Carlos and the team at Cow Hills invited Matthew to give the keynote at their annual get-together in South Africa, held at the Suikerbossie Restaurant overlooking Hout Bay. South Africa's largest retailers, including Shoprite and Woolworths, gathered to hear about the latest trends affecting the industry, and Matthew's brief was the Future of Retail.
His warning was direct. Retailers have already lived through one major disruption, the arrival of e-commerce in the early 2000s, and they are about to experience another that most are not prepared for. He covered new product design and manufacturing technologies such as creative machines and 3D holographic printing, and the emergence of the first fully autonomous retailers, which will usher in the industry's third wave of disruption. That wave will change the economics of retail, eliminate supply chains and inventory, and move retailers to an on-demand business model.
"Companies need to be always on the lookout for the next wave of disruption and be ready to both defend against it and lead it."Matthew Griffin, Hout Bay, September 2020
Adding fuel to the fire, the trend is being driven by Amazon, which Matthew showed is on its way to becoming the world's first fully autonomous retailer, where everything from product design and manufacturing to fulfilment and delivery is performed by machines.
He closed on the wider pattern. Exponential technologies make it easier than ever for whole industries to be disrupted in new ways, and they accelerate the rate of disruption itself. The time between disruptive events keeps shrinking, so retail executives need to be always on the lookout for the next wave, and ready both to defend against it and to lead it.
