Last week I headed to Cologne to create a customer success video with Rituals Cosmetics and I came away from the day full of inspiration for how they operate.
Rituals, a Dutch company, were founded in 2000 and have taken the beauty sector in Europe by storm to become a market leader. They're not afraid to challenge themselves and one of the few retailers who defy the challenges in the industry to grow at an impressive speed, opening 2-3 stores weekly.
The question is, how do they do it? How do they continue to go from strength to strength when many retailers are forced to close store after store?
After spending a day with the Rituals team, my analysis is the following:
1. They envision passion
Passion for their customer experience. Passion for their employees. Passion for their products. And they obsess about it. It’s in all the details; their value words being highlighted in their office and in their stores, the accessibility in their organisation, the way they serve you tea when walking into the store and the way they hand over their products when you've purchased them, Asian-style with two hands around the bag. They're not just selling a product. They're selling a beautifully packaged experience and feeling.
2. Affordable luxury
This is created by a combination of 1) high quality products 2) beautiful packaging 3) perfect price point 4) strong story telling (every product line has their own unique concept and story) - placing them in their very own position in the market. They’ve created the perfect gift. Who hasn't received one of their beauty boxes for Christmas?
3. Location, location, location
They always choose central stores and are always in prime display in larger warehouses and at resellers.
4. They live by and use the advantages of new technology
Everything that can reduce admin and make them focus even more on the customer experience, they embrace. And having met and worked with members of the management team, they are impressively fast moving and in the forefront of digitalisation.
With the risk of being overly positive - of course Rituals are facing challenges. They, as all companies must, struggle with recruitment, keeping the culture, keeping the deadline in projects, change management and with expansion strategies. I’m not saying it’s easy. It takes a lot of hard work. However, it's nonetheless impressive to achieve this kind of growth.
My Summary
Passion + brilliant execution + embracing the future = a combination that is hard to beat. And if you do it constantly, with a strong culture to back it up, you might be able to oppose the trend of a whole industry. A thought I’ll add to my own ”daily ritual”.
Quinyx has recently been recognised in Gartner’s 2020 Market Guide for Retail Workforce Management Applications and the 2020 Market Guide for Workforce Management Applications.
