Falabella Chairman Enrique Ostalé on AI, Leadership, and Latin American Retail | Live from WRC
Live from the VusionGroup Podcast Studio at the World Retail Congress in London, Omni Talk sits down with Enrique Ostalé, Chairman of the Board at Falabella, for a conversation that blends strategy, leadership, and regional retail insight. Enrique, a retail veteran with experience at Walmart and Falabella, unpacks how he thinks about the AI opportunity—not through a technical lens, but through one of cultural and organizational readiness.
⏱ Key Moments:
- 0:38 – Enrique’s background: Walmart to Falabella
- 1:12 – Overview of Falabella and its LATAM footprint
- 2:00 – Why he came to World Retail Congress and what he spoke about
- 2:50 – How he views AI adoption in retail leadership
- 3:58 – Balancing innovation with thoughtful strategy
- 4:44 – Falabella’s focus areas: customer experience & profitability
- 5:56 – Empowering teams and decentralizing experimentation
- 6:32 – How macroeconomic pressures have shaped the past 2 years
- 7:14 – What’s next for Falabella amid a gradually improving outlook
#falabella #retailai #worldretailcongress #retailleadership #omnitalkretail #LatinAmericaRetail #aiinretail #retailinnovation #retailstrategy #futureofretail
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Transcript
Hello, everyone, this is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker B:I'm Chris Walton and I'm an Mazinga.
Speaker A:And we are coming to you live from the World Retail Congress in London from the Fusion Group's podcast studio.
Speaker A:And we've got the heck.
Speaker A:We've got a heck of a lineup today.
Speaker B:We do.
Speaker B:We've had some pretty banger interviews so far.
Speaker A:I know, I know.
Speaker B:We're not stopping now, Gavin.
Speaker A:We're not stopping because right next to us I want to introduce Enrique Asele, the chairman of the board at Falabella.
Speaker A:And Enrique, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker A:It's great to have you.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker B:Enrique, why don't you give us a little bit of your background and a little bit about Falabella, please?
Speaker C:Yes, I'm from Chile.
Speaker C:I have been in retailing, mainly food retailing.
Speaker C:Almost most of my professional life I spend in the last 20 years.
Speaker C:I spent 15 years with Walmart starting in Chile and then moving to Mexico and the U.S.
Speaker C:okay.
Speaker C:And lately I'm with Falabella as a chairman in the last two years.
Speaker B:And tell audience members who might not be familiar with Falabella what that includes.
Speaker C:Yeah, Falabela is a Latin American retailer.
Speaker C:It's one of the most important retailer in Latam.
Speaker C:We operate in seven countries.
Speaker C:Our origin is Chile, but we also have a strong present in Peru and Colombia.
Speaker C:And also we have business in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay.
Speaker B:Perfect.
Speaker B:Excellent.
Speaker A:And what brings you to wrc?
Speaker A:What brought you here?
Speaker A:Have you been here before?
Speaker C:Nope.
Speaker C:No.
Speaker C:This is my first year to wrc.
Speaker C:I was invited to speak.
Speaker C:I spoke yesterday.
Speaker C:I participated in a panel talking about AI.
Speaker C:Important topic.
Speaker C:Important topic for all of us.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker C:So that's what.
Speaker C:And I did wanted to attend the conference.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:It seems like there's a whole contingent of former Walmart International folks here too.
Speaker A:Like, it's like a little mini reunion for you all.
Speaker C:Yes, that was a good coincidence also.
Speaker C:It was a good.
Speaker C:So we were able to get together and we haven't seen for a while, some of us.
Speaker C:Yeah, it was nice.
Speaker C:It was nice to connect.
Speaker A:So I want to press you on AI.
Speaker A:So what did you talk about in regards to AI on stage or what were some of the key messages you wanted to talk deliver to the audience?
Speaker C:Well, I'm the chairman of the board, so I'm not a, you know, I'm not an IT guy.
Speaker C:So it's more about in terms of how you lead in this world with all the changes.
Speaker C:And I had experience living through the Digital disruption in the retail arena and now with AI.
Speaker C:So it's how you are effective in addressing the challenge that AI or the opportunities that AI brings.
Speaker C:And so that's what we're talking about.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker A:I'm curious, you know, one of the questions I was planning to ask you maybe later was, but I'll ask you now, is what is your perspective on AI in the retail industry?
Speaker A:Like we had Scott Price, one of your former Walmart colleagues with us yesterday and he made this statement on stage that he said, you know, he thinks AI is going to be a separator for the haves and the have nots in retail and then if you're not investing in it now, you're going to be behind.
Speaker A:Do you share that same sentiment?
Speaker A:Do you take a more.
Speaker A:How do you think about it?
Speaker C:One of the lessons I think I got from the digital disruption experience is that you have to be careful to jump into conclusion too quickly.
Speaker C:I observe how the answer to the same question has changed over the time.
Speaker C:So my advice in this be careful.
Speaker C:I think you have to be thoughtful in where you wanted to be ahead of where you just riding the wave and where you wanted to be behind and maybe a laggard.
Speaker C:So I think it will be a little bit of each one.
Speaker A:Okay, got it.
Speaker B:And Enrique, as the chairman of the board, especially when it comes to things like AI and how you're going to bring that into the business at Vallabella, how do you.
Speaker B:What are your expectations of the team as we head into this year?
Speaker C:Yeah, that's an interesting question because this is all about effectiveness.
Speaker C:So how we are as an organization, we're effectively addressing the opportunities, not only the threats, but mainly the opportunity that AI may bring.
Speaker C:And in another lesson that I think I got from the digital, you know, experience is that it's hard to have a central agenda or have a total control of the agenda when you're talking about innovation.
Speaker C:And so my recommendation and the recommendation and the approach that we take in Falavela is just set up some clarity in terms of where you wanted to focus.
Speaker C:In our case, we focus on two main things, customer experience, how we improve customer experience and increase profitability.
Speaker C:So Those are the 10 main focus.
Speaker C:Set up some guardrails, mainly in cybersecurity, so just general guardrails and then just leave the organizations.
Speaker C:We are quite a diversified organization.
Speaker C:Leave the organization just to prove a lot of things that we have a lot of projects, a lot of proof of concept, looking for greenshots, but in a very decentralized way.
Speaker C:Yeah, we don't, we don't aim to control everything in this.
Speaker C:On the contrary, we put incentives so they can go and see what they make sense for.
Speaker B:And there's a, there's a lot happening outside of everyone's control right now in the retail industry.
Speaker B:That seems to be a key theme here at wrc.
Speaker B:But how are you, what is your expectation for your team to focus on when there's a lot of uncertainty out there?
Speaker B:What are the fundamentals that you're looking for them to kind of focus on the rest?
Speaker C:Well, they are close to their customers and to their business and their own market dynamics, so they know better that.
Speaker C:So what we try is just to empower them to have the right level of accountability so they have the tools, they have the, the authority to take actions.
Speaker C:Don't wait for somebody come and tell them what they need to do.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And that has proven to be quite effective in terms of driving organization not affecting us.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:That's good advice.
Speaker A:Autonomy is always important.
Speaker A:Okay, so let's get you out of here on this.
Speaker A:So year two and your role as chairman, there's been a lot of changes macroeconomically, without a doubt.
Speaker A:I'm curious, how has year two been different than year one?
Speaker A:And, and how are you approaching it?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And in our case in Latin America in general, coming out well during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemia with the aftershocks, you know, inflation's going up, interest rate going up.
Speaker C:In our business, which is mainly non discretionary, we have a big hit and so we have a rough time.
Speaker C:So what we have seen in the last few years is an improvement.
Speaker C:We continue to continue to see that trend even though that the, the countries are not growing very much.
Speaker C:But it's, but at least we are not facing.
Speaker C:We're seeing more, you know, better, better numbers.
Speaker C:And so we are happy to see the improvements and confident that it continue to be so.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker A:Done.
Speaker A:All right, well, thank you so much.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for making time.
Speaker A:We hit each other up on WhatsApp prior to this conference.
Speaker A:We got this scheduled and really appreciate you taking the time spending with us.
Speaker A:So that concludes our interview with Enrique and we'll be back here soon.
Speaker A:Anne's gonna go on stage here for the next hour, so she's gonna take a break, gonna go regale the WRC crowd with.
Speaker A:We're gonna try everything in terms of the future of retail.
Speaker A:And until next time, Ann, be careful.
