KrytEntys

26/01/2022

The Victorians taught children about consumerism – and we can learn from them too
Every parent dreads the day their child asks where babies come from. But perhaps we should be more concerned about how children learn where other things come from. What do we say when they ask where we get the clothes we wear, the furniture in our homes, the food we eat?

Considering the volume of advertising of all kinds of products designed for and marketed directly to children – everything from toys, to cereals, to fashion – it is surprising how little time we spend on helping children to become educated and empowered consumers.

Growing interest in eco-friendly and sustainable products has led to increased awareness among modern consumers of where our clothes, food and other goods come from. Documentaries like Ethos (2011), The True Cost (2015), and campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and the Clean Clothing movement inspired by the Savar Building collapse in Rana Plaza in 2013, encourage us to think carefully about our choices as consumers. Most of the educational campaigns aimed at young consumers focus on the things they eat and drink, whereas those aimed at older consumers focus on industry and manufacture.

Perhaps this is because we assume children are more interested in what they eat than where their wellies or beds come from. But perhaps we need to think about a more holistic approach. Indeed, consumer interest in sustainability is far older than many of us realise. Though the interest in conscious consumerism may feel like a modern phenomenon, it existed in the 19th century, too. And the Victorians had some interesting solutions to the problem of telling children where our stuff comes from.

Victorian consumers
The Great Exhibition of 1851 brought together goods from all over the world in Crystal Palace, an enormous glasshouse in south London. There were fantastic things on display: a steam engine small enough to fit inside a walnut, a fabulous fake medieval court, a model that transformed from dwarf to giant at the touch of a button. There were very mundane things there, too: blocks of coal and alum, piles of wood, sheets of paper, tablecloths, and ordinary cutlery and crockery.

Considering that the modern department stores and shopping malls didn’t exist yet – Le Bon Marché opened in 1852 – this was the first time so many things could be seen in a single building, making the exhibition a bewildering experience for many visitors. A considerable portion of these visitors were children.

The Great Exhibition. V&A Museum
Many books were written about the Great Exhibition for children – both guide books to lead young visitors around the Crystal Palace and stories about the exhibition after the spectacle closed. These books emphasise the provenance and production of the things on display and encourage child readers to think about where these things come from, who made them, and how they were made.

Children’s Prize Book of the Great Exhibition. Pollard Collection, Trinity College Dublin
These writers wanted to engage children with the material goods around them and, by doing so, to mould them into informed consumers who understood where things came from, how they were made, and how they fit into a wider global economy. For example, the child reader of The Children’s Prize Book of the Great Exhibition, a souvenir book for young visitors, is reminded that “some of the nice butter that you eat on your rolls comes from Ireland” and that the food on the breakfast table doesn’t appear by magic.

Licking alum
The master of this sort of lesson for young consumers was Samuel Prout Newcombe. He appears in various census records as a photographer and a teacher, but by 1851 he was a writer and educator. His books about the Great Exhibition encourage children to investigate the objects around them and really think about where they came from.

He has some unconventional methods. In one book, Little Henry’s Holiday, the characters Henry and Laura are encouraged to touch the objects on display in the Crystal Palace and even to lick the huge block of sharp-tasting alum (aluminium potassium sulfate, which is used today in baking powder and deodorant crystals). It’s a playful, and tactile sort of learning – the kind of approach we associate more readily with Sesame Street than with the 19th century. Newcombe emphasises that the children should engage all of their senses and learn about the whole manufacturing process, from raw materials to the finished product.

A little later in the century, Annie Carey’s Threads of Knowledge (1872) focuses on helping young readers to understand the social and environmental impact of common items made from cloth.

Once she realises her children consume without thought or reflection, the Mamma of the story decides to instruct her children about the origins of the most common items of clothing, reminding them that young children are involved in the manufacture of some of the items they consume thoughtlessly. She reminds the children that though industrialisation has created employment, its history is “a history of much misery and many mistakes”, and tells them of the harmful effects of the chlorine used to bleach cotton on both people and the environment.

By positioning child characters – and by extension child readers – at the centre of a global economy, Carey’s work, like Newcombe’s, helps child readers to become informed, thoughtful consumers.

These Victorian books foreshadowed modern concerns about consumerism and sustainability. Today, our emphasis is on the informed choices that adult consumers can make. But we need to start educating consumers earlier – much earlier.

The Victorians’ playful, narrative-based approach engages the young consumer in the whole process of making, selling, buying and using household goods. We could do worse than learn from the Victorians, and their strategies for teaching young children about production and consumption at a time when consumerism and industrial manufacture were just getting started.

26/01/2022

Who needs experts? UK retail giants take a calculated risk with new bosses
Two established British high street stores have announced senior appointments, both of which have sparked some surprise across the industry. A new CEO at department store House of Fraser and a new director of home, clothing and beauty at Marks & Spencer share an intriguing characteristic: both will arrive in these posts with little relevant experience of their new fields.

You might think this taps into a wider, global trend, where in the US and France, Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron have both won the presidency after seeing off rivals with more impressive and relevant CVs.

But business, and in particular the retail business, tends to reward detailed industry knowledge gleaned from time spent at the coal face. That’s why there was much surprise at Jill McDonald’s move to M&S from automotive retailer Halfords, and Alex Williamson’s switch to HoF from running the Goodwood sporting estate in Sussex. Both are tried and tested managers, but both would appear to be fish out of water in their new roles.

Although the leadership turnover in the retail world is relatively high – across the UK’s largest 300 retailers there were 41 changes at CEO level in the past year alone – these kinds of unconventional appointments are rare.

The pressure is on to attract shoppers. EPA/DANIEL DEME
Sporting chance
But perhaps the electoral success of Trump and Macron could help explain it. Do those at leadership level in UK retail really need to have had specialist functional skills or prior sector experience?

Both M&S and HoF already have product design, buying, marketing, data analytics, supply chain and store management teams, full of very talented individuals, and so it may be that exemplary transferable skills, in particular leadership, are the real requirement, whether gained in the retail sector or not.

There are some parallels that can be drawn with recruitment and development programmes in high performance sport. They include Performance Pathways, the collaboration between UK Sport and the English Institute of Sport (EIS), which sought to identify talented athletes who had no previous experience of a specific sport and develop them for success at Olympic and Paralympic Games. That project has resulted in over 100 newly identified athletes across 17 sports, and secured more than 150 international medals.

Their Pitch to Podium scheme tried to do a similar thing with young footballers who hadn’t made it to the highest level in their chosen sport, but who might have the right physiology and attitude to succeed in other sporting disciplines. In both these examples, it is transferable strengths that were sought after and valued, rather than specific previous experience.

Second chance? makieni/Shutterstock
Team talk
At M&S, McDonald will have the support of an experienced clothing and beauty director, and will also work with Neal and Mark Lindsey, the former sourcing gurus at high street rival Next, who have been retained to sharpen M&S’ clothing supply chain.

Similarly, HoF have built up one of the strongest retail management teams to ensure they have a balance of skills and so Williamson will be leading a team recently strengthened by the recruitment of several experienced retail operators from, among others, online fashion retailer Asos, M&S and rival department store John Lewis.

While McDonald’s appointment prompted predictable “from jump leads to jumpsuits”, press coverage, M&S CEO Steve Rowe sought to highlight her customer knowledge and experience in running dynamic, high achieving teams which he felt “made her exactly the right person to lead this all-important part of the M&S business from recovery into growth”.

Trouble in store? M&S clothing lines have struggled. CC BY-NC
As Nick Bubb, a leading UK retailing analyst pointed out, the role that McDonald takes on at M&S is crying out for somebody who is good with customers and people and that “leftfield” choices for key leadership positions can sometimes be inspiring. He also thought that the task of managing the inexorable decline of M&S clothing may well need new talents from outside the fashion industry.

The House of Fraser appointment is perhaps slightly more difficult to understand, but again you need to look behind the headlines. Last month, HoF revealed plans to turn its shops into a “lifestyle-led experience” by adding restaurants, cafes and more beauty services.

With that in mind, Williamson’s experience at Goodwood starts to make a little more sense. And HoF chairman, Frank Slevin, focused on his new CEO’s ability to deliver “compelling and engaging experiences for the customer” when announcing the appointment. He also said: “Transformation isn’t delivered by classic retail appointments.”

Perhaps that says it all. It may well be a risk to bring in new retail leaders – or even presidents of G7 countries – without them ticking off all the traditional staging posts on their career path, but they certainly have the capacity to shake things up.

26/01/2022

Will Amazon’s Whole Foods deal go the same way as L'Oréal and Body Shop?
Online retail giant Amazon has made a decisive move into food retail. The acquisition of US grocer Whole Foods, a pioneer in organic, healthy food shopping for well-off consumers, brings together two businesses with contrasting reputations. We’ve been here before. And it didn’t work out well.

Amazon’s mission is to build a place where people can find “anything they might want to buy online”. In the Whole Foods mission statement, however, it promises to “not sell just anything” but to deliver the highest quality that encompasses the greater good. We perhaps shouldn’t judge a deal by highlighting that the corporate PR seems to be at odds, but this discrepancy does raise some profound questions about the purpose of a business and how that purpose is accomplished.

For years, Amazon has been criticised for its business practices. A burnout-inducing work culture, limited focus on recycling and a lack of transparency on sustainability reporting have all come under fire. Compare that to Whole Foods’ value-based culture of caring for worker communities, adoption of responsible recycling and its foray into solar energy. It feels like a strange marriage.

An Amazon distribution centre in Germany. Lukassek/Shutterstock
Trojan horse
In fact, it does bring to mind 2006, when L’Oréal, the corporate beauty giant with a deeply questionable animal testing record, acquired Body Shop, the socially conscious beauty company known for its ethical products and friendly environmental practices. The deal was made through an agreed buyout with Anita Roddick, the founder of Body Shop. Agreements were made that Body Shop would continue to run independently, and Roddick was quoted as saying Body Shop could act as “a Trojan horse” and positively influence the way L'Oréal did business.

However, over time, the lack of a cultural fit between the two companies, and growing competition from other ethical beauty brands, led to a decline in Body Shop’s appeal. Sales fell, as did operating profits and market share. Now L’Oréal is looking to sell Body Shop a decade after a deal that shocked many. Clearly, there is more to an acquisition than just potential financial rewards, and that mismatch of ideology and purpose can lead to reduced value for investors themselves.

Is the same in store for Whole Foods? mrfiza/Shutterstock
The Whole Foods deal has echoes of that Body Shop-L’Oréal story, but there are some important differences. Amazon has responded to criticisms over its sustainability credentials and signalled a positive shift by significantly expanding its sustainability team. It has also announced a series of goals in this direction, ranging from solar-energy-powered fulfilment centres to construction of its largest wind farm.

Pressure off?
But let’s not get carried away. Amazon is more than 20 years old, and remains a laggard in the sustainability movement. Its venture into renewables was not a matter of business philosophy, but was driven by market and competitor pressures and the push to align with the previous US administration’s stand on climate change. In contrast, Whole Foods has followed a mindful approach to sustainability, winning its first Green Power award from the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) more than 13 years ago. With the Trump administration’s renewed focus on coal, the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, and overhaul of the EPA, the pressure on Amazon to progressively adopt green tech may ease.

It is also hard to see how Amazon will handle the strong views of John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and a proponent of conscious capitalism. He has been quoted as saying:

Business (in America) is about a bunch of greedy bastards running around exploiting people, screwing their customers, taking advantage of their employees, dumping their toxic waste in the environment, acting like sociopaths.

The Whole Foods approach is to create long-term value for its owners, shoppers, workers, suppliers and local residents. What marks out a so-called “purposeful” business is its ability to stay true to that mission, rather than drifting inexorably towards life as an engine of growth for investors through continuous expansion.

Now, Amazon has focused on long-term growth and is a customer-centric company, but its attitude towards workers, communities and the environment has often been drastically different from that of Whole Foods, leading to the obvious question of how Whole Foods will be run within Amazon.

Will Mackey make way? Gage Skidmore/Flickr, CC BY-SA
Misfits
The fear must be that the rationale for the Whole Foods acquisition is to make cost cuts and secure a good outcome for investors. There is much chat in the media about Amazon’s warehouse robots being let loose on Whole Foods, at the expense of jobs. And the door is already ajar. Pressure from investors has already led to an overhaul of the Whole Foods’ board of directors, where long-standing conscious capitalism supporters have been replaced by corporate leaders interested in market growth and investor wealth maximisation.

There is clear business potential here for Amazon, but an equally clear lesson from past acquisitions where a poor cultural fit has proved detrimental for everyone involved and for the brand itself. Whole Foods has become synonymous with ethical consumption through its careful selection of vendors and products. Despite competition, it has an ardent following of ethical consumers.

There is a genuine risk that this acquisition will muddy the waters for Whole Foods shoppers. Will they now be faced with shelves full of “anything” that can sell, rather than the benign niche products they are used to? How leadership works post-acquisition will be key: how and why decisions are made, and by whom, will dictate whether the upscale grocer loses its claim to conscious capitalism. The deal could be a success, but if lessons aren’t learnt, Whole Foods could even go the same way as the Body Shop, and end up on the auction block in a decade’s time.

26/01/2022