Retail

As CEO of German DIY store Hornbach-Baumärkte, Erich Harsch manages 23,000 employees. In a GDI video interview, he talks about good leadership, the biggest challenges of a multichannel retailer and global supply chains.

Whether it's e-commerce retailers, shops, brands, advertisers, everyone is currently insecure, says tech analyst Benedict Evans. How unbundling is creating new business models and what the next tech trend is, Evans explains here in a video interview from the GDI Retail Summit.

Javier Goyeneche makes clothes out of plastic waste through his label Ecoalf. He says: "Instead of asking ourselves which earth we are leaving to our children, we should be concerned about which children we are leaving to the earth." Watch the whole video interview from the GDI Retail Summit here.

The dynamic in online retailing has been apparent since before the Covid-19 crisis: there is no retail concept that cannot be digitalised. But what about physical retail space? What should remain, what should disappear, what needs more space?

"All retailers could benefit from being a bit more paranoid and protective of their turf." This is what Sucharita Kodali, Vice President at the American market research company Forrester, says. This means that they should invest more in protecting their intellectual property and lobbying for laws in their favour, just like Google, Facebook and Co. are doing. Read an interview here. Sucharita Kodali spoke at the 71st International Retail Summit on 9 and 10 September 2021.

How do you manage your staff during a pandemic of unprecedented magnitude? What doesn't work at all in such a situation? One person who should know is Erich Harsch. As CEO of the Hornbach DIY group, he is responsible for 23,000 employees. How did his employees inspire him during the pandemic? Harsch discussed it all here in an interview, and at the 71st International Retail Summit.

Most online shops today are based on the same 25-year-old tile design. Neha Singh, founder and CEO of the e-commerce platform Obsess, wants to change this with her 360-degree online shops. She explained why investors thought this was worth USD 3.4 million in a video and at the GDI International Retail Summit.

The dematerialisation, demonetisation and democratisation of shopping has only just begun. Consumption as we know it today will cease to exist. Magic Commerce is one possible future scenario.

Whether in the form of neighbourhood shopping or delivery to the doorstep, proximity to consumers is becoming increasingly important, as the pandemic has shown. Mario Irminger, CEO of the discounter Denner, outlined the conclusions he has drawn from this in a video interview and at the GDI Retail Summit.

With her start-up Reflaunt, Stéphanie Crespin connects luxury brands to the second-hand market using blockchain technology. She recently raised 2.7 million US dollars in funding for her venture. Crespin's ambitious goal is to solve the fashion industry's sustainability problem.