How to Scale up New Business Models in Retail?
How can you scale up a successful pilot? Our experts addressed this question with leaders from renowned retailers and consumer brands during the Shopping Tomorrow research program. Leaders from PLUS Retail, Geisha, Intergamma, IKEA, Karwei and Centraal Beheer shared their experiences scaling up a new business model. Together with the participating organisations, we extracted valuable lessons learned.
Key takeaways
- Organise stakeholder management like an hourglass. Ensure broad support in the start-up phase and then work pragmatically with a small (multidisciplinary) group to keep up the necessary speed. After a successful pilot, reintroduce the concept more broadly within the organisation.
- Create scalability scenarios: what if it really becomes a success? Early in the process, work out positive, negative, and neutral scenarios. Assess whether full success would be manageable. Do you have sufficient resources, including the necessary skills, personnel, and inventory?
- Optimise your pilot for success. A strong pilot creates broad support and can convince even the more sceptical colleagues. For example, focus on well-performing parts of your assortment and select top-performing stores to run the pilots.
- Approach scaling as an iterative and structured process. Scaling works better when you follow a clear framework that helps you consider all necessary steps. It doesn't happen all at once, so make sure you learn from each iteration, go deeper, and continuously check the 4Ps: is it still good for People, Planet, Profit, and is there enough Potential to keep scaling?
- Quitting in time can be difficult, but it may be the best decision. New insights, shifting market conditions, or changing consumer needs may make quitting the wisest choice. By regularly zooming out and monitoring your predefined KPIs, you avoid pushing on too long and discovering, after significant investment, that a concept isn't viable.
What the report contains
Real-life cases
During the research program, PLUS Retail, Geisha, Intergamma, IKEA, Karwei, and Centraal Beheer shared their experiences in scaling up a new business model. Together with the participating organisations, we extracted valuable lessons learned.
Framework
Using the experiences of the participating organisations, we developed a framework for companies to use when scaling up new business models. Offering a structured approach to market new business models effectively, or to stop these models in time.
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