Group CEO of Accent Group, Daniel Agostinelli, talks to Imogen Bailey about his predictions for the future of footwear retail.
Well from my point of view, speed is super important in all elements and new customers are very tech-savvy.
They've all got a phone, they've all got internet access, they're seeing trends in the UK or the US – and they don't want to wait six months as they used to, they want it now.
That's forcing our brand suppliers and indeed ourselves and my buying teams, to act faster and get the product here faster. That seems to be alive and well in the sneaker space, that's for sure.
The other thing is the store environment. If [you want customers to come in] you're going to [have to] keep your stores vibrant and indeed viable. Unless you can keep the same customers coming through [the doors] you're obviously going to end up with a problem.
We've had success with how we've innovated and we're very happy with the executions with all these innovations, we're looking good.
Do you think online will ever overtake or get rid of traditional retail spaces?
We see it as, simply a customer that wants his or her product delivered to them in a different manner [and] we need to be the best at doing that.
We feel that our digital hub and our fantastic digital team are achieving that. We're ahead of our goal of where we want to be as a percentage of overall sales.
At the same time, [we] need to have a very viable presence in the market with [our] store base, so [we] kind of need both.
What has changed, is that where we can't get commercials right in a store – that means wages and rent – we are faced with closing that store and looking for a different location, where it does make sense – that's what the online is making us do.
This is particularly solid in the C and B grade shopping centres, but the trend is that it may start to happen in the A grade shopping centres too.
You just have to get your commercials right, and we're spending more money on the fit-outs than we've ever spent before, so commercials need to make absolute sense before we go forward.
This article has been edited for clarity and brevity.