I’ve been following RBC Capital Markets, specially their retail insights, for a while. During my last expert call with their European team, we discussed about how important is to be agile in such uncertain times. Fast and agile from design to delivery, implementing new processes boosted by digital assets and developing a new corporate culture.

The latest report “European General Retail primer; sector on sale” (Richard Chamberlain. RBC Europe Limited. October 2022) is worth reading for everyone interested on general apparel information including sales by activity and geography, market sizes and shares, margins and cost structures, pricing surveys, industry and ESG themes, macro trends, historical valuation ranges and SWOT analyses for each company under coverage. Broad insights to faster react to volatile scenarios.

In these uncertain times, experts agree on one thing: nobody knows what might happen next… So, there are 2 options:

1. Analyze all kind of historical data, analytics modeling and forecasting, trying to identify black swans and contributing to analysis paralysis
2. Prepare your company to be flexible and fast to react to new opportunities or to overcome new challenges.

Both options require decision analysis but there is a big difference on how to take advantage of data. The competitive advantage is not data itself but how your company’s culture, talent and processes are orchestrated to drive agile decision making models. Retailers are adapting to digitization but the big challenge is not implementing technology but adapting the organization to new working dynamics. This is what I understand by business