Castorama's Robert Wicha On Why Technology Alone Doesn't Create Value | Global DIY Summit 2026
In this Omni Talk Retail interview, recorded live from the Global DIY Summit 2026 in Amsterdam, Chris Walton talks with Robert Wicha, Commercial Director at Castorama Poland, about the company's marketplace strategy, the growing importance of data quality, and how technology is reshaping the future of home improvement retail.
Robert explains why Castorama views its marketplace as a curated extension of its brand rather than simply a channel for assortment expansion. He shares how trust influences every aspect of the customer journey, why retail media should create value for both customers and supplier partners, and how marketplaces can strengthen rather than dilute brand perception when executed thoughtfully.
The conversation also explores the growing role of AI in retail, why data quality has become a competitive advantage, and how retailers must balance technology with human expertise to create better customer experiences. Robert argues that the future of DIY retail isn't just about products, but about helping customers make better decisions through services, guidance, and seamless omnichannel experiences.
Key Topics Covered:
• Castorama Poland's marketplace strategy
• Why marketplaces should be a curated extension of the brand
• Building trust in DIY ecommerce
• Retail media beyond monetization
• The growing importance of data quality in retail
• Preparing product data for AI and agentic commerce
• Standardization challenges across retail ecosystems
• How technology supports better customer decisions
• The evolution of DIY from products to services
• Creating consistent omnichannel customer journeys
Thank you to Vusion for supporting Omni Talk Retail's live coverage from the Global DIY Summit 2026 in Amsterdam.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcript
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A:This is omnitalk retail.
Speaker A:I am Chris Walton, coming to you once again from the Vuzion Podcast studio at the DIY Summit in sunny Amsterdam.
Speaker A:Now, I'm pleased to introduce to you my next guest, Robert Vika, the commercial director at Castorama Poland.
Speaker A:Robert, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker B:Thank you, Chris.
Speaker B:Welcome.
Speaker A:Yeah, so I'm super excited to talk to you.
Speaker A:You're my first Polish retailer I've ever had on this podcast.
Speaker A:Yes, yes.
Speaker A:And believe it or not, my family is Polish.
Speaker B:Really?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Didn't know that.
Speaker A:Yes, yes.
Speaker A:So, yeah, you never know with the last name Walton, but I'm more Polish than anything else, which probably won't surprise a lot of people in my audience.
Speaker A:But tell us about yourself, first of all, your career, your background, and also about Castorama, because I'm sure there's many people in the US that aren't familiar with it.
Speaker B:So Castorama is the leader in market in Poland.
Speaker B:So we are leading the market.
Speaker B:Not only DIY, but we are quite big company with over £2 billion of revenue each year.
Speaker B:So we've got 109 stores, and we work with 12,000 colleagues in stores.
Speaker B:So we are quite big company leading the market in Poland, as I said.
Speaker B:So we are part of Kingfisher Group.
Speaker B:Kingfisher Group, few banners.
Speaker B:So BNQ UK and Ireland, Screwfix, Kasuama, France, Brico Iberia and Kassama in Poland as well.
Speaker B:So we are part of Kingfisher with over 2,000 stores.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And we've had a number of representatives from Kingfisher over the years on our program, especially from some of those companies you mentioned, too.
Speaker A:All right, so let's go.
Speaker A:Let's go.
Speaker A:Let's dig into that a little bit.
Speaker A:The Kingfisher relationship, too, particularly.
Speaker A: our marketplace in January of: Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Correct.
Speaker A:You were the fourth banner under Kingfisher to do so, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker A:What specific level did you learn from those that went before you prior to launching the marketplace in Poland?
Speaker B:So I think that we've got quite good lessons already done by our colleagues in other countries.
Speaker B:So we share the information, everything.
Speaker B:So I think that the most important thing that we operate in marketplace on very trusted merchants.
Speaker B:And my understanding of marketplace in Poland is like extension of our brand as well.
Speaker B:So we covered that.
Speaker B:We integrated marketplace into the customer journey.
Speaker B:We.
Speaker B:Which is fantastic for customers and giving them the more choices, more possibility to.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:Make better homes, better garden, better lives.
Speaker B:So that's, I think, the most important Thing.
Speaker B:So integration to customer journey under the umbrella of customer curated offer, like an extension.
Speaker B:I can give the example.
Speaker B:If in brick and mode and digital We've got the one battery platform for power tools like Bosch, for example, DeWalt, so we can not put all items on the same battery platform into our brick and mortar stores.
Speaker B:So that's for customer kind of extension extensions.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker A:And how's it been going so far?
Speaker A:Are you happy with the results?
Speaker B:Yeah, we are very happy with the results.
Speaker B:So we would like to make, you know, it's like not to make the maximum scale is like curated scale is like very beneficial for customers and for our partners.
Speaker B:So that my understanding of market as well.
Speaker B:We are very successful on that.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's going very well.
Speaker A:And how do you balance.
Speaker A:Yeah, so that is a key point for the US audience too.
Speaker A:You're taking a curated approach to the marketplace.
Speaker A:How do you balance that curation?
Speaker A:Like what effort goes into that?
Speaker A:And how do you make sure that you maintain the brand integrity of Castorama as you're trying to decide which vendors and suppliers to bring into the marketplace?
Speaker B:So the marketplace is the open platform for everybody, but there is ongoing discussion.
Speaker B:So we invite the merchants as well.
Speaker B:So just to give under the customer umbrella because we are very trusted brand in Poland.
Speaker B:We are leading not only in sales, but we are leading as well in customer perception, prices and so on.
Speaker B:So we're very proud of that.
Speaker B:So we integrate the marketplace into customer journey.
Speaker B:So that's like the customers are aware about the fact that they buy online, not directly from customer, but for them we build a kind of trust.
Speaker B:So this is the trust which is very important.
Speaker B:So that's why the most important question for us and solution we're giving to our customers is that we are reliable.
Speaker B:We got the trust of the customers, they trust us and we provide technical solutions and tool solutions as well to make their journey very easy on marketplace and giving him the solution affordable democratization of the price understood as the availability and accessibility and affordability of the offer.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So trust is very important.
Speaker A:So along those lines, you know, retail media is becoming more and more important of a topic at every conference I go to.
Speaker A:And when I think about retail media and the relationship with diy, one of the things I'm learning at this conference is DIY is heavily a content fueled business.
Speaker A:So how do you look at your retail media strategy in terms of maintaining that trust, in terms of how it's being perceived by the customer?
Speaker B:Yeah, it's a very good question.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker B:But first of all, for me, I think that retail media, there's no doubt they should help our customers in making the choice, but should as well help our partners.
Speaker B:So for me, the retail media is not the way we monetize the traffic on the websites and so on, but it's even more important from the perspective that we build the good cooperation with customers and with our partners.
Speaker B:So it's not only the monetization, it's how we can bring the value for the customers and for partners.
Speaker B:That's for me exactly.
Speaker B:The retail media is.
Speaker B:So we've been hearing yesterday, I think that was very good session on retail media.
Speaker B:And the pace of growth of retail media in Poland is just amazing.
Speaker B:But it's the same everywhere.
Speaker B:Everywhere.
Speaker B:Yeah, we have to use it, we have to use it.
Speaker B:But as I said, not only to make money, but to bring to the customers some value and to our partners.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:And I think retail media is potentially even easier than the marketplace discussion because yeah, you can be very clear in who's producing what and how you want to talk about it.
Speaker A:So the other thing on the retail media side, you've been kind of a champion of standardized data quality and measurement across the retail media landscape.
Speaker A:What is it that makes the data quality standardization efforts so different difficult for the industry as a whole?
Speaker B:I think that's, that's, that that's very tough topic.
Speaker B:So the data quality should be just excellent because if we embrace what's going to be in the future, it's becoming even more important.
Speaker B:And as the piece of work we have all around the diy, but only in retail in general, we have to do, there's no other options.
Speaker B:Because if we think that and we see that exactly where we are going and we gonna develop some, you know, agentic commerce, some sales we're gonna do by the agents and so on, the data quality is even more important because how to become more visible for the every tools in the world for the AI to make to, you know, to synthesize the choice for the customers.
Speaker B:And that's exactly very good question.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of tensions on that.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of thought we put to the data quality should be enough to be visible for everybody, for the customers and so on.
Speaker B:So that's about the consistency of data, it's about daily improvement of data content, product specification.
Speaker B:So we engage a lot of vendors as well, we build the platform to share the data, to have very fast track to improve our data in terms of content and so on and Then we use the tools.
Speaker B:Technology is there, but technology is done for the people, for the human.
Speaker B:So that's important how we combine all data we have and then how we combine that with the human expertise and so on.
Speaker B:So data is absolutely the big focus for now.
Speaker A:Robert, what makes a standardization so hard across the industry?
Speaker A:Is it just that retailers all have different ways of doing it?
Speaker B:That's very good question.
Speaker B:That's very good question.
Speaker B:So I think that it's so hard because it's a lot of information.
Speaker B:You have to gather just about one product.
Speaker B:There are some information to gather because the legislation obliges you to do it.
Speaker B:But from the other hand, to really go through the whole data you have, everybody is thinking that if I have more data, I will be better than the others.
Speaker B:But that's not the best statement.
Speaker B:The best statement is how I can use the data, how I can sensitize the data.
Speaker B:I put them visible for everybody, for the customers, that's the biggest issue.
Speaker B:And to do it you need some consistency.
Speaker B:So the way how the customers, they compare, the lawnmowers, for example, they have the same data from everybody, so from every player.
Speaker B:So that's difficult part of that to have consistency between the hierarchy, product, product specification, data flow and so on.
Speaker B:That's the biggest challenge.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a great nugget too.
Speaker A:I've never thought about that until you just said that.
Speaker A:Which is like the retail industry in total just deals with so many people and constituencies and trying to put data in front of the consumer.
Speaker A:At the end of the day, like you've got suppliers, you've got the retailers themselves putting data on top of the product data.
Speaker A:So it just gets very complicated very quickly.
Speaker A:All right, so let's get you out of here on this.
Speaker A:And I appreciate you spending time with us, but I know you're very busy at this conference.
Speaker A:The theme of the summit is accelerating in a new global, building collective awareness for a fast changing world.
Speaker A:So I'm curious, Poland, in many ways it's one of Europe's most dynamic home improvement markets.
Speaker A:What are two or three ways that you think Castorama consistently sets itself apart in the market?
Speaker B:Another good question, and I'm happy to share with you that there's the big part of technology.
Speaker B:So how to embrace the technological change?
Speaker B:Because the world is going very fast.
Speaker B:This world is fragile, we know it.
Speaker B:So every presentation, there's the fragility, complexity, it's not linear and so on.
Speaker B:That's very complex word.
Speaker B:But how to find consistency in this, that's the most difficult part.
Speaker B:But I think that our objective is just to make the DIY closer to customers.
Speaker B:How we might be sure that the customers take the right decision, how we might help our customers to make the right decision, to make the right choices.
Speaker B:And there's one part of that.
Speaker B:So facilitate, take the bargain from the, from the customer shoulders and just we're going to do that for you.
Speaker B:So that's why the DIY now is not only the products, it's as well services, which is very important.
Speaker B:End to end services.
Speaker A:Keep hearing that.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:And we work on that.
Speaker B:How to, you know, bring the complexity on us and on customers.
Speaker B:That's the one thing technology is supporting us.
Speaker B:But the most important thing, we very struggle every day to be digital driven company, multichannel company, to make very consistent customer journey within different channels.
Speaker B:We need technology.
Speaker B:But technology alone doesn't bring value.
Speaker B:That I think that is very, very strong statement.
Speaker B:But technology alone doesn't bring any value.
Speaker B:It should be humanized.
Speaker B:It should be made and done by the human, for the human.
Speaker B:I think that's different.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:And we work hard to walk the talk every day.
Speaker A:Yeah, right, right, yeah.
Speaker A:And it's very consistent with what we've been hearing at almost every retail conference too, which is like the AI.
Speaker A:Particularly with the advent of AI, the key thing to think about with AI is how do you make the experience with your consumer even more personalized versus less personalized through the technology.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Well, Robert, thank you so much.
Speaker B:You're welcome.
Speaker B:My pleasure.
Speaker A:I appreciate you stopping by and it's great to learn about Polish DIY retailing.
Speaker A:So I love this.
Speaker A:I'm like a kid in the candy store.
Speaker A:And thanks to Vuzion and the DIY Summit for enabling us to come and share all these wonderful interviews with all these great executives with you all week long.
Speaker A:And as always, be careful out there.
