Opposite Page, Top to bottom: Retra Conference host , Declan Curry AMDEA, Paul Hide Retra Chief Executive Howard Saycell Best Practice AI – Tim Gordon


Right (L-R): Matt Renaut, Sean Hannam, Luke Gammon and Matthew Todd


said, with consumers’ average spend going up. “Part of this is consumers’ desire to have more energy efficient products in their homes,” he said. “It’s an obvious entry point for the MDA market and over half of all sales are of highly- rated ‘A’ appliances.” Mr Simon said a trend to keep an eye on is multifunctionality, as want more functions in one product. He concluded: “While the economy seems slightly stronger, many consumers are still preoccupied with inflation and the overall cost of living. Consumer confidence reflects this, although natural pessimism means that it has rarely gone above or even reached the zero breakeven line.”


AI to transform business Tim Gordon, a partner at Best Practice AI, started his presentation by suggesting that despite the excitement around AI, there is also a lot of over- hype. “Think of it less as a Terminator robot, and more


as a spreadsheet with ambitions to change the world,” Mr Gordon said. “It’s like having 1,000 interns to share your


workload; it acts as your co-pilot to prompt you on information you might need to answer certain questions or complete certain tasks. It also has superpowers, and it helps even the best workers be even better at what they do.” When it comes to jobs, all the experience so far shows that AI is having a big impact on productivity – increasing people’s ability to work faster and learn faster. Mr Gordon concluded: “There is a lot of talk


Winter 2023/24


about the risks around AI and people should make sure they do their homework. But don’t worry if your company is investing in AI, worry if your company is not, because those that are using it now will almost definitely have the competitive edge in any future battles in the marketplace.”


Panel session tackles key issues The panel consisted of three retailers – Matt Renaut, managing director, Dacombes of Wimborne; Luke Gammon, director, Wades; and Matthew Todd, partner, Herbert Todd – and Sean Hannam, editor, Retra Alert. The panel was asked: how sustainable is your business and how do you think you could do more? Matt Renaut: At the moment we’re doing okay. We recycle as much as we can, we are hoping to invest in a fleet of electric vans soon, and in the New Year, we’re having solar panels fitted to our building. We got a grant from local government towards the fitting of the panels, so, hopefully, we’re going to be completely sustainable so we generate all the power we need and hopefully a little bit more for the new vans.


Luke Gammon: We’ve just had a big redevelopment in our store, so every light bulb is now LED, where we used to have the big halogen light strips, which cost a fortune to run. Also, we don’t travel miles away from our store on so electric vans would be perfect for us, but it’s just the cost implications and the lack of infrastructure around our building.


Matthew Todd: We moved to a new out-of-


town building about six years ago which meant that we had to put solar panels on the roof. Our heating system is so costly to run but, hopefully, government grants will allow us to explore heat pump technology instead.


The panel was also asked about the issue of manufacturers selling direct to consumers. How do you compete with that?


Luke Gammon: We can’t. It’s not nice. They are manufacturers and they should probably stick to manufacturing, we’re the retailers we’ll stick to retailing. I understand that it’s really easy to get in front of the consumer now, but whatever they’re doing we should be allowed to do; if they’re offering a 20% snap deal just tell us and we’ll do it too. If it’s a level playing field, we wouldn’t care as much.


MT:Of course every manufacturer is going to want to have the best presence they can online – it’s where customers will go to do their research. At the same time, they’re looking for a local expert and that is what I offer. We can’t have brand websites advertising special prices and offers that I’m not even told about, because it completely pulls the rug out from underneath me.


MR: At this conference a few years ago, we discussed how we could combat manufacturers selling direct – we’ll get our own brand. Being part of Euronics we have the Blomberg brand which works really well for us; it’s a large part of my offering and it keeps me relevant to the value customer these days.


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