On today’s episode, David Walmsley, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Pandora, discusses using technology to customize the e-commerce experience, prioritizing bringing your whole company up to speed on digital transformation, and how these advancements are helping to reduce Pandora’s carbon footprint.
This episode features an interview with David Walmsley, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Pandora. David has led multiple consumer businesses through their digital transformation and, in the process, scaled omnichannel growth.
On today’s episode, David discusses using technology to customize the e-commerce experience, prioritizing bringing your whole company up to speed on digital transformation, and how these advancements are helping to reduce Pandora’s carbon footprint.
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“Our starting point, our point of departure, was always keeping our people safe, and then keeping our customers safe, and then thinking about how we could use technology to amplify our business in that very strange time that we all lived through, particularly in 2019. And we didn't just survive; we thrived through that time.” - David Walmsley
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Show Notes
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Sponsor
This podcast is presented by Dell Technologies and Intel. Together they help you realize digital transformation across retail by driving IT innovation to better engage with today’s connected consumer. Learn more at DellTechnologies.com/retail and Intel.com/retail.
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Links
Connect with David on LinkedIn
Narrator: Hello and welcome to Winning Retail. This episode features an interview with David Walmsley, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Pandora. David has led multiple consumer businesses through their digital transformation and in the process scaled omnichannel growth. On today's episode, David discusses using technology to customize the e-commerce experience, prioritizing bringing your whole company up to speed on digital transformation, and how these advancements are helping to reduce Pandora's carbon footprint.
But first, a word from our sponsor.
David: This podcast is presented by Dell Technologies and Intel. Together we help you realize digital transformation across retail by driving it innovation To better engage with today's connected consumer, learn more at dell technologies.com/retail and intel.com/retail.
Narrator: Now, please enjoy this interview between David Walmsley, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Pandora and your host Tony Saldanha.
Tony: Hey, hello and welcome to a. Sort of winning retail. The podcast that's been designed for retail executives. We helped turn the biggest retail disruptions into the biggest strategic opportunities. I'm Tony Saldana and we've got a great episode today. My guest is David Wamsley, chief Digital and Technology Officer at Pandora.
This is the global jewelry manufacturer and retailer based in Denmark. Welcome to our show. . Hey,
David: thank you for having me,
Tony: Tony. It's great to be here. David, you've had a very interesting career. You've got varied interests as well. You've been at Marks and Spencer and I believe Dixons and and love history and theater, and I suspect in your spare time do a little bit of technology.
So tell us a little more about how you've ended up here at Pand.
David: Oh, crikey. Without it sounding like a job interview. Yeah, sure. I'll give you, I'll give you the, the potted history. I mean, I've always followed my curiosity and from the very start of, I guess my working life after university and I happened to be in the right place at the right time in academic publishers in 19 93, 94 in Cambridge, in the uk.
And the web started. The commercial web started just about then, just before then, and was focused on academic publishing in particular. So right place, right time, built my first websites in 94. Knee-deep in things like Sgml, early days of html, early days of xml, and followed that through and worked in publishing for a number of years.
And then I spent the second half of my career in retail, so particularly big box UK retailers. You mentioned Dixons, marks and Spencers. Also John Lewis and loved every second bit really helping. So tho those large. Businesses. Those traditional businesses really think about how they could transform through all things digital and really transform themselves around that digital agenda and loved every second of it.
Now I'm at Pandora, and I think we're doing some really interesting things here, which I'd love to tell you about. Oh,
Tony: I, I can't wait to get into it actually. Let's, let's just go ahead and jump in. But you mentioned Pandora and, and I know this is, The, the, the company that's, that's twice as big as the, you know, radio streaming program.
But the names can be mistaken for each other. So for our listeners, would you mind giving a little bit of a quick primer on Pandora, the jewelry company?
David: Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a really, really interesting business. I mean, with the world's largest jewelry brand, we make over a hundred million pieces of jewelry every year.
But when you speak to people in the US, they think it's a US brand. If you speak to people in the uk, they think it's a UK brand. We're a Danish company, though at heart. Founded by a Danish couple 37 years ago. 20 years ago, they created the moments bracelet, the thing that we are very well known for globally, and we've been on a march ever since.
In terms of telling our story around the world, the, the product is very personalized, very personal. It's you tell your story with our charms and our our moments bracelets, and then the broader product range. We sell some amazing jewelry, some beau as I say, some beautiful jewelry to some beautiful people, and we're very proud of our product.
It's the heart of our. All our manufacturing takes place in Thailand in three crafting facilities. 14,000 Pandora, people making the jewelry every day, just mind blowing what they do. We set over a. 1.8 billion stones every year are set by hand into our jewelry. It really is kind of mind boggling what the guys there do.
And then really just reaching out to our customers every day, telling our story, helping them understand our product, and hopefully helping them buy more jewelry and enjoy our product. And that's really our business in a very simple, very simple picture. I've been following
Tony: Pandora as we were talking just before the show because I've been amazed at some of.
Retail transformation, specifically your online business, and it seemed to have coincided with your entry into Pandora. This was about 2019 just before the pandemic. Is that correct? Yeah.
David: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Pandora, I said it's 37 years old as as a global business. It's relatively young because it was very heavily franchised, very heavily distributed for a number of years.
And then I think about eight, nine years ago, the decision was taken to try and consolidate around a global presence and created a global business. And so when I joined four years ago in the digital end of things, The E-commerce web. You know, the e-commerce business is basically an IT project. A few years before it was a sideline, a lot of focus on, on the store business as you'd expect.
That's where the volume was. But all the growth was coming. The velocity was coming from online, and my boss absolutely saw that and wanted to get after that. And so I joined 2019. I brought a couple of people in who worked with me previously, and we had a lot of fun, kind of rapidly transforming the E-com side of the operation.
So what you can see online, but. Critically, the back end, you know? So the, the supply chain, the customer service piece in particular, and thank goodness we did, because then Covid hit. Yeah. And we traded very effectively online through that period of time. Our, our starting point, our point of departure was always keeping our, our people safe and then keeping our customers safe.
And then thinking about, How we could use technology to amplify our business in that very strange time that we all lived through, particularly in 2019. And we didn't just survive, we thrived through that time. So I think then talking with my colleagues and my boss in particular was, okay, how can we use that same mindset to transform.
the broader business then if it's not just about the e-com channels, it's about how technology can be used overall. And that's, I think, the journey that we've been on for the last two years in particular. Now
Tony: I've come across a couple of programs that have run at Pandora program now and and Pro program Phoenix.
Yeah. So for our listeners, would you mind sharing a little more about them?
David: Yeah, sure. I mean, very simply, program now was, look, the business found itself in some troubling times five, six years ago, where. You know, not uncommonly, they've been expanding. They've taken their eye off their core customer, they'd diversified their product range and maybe lost an absolute focus on the core of the business, and really found itself in, in, in troubling times.
The top line was decreasing at minus 10 on the year. And so program now was a classic turnaround program that was had begun when I joined the business. And my boss, Alexander Ick, our chief ex executor, had begun just before his time. And when he came in he said, look, you know, we've gotta refocus this, not try and do 20 things.
Just really focus on who our core customer is. Really focus on dreamlining the operations in order to put more money where it counts to the customer experience, which is in media and channels where we're reaching out to our customers. And then in terms of our store frontline and staffing levels. And that sort of classic turnaround recipe really paid huge dividends.
And we, we were coming out of that turnaround phase through covid. very, uh, very interesting times from the digital point of view there. And then program Phoenix was, we started really putting the bones of that together in, uh, through 2020. Then through the, the kind of middle phase of Covid all, obviously all working remotely cuz we were distributed around the world.
But as a leadership team, thinking about, okay, let's assume that the turnaround is really biting and taking effect and it was very hard to read because of the impact of Covid on our, on our business. But let's assume that's working. what next? Where do we go next? And that was really for us then about the transformative piece.
How do we take our organization to the next level? And that was everything. Then from how we take product to market, how we engage with our consumers around the world, on topics like personalization, how do we really use technology to personalize the experience? How do we transform our supply chain in the back end of our organization?
And we've got, you know, major e r p program right now as well as alongside supply chain and merchandising systems. And then how do we, how do we really just bring all that together for the customer and orchestrates really outstanding customer experience and that's what Phoenix is about now, that kind of transformative stage now that we kind of.
Really kind of turned the, the core of the business around through program now. So I guess the two programs go together and we kind of knee deep in Phoenix right now. Really. And that's the catalyzing effect of that in the business has been, I think, outstanding. .
Tony: So it sounds like obviously the foundation was set by program now around the time that, that you started with the company.
Yeah. Now talk us through some of the e-commerce changes that you brought in pre Covid. Yeah. And you know, what was the focus? I mean, at that point in time, obviously, like you said, the focus may have been more on digital presence and, and growing that particular channel. , but then suddenly you find that particular channel becoming your main channel during Covid.
Yeah. So tell us a little more about Sure. Maybe from a, a work process standpoint, what were some of the changes that you started to introduce and then found that that became the bedrock of your, you know, sales and distribution? ,
David: I think you, you, you're, you're teeing teeing up the question very nicely, Tony, cuz it's, I can talk about the tech, but really it's about culture changing the organization.
Because we went from a world where e-commerce and some of our markets was, uh, was a rounding point. You know, you're talking about like single digits of our sales, you know, eight, 9%. And I think in 2020, I, we came into the year with an ambition to take e-commerce, I think to something like 13% of sales globally.
Mm-hmm. . And then somewhere around May time, may, June, we were 97% of our business. And that's pretty startling from a, a trading point of view. Now, technically, we'd cleaned up the, the front end, the website. We'd gone from 14 code bases to three, and we're now at one with that consolidation at the back end to make it simpler to manage supply chain.
We'd started working very heavily intensively with our warehousing DC teams. And also in, in sourcing customer services. So we continue to, sorry, we continue to work with third party, but taking ownership of the customer service platform stopped customer service being a black box. And I think Christmas 2019, Christmas day 2019, I was answering customer complaints on Facebook myself because we had no 24 7 customer service team.
So I was, I was so aggrieved by what I was seeing as kind of like answering the complaints myself, which is kind of, yep. Uh, an interesting time. So we'd put a lot of focus in early 2020 on customer service. But then what happened was if you take, you know, your general manager of any country, the e-comm guys were the guys in the corner.
You know, they're, they're doing stuff you don't quite understand. You don't know how to ask them questions. You say things like, oh, traffic look good, and they say, yes, it was, or you say traffic looks bad and they give you answers you don't understand. There was no leverage on those conversations for the general managers.
And so when Covid really struck and started to, you know, really hit us all the general managers and their leadership teams, E-comm, general managers, they, it wasn't just the three guys in the corner. And so that led to a step change in the culture in the organization and our fantastic commercial teams around the world and the leadership in those commercial teams.
Really getting to grips with this very rapidly and starting to ask some super smart questions. Really understanding their business and understanding the levers they had to, to affect it every day and every week. And then the last thing that happened just to share was, , we got this kind of inbound, kind of tidal wave of requests.
Well can we have this on WhatsApp and can we have curbside collection and so on. I went, guys, hang on just one second. And we had like dozens of requests coming cause they're kind of hungry for more. Yeah. And we, we kind of streamlined that whole inbound process and what gave the opportunity to do was not just launch like, okay, let's do Q busting or let's do this point points application.
We took significant part of the business on an agile journey around kind of okay lo. Let's start off. Let's try and streamline, let's try and groom what the requests are. Why do you think q busting is a, is a good idea? Why do you think this thing on WhatsApp is a good idea? Asking the five why's, driving out the fundamental needs.
And what we did through that process and through lo-fi development and really focusing on, uh, minimum viable product was drive out. I think it was started off with 13 different propositions that we boiled down to six iterating week on week with our sales teams in two clusters in particular. And then we landed all of the propositions in won go early September, 2020, ready for peak season.
And these are all omnichannel? These are all omnichannel propositions. Uh, sorry, I should have said that. So, uh, things that are gonna. Uh, our customers, uh, feel they're comfortable in store, feel they could go back in store, and that was really, I think, the big breakthrough in the organization when they realized, oh, there's, there's a different way of doing technology.
It's not kinda like year long multimillion euro projects that we don't quite understand and are probably gonna fail. It was much closer, much more visceral kind of customer experience stuff and colleague experience in particular. In a process they could understand, engage with. And we needed them to be a part of, you know, we needed to be close to the, that colleague experience.
And I think that was the big cultural tipping point for us. That then when we said, you know, subsequent to that, okay, let's, let's talk about digital transformation, let's talk about what it is. It became a much easier conversation. Cause it's like more of that, that stuff that we were just doing there. We can do all of tech like that.
You know, that's, that was the really, the really
Tony: big tipping point. The interesting thing about this particular journey, David, was it was a business model transformation in many ways because you, you know, your main channel suddenly shifted and what you were just describing was a digital literacy program and a business process transformation program.
Of course, all led out of the IT. Organization now, which, which kind of goes into my next question, which is the role of the cio, right? I mean, you know, you and I have been around during the oral CIO days where our job was Yeah. Technology and governance and standards and, you know, telling people what they could and could not do to drive standards.
And that's still, you know, an important part of our. But the other role is we are the transformation agent of business operations, which means essentially we have to kind of work with resources that are not just IT people, but you know, consider the entire company as being, you know, extended partners. So talk to me a little bit about the new CIO role.
Yeah. How do you bring your partners along on the journey, knowing. It's day that will drive the change. That's a
David: really good question. I can, I can give you the official answer and I can tell you how I screwed it up, which might be more interesting. The official answer is we, you know, having technology that's outcome focused.
So focus on the difference that the technology's gonna make for the business. Right? And yeah, Jan 20th, 21, when we're still in Covid, we're still working heavily remotely. I pop on, pop up on screen with the IT organization, the digital organization, data and analytics and bi and we'd, we'd kind of stage manage this kind of event where they're all coming together on the same town hall and they didn't know it.
And I pop up as like, hi, I'm your new leader. And one of the things that was really front of mind for me and I said there was, you know, we, it's about being outcome driven. It's not about high fiving cause we've delivered a big program or whatever. So what, what difference does it make? And so off the back of that, you know, good agile playbook, you know, okay look, we're gonna be okay.
R driven. And I kind of made the mistake that I thought, you know, this is really obvious. . So we do the first pass. We've got the domain set up, you know, we've kind of got, got the kind, okay, what's the structure, what's the value model? And then we start defining OKRs Now, you know, hopefully it's coming outta the teams.
Yes, okay. It'd be great, you know, you've got this toolkit. Okay, think about what your OKRs are. And they were so variable in quality. There's some teams that. . Yeah, we're working on day one. I also banned the phrase the business, cuz people say like, well we need to go and ask the business. It's like, well who, who are they?
Because we're all here to sell jewelry and that's what we do. So some, some teams engage with their stakeholders and said, okay, yeah, it's about shelf edge availability, it's about stock, uh, stock movements, whatever it was. Other, other domains were, come back with OKRs, well our, our three OKRs to deliver the platform X, deliver project Y and deliver project Z.
And they said, well, okay, that's not really so. My big learning has been just, you know, just keep going back over the same ground because being outcome driven, of course, is the, is the destination, you know, having, it's the thing that's gonna tie together your stakeholders, your teams, and so on. And really the opportunity then is to help teams go on that journey over and over again and build that muscle in terms of what makes a good measure, what makes a good outcome.
And we've, we've gone through that phase of, I. pseudo agile. And I think in some regards we're still in it. And it's, it's good to recognize that cause it's not kinda like, it's not like, you know, click your fingers and suddenly everything's, you know, sort of agile perfection, you know, in terms of how we're driving outcomes for the organization.
It's a long journey and I think that kind of, that, that pseudo agile phase is really important for organizations to recognize. Cause it's a positive, it's a good step. You know, on the, on the journey, I'm slightly suspicious sometimes of CIOs and digital leaders who yeah, say, well, we just did this. You know, we did the big event.
The chief exec was there and said, good news, we're all agile now. And you think, really, is that really gonna land well? Is that gonna be sustainable? And I think the much more intuitive approach we would take, you know, we've got some things wrong, like I said, you know, in terms of assuming things were gonna just land.
Brilliant. , but I think we've kind of been on this kind of journey, which is I think, much more intuitive and then that will create a much more sustainable digital transformation longer term. Yes. Yeah. So that's, that's really, I
Tony: guess, where we are right now, it is about the culture of the organization being, you know, agile rather than the technology or the project execution process, which is of course, the enabler for speed of execution in the business.
But it sounds like what you did along with your team, Was very successful in, in helping the business understand that yes, this is the business, right? You know, this is, this is not about technology. So that set you up with a really good foundation along with project now and then as you kind of think about building on top of that, what's next?
What changes in the business model are you working along with your CEO and other partner? To completely change the way Pandora is ready for, you know, the new ways of doing business.
David: Yeah, I th I think, I think. ? Yes. Again, great question cuz there's the new ways of doing business and there's new forms of business and you know, on the ladder we keep a very close eye on, on our, on the world around us.
You know, because we're moving things like the metaverse space where, you know, we sell a physical product. And I think Bill Gates once said, you know, when I, when I look a couple of years ahead, I always overestimate the level of change and when. 10, 15 years ahead. I always way underestimated and that sticks in my mind when I think about things like Metaverse.
I mean, I, I'm sure you were as well, I was around in the nineties when the first avatars appeared and the very clunky apps, you know, applications you had to XE, files you had to download and and so on. And so you kind of look at that stuff with quite, quite a long lens. But, you know, I think we keep an, a very close lens on that stuff because I think the, the, the world is moving in the, you know, my children and their children will be in a very different space in terms of where they place value over things versus ideas and, and so on, and where they ha where they spend their time.
So that's the, the type of business we had. But that's kinda like a small part of what we, what really our focus in terms of the way we do business. Yeah. Mean it's transforming fundamentally. You think about, Topics like sustainability. You know, we've got the kind of published stuff in terms of, you know, um, moving to fully recycled golden silver.
We've moved to lab ground diamonds, which is a big topic for us right now, and I think is a really exciting thing that we're doing. But in my neck of the woods, the less we handle a product. The lower our carbon footprint, the less that we're moving product between dcs, the lower our carbon footprint. Now our product's relatively small, but we wanna make sure that we're doing our piece.
You know, I, I used to work in department store businesses where you're kind of humping sofas around the world. It's kind of a very different thing, but it's very important when we think about the supply chain, that we think about that sustainable future because, That's not just corporate pr, you know, I've gotta be able to look my kids in the face.
And I think all, all my colleagues are the same place, which is we're trying to do our pieces as private citizens, as well as as corporate citizens. And so I think that that's something where we can really think about digital transformation, having a direct impact on our business, not just for next year, but for the next generations.
And then digital experience. I think the, the experience we create for our customers, our, our product's, very personal already. You know, when I travel around the world, which I still do sometimes, And you see on people's wrists, one of our products, and you say and say, well, that's a lovely bracelet. And the person will say, well, that's my daughter going to college.
And that's my, that's my second marriage, second honeymoon, and that's my dead dog. And you get these great stories that come out. It's a conversation started, and the product's incredibly personal. But in thinking about how we can use technology to kind of amplify, That experience. You know, people think about personalization as being a very digital thing.
I think the most personal our product gets is those kind of conversations, those, those, those dialogues, you know, and all we can really do with technology is try and keep up with that. So I think digital transformation from in Pandora is really how can we use technology and data to really kind of spot those moments with our customers.
Share ideas they might love and remind them of the kind of what Pandora's done for them with the kind of products they already have with us. And creating those personal stories. And those personal moments is something that we can do a lot more of for sure.
Tony: You know, and, and that's something that I, I think the retailer.
Industry could do a lot more with those moments of truth, the intensely personal moments of truth, because again, the industry, the retail industry continues to evolve and efficiency and effectiveness. Is certainly important. But yeah, I haven't seen too many examples of technology being used to amplify those.
Not just the, the first moment of truth in the store where you pick a product versus others, but you know, also the second and the third moments of truth after that. Yeah. Where you continue to get delighted by the, the product that you've purchased. Yes. So, so is this an area. You talked about emerging technology, like the metaverse or conversations, is this an area where technology continues to play a bigger and bigger role in the future?
David: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I, I, it's a good challenge on the in-store experience because I think about, Our customer service experience where you're separated, the, our colleague is separated from the customer by a phone call or a web chat or whatever, and guess what? Our colleague can have screen or screens in front of them, and we've done a lot of work in that space to create these.
I guess you'd call 'em serendipitous moments. These moments where the colleague knows mechanistically, they've got your history there, you know, they, they understand what you've done, but then we're able to pop up on the screen some recommendations to the colleague and our really good service agents are able to weave, weave that into the conversation.
And we, I think sometimes you may have experienced, I've certainly experienced in store or online is quite clunky. Oh, I see you've bought this. So my screen is telling me I should tell you. You know, and we're in the early days of it, you know, but I think when it, when it works well in customer service.
That creates that sense of serendipity that you get face to face with a really great store colleague. Now in store, again, mechanistically, we have the issue of customer and colleague and screen screen between Yeah, and that becomes interesting now is in a store, a consumer brand with my kids a few weeks ago, and they're inviting customers around the Back to the pause screen.
Ah, could you type in your email address? And I thought, cause I stood in this long queue and it's like, why is this queue taking so long? I've got a professional interest. You know? And it was because they're somewhere along the line. They decided that asking customers to type to personally type in their email address is a good idea.
So customer has to get behind the counter and it was just wrong all the way around, but you can see what they were trying to achieve. And I, I think that's actually mechanistically a huge part of the challenge. So how do you introduce data? at the, the joining points between customer and colleague. How do you put data in there without it being, now I'm going to start typing on my screen.
Or indeed worse, can you please type on my screen? So I think that's, it's, you know, glasses and ideas like that are all part of it, but I think that's a big frontier for us because we can introduce data to the point of the conversation. No problem at all, but how do we do it in a way that's gonna be seamless?
And I think that actually comes down to hardware as much as Oh, sure. Your culture and so on. So yeah, a challenge ahead of us.
Tony: Yes. An an exciting challenge. Absolutely. David, it's been really fun talking about your professional life and the mindset that you've brought into the retail industry about.
Creating that serendipity as, as you said, using technology. But we're at the point in the show now where we get to learn a little bit more about David, the individual, and so are you willing to play along?
David: You do know I'm English, don't you? We don't feel comfortable with this person.
Tony: Well, that is true, but we're also kind of in the midst of the holiday season these days, and so I, I I thought I'd link the two.
So what would be your best tip for families that are, are picking out jewelry for loved?
David: I, I, I don't think there's any real magic this, I think it's, I mean, really I'd go for the surprise and delight aspect, which is that I think it not to do a sales job on our, on Pandora per se, but you know, we have some, I think some beautiful products in there, which are just.
Like our timeless collection, which is just classic jewelry, which just suits every occasion. And I think is so lovely when you think of Pandora, you think of the charms and you think of the moments like, you know, the pets and the, the holidays and so on. The kind of charms with meaning. But I think we saw just some beautiful jewelry that's just.
Got this, well, literally timeless quality to it. And I think some of that I think sometimes can speak, particularly in holiday season, I think can speak volumes in terms of the connection that you have and, and the loves that you have. You know, I think one thing that we talk about a lot in Pandora is loves plural, all the forms of loves that you can have.
Whether that's from, like I said, your dog or a place in time, or a, an individual. And I think we, I think that's, just think about all the loves that. The person you are buying for and how you could represent that best. I guess that would be where I'd
Tony: go. That is, that's a really good point. Well, backwards from, from the loves.
What's been your most memorable individual customer experience? You as the customer.
David: me as a customer, I guess. I guess it would be. I went into a, I'm gonna, sorry it's a Pandora story I'm afraid, but I went, I took my little girl who's eight, going on nine into a Pandora store in London Bridge in London in the summer, and we ended up buying her first ring, which is just a nice little thing.
She loves Pandora. She's got a bracelet and some charms and things like that, but I just wanted her to pick something out and I think that's just magical. Having her talking with me and the, the store colleague about different things and she chose the ring in the end and she has it in her room and it's a very precious moment for us.
I think it's something that we share. So that's a very nice, that's that's front of mine. Yeah.
Tony: Now, this is an interesting question I'd like to ask. If you were to be sponsored by any one brand in the world, so you as David Beckham, what brand would it be and why?
David: Oh, crikey. We do a lot of collaborations actually.
So we, we've got big time with Disney and within that, the, uh, the Marvel Universe, which I think we've got some great products in there that I love the new Spider-Man one. If you get a chance to see it, I think it's fabulous. Yeah, I think. And we've just done done a type with the Keith Herring Foundation as well, which I think is, is I think is really special.
And I think tho those kind of collaborations where we create more of a, an aesthetic universe that's kind of, I think just really beautiful and, and speaks to kind of Keith Herring's legacy. I think it's not so much maybe sponsored by them, but I think you people, we love to partner. real creative individuals, people who've got that individual tone of voice.
I mean, could you imagine David Hockney or someone like that doing a tie up with Pandora? I, I could, and I think, you know, those sort of things that I, I think are really exciting for our brand as a future direction. So yeah, that, that, that's where I'd go with the more collaboration than sponsorship.
Tony: No, that, that sounds lovely.
Well, maybe one more. What do you think is the most fun app on your phone right now?
David: Oh, cri. That's a really good question. Probably right now it is really tedious cuz it's like sort of the, uh, the Bogue, but probably the Amazon app's getting far too much use in the run up to the holiday season. We've got an eight year old and a four-year-old.
I'm buying a lot of train based products. I've gotta say, I think. this. Yeah. Probably playing with my little boy for who is trained, obsessed brio, you know the Brio, the wooden trains? Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I've gotta say they've got some, a fabulous app in there, which is this immersive world to play along with, and you can.
Who doesn't wanna, who doesn't wanna drive a train, you know? Yeah. So I think that's probably, probably favorite. Cause I, I spent far too much time with my, uh, little boy playing with trains. But yeah, I think the Brio Train app right now is probably, probably the most immersive app I've got. PR more productive, probably Amazon, I've gotta say.
It's really boring. I can't, I can't think beyond that right now, actually.
Tony: Understandable. Well, thank you very much, David. I, it is been really fun getting to know you a little better individually, but before I let you go, as a CIO that's been so successful in transforming the way business has done, what advice would you have for other retail CIOs?
David: Oh, crikey. I mean, I think, look, I mean, I come from an e-comm digital background, so two years ago I didn't really know what an E R P. , and I think my best advice would be maintain a kind of an outsider mindset. I used to rail against CIO functions who would talk about protecting the business? Well, you can't do that because why?
Well, we are here to protect the business. . It's like, well, what business are you protecting? You know, where's the considered risk? And I know Tony, from your background, that considered risk piece is a fundamental part of good CIOs. You know, I'm talking about kind of, you know, maybe middle of the pack, you know?
So I think that maintain the outsider status, maintain that kind of sort of curiosity, fearless curiosity in terms of, well, why is that like that? And feel free to ask the dumb questions. Like I said, two years ago, I didn't know what an E R P was, so it's perfectly liberty. , what does an E R P do? You know, and actually we've made a big point of that in inside our business as we've entered on that transformational journey is, is just saying, guys, you know, just in case you don't know, cuz lots of people don't, this is what it does.
And just, I think being accepting of your own ignorance on, on some fronts, I think is, is, is, is quite powerful and helps create a safe space for people to ask the dumb questions and learn alongside you. And I think that's, that's, that's probably my number one piece of.
Tony: That is great advice. It's a way to manage and, and drive change by influence.
It's, it's fabulous. Well, David, I have to say it's been a real pleasure speaking with you. We've learned that so much. Thank you for joining us today. No problem at all. Take care. And uh, thanks once again to all of our listeners out there. Make sure as always to subscribe at www.winningretailpodcast.com.
And until next time, keep reinventing retail.
David: Thank you again for listening to Winning Retail. To find more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter, go to winning retail podcast.com.