What: James Bailey has been Executive Director at Waitrose (part of The John Lewis Partnership, with 329 stores and nearly 50,000 employees) and since April 2020 – he oversees trading, merchandising, marketing and developing customer propositions for shops and online. Before that he spent 18 years at Sainsbury’s working in a variety of senior strategic, insight and commercial roles.
Why: Get a rare insight into what innovation looks like for a major retailer like Waitrose and the inventive ways major retailers are adapting to meet changing customer demands and habits – the effectiveness of loyalty schemes, data as intelligence and the rise of ecommerce.