I recently spoke to Nick Connell, head of resale at Decathlon UK. He built Decathlon’s ‘Resale’ offering from a single guerrilla-style pop-up, flash-sale store of returned bike stock in Stockport just before the Covid pandemic to a nationwide initiative through which 12.6% of ALL bikes sold last year across Decathlon’s 40 stores originated from the retailer’s buyback scheme.
I asked him to share the top three learnings from his successful journey enabling front-line staff to fully support the organisation’s circularity initiatives in the retail environment. His response:
Make it easy for retail assistants to sell
- The offering has to be like for like, for example Decathlon offers the same guarantee on new and ‘Second Life’ bikes so there are no additional hurdles for the customer to shop sustainably.
- Clearly train around the new sales hooks that Second Life stock and the buyback scheme will give retail assistants – help them articulate the offering so they can leverage it to meet closely their customers’ requirements.
- Provide easily accessible channels to get internal answers and support. Decathlon has a vibrant Second Life community on Slack where retail assistants can communicate with staff at the circular hub in Northampton and/or people in other stores to get answers and Second Life stock quickly.
- Integrate new steps into existing processes so there are no additional interfaces, for example Second Life stock is integrated into the central stock system seamlessly – there are no extra steps or tabs to navigate.
Ensure ongoing and consistent communication
- This is true of the buyback and Second Life schemes, and needs to take place across all channels, reinforcing again and again the commercial sense of and focus on the initiative.
Provide clear visibility and accountability for stores and retail assistants on progress
- Decathlon retail assistants have access to online dashboards where they can see, per store, Second Life sales, buyback performance and margin contribution/stock saved from landfill.
- Second Life performance is integrated into individual retail assistant’s monthly meetings along with individual targets and incentives.
Connell’s insights further support the six-step process that we at Halo by Design recommend. As you start to think about how to turn your retail assistants into advocates to ensure your circularity initiatives fly, think about these stages:
Understand: make sure you know the retail assistants’ role, commitments, and what sort of changes will be required to make your circularity initiatives a success in their environment – from extra bins, to the right signage – and what sort of pressures that might put on them in relation to their other daily commitments.
Co-create: when looking to land your circularity initiative in store, what collateral will be needed, where will it go, how will any problems be handled? Retail assistants are your most brilliant source of insight; they know what works in the store, they know the questions people ask, they know the hurdles before you do and if you make them part of the solution it is much more likely to succeed.
Empower: give front-line workers the power to own the initiatives and pivot them as they see fit. Also ensure comms is a two-way street; you push down assistance but listen to what they are learning on the front line and support them in any pivots required.
Measure: set KPIs and targets per store and report on them. Ensure you have a ‘mystery shopper’ process in place so you can monitor how well the strategy is being activated ‘on the ground’ in stores (large and small) throughout the country.
Reward: retail assistants and stores should be acknowledged when there are successes – these can be soft rewards such as internal kudos or hard rewards in the manner of percentage of revenue share on any margin gains.
Celebrate: share the macro impact the initiatives have had (and of which they have been a part) and celebrate it together.
Maintain: comms, comms and more comms.
So, all you retail sustainability teams out there… do you have a retail assistant engagement strategy? If not, what is your plan to engage, activate, and empower this crucial audience to make your circularity initiatives sing and swim?
And if you have launched sustainability initiatives in store when was the last time you went ‘mystery shopper’ to find out how well they are doing? If you’d like help. we’d love to be part of ensuring your in-store circularity initiatives don’t just survive but thrive!
Tam Hussey is the founder of Halo by Design.
She has spent more than 20 years creating employee and consumer engagement initiatives and programmes for businesses across the world, and is now using these skills to support companies in reaching sustainability goals. Contact Tam on LinkedIn.
[image credit: Halo by Design]
