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Insights into evolving your retail business from industry leaders
Westfield's highly popular Breakfast Seminar Series is back.
Last year more than 1150 retailers across Australia shared in insights around the theme of 'Retail Reinvention'.
This year, post the Global Financial Crisis, the Seminars will address the subject of Retail: The New Normal'.
Headlining the seminars will be some of Australia’s leading retail figures, including:
- Retail pharmacy legend Terry White in Brisbane.
- Chris Beer, CEO of Luxottica (OPSM) in Sydney.
- Stuart Machin, director stores and operations with Coles in Melbourne and
- John Charlton, MD and owner of Spend-less Shoes in Adelaide and Perth.
Heading the line-up in all five cities this year will be Howard Saunders, direct from London, founder of retail trend-tracker Echochamber. Howard has 25 years of store design experience and now travels the world tracking and analysing retail design trends. He is a compelling and entertaining speaker.
And Jon Bird, CEO of specialist retail marketing agency IdeaWorks, will also speak on the findings from this year’s Westfield World Retail Study Tour.
The seminars have been planned to suit the schedules of busy retail executives. They start with a light breakfast at 7am with the sessions wrapped by 9.35am.
Tickets are just $35 per person, or $280 for a table of eight.
Media partner for the Westfield Breakfast Seminar Series is Inside Retailing, and highlights of the events will be covered online and in our weekly newsletter.
2010 Breakfast Seminar Session dates and times: (Click on each city to register)
Speaker biographies:
Howard Saunders has worked in retail design for over 25 years. As a former Creative Director of Fitch & Company, responsible for retail design and branding, he has worked for many of the UK’s High Street brand names.
In 1997 Howard formed the Echochamber, an agency that travels the world tracking and analysing design trends. Based in London, but with a global network of ‘explorers’, its aim is to inform and inspire retailers across all categories with the innovative and the new.
Howard’s current clients include, Marks and Spencer, Microsoft, Tesco, John Lewis, Waitrose and Westfield. By keeping these clients informed of design trends and shifts in consumer attitudes, Echochamber helps develop new business strategies for the retail environment.
When Howard is not travelling and talking at conferences he spends most of his time composing music and drinking Rioja.
John Charlton is the founder & MD of Spend-less Shoes a value-based family footwear retail chain of currently 141 stores throughout Australia. The business commenced in 1988 & its first two shopping centre stores were in Westfield centres. Today Spend-less Shoes is in 21 Westfield Shopping Centres as it continues to grow and open new stores in providing the latest footwear “looks for less”.
Terry White, along with his wife Rhonda established the Terry White Chemists franchise group in 1994 and which now boasts 162 outlets in all states with a turnover of $1 billion, employing over 4500 staff.
The head office is based in Queensland with an executive and staff complement of 70 at Milton. The Terry White franchise group was the first to franchise pharmacies in Australia.
As former President of the Pharmacy Guild, Terry was heavily involved in developing services to up-skill pharmacists as small business people. He has played a significant role in the development of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia – arguably one of Australia’s most successful industry organisations.
In January 2006, Terry was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia for his services to the Retail Industry, the Community and to Parliamentary Reform.
During a busy life, he served as a Member of Parliament – Minister for Corrective Services, Family Services, Migrant & Ethnic Affairs, and Parliamentary Leader of the Liberal Party during the first stage of the reform process leading to the Fitzgerald Corruption Inquiry in Queensland.
His personal and business achievements are the topic of a biography "A Prescription for Change - The Terry White story," published by the University of Queensland Press and authored by Walkley Award Winning journalist Tony Koch of The Australian newspaper.
He continues in his role as Chairman of the Terry White Chemists Group. After selling the franchise company to the FH Faulding & Co 10 years ago, Terry last year led a team to successfully reclaim ownership of the Franchise Company in a unique earn-out, so that his board controls the direction of the Terry White Chemists brand in Australia.
He is a strong advocate for small business to marshal their strength through franchising in order to compete in the market place.
Stuart Machin - Operations Director, Coles Group / Wesfarmers Australia.
Stuart joined Coles in August, 2008, relocating from the UK, where he held various director positions within J Sainsbury (Including Savacentre Hyper market), Tesco and latterly Asda Wal*Mart.
Stuart has over 23 years experience in retail working in both store and central head office positions and has had experience in managing food, clothing and general merchandise. He has carried out roles in merchandising and marketing with the majority of his experience in Leadership roles within operations - stores and supply chain.
In his current position, Stuart is directly accountable for supermarket operations throughout Australia, including Coles IT, Coles On-Line, operations, human resources, customer service, retail change and store renewal. Within his team he has 16 general managers and 100,000 team members.
Stuart is one of six Coles Board Directors, responsible for 743 supermarkets, 788 Liquor stores, 619 convenience stores and 90 hotels with a sales turnover of $30 billion per year.
Chris Beer is CEO Asia Pacific, Greater China & South Africa with Italian eyewear company Luxottica, which owns OPSM, Sunglass Hut and other chains.
Across the region he is responsible for 2100 retail outlets and a staff of 8500, with more than 830 stores in Australia alone.
In 2009 despite tough economic conditions, Luxottica continued to grow. The Sun sector has grown over 20 per cent over the past three years, and last year saw the introduction of Sunglass Hut to Myer stores across Australia. The regional business continues to grow significantly, and under Chris’ direction it recently expanded into the Philippines.
Chris joined OPSM 23 years ago and, in recent years, has held a number of senior positions in sales and operations. In 2004, Chris was appointed chief operating officer of Luxottica Retail Asia Pacific and in 2006 CEO for the region, including South Africa and Greater China.
For expressions of interest about the Westfield World Retail Study Tour 2011, contact Robyn Burgess at Westfield Retailer Relations on (02) 9358-7685, or email RBurgess@au.westfield.com
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