Agenda

8.30am-9.35am

Breakfast and networking

9.35am-9.40am

Retail Week welcome

Hear from Retail Week Director of Commercial Content Nicola Harrison, as she kicks off a content-packed day and piques your interest for the sessions to come.

9.40am-10am

How Holland & Barrett is winning with tech, data and purpose

Keynote

As Holland & Barrett hails a second year of double-digit growth amid its ongoing transformation journey, its CEO of Wellness Solutions and Transformation Tamara Rajah joins us to delve into the health and wellness retailer’s innovation-driven growth strategy.

Tamara will reveal:

• How Holland & Barrett leverages technology, data, and consumer insights to drive meaningful change
• The benefits of the company’s science-backed, mission-led approach
• Tactics for building long-term customer relationships, including supercharged personalisation
• The innovative strategies across stores and ecommerce that will continue to drive growth

10am-10.30am

Visionary in-store retail concepts – what’s worth the investment?

From holograms and interactive digital screens to hybrid checkouts, dynamic pricing and innovative shelving solutions, what interactive features are transforming the in-store retail experience for customers and employees? 

Delving into retail’s most exciting innovations in physical retail, we’ll separate the gimmicks from the must-haves and ask how you measure the success of in-store innovations and ensure they deliver ROI. We’ll cover:

•  What future stores look like and the latest innovations accelerating retail change
• Smart mirrors, magic fitting rooms and immersive VR environments: just for fun or profit boosters? 

• What’s driving hyper-blended retail and what role ecommerce will play in future stores 

Speakers include:

• Katherine Davies, Chief Retail Officer, Matalan

10.30am-11am

Is your business intelligent enough? How smart retail can unlock peak performance  

In today’s data-driven economy, insight-led innovation will drive retail success. 

Fuelling business intelligence, data underpins the most game-changing retail innovations from system and warehouse automation, to demand prediction and inventory management for operational prowess. 

This panel will explore the most transformative data-driven solutions that are supercharging ultimate business intelligence for sustainable growth, as well as looking at evolving cyber security threats and how to mitigate risk.

We will cover: 

• What a truly intelligent retail business looks like: how data-driven machine learning and AI are being used across operations 
• From POS to supply chain, what are the most valuable data sources and why? 

• The importance of robust cybersecurity measures to safeguard customer data 

• What holds businesses back when it comes to spending on innovation and top tips on making savvy investment decisions   

Speakers include:

• Sathya Nandakumar, Chief Technology Officer, Holland & Barrett
• Vidya Laxman, Technology Director, Tesco

11am-11.30am

Refreshments

11.30-12pm

2025 friction busters: Driving conversion via seamless cross-channel shopping

You’ve built brand awareness and mastered ecommerce appeal but why do customers continue to abandon their carts at the point of purchase? 

We discover how retail’s super streamliners are taking the friction out of the customer experience and turning browsers into buyers. From AI powered chatbots driving product discovery, to innovations that are optimising convenience and fulfilment, this panel will explore retailers’ persistent pain points along the customer journey and provide top tips on ways to prevent cart abandonment and keep customers coming back for more. We will explore: 

• The now and future of contactless payments, scan-and-go retail and checkout free stores  

• The importance of meeting customers wherever they are with consistency  

• How chatbots and personal assistants can improve the customer experience 

• The innovations improving convenience and fulfilment for consumers

Speakers include:

• Muktar Mahama, Head of Digital Product, The Very Group

 12pm-12.25pm

Tailored, trusted, transformed: The three T's driving lasting loyalty 

Today’s shopper is more demanding and less forgiving, requiring businesses to exceed expectations – delighting and engaging consumers through innovative, hyper-personalised experiences, while building trust at every touchpoint. 

Although there’s still appetite for loyalty and reward programmes, brand-promiscuous consumers continue to chase price and convenience. For retailers, that means loyalty must be continuously re-earnt through relevance, creativity and innovative content and offers.

Exploring the reinvention of loyalty, we'll cover:

• Tailored: AI-driven personalisation and customisation that makes customers feel heard and understood 

• Trusted: As a valuable currency, trust must be earned so what must retailers do to earn it? 

• Transformed: The latest innovations around loyalty, and are they worth the investment? 

Speakers include:

• Gillian Connor, Director of Marketing Operations, Seasalt

12.25pm-12.55pm

Retail Media: maximise insight and unlock new revenue streams 

Retail media spend (excluding Amazon) is set to surpass the £1bn mark this year in the UK, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, climbing to £2.3bn in ad-spend by 2028, up from £588m in 2022. 

Recognising the power of retailers’ first-party data, suppliers and advertisers are looking to spend more on retail media. So how can you put your data to work and watch it pay off? This panel will ask what the best retail media models look like now and in the future, and what can be learnt from the grocers. We’ll cover: 

• Why retailers are becoming media owners 

• The challenges retail media help businesses overcome and how 

• Top tips on how to take the first steps into the world of retail media and drive measurable returns from first-party data  

Speakers include:

• Adam Smith, Head of Retail Media, Iceland Foods

12.55-2pm

Lunch and networking

2pm-3pm

Roundtables

3pm-3.30pm

Coffee and networking

3.30pm-4pm

Test boldly, learn fast: The power of innovation-led cultures

‘Test, learn and iterate,’ is a mantra coined within the start-up culture but it’s a powerful ethos for both emerging and legacy retailers to drive sufficient agility in today’s constantly shifting retail environment.  

But as budgets remain strained and retail leaders must do more with less, how do they make decisions about what innovations to invest in and ensure board and colleague buy-in when it comes to bringing new technologies online?

This session will explore how business transformers can contribute to a company culture that recognises the imperative of adopting new tech, and how to balance considered investment with a spirit of experimentation. It will cover:

• Why innovating and driving change within a company matters and how to encourage colleagues to champion change 

• From AI to holograms: what innovations are being used to help train and retain colleagues 

• The leadership behaviours that encourage innovation and what can stifle creative thinking 

• How to progress from brainstorming to implementation and how to measure success 

Speakers include:

• Jen Stewart, Senior Manager, HR Operations, Global, Jimmy Choo
• Romain Roulleau, Digital and Ecommerce Director, Kingfisher
• Alfie Meekings, Global Director of Transformation, Allsaints and John Varvatos

4pm-4.30pm

Secrets to standing out: Reimagining brand reach through innovation

In today’s always-on commerce landscape, brand discovery is happening everywhere all the time, creating opportunities and challenges for retailers and brands.  

This session will deep dive into how advertising and engagement is being reimagined, across the full funnel, from awareness and discovery to advocacy. 

Join us as we explore the innovations delivering best returns – from marketplaces building brand awareness and subscription models reshaping loyalty, to the likes of gamification transforming passive shoppers into active participants. We’ll cover: 

• The power of video and user-generated content in building trust 

• How visual search is transforming product discovery  

• The latest in supercharged CRM systems to maximise the productivity of marketing spend 

Speakers include:

• David Titman, Marketing Director, Who Gives A Crap
• Emily Crawshay Jones, Head of Marketing and PR, French Connection

4.30pm-4.35pm

Closing remarks from Retail Week

4.35pm-5.30pm

Drinks reception

Please join us over drinks to reflect on insights from the day and catch up with your peers.