A £1.7bn retail empire with near 100 years of history, Shop Direct may not be a household name, but with the likes of Very.co.uk and Littlewoods.com, you probably know its brands. And if you're a retail start-up, you're going to want to know much more.
Shop Direct is an ecommerce business – and it's in the UK's top five. The digital team's 75 marketers, designers, developers and content managers are tasked with engaging and optimising the online experience for the one million shoppers that hit the group’s sites each day.
And in charge of that lot is ecommerce director and Ideas Britain coach Jonathan Wall, a five year servant to Shop Direct who's a big champion of start-ups and, as it happens, a big champion of failure.
Jonathan spent a successful decade at DABS.com, which was sold to BT in 2006 for some £30m, before moving to Shop Direct. As ecommerce director, one of his first moves was to inject the mantra of his mentor and DABS founder Dave Atherton: fail fast but succeed faster.
It's a philosophy designed to encourage and inspire creativity and ideas – and to redefine what 'failure' really means in an online world.
“Fear of failure was stemming innovation here,” says Jonathan, “but with an experimentation programme, and AB testing, we can gauge an ideas' success quickly. We don't hide from failure, we embrace it and we learn from it.
“Of all the testing experiments we do: a third fail, a third succeed and a third are inconclusive. We learn a lot more from the third that fail.”
As we know, fear of failure can paralyse entrepreneurs and stop ideas in their tracks. But as a longstanding champion of start-up business, Shop Direct goes the extra mile to bring fresh creators and their products closer to the audience – increasing the odds of success.
The doors of the company's User Experience Lab in Shop Direct's Liverpool HQ are open to new and aspiring retailers and fashionistas who want to test and trial and collaborate with their public. For Shop Direct, it's a case of practicing what they preach.
“Whenever we have an idea we always put it to our customers first,” says Jonathan. “So the first thing I'd always suggest to start-ups and entrepreneurs is getting evidence that your idea is right by speaking to your desired and potential customers.”
One of the biggest fears for retail start-ups is getting traction in markets that are so heavily influenced by big brand power. Given the utter dominance of superbrands in the fashion and retail space in 2015, is there still hope for small outfits in retail?
According to Jonathan, there absolutely is.
Since his tenure, Shop Direct has worked hard to reduce the red tape, the compliance and the excessive lead-in times that stifle SME onboarding, and keep small players out of the game.
“When I joined the business, start-ups were unfamiliar – they were alien,” he says. “It would take them six months to get going with us, and start-ups, as we know, can fail in six months.
“So we now engage with start-ups on a light-touch basis – we work with them on their terms.”
Getting small enterprises' products onto e-shelves quickly seems in-tune with the philosophy of Shop Direct, and Jonathan, their start-up champion-in-chief. The faster new items are up on sale then the quicker they can succeed. Or fail. And the best learning's probably in the latter.
For Ideas Britain entrants, Jonathan has the credentials, the contacts, the compassion and the common retail sense any start-up could use on their journey. He's the mentor that wants you to fail. Fast.
(But succeed even faster)
