EP37 Raine Peake : Navigating leadership for fashion , Technology and innovation

My next guest on Episode 37 is Raine Peake , Strategic Director , Advisor in the fashion industry with a focus on omnichannel , innovation and technology .
 Get set to embark on a riveting journey with our special guest, Raine Peake, a seasoned strategic leader in e-commerce and retail digital. From an allocator to a digital director, Raine's career path is as inspiring as it gets. As we traverse this fascinating territory, Raine's unique insights about her experiences with prominent companies like Alex & Alexa  ,Farfetch, Jigsaw and now New Look  will keep you hooked.

We plunge into the intriguing transformation of traditional retailers morphing into tech-savvy enterprises, dissecting the emotional factors that fuel the fashion industry, . As part of our deep-dive, we touch upon the crucial role of maintaining curiosity in career growth, the significance of being adaptable, and understanding that job titles aren't everything.

Towards the latter end of our conversation, we bring to forefront the challenges faced by women leaders in the fashion industry, the glaring gender pay gap, and the need for nurturing management styles. Get ready to be swept away by Raine's insights on artificial intelligence’s role in enhancing customer experiences and reducing return rates in online shopping. Join us for this insightful journey that reveals the future of data, the importance of the human element in sales, and Raine's personal tips for success in the digital and e-commerce industry. Don't miss this action-packed episode filled with wisdom for enthusiasts and professionals in the retail industry.

Mentions 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ikigai-Japanese-secret-long-happy/dp/178633089X
https://www.kingscross.co.uk/event/hockney-bigger-and-closer  

Follow 
Raine Peake 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/raine-peake-19954a11/

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Transcript

The Trailblazers Experience: 0:11

Welcome to another episode of the Trailblazers Experience podcast, number one podcast on candid conversations and career journeys with women in business, tech, STEM, entrepreneurs, content creators all things women. And I'm really excited to have my next guest here, Rain Peake, who describes herself as an experienced strategic leader over 20 years experience in e-commerce, bricks and mortar. She's focusing on innovation, technological solutions, transformation strategy. She's passionate about data and science. Welcome, Rain.

Raine Peake: 0:53

Thanks for having me Very excited to be here this morning.

The Trailblazers Experience: 0:57

I know, and you've also just been for a run, which is incredible.

Raine Peake: 1:03

Yeah, exactly, I did have to run to get my car, though that was.

The Trailblazers Experience: 1:07

Oh okay, a new car or car that's being repaired? Okay Well, fair enough, fair enough.

Raine Peake: 1:14

We're in the Christmas season of very lovely dinners.

The Trailblazers Experience: 1:17

That's nice. That's nice, oh, brilliant. It's really lovely to have you on. I think I've been chasing to have you on the podcast because I hear such great things about you, about how you work with people, the organizations you've been affiliated with, and you've been also doing lots of interim roles as well, which I feel like a few years ago, interim was a dirty word. You're doing an interim role.

The Trailblazers Experience: 1:42

But actually it comes with a bit of freedom in terms of where you're going into a business. You're going to deliver X and you're coming out with Y. Let's talk about the journey of how that all started and how you got into retail digital, just so that we can understand you as a person and how that shaped what you're doing now.

Raine Peake: 2:04

Yeah, so in the late 1800s it feels like I started out in retail as an allocator, so I didn't even know that role existed. I thought there were just fires. I knew I wouldn't ever be a buyer if I'm not creative enough. And then there was this whole kind of other world of like oh, this is how you get the stock to the shops. That's quite interesting, and so I worked with a brand that's no longer around called Kohl's Men'swear. It's a bit like Reese's and I just really really enjoyed it. I really loved that kind of element of you're selling things to people and you're using data to forecast the sales, working out which stores you were going to send the stock to. So that was kind of my sort of initiation, I would say. I mean it was hilarious when I look back.

Raine Peake: 2:54

We used to go to a pub at lunchtime, have a pint, and then I'd be in a range of you. I don't know how it functioned. You're kind of like how did I do that? And continued in retail ever since. So I've been at Moncine at Cussarise. That was probably my longest in. I was there for 11 years. Really fun company, really fun brand Was within merchandising and branch merchandising and then I left there and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Thought oh, I'll be a florist. That's a great idea. Realize, the week's cover on flowers is like 20 minutes so yes exactly.

Raine Peake: 3:28

This is quite a stressful situation.

The Trailblazers Experience: 3:31

I think analysis there oh no, oh no.

Raine Peake: 3:35

Did a few weddings, realized that my hourly rate was. I worked that it was seven P because it's very labor intensive. So then went back into retail and it was a very small, a relatively small company and it was online and this was in 2008. So it was relatively early and it just was really interesting. I'm like what are all these people doing in that other side of the office? So they're kind of looking at trends and data. That seems very similar to what I'm doing, but not quite the same. So that was kind of sort of my initial sort of sort of foray into it.

Raine Peake: 4:15

So I work for Alex and Alexa, which is an amazing children's wear brand. My children were very well dressed at that point. They were completely the right ages. I think I may have break it a monster with my teenage daughter and I think kind of really got into visual merchandising online because I knew how important it was in physical retail and the site was designer children's wear and we were selling doctor and Gabon addresses to buy from Japan's and they'd be next to a pair of night trainers and I'm like this isn't how the customer perceives it, this isn't what she wants to see. So it was kind of really taking all of those learnings from bricks and mortar and employing them in a digital scenario and then using all the amazing digital data that you can get to sort of recreate those human experiences.

Raine Peake: 5:05

And then I went to Farfetch, which I mean sad times at the moment with Farfetch, with all of their kind of current news, but at that point it was pre IPO and it was really. It's a tech company that does fashion, so it just made you look at things completely differently. They run incredible tests and learn programs. They partnered with Google and it was really really exciting to be part of something where it was the polar opposite of kind of traditional retail, so they use data incredibly. And then you were almost saying, well, actually, no, this thing isn't selling because it doesn't look very nice and all the data science has done. I don't understand that. And that put me in a really different position to other sort of digital directors, because they quite often come from a marketing background. So I come from a very much a merchandising trading background with that kind of tech element. So I'm not, I can't code, but I understand the fundamentals of it.

Raine Peake: 6:10

I understand how you can implement it into a retail situation. So that's kind of why I sort of, in a very long-winded way, got into interim because it's all about learning and I think it's super, super important to learn throughout, whatever you do. So the roles that I pick, I'm very specific about companies I work for and what I will get out of them and what they can get out of me, and what kind of different challenges that you can solve within it.

The Trailblazers Experience: 6:41

I think it's important to say what the journey has been for yourself and how you were a florist who would have known that there was a lesson there is. You are passionate about it, but not passionate enough. I can scale this into something.

The Trailblazers Experience: 6:55

There is no scaling at that Exactly. But to your point about tech and data and working for a business that is driven by tech first and data, we've also seen the onset of businesses having not only data scientists but behavioral scientists as well, because they can marry up that thing of customer behavior. How is the customer behaving? How are they being influenced by what's happening?

Raine Peake: 7:23

But how do we marry?

The Trailblazers Experience: 7:24

the two. To make decisions is a brilliant thing to be in, and you are right, traditionally digital directors have been marketing, but, as we know, it's more than just that, in terms of leading a digital business as well. It feels like also, as your interest in interim digital roles suggests a focus on being hands-on but strategic. What draws?

The Trailblazers Experience: 7:48

you to these roles and how do you make sure that you make a tangible impact in that relatively short term, which could be nine months, 12 months, 18 months in that organization? I think it depends on what the remit for the organization is, for instance, mint Velvet.

Raine Peake: 8:07

It was a very specific remit. They were re-platforming onto Shopify. So that was something that was very tangible. So it's driving that roadmap. It's using all of those skills that you learned from a tech company into a retail company to say, actually, these are the things that are super important, these are the things that we can iterate on. This is how you should develop a roadmap. This is how you should take the team on that journey and empowering them to be able to do that.

Raine Peake: 8:41

So that was a six-month role that delivered within that six-month period, the re-platform. So it had a really deliberate outcome at the end of it and I think, as well as trading the site and doing all of those other things with the team, there's elements of outcome and there's also elements of team building. So, as you said at the beginning, I'm really passionate about people. I'm really passionate about developing teams, getting the best out of everyone, and I think, if you go in with really clear objectives in terms of what is the team structure? Is it about building the team? Is it about recruitment? Is it about recruitment? Is it about changing how the team thinks about things?

Raine Peake: 9:30

I really like you know my current role at New Look. It's a very traditional retailer. You know everybody's got a lot of love for New Look. It's a great brand.

Raine Peake: 9:39

You know this 400 stores, you know, probably one of the biggest retailers there still is in the UK and I think it's a lot about actually celebrating all of those things but also showing my team I've got quite a big team showing them kind of different ways of working and different ways of looking at things and really empowering people to take risks and also, you know, that sort of test and learn mentality that is so prevalent in tech companies. That is obviously how they develop and how they fail fast and all those other kind of buzzwords like buzzword bingo, but in a traditional retailer and not so common because the initial, you know if you have a bricks and mortar store, you can't really test whether it's going to work in that location. So you know there's very, very different kind of pressures on the P&L but that you don't have in the digital world and it's kind of transforming those kind of thought processes around.

The Trailblazers Experience: 10:37

Yeah, and that makes such a big difference, isn't it? I mean, going into a business where you're replatforming ooh, that's lovely so you can do a lot of the change management. You can just transform it. You're working with all the departments. It's something new. Yeah, you're leaving there, having taken something that maybe was broken, and putting them in a position to succeed in the future. Those are the exciting projects. Yeah, that's the stressful, but they're really exciting yeah they're super fun?

Raine Peake: 11:04

And I think yeah, because, as I said, there's a beginning and an end. Everybody's super excited when the site launches and takes its sale. I think you know there's really different ways of replatforming as well, and that's also super interesting in different ways of doing it. So Mint Velvet was a six month journey. That, I think, is, you know, very reasonable, and before that I did two replatcoms in a year, which was, I would say, a little intense, but I transferred the Arcadia brand onto Boohoo and that was over a weekend, which was absolutely behind it.

Raine Peake: 11:47

It was bonkers, and you know the difference between Arcadia, which obviously for many reasons is not around, and the legacy tech solutions that they had, and the we're lots of boltons upon boltons, unbelievable amounts of boltons, and just very, very slow and very, very clunky because of all of those boltons and you know the infrastructure and then moving it in a weekend over to Salesforce, you know, and loads of things didn't work. But it was like no, no, we keep going, we keep going. And it was like, wow, this is incredible, people can't check out with some payment methods, but we're still going. And it's not to say when's the right or wrong. It is very, very different ways that, culturally, businesses do things and it's, you know, that's, that's super interesting. And then the kind of the mop up of that was probably two months but the launch was super fast. So, you know, and all of those things, you kind of take into the next company and kind of, you know, look at different ways of working.

The Trailblazers Experience: 12:47

Yeah, yeah, and you talked about Farfetch, who actually he's. He's looking. What's in the news now is that he's looking to take it private again which I think will be brilliant because it means tech will be at the forefront and not what the shareholders want. Yeah, it goes back to being a tech company that does business, that innovates, that can say this is a reset year. These are the things we're focusing on, you know.

Raine Peake: 13:12

And I think I think he's. You know it. Jose is very you know he's very tech focused and I think it's it. It will be, yeah, it'll be really good if having quick guys yeah, like I think private hands you know it was it did so well in lockdown. And then I think fashion companies generally sometimes don't do very well on stock markets because the nature of the business isn't like a finance house or any of those things, they're just different roles no it's not.

The Trailblazers Experience: 13:41

It's not linear, so it's not, it's not predictive, it's not one of those where you know if you leave your stock in this fashion brand for the next 10 years. It'll just compound and do this.

Raine Peake: 13:52

Yeah, it just won't. Yeah, it's Ali.

The Trailblazers Experience: 13:54

Exactly it's not safe, it's not a need, it's not a business, it's not a sector where it's things that people really need. You don't need it.

Raine Peake: 14:03

You know, obviously you do need clothes. It's not showy, you don't need much of it.

Raine Peake: 14:08

No, it's not, and I think that's also a really exciting thing about how do you inspire customers to buy things. Yes, I think I think that's you know, because you don't. You know, you don't. You obviously need a certain amount of clothes, but you don't need more and more and more, and you know, for many reasons sometimes that's not a great thing for the, for the planet, but it's about how you kind of inspire customers through emotion, because it's a very emotional purchase and I have very many conversations I think I've even I must have whittled on to you about this but returns rates are obviously an enormous factor in in online retail, especially in clothing and especially in women's clothing.

Raine Peake: 14:50

I'm really passionate about the fact that you can't try it on, so you don't know whether you like it. I bought six pairs of black leather trousers last year. They all fitted me, but I only liked one of them, and so it's not necessarily a fit problem, it's not necessarily an image problem, it's all of those things. It's. It's a tasting and an emotion. Yeah, so you've got to kind of think actually for your really valuable not implying I'm a high value customer, but for your high value customers, they probably will return more and they probably will have an emotional connection with the brand, but it's how you build that relationship with her and build that customer lifetime value. So you're looking at really really different metrics, not just a line on a profit and loss, so kind of getting the lifetime that it's.

The Trailblazers Experience: 15:37

It's so important, the KPI's, the measures maybe need to change between customer lifetime value those high you know in the in the cohort versus someone who's just coming in for that gift. One in one hour Exactly. Yeah, I think that that's really key. I was talking to one of the members of Bloom reach and he was talking about how they're investing more in conversational commerce.

The Trailblazers Experience: 16:01

So, having that conversation, having someone look at your file or your profile and looking at what you've ordered and the color palettes, and in that way you know, suggesting to you things that you might need. They might have information of what occasions you're meant to go to and tying that in to a just improve that customer experience, but also getting you to buy the things that you will essentially keep.

Raine Peake: 16:27

I think. But this is where I think there's a real marriage between data and trend and art, because and I think you have to identify your customers into obviously we know what they've bought and I, you know, we're both in black jumpers. This year I bought a fair r-jumper Quite, it's not really my, you know, it wouldn't be my normal thing and no one would have been able to predict that, but fair r-jumpers are quite on trend. So if you denote me as a trend led customer, you would have actually shown that to me. Yes, but how you show that product catalog to different people without just backwards looking? Personalization isn't it yeah.

Raine Peake: 17:13

When I was at Farfetch, one of the data scientists was explaining how she had been to Stanford and Silicon Valley and I was like, oh, this is so exciting and so interesting. And she was saying she'd worked at Netflix for a while and I was like, oh, that's amazing, it must have all been science. And she's like, yeah, it was totally science. But there was a whole room full of people suggesting film, because it's really difficult to get newness into any algorithm. Yes, obviously, program you in a certain and you can kind of, but you have to throw in serendipity or else you're in a real echo chamber, and those are the kind of things that I think are really interesting, because then you still kind of it's using humans in a different way.

The Trailblazers Experience: 17:57

Yeah, someone was talking about how there was a report data report that I read, talking about how, coming back to your point of you, need to add in serendipity, otherwise you're just going in silo. So you can only tell you so much.

Raine Peake: 18:11

It can only tell you it can reinforce your decisions. Yes, and it can, but it's not going to be a silver bullet. No, it can reinforce your decisions, it can show you where you can make improvement, it can control all of those efficiencies and all of those things, but it's not going to solve your problems too.

The Trailblazers Experience: 18:29

No, and it won't tell you about missed opportunities. No, no, the sales you could have had, missed sales, the you know, the stock that you didn't get intake, that could have helped with some sort of a consumer moment. For example, yeah, beyond say, renaissance concept, silver, yeah, who would have thought?

Raine Peake: 18:49

Yeah, I have bought silver boots that I had on last night with a like it and heel. Where is this coming from? I always try and. And then I bought some silver jeans. I mean, in fairness, they are going back in the return thing because they fit. They look a bit odd. Yes, well, I show my 14 year old daughter. She was like not so much. I'm like okay, they are actually not bad. It's not, yeah, but you know. So you know, and it's all those things like Barbie. You know, the the cut is cultural references and I think that's obviously where designers and buyers that's where still set right. That is there. You know they kind of that creativity and kind of different references in different kind of walks of life and you know different areas of the world. You know I really love going to galleries and I've got a particular friend that we always go to the Tate every sort of couple of months and it's it's how you kind of use all of those sort of references to look at different areas.

The Trailblazers Experience: 19:57

Yeah.

Raine Peake: 19:57

You might think oh, actually that's a bit of an obscure thing while you're looking at a mark, but it's culturally in the kind of ether.

The Trailblazers Experience: 20:04

Right, we haven't even preempted that we're going to talk about this. So I went to a David David Hotfield exhibition oh yeah, amazing, at the lighthouse with my friend Jerry, and it was so interesting to see so how we thought it was just going to be a classic exhibition. You know where you're just looking at all the pieces of work that is done, but they sort of it was a digital presentation across the four walls, talking about the process, how he thinks about perspective, color, how it was influenced by California, moving there and the food, yeah, the countryside, etc. And then I was reading was I reading Harper's Bazaar or Vogue? He's got a segment in there Because, guess what he's done?

The Trailblazers Experience: 20:49

A portrait of Harry Stiles. Yeah, amazing, harry Stiles says he's influenced by him as well. It is, it is dress sense. So you can see, fashion is also taking an interest in this artist who's been around forever. Yeah, and all of the things tied to. You know, data probably could not have preempted that. That is something that will be, you know, maybe spring, summer, because of his eclecticness and the color palettes, that might be something that will be coming through.

Raine Peake: 21:18

Yeah, and I think it's just. I think it's just. You know, I read, as I said earlier, I just really liked learning about things and, yeah, I'm just quite interested in the world, you're curious. Yeah, really curious.

The Trailblazers Experience: 21:28

Very curious.

Raine Peake: 21:29

And I think you know that that is why I kind of enjoy working, I enjoy learning, and I think you've got to kind of think, actually, what's what's fun? Yeah, you know what, what you know, what are your drivers and how do you, how do you keep, not keep going? But you know, I've had a very long career and I'm still really enjoying it. You know, and I think when I look at my colleagues who I maybe worked with in other roles, you know some of them have gone on to do completely different things or stopped working, but I think the ones that are still working, it's a really key thing that that we're all quite curious and we all, you know, are quite passionate about what we do and and I'm really passionate about, you know, as I said before, about, you know, really inspiring the team and really I mean it's a very female dominated industry and I think it's really showing women, you know, what you can achieve.

Raine Peake: 22:23

It's not it's not one or the other, it's not family or work, or you know, it's, it's how you make it work for yourself and how you can kind of you don't have to have a linear career. You can do different things, you can do different moves from sector to sector. Or you know, I've gone from merchandising to a tech company back to retail doing very, very different roles, and I think that's that's how you kind of maintain a career and kind of relevance really, and also not being sector or industry agnostic, you know, being open to how can I add value with the skill sets I have and being curious, being innovative, being entrepreneurial.

The Trailblazers Experience: 23:03

I think having those approach because then you're open to change, you're open to doing things differently.

Raine Peake: 23:08

Yeah.

The Trailblazers Experience: 23:09

Is there an interim role that you were like? You don't have to mention it. This is just not my path. This is not for me. And what? What were the factors that, the deciding factors that made you say okay, in the future, this is something I will not be looking to pursue.

Raine Peake: 23:24

Particularly because I am quite conscious of where I choose. Yeah, I do like to do different things in different orders. So where I was at, say, jigsaw and Mint Velvet are both. Well, mint Velvet is bigger than Jigsaw but quite similar demographic customer, quite similar size teams. Quite, mint Velvet's founder led Jigsaw has an owner. So they're, you know they were both on Shopify. So I thought you know, for my next role I want to go to, you know, a larger turnover, bigger, bigger teams, different and different challenges. So you know the challenges are very, very different. At new looking terms, you know we've got at Jigsaw there was one data scientist, I've got a team of five.

The Trailblazers Experience: 24:21

You talked about this as well. Honestly, I was just like awesome that is. That is like data on steroids.

Raine Peake: 24:28

Oh, it's amazing, it's so good, it's just so brilliant. You're like oh well, that's, that's just incredible. Within my team, we have digital analytics and I just said we also have an insights team. We work with Pantel. It's really powerful, and using that data across the business is brilliant, because we're looking at market share all the time. We're looking at all the sort of customer demographics, we're looking at it regionally. It's really empowering.

The Trailblazers Experience: 24:59

Yeah, because they're not very many retailers that can look at, unless you're as big as New Look or the Indie Text Group to look at it regionally and say this is what we think the store in this town is doing to get that granular and be able to influence, whether it's from a social media platform, from it's what you're showing the customer once they put on the website it's, it's awesome and just for the audience. There's a lesson to be learned here, because you've got to a bigger organization. You are not also wedded to titles as well, and I think that's also a big thing where people are so wedded to a title but you may have the director title but not have the teams or the remit or be able to influence or be able to make tangible change and just jog that brain of yours a bit, Whereas now you're in head of role but you've got teams and it's a bigger organization and the impact and value add is much bigger.

Raine Peake: 25:53

Yeah, it is. I've got a far bigger team than I had when I was a director probably triple the size, yeah, and it's just a very, very different way of looking at it. I think you can. Obviously you want to progress in your career and obviously you know that this sort of I was very passionate that I wanted to be a director. But I think then when I kind of looked around and was like, oh, actually, what am I getting out of this? What are the kind of key things that I'm doing? It's like, oh, this is, there's other opportunities. That's actually great because of the scale of the company and the size of the company.

The Trailblazers Experience: 26:29

So I think.

Raine Peake: 26:30

Yeah, I think just kind of looking and thinking what is it, what is it for me?

The Trailblazers Experience: 26:35

What are some of the challenges do you think you faced? Obviously, we've talked about fashion obviously has a lot of women in the industry, but what some of the challenges is as a woman in leadership, as a woman coming up in the business, that you think there's knowledge you can impart that might be impacting others right now.

Raine Peake: 26:55

I think in my first role, when I was an allocator, a man came in and he earned £2,000 more than me and this was obviously over 20 years ago, but it still wrangles. Oh my God, that's the most frustrating thing ever. So I've been really conscious to be very fair and be very supportive. I think the main thing and I think I do think it's changed I don't think you kind of have to demonstrate those very male, very aggressive that was probably quite a second thing. It was male but very aggressive sort of management and managing by fear. That was quite prevalent when I first started out and that's because it was learned behavior from other people. Right, it wasn't that those people were naturally terrifying, but I think there's just very, very different ways of working and what I would always counter is you don't have to do those things to succeed. You can kind of come at it in a very, very different way. You can look at things in different areas.

Raine Peake: 28:02

What I'm quite passionate about at the moment is the difference between managing people and being a principal. So, especially in tech companies, there are a lot of people who are principals, obviously, who are incredibly skilled at their roles and they have that kind of slight. They have that different path where they don't manage people. And I think in traditional retailers, to be promoted, you generally have to manage, and I think that's a really different dynamic when you're kind of thinking about team planning and all of those things. Actually, these people who are brilliant at what they do, they might not want to manage people. How can we encourage them to progress or to learn or do different things?

Raine Peake: 28:40

But I think it's sort of the changing nature of roles and the changing nature of workforces and the automation of things. It enables people to do things that you need a human to do. So it's being able to do things at scale that we haven't been able to do before. I think you should always embrace that and not be worried about it. So it's not necessarily about getting rid of people. It's about enabling change and enabling scale so that you can kind of do different things. So I think you've got to kind of flip it on its head and kind of think, actually, what are these things doing that will enable me to do things that are more fun and you talked about the managing by fear over the years.

The Trailblazers Experience: 29:28

There was a big report that I read talking about how leadership styles have evolved. What are businesses looking for? So you either had a leader who led by consensus, so democratic, and then you had someone who was authoritative and that was it. There's nothing in between, yeah, and now you've got different styles. There's transformational leadership, collaborative leadership. There's coaching style, strategic and to your point of not everyone in your team or your department will want to be a manager If there are specialists.

The Trailblazers Experience: 30:02

If you've got specialists in an area, that's brilliant, too, totally brilliant, do you know? And AI is such a big thing. I keep on saying what's definitely promised is death taxes and AI. That's happening for sure. And it's how do you use AI to take away those admin heavy tests?

Raine Peake: 30:24

Yeah, it's a tool, right, it's not a tool.

Raine Peake: 30:27

It doesn't really have its own intelligence I mean, I do know generative AI is a bit more fancy than that but it is a tool. It's not this kind of beast that kind of does its own thing. A friend of mine was showing me this picture and I was like what is your son doing? And he's training to be a dentist. It just looked like he was kind of chipping away at something in midair, but it's because he's got a virtual reality headset on and they were using it for things like that. I think there's a lot of fear around it, but I think the amount of good it can do is incredible. I always am very positive and I always think about the positive things in anything. You know, if you feel threatened by it, you will be threatened by it and you won't be able to harness it to the best of its ability, though I would say.

The Trailblazers Experience: 31:22

I think there's so many use cases of how generative AI is just going to revolutionise search shopping, delivering exceptional customer experience, which is what we want which hopefully reduce returns all these things that will make that online shopping experience.

Raine Peake: 31:40

Totally Well. It will take away the heavy lifting and it will enable you to hone in quicker to the thing that you like, that you're trying to get to yeah that you're trying to get to, and I think you know when anybody one of my favourite descriptions is when you're talking about product recommendations.

Raine Peake: 32:01

I say, well, if you go into a store I walk into a store the sales associate knows what size I am, what height I am, basically what things I like. She can kind of come out and show me all these things. What you're doing with a recommendation engine is you're trying to get those signals for all of those things. So it's actually supercharging those signals that a human makes a decision in like a hundred to the second. So it's giving all of those extra touch points and extra data and enrichment and all of those things to be able to. You know, it's enabling it to think super fast.

The Trailblazers Experience: 32:37

It's also interesting because when you walk into a shop, you might not be dressed. If I think of my shopping experience, when I walk in, I'm usually my gym kit, so she's walking in, you know, and all these suits, outfits. She has to then deduce, saying right, okay, is she A, is she in the right store or B, is she then in her casual, at leisure? I found out what she's looking for. Is it an event, an occasion? What does she do for work? And those conversations. I still feel we cannot substitute the retail experience in the store.

Raine Peake: 33:10

Absolutely not. And that, I think, is why. Because it's an to go back to our earlier conversation because it's emotional. You are emotionally engaging with that item of clothing, all that amazing, I don't know safer or something, because it's, you know, you don't necessarily need it. So it's an emotional purchase. It's about the texture, it's about, you know, does it, how it makes you feel, all of those things, and I think that's why the last few places have worked are Romney Channel, and it's because I shop all my favorite shops. I shop online and I shop in stores, but if I'm, you know, in a blinding hurry, I'll order it for next day delivery. Yeah, Because, because you and you don't, there isn't a one size fits all. I really love live shopping. I think it's really, really great, because I've said this before to numerous people people buy from people. They don't buy from just an innate website. They are buying from the brand they love, or you know they're calling.

The Trailblazers Experience: 34:14

Well, this is why live streaming and renew with me and shop with me is so successful, especially in countries that have established it. Everyone buys everything by seeing it first on, so it's tying. You know, those Romney Channel experience, thinking like how the? Customers thinking as well.

Raine Peake: 34:32

I think that's definitely the way forward. I don't think you'll pick the channel consistently, but you'll pick the channel that is suitable for you at that point in time. And I think, you know, I think live streams and, and you know, I really like, like Martin Spencer's TikTok, where all of their branches have got TikToks, and you've got, you know, I can't remember the name of the lady in Romford who's you know, showing you my personal page. It's just and it's fun, right, it's funny and it's, you know, it's genuine.

The Trailblazers Experience: 35:01

It's organic.

Raine Peake: 35:02

And it's also for those store colleagues. It's making their life more fun as well. Oh yeah, they're kind of there but they're kind of having fun, they're doing all of those things. It will. It will, I'm sure, help with employee retention and all of that. And it's just. You know people talk it incessantly about the death of the high street.

Raine Peake: 35:21

It will just change, yeah it'll just it'll just be a different version of the high street and it and that's. You know, whether you think that's a good or a bad thing is almost not irrelevant, but it will change. So it's kind of, how do you embrace that change and how do you, you know, work with your store colleagues, or how do you, you know, slightly pivot your business into, into that?

The Trailblazers Experience: 35:45

Pivoting on balancing leadership roles and interrooms can be demanding. How do you prioritize self care, you know, amongst all these commitments and just maintaining what a healthy work balance looks to you, because there is no one size fits all. No, as well, I'm so.

Raine Peake: 36:05

I'm, I'm quite a, as we said earlier, I like, I really like running, I'm a bit of a stump with it, so and I always, or what, every week, then morning we'll do some form of exercise, and I know that works for me because I'm a very early riser so and I I'm also quite like routine and so then I kind of do all of those things in the morning. Then I feel really much more energized, all those endorphins are going, and then I feel like sitting down and kind of, especially when you're working from home, you can do like 200 steps. And if you think, oh, my goodness, me, I will, I've done it like 200 steps and had three biscuits and 20 cups coffee. So it's kind of how you. So that's how I prioritize, that. I prioritize, you know, exercising in the morning and and that I find personally really helps kind of in my mental health, because then I'm I don't tend to listen to music.

Raine Peake: 37:07

So then if I'm running on my own I'm just kind of thinking about whatever, trying not to trip up if it's dark. I quite often run with friends, so that's really good fun and we put the world to right. So if we're being especially vociferous about something, that hill doesn't seem so much of a hill when you're kind of banging on about something. So that's kind of what I do from that point of view Now, and I I, as I said earlier, I like learning about things. I read quite a lot and just being nosy.

The Trailblazers Experience: 37:40

Yeah.

Raine Peake: 37:41

Yeah, I think that is one of the things that I like. I like gathering facts about things, Not that necessarily I can remember that fact, but I like learning about it and I like finding out about it, and you know all of those things. I just find it really, really interesting. And then I think if you're curious, then that kind of helps in lots of other areas of your life. You know, I'm very curious about how it works, how it's going to enable me, how it's going to help me to do something, and then you can kind of employ that in other areas.

The Trailblazers Experience: 38:14

There's something to be said about it from everything that you've said. You've got both of your brains working, so you've got the inspiration of data and science, but you're also on the art and the creative side. I think that helps you with whatever role you're in.

Raine Peake: 38:28

Yeah. I mean I've got a geography degree, which is so random Because it's nothing related to anything I've done, maybe with allocation. I kind of knew where the soils were roughly, but it's, you know. And yeah, I think maybe I mean it was human geography and it was a long time ago.

Raine Peake: 38:49

But but I think it's, you know it's it's don't be restricted by what you think I've always been so. Geography is in the humanities and that's, I think, why I like lots of different things. It's not a particular. I never thought I want to be an accountant. I'm just going to learn accountants and I probably could have been an accountant because my roles are very, very numeric, quite similar. But I think it's that kind of.

Raine Peake: 39:12

Don't be restricted by what you study, what you're learning. You know you kind of need to go with your passion and whether that passion is. You know I've always been really interested in passion and that's kind of been an underlying thing and I've always been really interested in that relationship of kind of the sort of creativity and how you kind of sell that to people. I'm quite competitive. So we were before we were talking, you know it's reforecasting and budgeting and beating those budgets and kind of. You know what can you do with all of those things and can you make that store and, wherever, sell more or by doing that visual merchandising is a conversion going to increase. So it says kind of competitive things with yourself.

The Trailblazers Experience: 39:59

Yeah, it's about finding your. Is it your icky guy? Isn't it what you're, what you love, what you're good at, what you can be paid for, and all of that passion.

Raine Peake: 40:11

Yeah, totally yeah. I had a really brilliant coach for a while, gary Crotas. He's amazing, absolutely amazing, and he works through Gallup strengths and I've never done that before and it was really eye-opening, because you go through all of these things and it kind of gives you 50, you have 50 different strengths and it orders them into what you're naturally good at, what you're actually good at, and then what you're a bit rubbish at, and then and the point is that you then should think about work to lean into the things that you're good at, not to try and correct the things that you're not good at, absolutely. Thank you, nice to hear.

Raine Peake: 40:55

And I found that really, really eye-opening, because I was like, yeah, that thing, I'm never really very good at that, but why am I focusing on roles that include that? Because that's not necessarily my core skill set. My core skill set is I like learning about things, I'm strategic, I like innovation. So those are the kind of things that I should go after, and I think it was really like a kind of thing of thinking oh yeah, that really makes sense and that's why I really enjoy these roles. It's not so much those roles.

The Trailblazers Experience: 41:29

Yeah, it's like a self analysis, isn't it? Because otherwise you're just setting yourself up for failure, going for the things that you think you need to be doing, but you're not excelling. That.

Raine Peake: 41:39

Yeah, I mean, it's like that taxing, you've got to do it, but it's quite painful. Yeah, but you can employ an accountant if you want to. There's kind of different ways of doing things.

The Trailblazers Experience: 41:50

So, as a leader, I'm still working at the intersection of innovation and tech. What advice would you give to professionals aspiring to make an impact in the digital and e-commerce space?

Raine Peake: 42:04

I think you've got to really think about what is the thing that you can bring to it that you're trying to change. So what is your kind of specific skill set and how are you going to employ that? So I'm very much about customers, about different ways of talking to customers and how you can marry traditional retail and what wants to be a better word, more modern retail and team. So you've got to think what are the areas that are going to make you different from other people and have really specific results in mind when you do things. So I'm a really passionate advocate of OKR, which are objectives and key results, and they're very different from the objectives that you'd set 20 years ago because of the results element and it's being really focused in on what are the things you're trying to change and what are those elements that you're trying to shift and needle on.

Raine Peake: 43:17

I've always worked in commercial roles, so obviously I'm always tasked with commercial metrics, but there's a lot of different ways to get to those commercial metrics Effectively. I'm employed to sell more things right. Another bit is that. But you can kind of go about that in loads of different ways and I find that with OKR, it's really great bringing a team on the journey with you. But also, the ultimate R is obviously revenue, but the other R is I kind of take you on that journey to get there and it just makes it really specific and that change within teams.

The Trailblazers Experience: 43:59

Yeah, I think, just for the audience who may not know what an OKR is. Obviously the objective is the thing Tell us what you want to improve the thing. The key results quantitative, measurable outcome how close are we to achieving it? And the success of the objective is measured by the progress made on the key results. Is it, whether it's revenue or transformation or change.

Raine Peake: 44:25

It has to be very specific. It has to have a yes no answer. You can have strategic ones which are like we want to be more, we want to have a higher green agenda. That can be a strategic one because it doesn't really have a beginning and an end. But you can have a very, very specific one of conversion rate have to increase by 1%.

The Trailblazers Experience: 44:49

Well, not 0.2%.

Raine Peake: 44:51

No, no, no, no. But I think yeah, no, no, no, no. And then you have a list of tactics to get to it and I think the really empowering thing is that you don't have to win with them. So as long as you've employed the tactics that you have said that you're going to do to get to it, you can measure the result and then you can change tactics. So where things are where innovations are happening really quickly, or where there's kind of different tools that are using any of those things, they should be every three months and it depends on the maturity of the business, as to how long, how far out, you should go with them.

The Trailblazers Experience: 45:34

I agree Totally. That's really important, I think yeah.

Raine Peake: 45:40

So a much more. You know much bigger business. You can probably set a six months annual OKR a much smaller startup, or where you're trying to change things quicker or where you're trying to change behaviors and get a waterfall to agile. And I think agile is one of those things. That agile doesn't mean just kind of chaos. I've been in situations where agile is good to you need to be agile. Yeah, you're saying agile is just absolutely chaotic.

The Trailblazers Experience: 46:12

This is not agile. Yeah, it's always been active to the consumer moment.

Raine Peake: 46:16

And changing your direction.

The Trailblazers Experience: 46:18

Changing the connection and views.

Raine Peake: 46:19

Yeah, so it's like in that whole test and learn mentality that it's brilliant if a test is fantastically wins or fantastically loses. Anything in the middle is a bit like oh God, I'm not telling me anything. So, yeah, that agile pieces, yeah, actually, if that test has told you why you thought it was going to be X, you pivot and change. It's not just like you're going to scatter gone after everything.

The Trailblazers Experience: 46:46

Yeah, a lot of businesses are resistant to change, isn't it? We've said this call this. Okr and this is that actually we're going. But you need to be open to change. You need to be open to change.

Raine Peake: 46:55

You need to be. You know who would have thought. You know we've had some really dreadful world events recently and you cannot predict them, but we've got to kind of think about what we would do in that situation. You know, how do we change direction? How do we change direction? How do we? How do we mitigate for it? Or, if it's you know, or if it's, for instance, the weather is just bonkers Women's clothing, the seasons are just very, very different. We've spent a lot of time recently talking about we just switching the seasons around, changing the way that the perception of when you traditionally would actually sell things, being more in the moment and having more continuous line, having more people are traveling more. So we had our search terms were up last week for swimwear because people are going on Christmas holidays, which is obviously quite obvious when you think about it. But it's just. It's just a very, very different way.

The Trailblazers Experience: 47:52

Yeah, I'm doing away somewhere where it's warm getting away from this?

Raine Peake: 47:56

Yeah yeah, I mean he wouldn't. It's just kind of thinking. Actually. We probably do need to have no thing year round with obviously a focus, and that might help with the whole you know certainly economy and how things are produced.

The Trailblazers Experience: 48:13

Maybe things might not be produced in excess because you're thinking of the year round collection, but I think a lot in that, To your point of things produced in excess.

Raine Peake: 48:21

That is where data and AI can massively, massively help. You know, Sarah, if you dress for you is such an aspect of this, and it's about predicting what you're going to sell in a different way so that you don't over-produce. So obviously, humans do it with brilliant, you know, amazing accuracy. But if you can kind of you can't do size runs generally for each individual thing, by each individual amount of data, you generally do short dresses this size run, long dresses this size run. But if you can kind of take it down into kind of layers and layers and layers, you will actually increase the efficiency of what you're selling and the granularity of what does that size curve, look for that particular shape and not have to produce as much, and I think that's where data and AI really can massively help in terms of you know all of that, I think, because it's the amount of data it can ingest in comparison to what you can traditionally do now.

The Trailblazers Experience: 49:23

So, looking to the future, I can sense you're very passionate about, you know, ai and the trends and the advancements of digital. Where do you see yourself, you know, in terms of shaping the industry or your career in the next few years? Have you thought about this? You're in the now.

Raine Peake: 49:44

I'm in the now, at the moment because I'm really I think it's a really interesting time at the minute because I think obviously AI is such an amazing thing. I think companies are going to really massively reorganize themselves based on that. I think the amount of data will become it'll be your currency, much more than your kind of anything else, and the amount of data that you've got. So basically each of the things, I think it will fundamentally change the way people report, because you need to have far more inputs and I think because at the moment we're at that customer, we don't have enough inputs into data to make the data meaningful. So there'll be that kind of shift into actually this far more things that you can measure and you're tagging that because it's good in, good out and a situation. So I think that'll be a really interesting thing.

Raine Peake: 50:39

I think the investments in that will be. Once that's happened, it'll be super, super fast. But then I think it'll be really interesting what happens with the human element, because people buy from people and it's also that kind of taste level and all of those things you can't really machine learn. So you can machine learn the efficiency. So I'm really excited and really interested in where that goes, I think. For me personally, I think it's about helping companies get everything aligned so that they can be able to use all of these things. I think it's about working with teams to not be scared of it, yeah, and I think it's about how you coach people to see it as a fantastic opportunity and not threatening. And change is hard and people, yeah, human right. You've got to treat people as humans and with kindness and take them on the journey and show them how this is going to empower for their lives and make it their jobs more interesting, or give them different ways to look at and kind of excite them in terms of the opportunity.

The Trailblazers Experience: 51:58

Yeah, excite and delight and empower is really important for that too, through your blazer takeaway tips. I mean, we've circled around and talked about so many things and you've had a really colorful career. Still a lot more to come from you, definitely, and your passion is evident in the way you talk about your sector and the things that you're doing. But if you were to share three or four nuggets of information or tips for the audience, what would they be?

Raine Peake: 52:31

I would say always be enthusiastic, because that has been my kind of underlying thing and I think it gets you so far in life. I would say don't be afraid to make mistakes and learn from them, and I think that's how you kind of circled. I know it's really trying and I think, owning them. I think really own what you do, really own that thing that you've done or really ate, and just kind of being like right, actually, this happened. We're doing that, we're changing, we're pivoting, we're doing something else. And I also, you know, I've been very fortunate to work in some great places where I've been super, super happy. But if you're not, you've got a choice, you can leave. And then it kind of really think about what are the things that really motivate me and then go after it. And I think don't be afraid to go after what you really want.

Raine Peake: 53:29

I was speaking to someone last week and she was always apologising for being ambitious and I was like, why apologise for being ambitious? This is ridiculous. It is really great to be ambitious, it's really great to want to do different things and be promoted, and she's got an amazing opportunity. She's like, oh, and I said you can go for it, absolutely. Go for it and set yourself paths that you want to take, you can go for it.

The Trailblazers Experience: 53:52

It's a really good thing, yeah you have to be living a life of setting yourself up for your own personal and professional success, because we only have one go at this, isn't?

Raine Peake: 54:01

it. We only have one go at it. I think I want religion you believe in.

The Trailblazers Experience: 54:04

You know, I'm not sure?

Raine Peake: 54:07

Yeah, I'm not sure I can do this twice, but I think you've got to kind of choose your happiness, right?

The Trailblazers Experience: 54:13

Choose your happiness. That's a very good one. Samorises it all. Yeah, frank, this has been awesome. This has been amazing, you know here.