The Star: October 24, 2019

The Star Thursday October 24 2019
24
OUR PEOPLE – ROY CAMPBELL
Boss keeps long-serving retail outlet
Smiths City has been an
institution in Christchurch
for 101 years. Louis Day
catches up with chief
executive Roy Campbell
How long have you been
involved with Smiths City?
I have been here about fourand-a-half
years. I came back
to Christchurch for this role, I
returned for the role as group
CEO.
What were you doing for work
before this?
Well, that gets a little bit
interesting. Directly before this, I
was over in the US Virgin Islands
and I was doing a restructuring
of a duty-free company which
had been bought by a private
company and just integrating
that into their overall corporate
structure. The company was
called Penha Duty Free it is a
privately held Dutch company
and it has been around for 300
years I think. I was there for just
a year.
How has Smiths City changed
over the years?
Well that is a really interesting
question, if you go right back
to 1918 when Henry Cooper
founded it and it was a seller of
second-hand farm implements
that he bought, refurbished and
sold and then went from that into
seed and grain and into livestock
and then it was an auction house
so it has changed massively over
the last 100 years, it is continually
evolving to meet the needs of the
modern market.
How have buying habits
changed over the years?
Well clearly in the last year
term we have seen the rise of the
online portal as a way to shop
so that has materially impacted
how people search, relate and
purchase goods so that has
ALL SMILES:
Smiths
City chief
executive
Roy
Campbell
stands
outside the
Colombo St
store.
changed quite materially.
Do you think online shopping
is killing the face-to-face
customer service experience?
No I don’t, I think it is
changing how that customer
face-to-face experience happens.
You now have a far more
informed consumer entering
your store now, but humans are
social beings we like to interact
so we may search online we
may purchase things online,
and certainly, we see fantastic
growth in our online sales no
question about that, but they are
complementary to the in-store
experience. So I am very fond of
saying that there is not an online
and offline experience there is a
blended retail experience.
Who has been the most
famous customer you have
served?
All our customers are famous,
anyone that really shops with us
is a famous person to us because
we really value their interaction.
Kieran Read has shopped with
us, I know that well. But we treat
every customer the same.
What have been some of the
biggest challenges?
I think that retail is evolving
so making sure that you have
the right customer experience
that you have the right level of
engagement in-store is crucial to
us making sure that our teams
are really giving the customers
what they want and listen to
their needs is the most important
thing.
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