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Liz Woodland: “Working for Dufry has been a fantastic adventure. I’ve seen a company born and I’ve seen a company grow.” |
UK. The last three years have been among the most professionally demanding and satisfying in Liz Woodland’s extensive retail career. Now she’s preparing to augment an already impressive CV with the reopening of a venture that has been put on hold during her employment with the industry’s fastest-growing travel retailer Dufry.
Having created a thriving independent UK retail advisory business called Consultancy for Retail in 2001, she took on what was intended to be a short assignment with Swiss travel retailer Weitnauer in late 2002 .
Her success led to the offer of a full-time position and by June 2003 Woodland had left her native England, moving to Basle as Chief Procurement Officer. The consultancy would have to wait.
Weitnauer, historically perhaps the most secretive duty free company of all – more so even than DFS Group in its pre-LVMH days – was a business at the cross-roads.
The lines between a distributor and a retailer – never distinct at the best of times – had become increasingly blurred. Recognising that, the former owners and management in October 2003 split the business with Dufry becoming the name for the retail-only operation while Weitnauer Distribution, the remaining entity, was spun off.
After that the action heated up dramatically. In early 2004 Dufry was sold to a group led by private equity group Advent International and new management entered the scene, headed by CEO Julián Diaz who replaced Frederic Gauchet.
What resulted, Woodland recalls, was a “completely new and dramatically changed company with equally dramatic growth in both sales and profits”.
She played an important role in the impressively rapid Diaz-led evolution of the company, remaining as Chief Procurement Officer and a member of the Executive Committee.
But last December, having decided she wanted to spend more time with her family, Liz Woodland resigned from her full-time post with Dufry. Having stayed on in the short term in a consultancy post, she is now established in her UK base (a home and office in Carshalton, Surrey, near London), from where she divides her time with a home in France.
“I was extremely flattered that Dufry offered me the opportunity to work as a consultant during the early part of 2006,” she comments. “For the first few months of this year I was involved in a very different role, consulting on specific projects. My work on those projects has now ended.
“I am most appreciative of the opportunity to have continued for some months with Dufry . I don’t think every company would have done that for someone who genuinely wanted to spend more time with their family.”
But Woodland is determined to stay in travel retail and already has her plans well laid out for the revived Consultancy for Retail. “I’m passionate about retail and passionate about travel retail,” she says, adding that she plans to focus on three key areas.
The first is store development. “Given the challenges today in spend and penetration issues, I would love to work closely with retailers to develop new store designs; to make sure that the layout and the category adjacencies are clear to the consumer,” she explains.
Other elements would included matching customer profiles with the brands that those customers are interested in. She comments: “Today there is a new customer shopping with us – a much more frequent traveller, much more savvy and wanting change, including change in products. I’d like to work to bring constant newness into travel retail stores.”
Her second broad sector of interest is brand development – “working with brands to develop visualisation in stores and to assist their brands to grow in travel retail.”
Is she talking to any brands at present?
“I certainly am,” she replies. “I am in discussions with [UK watch company] Sekonda and will be starting work with them later this year. I’ll be assisting them in their travel retail development and to help train their teams to understand the needs of travel retail buyers in areas that are dependent on contracts and tight spaces.”
Sekonda, with its nifty tagline of “˜beware of expensive imitations’ is flourishing in the UK domestic and travel retail market s and fast emerging as a force in travel retail throughout Europe.
“They have one of the keys to today’s travel retail consumer – they have a huge range of products within the ₤20-50 arena,” says Woodland. “They display and present ranges well and they offer a great quality and value product. That’s why they are the number one UK brand in terms of high street unit sales.
“While they haven’t always had the right arena elsewhere within Europe, wherever they have been introduced they have done well. And I’m very excited about assisting them in their development.”
But Woodland won’t be pigeon-holing herself in terms of categories. “For me luckily anything goes. In the domestic market and in travel retail globally I have worked in every single category – the fashion categories, fragrances and cosmetics, with spirits and tobacco, as well as with luxury products and luxury branding. I love brands and branding and I love the retail element so there is nothing out of bounds for me.”
Already she is in discussions with two wine companies, a category she thinks has serious potential in travel retail. “But it is all about how to present it and how to motivate the consumer to purchase wine,” she cautions.
And the third area for development?
“Training. There’s an incredible need for better service in travel retail. I think that all of us in the channel believe that the service of the people in the stores, and the training of the shop floor staff are hugely important. The staff have a very, very short space of time to convey to the consumer the value of a particular product.
“The other related area is training buyers and procurement teams. I have found over the years working with different travel retail teams that either you have a very skilled person in the category that doesn’t know the channel, or else someone who is operationally efficient, knows the channel, knows the store, knows the consumer, but doesn’t know the branding or brand needs and therefore frequently gets it wrong on the presentation side.”
Key to raising the all-important spend and store penetration drivers is to help those in the industry better understand others’ needs, Woodland says.
“If the brand needs are being met and the product is being displayed and presented effectively and the sales person knows the product that they are selling, then I think we’re more than half way there in terms of attracting the consumer.”
As she moves on to a new stage in her career, Liz Woodland looks back with affection on a travel retail journey that has embraced periods with several of the industry’s biggest names, including DFS, Alpha, Allders International, Weitnauer and Dufry.
“I’ve enjoyed working for each and every one of those companies,” she says. “They were all so different in style and approach and I had a different responsibility in each role so it’s been incredibly stimulating.
“And working for Dufry has been a fantastic adventure. I’ve seen a company born and I’ve seen a company grow. The difference between my first meeting with brands when I first joined Weitnauer and my last meeting with them as Chief Procurement Officer at Dufry in terms of how they perceived the company represents an incredible change.
“It’s a real privilege to have taken part in that change, especially with a pioneering company like Dufry that has always challenged itself internally. Joining that team and being part of that growth has just been fantastic.
Woodland is convinced of travel retail’s innate growth potential, provided it recognizes and responds to some fundamental changes. “I do think that we have a new consumer out there,” she explains. “They are a more leisure-based consumer, travelling not necessarily out of major airports but out of secondary airports, and they have a need for a different type and style of product.
“They’re very amenable to spend but they need a different type of presentation. Having a broader array of products is important – not just the luxury products which look great and which we want and need in the stores but I do think there is a need for a broader range of price points.”
Given an accepted industry norm of only 15-20% of international passengers buying in duty free, she is surely right. The industry’s historic inability to convert large numbers of travellers to spenders remains simultaneously its greatest failing and its greatest opportunity.
“It’s a fact isn’t it?” she agrees. “We must address that capability in order to be able to tender aggressively to airport authorities. They’re coming to the tender with x amount of passengers and they’re wanting to see the realisation of both passengers and profits.
“I would love the opportunity to work closely with a retailer in an environment and just focus on that and see what we could do. I want to make a contribution. I have been incredibly fortunate in working for people who gave me the opportunity to make a contribution. And I have been fortunate in having the help and support of brands and suppliers to grow those opportunities.”
Always upbeat, Liz Woodland is robustly confident of the future of her revived venture. “The interesting thing about being an independent is that one is very versatile. Not all companies need someone for 365 days a year but for small focused projects it can be very useful for a company to take onboard someone with a specific skill for a set period of time. As long as the project is a firm understanding between all partners you can actually see the results quite quickly – retail is an immediate response isn’t it?”
She concludes: “The whole experience of Dufry has been an incredible one for me – I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Now a different type of world, a brave new one, beckons for one of the industry’s most admired retailers.
LIZ WOODLAND CONTACT DETAILS
Phone: +44 (0) 7950 0333 45
