Retail

The fast-changing world of retail demands adaptability. And our retail consultants know what it takes to stay out front. We pioneered the omnichannel concept a decade ago, and since then have been at the forefront of defining the Future of Retail.  

We're now entering the age of Retail Convergence, in which we see traditional incumbent retailers and digital natives battling for the same customers, talent, profit pools, and shareholders. This convergence—coupled with new waves of technology, proliferating consumer touchpoints, and table stakes sustainability agendas—accelerates the urgency for all players to transform their core retail and digital capabilities.   

We have a proven track record of delivering measurable results, including increased sales, reduced costs, improved customer experience, impactful innovation, and higher shareholder value. Leveraging our proprietary analytics, software platforms, and deep customer insights, we help leading retailers around the world use data, technology, and shopper trends to navigate uncertainty and leapfrog the competition. 

Let us help you refine your retail strategy in order to: 

  • Maximize customer love. Use your deep and proprietary knowledge of your customers to increase customer loyalty and retention, generate promoters, and create personalized shopping journeys that delight consumers beyond their expectations.  
  • Excel at core retail. Build the right assortment, pricing, and promotions, balanced with localization, private labels, and innovation to entice customers.
  • Redefine the omnichannel footprint. Evolve your supply chain and store networks to not only delight during customer-facing moments, but also ensure fast, resilient, and cost-effective fulfillment.  
  • Accelerate the tech transformation. Future-proof your technology and shift spending to business-growing innovation, automation, and data management, all while transforming to an agile, product-based operating model.  
  • Tap into new profit streams. Diversify profit pools by moving “beyond trade” into high-growth and high-margin adjacencies such as retail media, data monetization, and new marketplaces.  
  • Build a scale ecosystem. Define your role in the ecosystem, from hub to spoke; build scale and new in-house capabilities or through strategic M&A and partnerships. 
  • Achieve an ultralean cost base. Fund your transformation through a tight cost base, from procurement to stores to your operating model. 
  • Kick-start your ESG journey. Position your company for a more sustainable future, converting the challenges that seem insurmountable into bite-sized, actionable, and measurable projects.
  • Push web3 boundaries.Create connected consumer experiences with innovative store concepts and immersive metaverse encounters that integrate everything from browsing to NFTs to payments.  

We collaborate with you to ensure you win with all stakeholders—customers, communities, NGOs, employees, suppliers, and shareholders—as you future-proof your business. To do so, we prioritize building diverse and inclusive teams that collaborate with a broad ecosystem of industry leaders, including the National Retail Federation and The Consumer Goods Forum. These partnerships, along with our expert executive networks and proprietary data and software tools, uniquely position us to solve your most demanding challenges.    

Sector Expertise

Sector Expertise

Grocery

We help grocery organizations across the industry ensure their strategy both realizes near-term results and positions them to win in the future. 

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Fashion and Luxury

As the preeminent thought leader in fashion and luxury goods we have helped hundreds of companies in every category tailor winning strategies to gain a competitive edge.

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Restaurants

The pace of innovation in the restaurant industry has accelerated. Rapid shifts in consumer behavior and digital technology are forcing companies to reinvent every facet of the business.

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Envision the Future of Retail

Envision the Future of Retail

As retail thought leaders, we’ve always had our fingers on the pulse of the industry’s evolution. Today we see signs of a new Retail Convergence, as emerging winners combine the perfect execution of retail incumbents with the innovative power of digital natives. Our retail consulting teams can show you how to disrupt your own business and evolve in anticipation of new disruptions. Our Future of Retail ecosystem encompasses four key areas:

Retail Holiday Newsletter 2024

Retailers preparing for the season can tap data and insights to stay competitive. Our annual series breaks down what’s driving our holiday shopping outlook—including monthly retail sales updates, pulse checks on consumer confidence, and trends—and outlines tips to help retailers weather the snowstorm.

Access this season's insights

Our Retail Consulting Experience

Our Retail Consulting Experience

Our Client Results in Retail

A Powerful Diagnostic Guides Your Future

  • Map your course

    Do we truly know our consumers—how they live, work, and shop? Are our tech and data skills good enough? Are we struggling with profitability or with finding the funds to invest in key projects?

    Our Future of Retail diagnostic sheds light on these and related critical questions so you can develop a winning strategy and take all the right actions to succeed. No matter your starting point, we can help you assess where you are today and map the most efficient journey to your ideal end state.

  • What is it?

    The Future of Retail diagnostic is a fast, flexible assessment powered by highly curated data and benchmarking capabilities. It evaluates your company and identifies gaps to best practices on seven key pillars:

    1. ESG
    2. Customer centricity
    3. Omnichannel operations
    4. Financial performance
    5. Technology
    6. Talent management
    7. Adjacent profit pools
  • What you can get

    The Future of Retail diagnostic generates visually rich results that include:

    • A detailed, outside-in scorecard displaying your performance vs. peers across a range of metrics, as well as deep dives on critical themes (personalization, ESG performance, and much more)
    • A survey-based maturity assessment that identifies the largest gaps across seven pillars, leveraging feedback from key stakeholders, so you see how to prepare for the future of retail
    • A roadmap that clarifies your point of departure, provides an overview of the most promising performance boosters, and presents a plan to scale and embed your new approach

Do we truly know our consumers—how they live, work, and shop? Are our tech and data skills good enough? Are we struggling with profitability or with finding the funds to invest in key projects?

Our Future of Retail diagnostic sheds light on these and related critical questions so you can develop a winning strategy and take all the right actions to succeed. No matter your starting point, we can help you assess where you are today and map the most efficient journey to your ideal end state.

The Future of Retail diagnostic is a fast, flexible assessment powered by highly curated data and benchmarking capabilities. It evaluates your company and identifies gaps to best practices on seven key pillars:

  1. ESG
  2. Customer centricity
  3. Omnichannel operations
  4. Financial performance
  5. Technology
  6. Talent management
  7. Adjacent profit pools

The Future of Retail diagnostic generates visually rich results that include:

  • A detailed, outside-in scorecard displaying your performance vs. peers across a range of metrics, as well as deep dives on critical themes (personalization, ESG performance, and much more)
  • A survey-based maturity assessment that identifies the largest gaps across seven pillars, leveraging feedback from key stakeholders, so you see how to prepare for the future of retail
  • A roadmap that clarifies your point of departure, provides an overview of the most promising performance boosters, and presents a plan to scale and embed your new approach

Better Together: OpenAI and Bain Form an Alliance

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Our Retail Consultants

Our Retail Insights

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We work with ambitious leaders who want to define the future, not hide from it. Together, we achieve extraordinary outcomes.

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