Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the retail podcast and Reef before before I get to you I I forgot there's a there's a there's a back story to my
journey to to here. I was at NRF in a press conference, I think it was last year where the Singaporean Minister of Tourism was talking about how they want to bring retail to Singapore. And NRF will be that event that will sort of kick off this retail festival, if you like, in in Singapore. So when I heard that, I was like, whatever happens come hell or high water and I need to be #1 be there and #2 if I can get an inside track. What's going on? How are you putting it together?
And so Reef Quail, thank you so much for giving up your time to to meet with us. We're in the world. Are you ready? Women, Sydney, Alex, thank you for the opportunity. By the way, I'm in Sydney at the moment and it's actually not very Sydney. Like it's dark and gloomy and radio outside, which is very unlike Sydney at the moment. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure I wanna be in Sydney. I'd rather be back in Singapore at that at this time point in time with me. Yeah.
Well, especially when you see the tourism videos or the video that we just watched. So Reef, you're the Managing Director and I guess you're responsible for putting this phenomenal agenda and event together in one of the biggest regions across the world. If not, it is not one, it is the
biggest region across the world. So I've got some questions to go through with you, if that's OK, that's great and we'd love to do we we have a global audience who sort of TuneIn as as I go to different events around the world and they're always you know looking at what are the next big things, what is happening. And I noticed one of the things that you've gone to great lengths at is to make sure that retailers can sort of fast track their their success by attending
the event. But I was curious, I'd love to get your thoughts on what fast track your success, what is it and how can retailers extract the most value from NRF Asia? Ohh, thank you. Thank you for that Alex. For me, the fast track, Essex Fast track, your success is the theme of the show, yeah. And it's pretty much well, it is very linked to the launch as is the inaugural event.
And the reason why we've taken that road with the theme is, you know most retailers are focused domestically on their markets. Some of them are globally expanding. But the really the, the thing that's going to fast track people's success is to meet a collection of peers from across the region and across the world all in one place. There are great minds when great minds in retail come together.
It's a fantastic industry because, you know, a hardware retailer can talk to a beauty and a fashion retailer and they're not competitors, so they're able to share a lot of information. And by sharing and working with colleagues and peers, you can solve problems in your business and solve problems you didn't even know you had.
So when you go back to your office, go back to your business, you can fast track your career and fast track your business and basically turbocharged things because you've come back on a whole bunch of insights from a diverse group of peers that you wouldn't normally have engaged.
Reef, I was taking a look at the agenda and and the the level and quality of speakers that you've got from around the world, which is interesting because part of me felt that you know there would be maybe a focus in one region in Asia. But I notice you've got speakers from India, you got speakers from China, Australia, literally from every single region. But I I'm just curious what are the key takeaways that attendees can anticipate from attending the the talk tracks.
And I don't know if you've got, you know, top of mind any of the of your speakers, but I'd love to sort of just sort of focus a few minutes on that if that's possible. Fantastic. Thank you. For me, there's a, there's a whole bunch of really fascinating stories. I mean we've got Uniqlo, Unico speaking, Takehiro, he's, he's gonna talk about how our friends at Uniqlo are taking are taking their retail mark to the world. We have obviously fair price in Singapore, which is their big
supermarket brand. We have Lottie supermarkets coming out of Korea. We have we have Nike out of the US talking about digital transformation and that's going to be a fascinating story. We've got Lauren Boyd Evasi, who's the president of APAC speaking who's from Moet Hennessy, uncorking, uncorking luxury retail experiences. We have a huge array of speakers, both DC across
categories. We have the associations having to say and of course we've got, we've got some sessions on sustainability with with Amazon and humour, but and also people like Simon Miles, who's ex Coke, who ran their global retail media strategy around the world. So there's some really interesting stuff coming through it and and as as I said to you before, this has been an incredibly self indulgent
journey if content. Now I've met some absolutely fantastic retail leaders and people and for me it's been a wonderful, enjoyable journey. Where I've, I mean I've grown as a as in when my knowledge because every time I have an encounter I walk away richer from the experience. So I really hoping that when our delegates set up on stage, they'll have to take as much pleasure from this pieces of content as I have putting them together.
Yeah, I I look the the energy comes across just from talking to you and having a sort of meeting you and seeing the agenda. I sort of get where that come that general passion and and light for for the industry and helping attendees leave. You know and I think you you mentioned this actionable insight rather than just
insight. I think there's a lot of conferences I've been to where, yeah, you get a lot of insight, but you think you have had, am I gonna use that right instead of like actionable insight, which I think is the key thing that I'll definitely be looking for. Yeah, it has to. I mean, things have to get landed.
So there's there's for many retailers need to be able to as if we're going back to our theme and fast tracking our success, what are the Nuggets, What are the things that retailers can grab hold of in these fantastic retail leaders and go well, I can take that back to the business that's applicable to me in my career and what I'm doing today. That's the exciting part of it, and the commonality between the countries within the region is there, despite being sometimes
unrecognisably different. But the commonality is, is there, and the energy for retail is there, and the passion with these people is there. And so through that enthusiasm, I think people will find their opportunities, find their moments and find their Nuggets. They'll take back to their businesses to really fast track their success.
Yeah, I as as I, I mean we we sort of keep going back to this is when when you use words like region or area as you said people sort of imagine one jurisdiction area and whereas I don't know how many jurisdictions you have across across Asia. One of the things I noticed about the show and at the big show in New York there was also a big focus on innovation on actual store tours and and
bringing that to life. But one of my favourite things store design and obviously how technology plays a part in that. I notice that that's actually a big part of the agenda and the experience of just, I don't know if you can sort of give some, I don't know if it's an external company that's doing it for it. You guys are doing that yourself. But I'd just love to get your thoughts on, you know, the the whole Safari event that that you're running.
Well, there's a couple of things that we've got going and we have some fantastic special programmes that really are the accents on the show. The 1st is the Innovation Zone. And the Innovation Zone We work with a partner who allows us to curate via the VC community globally some of the most forward thinking and progressive technologies and solutions. Wow, they're coming at retail and that's called our Innovation Zone. And we'll have 24 of those.
And we've got retail tech companies from Singapore, from from Europe, from the US, from Australia, all around the world who are breaking them all. And they are, they apply to be there. How can we have lots of applications. So we they and they apply to be there. And so that's really exciting. And the same group we use, we work with in the US as well with the big show in New York City. And so it's a very global look at some of the best technologies that are available to retailers
and it's mind-blowing. It's, you know, it's it's immersive tech where you've got the augmented reality type stuff. It's a really wonderful use of AI. It's robotics, it's, you know, drone and last mile delivery. It's all sorts of things that are you know that are going to be mind bending in the way we consumers engage with retail going forward.
It's it's so for me it's sort of a little glimpse into the future for many years because you know we're finding now in many cases that technology arrives and it turbocharges a section of the of the of the industry. I mean retail media is a good example of that. Retail media always existed, but when the technology arrived and and the plumbing came together that that whole element of retail of our retailers business took off. So I'm hoping to see more of that through our innovation zone.
The other thing we're doing and it's very much part of the US show, but also we're doing here is that our retail to us, Yeah, And we're partnered with Singapore Retail Association, they've been a. Fantastic. So retailer, so Singapore Retailer Association.
And they've taken on the task, yeah with gusto to run retail tours around Singapore. And Singapore is a fantastic hub because the the, the the way that the pillar of strategy that the Singapore Retailers Association had is that they they look to bring international retailers to the regional, land them in Singapore and then expand them through the region and help them really. But the Singapore becomes their launchpad for Asia Pacific. Solutely.
Yeah. And what's great about that is it then you see as a result a lots of wonderful flagship retail experiences which are really amazing from global brands, but also some really fascinating local style and heritage and heritage style retail experiences.
You know, because Singapore is a huge melting pot of colonialism plus inbound inbound inbound tourism, plus also a greatly interesting diversity of ethnic mix, which makes the experience really dynamic and really interesting when you when you engage in retail, when you walk the streets to Singapore, you think you see a lot of interesting, cool stuff.
Yeah. And I can make and and it's really interesting that you you sort of highlight that because when when you look at international retailers, they are struggling with global communities that are are expanding, not shrinking. Globalisation is going to continue and I think retailers are sort of how do we build
those future experiences. And it's interesting like a side note about how for example live shopping in in in APAC has been a shopping as entertainment has been a thing for a long time. Whereas you know that's just sort of people are getting their heads round of what does shopping as entertainment mean and all of the diverse elements from the store to online to ecommerce, the digital. And so you know I'm, I'm super excited to come to the home of live shopping basically, right.
That's and see what's going on there. Absolutely. Have you got a precincts like Orchard Rd in Singapore? It's just. It's it's it's an incredible experience because you've you've got, you've got a very, very warm hot city. It's it's not it's not cool in Singapore, yeah. So the the malls are with the air conditioning are very enticing. But then you. Literally, you can get lost in the place.
It's got, you know, it's an amazing experience and it's and and and people come to Singapore not just to shop. The locals are passionate about those those precincts, but you know, people come to Singapore to see what's possible. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think you sort of mentioned some of the technologies, but I can also imagine networking. Given such a diverse group of people coming together, how do startups or newcomers into the field? What's the best way for them to network?
Are you Are you running networking events? How are you approaching networking? Well, we're always good at networking, Alex. But look, let's start, let's start with all the key things. So this show, fundamentally this show will be no paper. So everything will be on the app. And when you're on the app, you'll be able to see who's there. You'll be able to message in
between people within the app. Obviously, the, the trade show and Expo is all about networking and they'll be functions like the opening night party on on day one on the Expo floor. So there will be plenty of opportunities to rub shoulders with people. But for me, I think I really would encourage retailers to take the bit between the teeth because if you want to expand your business through the Asia Pacific region, yeah, it's quite hard to do it without partners.
So if you're an Australian retailer and you want to go into Malaysia, you can't do it without a Malaysian partner. Yeah, it's just you need, you need some stewardship in each of the markets. So for me what's exciting is you not only I would encourage retailers to seek out partners in those markets they desire to enter, but for me what's exciting if that happens in two and three years time, we're gonna see the the fruits of those discussions come to light.
Yeah. And and that's what that's what gets out of bed in the morning. So we're we're hell bent on trying to make sure that retailers find their partners both from a supply point of view but more importantly from a from a networking point of view. One of the one of the speakers we've got is a gentleman by the name of Chris Chong who's CEO of Capital. And so they are Raffles malls and they run properties all around the region and mall
experiences. So one of the good partners you can help to expand your business if you will is to go with the property partner and that helps you achieve that outcome. So there's just one example of of ways to expand to the region and people retailers should seek out to help them expand. Well, the number of retailers that I've spoken about that are focused on growth and where future growth is coming for
from. I think that's why for me I'm so excited to bring that sort of experience to the retailers that I'm coming there with but also to learn and bring back because I think that's one of the irrespective of where you are in, in Europe or the UK or in the US if you want to grow and you you're a serious looking at growth, I think you know you have to be thinking about your APAC or Asia strategy, how are you going to do that And it is a minefield, it's not easy.
So I mean that little nugget of go with the property partner and and expand that way. Obviously is, is, is is one way and super interesting. I think for me too, just when you look at, when you look at the region too the that finally once you've found the right partner, I think the opportunity is enormous. And we spoke before the we went on air and and for me what's really exciting about this region is just the absolute power of growth.
Yeah, we're looking at, we talked to our chief economist from MasterCard, David Mann, who's closing the show. Yeah. You know, from 23 to 24, the desire for consumer goods still increased in this region like it
went all right. So still growing and that's driven primarily by the wealth generation and in this part of the world, according to Colliers, this region from 2020 to 2040, yeah, well, the middle class will glow, grow, grow, grow and like it's growing and growing by 3.49 billion people. You just can't find them, right? That's the strides. It's crazy. Yeah. And so if you think that's a growth from a 73% growth across
the decade, yeah. And so we are seeing some fantastic investment money is flowing into the region. Obviously, we've many companies who are running supply chains in Southeast Asia, in China, in in India. So there's there's already there's great productivity happening but we're seeing now a consumer that's meeting needs, needs them, demands met and retailers the opportunity is just fantastic. I I think obviously as I said, I got to be sensitive to your time.
The event is in two months. It's early Friday morning for you. I just love to get your closing thoughts. If you're an executive and you're and you just sort of gone through the experience, you're sat in your flight back to wherever you whatever region, what would you want them to have top of mind?
You know what? Because I know, because I'm curious in that when you were going out and asking questions to all the retailers to decide your agenda, you had this sort of vision in mind of what people would leave the show with. I'm I'm curious, from your perspective, what do you think would be that number one thing that someone would leave? Because we've discussed five or six things already. Yeah, what would be that one thing in your opinion?
I I think for me the, the the first point would be just we've all I've made. I've I've talked stats already, but for them to see with their own eyes the scale of the opportunity to come to the region, yeah, it's just emits
and then it's actually about. For them walking away and going, let's find what are the links in the chain to make this possible go you know it. Just how do I understand the legislative context, the payments, the issues in beige market and then and meeting some people who are similarly orientated who can hold, hold hands with them and take them on the journey to expand in the region.
Because I just, you know, I think if you look, if you're a North American retailer or European retailer and you and you sort of daunted by this party, it's a very friendly place. It's a very great, it's a great place to be part of and when I love being part of this region and so, So you'll find some awesome people who will literally go well, OK, we want to partner with you. We can see the opportunity. This is the opportunity we see.
Yeah. And I think people will get back on planes very excited about what's possible. Yeah. Well, I'm super excited. Tickets are booked. Need to get my hotel done. But Ruth, thank you so much for taking the time to sort of talk us through what what's happening. The tickets are still on sale now and I think I'm gonna put a link in the notes of the show on how you can get your ticket and
reserve your spot. But Reef, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. And thank you for the opportunity to really great to be be speaking, speaking with you today. And I look forward to seeing you in Singapore in June. Thank you.