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Customers first and always: Leading the charge for effective retail leadership

June 2025

The stage has been dismantled, the backdrop packed away. Delegates have returned home to their homes, offices and retail stores.

But while the dust has settled on this year’s World Retail Congress in London, the lessons and themes, the shared insights and experiences, will help retail leaders navigate a market replete with challenges and unpredictability — but also some opportunities, too.

But where should they start? What should they prioritise? Understanding what actions to take shows that effective retail leadership is more important than ever. Sharing learnings, wins and even being honest about wrong turns are all crucial.

From our conversations with key leaders at the event and in our everyday work with clients, as well as our mainstage session and upcoming podcast series with the World Retail Congress, we have identified four key lessons for senior retailers to keep in mind as they shape their organisation’s future.

Retailers need to deliver short-term results and fend off intense competition, but they also need to cast their eyes outward and focus on what is appearing over the horizon — such as evolving customer expectations, ongoing digital disruption and securing and retaining talent. All against a geopolitical backdrop as tumultuous as it is unsettling.

One leader who is no stranger to successfully traversing an uncertain external environment is Frederico Trajano, CEO of Brazilian retail giant Magalu. During his mainstage conversation with our colleague, Karin Karay, he explained how has developed an ecosystem that includes different logistics companies, joint ventures with banks and their own cloud services — all providing much-needed ballast amidst uncertain times.

Omnichannel retail is here to stay. It’s what customers expect and it’s what retailers are increasingly striving to achieve. This approach, which aims to create unified personalised shopping across all physical and digital channels, can take many forms but also incorporates a great in-store experience.

Londoners don’t have to look too far for examples on their own doorstep. The Grade II-listed former Topshop building in Oxford Street has recently been transformed into a new flagship IKEA store which includes a 130-seat Swedish deli, a live events space and one-to-one design services for kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms. And just down the road is Gymshark’s first bricks-and-mortar store on Regent Street — another example of re-using vacated space in a prime shopping district.

Perhaps inevitably, artificial intelligence (AI) was central to much of the Congress discourse. While still somewhat daunting, it is also clear that these technologies offer clear opportunities for efficiency gains as well as new customer journeys powered by AI. It can also help augment creative processes and be a significant enabler of speed and productivity. But such gains aren’t guaranteed.

Leaders need to be excellent communicators as they need to persuade their teams to adopt the technology and allow them to “fail fast” if needed. The way they set up their organisation to experiment is crucial, as is their own willingness to lean in and learn.

Creating a strong workplace culture — both in store and at headquarters — remains paramount. While culture should place the customer at the heart of everything, leaders themselves need to remember that how they act, how they are held accountable, and how they demonstrate their values sets the tone across their organisation.

These approaches indicate that successful retail leaders remain laser-focused in their quest to drive growth, serve new customers and use technologies to spark fresh efficiencies and innovations. No doubt similar themes will loom large during the 2026 World Retail Congress in Berlin next April.

After all, customers always come first — that’s one leadership lesson that should never change.


Sally Elliott co-leads Spencer Stuart’s Global Retail Practice and chairs the World Retail Congress Advisory Board.

This article was first published in the World Retail Congress Chairman's Review 2025.

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