Omnichannel
Talking With: Nikki Baird, VP of strategy, Aptos
Nikki Baird, VP of strategy at Aptos, share her insights on this year's holiday season and how retailer's will fare given the challenges they face.
October 26, 2023 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
As the retail industry gears up for the holiday season, kicking off with Halloween next week, RetailCustomerExperience reached out to a well regarded industry expert to get insight on trends and strategies on a wide range of topics.
Nikki Baird serves as VP of strategy at Aptos, a retail enterprise solution provider. She is a top global retail industry influencer with a background in retail and technology and regular contributor to top media outlets. She's been an industry analyst for nearly 15 years, co-founding Retail Systems Research, a boutique analyst firm focused on the retail industry. Prior to co-founding RSR, Baird was an analyst at both Forrester Research and Retail Systems Alert Group, where she covered retail industry and technology topics. Prior to that she was with PwC Consulting, now IBM Global Services, as a senior manager leading IT strategy consulting engagements for retail and CPG clients. Here is an edited excerpt from an email interview.
Q. When will consumers begin to shop for the holidays, by your estimate?
A. It seems retailers really can't get consumers spending much before Halloween.
Q. What are your predictions for this year's holiday season and consumer activity?
A. What's going to happen this holiday season is completely unpredictable. But this year I will definitely be watching Halloween sales. Halloween is the first real indicator after the resumption of student loans; it's a pretty discretionary spending kind of holiday, and the people spending on that holiday are most likely to be impacted by student loan payments. If Halloween spending is a bust, that will be our best leading indicator of what will happen over the holidays. Uncertainty is the new normal. Consumers still seem to be locked in on spending on experiences over things, but experiential spending does still lead to buying stuff to help enable the experience.
Q. One of the retail industry's biggest challenges with the holiday season is hiring and retention. Any new trends or strategies you're seeing?
A. Retailers are still trying to fill the regular ranks, let alone boost up for holidays, so that explains some of the gaps between job prospects and employers, there. It's interesting, because I know in the past retailers considered seasonal hiring as a way to find "keepers" when they had the opportunity, so the fact that retailers aren't budgeting for as much seasonal work or are trying to convince people to apply for more permanent positions instead means they may be missing an opportunity. I also feel like the labor market in retail has been skewed for so long that it's basically a new normal. We see retailers investing in technology to make in-store workers more productive, which means you can manage with a lower overall staffing level. But even the best technology requires training, especially in the more complex world of omnichannel and just all the roles that the store has to play in general, that it's also not as easy to just throw a new person out onto the floor and expect them to be in any way productive.
Q. The latest economic report was extremely positive though economists don't expect it to last. What's ahead in your view with the economy and impact on the retail landscape?
A. It's definitely worrisome — there are so many factors at play right now that it's so difficult to predict what's going to happen — student loans, discretionary income in general, interest rates and Halloween spending. I'm waiting for those numbers.
Q. What's your prediction in regard to overall retail performance as we turn toward year's end?
A. One thing we know is that if the holiday season is bad, retailers' willingness to invest in the next year is low. And they've had several years of such uncertainty and concern that they're running out of runway on some of their tech investments and may find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Because things aren't getting better, they're just getting more disrupted, or disrupted in new and more creative ways. The old standard of 'great holiday, great capital year' probably has to go to the wayside and you really do have to look at 'what you need to get done and where you have to invest,' whether business is good or bad. Consumers still seem to be locked in on spending on experiences over things, but experiential spending does still lead to buying stuff to help enable the experience. I don't think you should under-estimate the mall in contributing to those experiences — visiting Santa, light displays, that kind of thing — retailers have become more sophisticated in making sure that there is a physical draw to stores. A lot of consumers are already receptive to that — Gen Z especially, they want to unplug and they're very interested in things that feel nostalgic that those kind of family activities can have a powerful pull.
About Judy Mottl
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