Mark Ibbotson on Navigating Retail Chaos | AI, Black Swans & What Comes Next
Omni Talk Retail catches up with Mark Ibbotson, former EVP at Walmart and current VusionGroup advisor, live at World Retail Congress 2025 to break down the state of retail volatility. From economic whiplash to geopolitical black swan events, Mark paints a clear picture of the new retail reality and explains why precision, not perfection, is the future. He also shares advice for innovation teams on how to make a case for change inside cost-conscious organizations.
⏱ Key Moments:
- 0:33 – Mark’s background: From Sainsbury’s to Asda to Walmart
- 1:39 – Highlights from WRC: Tesco’s keynote, and Deloitte’s economist
- 2:44 – The only certainty is uncertainty: Black swans are now the norm
- 4:14 – Rising complexity: Wars, inflation, changing policies
- 5:00 – How retailers should prepare: Embrace discomfort and create the future
- 5:16 – Data & AI for supply chain precision and reduced working capital
- 6:28 – Why past processes won’t work: It’s time to rewire retail
- 7:07 – Knowledge is shifting from people to systems, but judgment still matters
- 7:46 – Advice to innovation teams: Prove value, not just tech hype
- 8:00 – “We’re not capital constrained. We’re return constrained.”
#retailstrategy #retailai #worldretailcongress #retailleadership #omnitalkretail #futureofretail #RetailPrecision #retailinnovation
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Transcript
Hello, everyone, this is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker B:And I'm Anne Mazinga.
Speaker A: the World Retail Congress of: Speaker A:Sunny London, which I don't think anyone's ever said, have they, Mark?
Speaker C:Well, I'm a Brit and I've got to say, this is pretty unusual.
Speaker C:Two days of sun.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Incredible.
Speaker A:Yeah, I know.
Speaker A:And I'm staying here the weekend to take advantage of it.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:But anyway, without further ado, we're standing in the Fusion Groups podcast studio.
Speaker A:Thanks to them for their support of our work here at the show.
Speaker A:And in between us is a man who we've had on the program many times, and I believe he's a friend of the show, Mark Ibbotson.
Speaker A:Mark, welcome back to omnitalk.
Speaker C:Friend of the show.
Speaker C:I like that.
Speaker A:Friend of the show.
Speaker C:Friend of the show.
Speaker A:Os, that's you, my friend.
Speaker B:Well, Mark, why don't you start by telling people who may be meeting you for the first time a little bit about you and your background.
Speaker C:So I describe myself as a grocer.
Speaker C:I've been in the industry all my life.
Speaker C:Started with Sainsbury's in the uk, then Asda, and then finished at Walmart, and I was central ops in real estate.
Speaker C:And I am now advising a number of companies.
Speaker C:I'm with Vision Group, who have kindly brought me to this conference.
Speaker C:I also work with McKinsey and a number of others.
Speaker C:So, yeah, the portfolio play.
Speaker B:Well, I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience so far at the conference.
Speaker B:What are some of the key themes that are really being drawn out for you?
Speaker C:So I think I was super interested in the opening address and then following the opening address, the keynote by Tesco.
Speaker C:Yeah, yes.
Speaker C:And then following that, there was a really good listening group with a number of people, Scott Price, colleague of mine at Walmart.
Speaker C:And then I think the highlight really was the economist from Deloitte.
Speaker B:I agree.
Speaker C:You know, really good.
Speaker C:Yeah, really good.
Speaker C:Really good.
Speaker B:What, what stood out to you from his session?
Speaker C:I mean, I've seen Ira before and I've.
Speaker C:I've listened to him, I've listened to him a couple of times and I was struck by he'd prepared for this, he presented for this, and yesterday, literally everything changed.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:So that, you know, this is unprecedented.
Speaker C:The tariffs were on, the tariffs were off.
Speaker C:You know, I think I saw you at Retail Technology show in London earlier, which day one was everybody was interested in day two, the Tariffs are announced, you know, so the level of change and the speed of change is profound, you know, and, and having the ability to anticipate and if not anticipate, prepare for that, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was pretty funny.
Speaker A:Like, yeah, the guy, he basically got on stage and he had this whole presentation around the impact of tariffs, and then all of a sudden it's totally null and void.
Speaker A:That's just the way it was.
Speaker A:So that comes, that calls to mind, too.
Speaker A:When we had you on the show last time, you talked about black swan events now coming, and that was around when we were coming out of the pandemic.
Speaker A:How are you thinking about that topic in general?
Speaker C:You know, and, and thanks for asking that.
Speaker C:I mean, I, if I look back to, you know, pre Covid and the financial crisis, which seems a long way off, but cast its shadow for so long, for so far, we then had Covid.
Speaker C:We then came out of COVID with inflation.
Speaker C:We come out of inflation to.
Speaker C:We mentioned the last time there, there was potentially last week, three hot wars.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's a.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's true too.
Speaker C:Yeah, there's a war in Europe, there's a war in the Middle east, and then suddenly India and Pakistan and the, you know, as you drop that pebble in the pond, you know, the ripples hit everywhere.
Speaker C:Added to that, you know, governments changing priorities, how they are spending, you know, I mean, we're in the UK at the moment.
Speaker C:Last, I think May 7 was a change to national insurance, which is going to be levied by the employer.
Speaker C:So suddenly, you know, retailers have got to deal with all of that and this level of change.
Speaker C:So the Tesco chief exec was fantastic, just talking through what that meant, but being true to their values on employment, on pay, on pricing, you know, and maintaining that.
Speaker C:And then we listened to Ira about, you know, the shadow of all this added together as a stack.
Speaker C:So how do you think about the future?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So let me ask you, how do you.
Speaker A:I mean, because what I'm taking from what you're saying is the only predictable thing is unpredictability at this point.
Speaker A:So how do, how should retailers prepare for the unpredictability that is going to become more commonplace?
Speaker C:I think you are, you are comfortable being uncomfortable.
Speaker C:This isn't going to change.
Speaker C:And you know, there's a couple of quotes earlier in the, in the week, and I, I think this is attributed to Lincoln and Ducker.
Speaker C:You know, how do you anticipate the future you create.
Speaker A:You make it.
Speaker C:You make it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:So what can.
Speaker C:What can retailers do well?
Speaker C:We can prepare for this.
Speaker C:We can really think through our cost base.
Speaker C:We can ensure our supply chain gets down to a level of precision, you know, and technology is going to do that.
Speaker C:Scott Price spoke very well about the use of data.
Speaker A:He did.
Speaker C:The use of AI, these tools, how are they going to give us more precision, potentially work with less stock, because we have more precise forecasting, you know, back up through the supply chain, signals that are stronger.
Speaker C:You know, the vuion platform, and it is a platform that connects everybody and everything gives you more precision, more accuracy, that you can then return value to your customer, principally return value to your shareholder, and make life easier for your colleague.
Speaker C:You know, and I think.
Speaker C:I think for me, that's the.
Speaker C:That's the big tenant.
Speaker C:That's the big message, that technology is going to liberate people to do a different job, but that job will be serving people.
Speaker A:It is really interesting to hear you talk about it because it is a complete rewiring of how we've done retail for the past 30 years.
Speaker A:It's like riding a new bicycle that goes the opposite direction because, you know, so much of it was like, let's get everything just in time.
Speaker A:Let's have our processes dialed in.
Speaker A:You're now saying the opposite needs to happen, where we need to use technology to account for the variability in all the processes that surround us, both online reaching our customers and in store reaching our customers.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I think, you know, if I look back through my career, we didn't need to be that accurate.
Speaker A:No, you know, it was kind of false precision in a lot of ways.
Speaker C:You know, because being accurate is very expensive, and the technology wasn't there.
Speaker C:Now the technology is here.
Speaker C:The price of labor is going up.
Speaker C:The availability of labor is very different.
Speaker C:So you can get now to the next level of precision using technology, which means you need less working capital, which you have better accuracy.
Speaker C:You can improve your velocity of the products that you've got.
Speaker C:You know, you can make informed decisions on your range that previously, you know, the knowledge might have been in the people.
Speaker C:The knowledge is now in the technology, in the process.
Speaker C:The people make seasoned judgments, though, on what to do with that.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a whole nother debate we could get into, too.
Speaker B:So, Mark, maybe in closing, what would you tell innovation teams working at retailers right now?
Speaker B:How would you suggest that they present some of these ideas, given the mindset and the approach that you're suggesting?
Speaker C:You know, retail is a very, very efficient business that's created a lot of value for a lot of years.
Speaker C:I think people, CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, people are curious, interested in technology, but they need to demonstrate value.
Speaker C:So I think you've asked me this a couple of times over the years at Walmart.
Speaker C:Rob Walton, great Rob Walton line.
Speaker C:We're not capital constrained, we are return constrained.
Speaker C:If you can show a return, you've got attention, right?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Well, wise parting advice from our friend of the show, friend of the show, Mark Ibbotson.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:Thanks again to Fusion Group for making all of our coverage today possible.
Speaker B:Stop by the booth, will be here for a little while longer and until then, heating up.
Speaker A:Be careful out there.
