14 | What Online Retailers Can Learn From Physical Retailers with Richard Chapple

Statements of Intent

In this episode, host David Mannheim talks to Richard Chappell, Chief Growth Officer & Co-founder of The Growth Foundation, about the importance of replicating the in-store experience online. They discuss Richard's career journey from working on the shop floor to becoming a retail consultant, and why brands need to "walk the store" digitally to better connect with customers.

As former Head of Marketing at play.com, Founder & CEO at THG Ingenuity and CMO at Gymshark, Richard helped grow all three into unicorn companies. With 20 years of experience in DTC eCommerce, he is an expert at unlocking huge, profitable and sustainable growth for start-ups, scale-ups and established businesses.

Topics Covered:

• Richard's background working at major retailers like Sainsbury's Homebase, Play.com, and Gymshark
• Translating physical retail strategies to the online environment
• Using AI and personalisation to recreate two-way communication
• Overcoming barriers like living in the CMS and not "shopping the store"
• Why eCommerce brands need to stay close to their customers

Key Quotes:

• "I think often people just live in the kind of eCommerce CMS in the background and actually never shop their stores."
• "It's thinking about…testing things like arriving on homepages and saying 'are you a new or returning customer?' Almost like signposting as you would do in a physical store."
• "Actually reaching out to those top customers...getting founders, owners, and team members to talk to their customers directly...the amount of insight you can gain is phenomenal."

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction
01:11 Introducing Richard Chappell: A Retail and eCommerce Veteran
01:26 Richard's Statement: Act Like a Physical Retailer
04:58 Richard's Career Path
06:42 Bringing Physical Retail Strategies to Online Stores
17:11 Overcoming Barriers to eCommerce Success
22:46 Richard's Final Advice
23:47 Outro

Social Media

• Richard's LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardchapple/
• Made With Intent LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/madewithintent/?viewAsMember=true
• YouTube → http://www.youtube.com/@madewithintent