-make-it.
I don't know, it's probably a topic of another conversation, but will the consumers vote with their wallets and does Gen Z vote with their wallet in terms of sustainability?

(55:02):
And it doesn't feel to me like they are.
I have read quite a bit of research about this and there's a couple of good articles and a couple of good podcasts floating around.
And Gen Z, Gen Zed have, they do have a strong view on sustainability.

(55:22):
And this is demonstrated through things like access instead of ownership.
So you have Spotify, you have Netflix, you have shared bike services, shared card services and so on.
And they also have, like, Gen Z have had quite difficult time over the last few years of being incredibly disrupted.

(55:44):
So they are making splurges on luxury purchases.
And there was a good stat, I forget where it was from, but millennials made their first luxury purchase at the age of 19.
Gen Z are making their first luxury purchase at the age of 15.
And technically they do that and luxury purchases generally have a lower carbon footprint per $1,000 spent on them.

(56:09):
And what the guys are doing is holding onto those products and using them as resale.
So they hold their value and they can resell them on.
So all of that is really, really interesting from a sustainability perspective, because these products last so much longer.
They've got a lot of longevity in them.
But on the flip side of that, SHEIN exists.

(56:32):
And they will sell you a dress for $3 or a pair of trousers for $3.
And so does H&M, fast fashion, Zara, fast fashion, it's all price.
And how much can I get?
So that's the dichotomy of Gen Z.
I think they're aware, but they don't vote.
To be fair, it is the dichotomy that exists in all of humanity.

(56:55):
We all like our luxury, but we all want it for $3.
Yeah, I would like to be fabulous - for $1.
Well, you're making that $1 T-shirt look fabulous.
It wasn't $1. Unfortunately.
Also, very, very briefly, I love the sustainability element in the Faerly packaging.

(57:17):
I remember a couple of years ago, we had a retailer who used to send and recycle their boxes.
Had a lot of complaints about the battered look of the boxes.
Well, they were battered because they were used once or twice or reused once or twice.
And so that particular retailer was getting a bit of a beating on Trustpilot and so on.
But that little sticker that was put on this box, 'please excuse, we like to reuse,' excuses the whole lot of that.

(57:43):
And I think as soon as you see it, the message is perfect.
It's so spot on.
It's such a small detail.
I think that's very clever from a positioning perspective.
And if you think Faerly is positioned as a retailer with a focus on ethical products and sustainability. But it will vary from retailer to retailer.
And some retailers will want to create that end-to-end luxurious experience, where the box is untouched as it arrives, and they will take steps to do that.

(58:12):
So I think it's going to depend on the retailer and the proposition there.
I do think it's a lovely touch.
It's perfect for them.
One of the things I thought was very interesting from Matthew was this idea of a sense of place, taking it beyond the retail store into the high street.

(58:32):
And that makes me think of how does the internet create a sense of place?
And maybe this ties into the metaverse and its general sense of place.
I don't think it has to.
I'm 100%...
I don't know where you're going exactly with this, but I'm looking into the future here.
And what I think, and I've often, I'm making a case for it.

(58:55):
I think the online store and e-commerce help support the high street, help support the high street in small towns and small locations.
And even though the two are kind of disjointed and disconnected, in reality, at home, somebody sitting on a couch at nine o'clock at night, they want to know if their store down the road has a particular product.
They're looking it up online.

(59:15):
They're able to buy it there and then if they want to, they're able to go in the next day and do their click-and-collect if they want to.
They can go into the store because they know it's there.
So that level of ecommerce and if you look at some of the stores, especially as you start off, most of the stores, online stores, are making their online, their sales online within 30km of their actual store locations.

(59:37):
So even though there isn't an explicit, like, direct connection sometimes between online and in store, in that regard, for me, there's definitely a supporting connection between the two.
Is that where you were going, Gordon?
That is totally not where I was going.
But I completely agree with you on all of those points and, like, we know where we've worked with retailers who are multiples, that where they have a town and they have a store, their online sales tend to be stronger, and I completely agree with you on that.

(01:00:06):
What I was thinking along the lines of was this idea of this set, this, I'm stuck on sensory environments basically, of this idea of, like, how does the internet create that sense of place around retailers?
And I wonder if that's the job of social networks?
So you have the retailer that appears on TikTok, the retailer that appears on Instagram versus the Amazon type marketplace.

(01:00:33):
And it's a really actually unstructured, unthought through area that I haven't really given any consideration to.
But what Matthew was talking about really resonated for me that the high street is far from dead, but the really great high streets have got a mix of different types of retail, entertainment, they've got good transport links, they've got ability to eat al fresco, although when it's raining most of the time that can be pretty grim.

(01:01:07):
Sorry on that, just, I really liked the idea of the shopping districts.
And even though he was talking about curation, he's talking about shopping districts pretty much in the same breath, nobody actually curated those shopping districts, really.
I mean, there's town planners and so on, but for a large part some of that thing grew organically.
You had the al fresco dining, you had the mix, you had the good, let's say, links in the parking, whatever was needed at the right time to create some of these shopping districts.

(01:01:35):
And I think, you know, we don't see it, but there is that similar kind of connection happening, let's say almost like an organic curation, between the physical retail, the digital retail, the retail in the social space, which people completely and utterly inhabit these days.

(01:01:55):
You know, so I think that's, you know, we're kind of getting these additional layers and almost a four-dimensional kind of space around shopping districts, which can be anchored around smaller towns and villages now.
I love it.
As I always say, I love shops, and I think the idea of these retail centers really starting to have a bit more conscious consideration, or to be consciously planned in the modern post-pandemic age of retail, is just a really fascinating area.

(01:02:27):
And the role that then online plays within that, I think is a little unclear, but could be very, very exciting in terms of additional services that are available, click-and-collect, visibility of in-store inventory, deciding where to go and even access to maybe products and services that customers wouldn't necessarily have access to before.

(01:02:51):
But this is, for me, has been hugely thought-provoking in so many areas, from curation through to storytelling and merchandising.
Very good.
And on that note, all that remains is to say thank you very much for listening.
We look forward to catching you the next time on the Functional & Fabulous podcast.
I've been Ger...

(01:03:12):
And I've been fabulous.
Thank you.
You've been listening to Functional & Fabulous with Ger Keohane and Gordon Newman.
If you'd like to know more about the podcast, or about StudioForty9 and Omnichannel Stories, please go to functionalandfabulous.ie. Our sound engineer was Elaine Smith, and the show was produced by Roger Overall.