About Us
About
The primary purpose is to raise the level of maturity of the retail Industry in emerging markets. At this forum we aim to bring together all stakeholders to exchange ideas and succeed in their endeavours. Retail businesses have a great potential to make use of tools, systems and ideas which have sprouted over the years. The future is already here, but is spread unevenly, so while you might be doing some of the latest, here is a place to pick up the latest and do things better.
Advisory
Here you can find partners who can guide you in your journey to greater maturity and profitability. We try to provide a conducive environment where the community provides supportive advice. Such advice can range from casual free (still valuable) tips to structured, expensive and effective direction for success. To be clear the community as a body itself is not a consultancy and doesn’t sell advisory services. However, we encourage consultants with depth and breadth from the retail domain to join and contribute. They are free to take up assignments from any contact made in this forum. They are welcome to volunteer to provide material and conduct sessions or talks, as long as they take up no more than a minute or so to sum up their services.
Benefits
Keep up to date with the latest ideas of the retail industry and various relevant tools and technology. Surely, there are many changes and disruptions affecting the industry. How do you as a business navigate this flux to sustainable success? How do you as a systems provider help potential clients use the latest tools and grow? How do we all gain competitive advantage? This is a great time and platform to engage with such matters. Of course this is also a wonderful place to network! We will also hold brainstorming sessions in the events.
Contribution
Help build and sustain this community either in cash or kind. We would like contributions to help organise events. Please reach out to sponsor the events locations or catering or any relevant logistics. Of course many of you will have your own areas of expertise, which you are welcome to share in speaking slots or in participative sessions.
Ethics
This is a community where learning and information gathering are paramount with only sponsors advertising products and services on the site. Sponsors don’t automatically get speaking slots. Speakers may state their affiliation and give a very short summary of their services or products. While conducting a session they should not take up more than a minute to tell about their services. The focus of any session should be the topic which in itself is useful to attendees. Speakers should avoid disparaging competitor’s products or services. They should also avoid mention of unethical organisations.
Communities of Practice
Retail is a large sector and we envisage many communities of practice. This is currently (2026) an ambition in order to handle specialities. Since the overall goal is to raise standards of retail systems and there are many aspects and segments, it helps to plan for specialities. In the future it will be good to have groups, ie CoP (Communities of Practice) focused on a given segment and theme. These communities (CoP) will themselves emerge on time depending on the people who join and their interests.