Shelley E. Kohan (00:05)
Hi everyone, and thank you for joining us on Retail Unwrapped. I’m Shelley Kohan, and I’m thrilled to welcome back Kevin Roche, who has been on the podcast previously. And also, ⁓ you’ve written many articles for The Robin Report, which is great, but you are a globally recognized design retail strategist. With over, am I allowed to say how many years, Kevin?

Kevin Roche (00:30)
We’re approaching 50 now.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:33)
50 years. ⁓ And you’ve

done so much work with iconic brands in our industry. You have shaped the whole idea around experiential retail. You have worked in retail, hospitality, mix use spaces. And one of my favorite things is that you are head of design and construction at LVMH’s Selective Beauty Group. You’ve worked with DFS Group.

Le Bon Marché, which by the way, Kevin, I don’t know if you know this, if you saw our announcement earlier in the week, a couple of weeks ago is that Le Bon Marché is one of our retail radicals. And most of that is based on that amazing design experience there. So I’m sure that ⁓ you had a part in that as well. So some of our listeners may not know you personally or know you, but they have certainly experienced your work.

Kevin Roche (01:28)
Well, thank you, Shelly. Let me just make one correction. was the LB Selective Retail Group. You said Beauty Group. so, Selective Retail, yeah, which includes Bob Marche, Sephora, DFS Group, now La Samaritaine is part of that group.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:36)
Select a retail, yes.

That’s great. So welcome, and we’re excited to have you here. And we’re going to be talking about this kind of idea that you have about blurring the lines of consumer behavioral patterns in retail. And Robin and I used to always talk about the old world versus the new real retail. So when we think about the physical stores and this kind of inconsistent experiences across the locations.

That’s of the past, the old world, to this new world of sitting on a beach with an iPad or a mobile device and seamlessly shopping, you know, through a great experience. But I believe that in your most recent article that you wrote with The Rotten Report, you talk specifically about blurring these lines between retail, hospitality, and all forms of entertainment, food, beverage, sports, leisure. So why don’t we start with kind of just with that point.

Kevin Roche (02:43)
Sure, well thank you. And again, thank you for having me, Shelley. ⁓ please say hello to Robin when you speak to him next. I miss seeing him and hearing him on the reports, but I’m sure he’s doing well. You know, I think back about this idea that I’ve been feeling for a long time when we wrote the article about this idea of everything’s kind of blurring and melding together. And I remember 25 years ago, meeting with the Tommy and Bahama people and they were opening restaurants.

in their stores, right? It was like, does that sound familiar to what’s going on today? ⁓ So sometimes there’s nothing really new, but everything just continues to evolve in these dynamic ways that we’re dealing with today. I was in London just a few ⁓ weeks ago and I was meeting with a multi-brand retailer. I can’t really say who and what category, but

super super luxury but you know entry price points all the way up to very expensive goods. So we were going to build a new flagship and you know we wanted to have all forms of entertainment, all forms of hospitality, cultural events, art, demonstrations, private dining rooms, private apartments and the list goes on.

And how would you do this? Because what’s working for us in the past, we don’t believe is going to work in the future. And this is a group that has stores in Europe and across the US. I don’t believe they’re in Asia yet, at least not yet. Japan probably could be on the list. So we’re going be given up when they say nothing really.

And we think that the core business is only a part of our future revenue stream, but we don’t expect to make money from these future additional attractions that we’re adding to the business. And we began to talk about, again, this idea of old world versus new world consumerism.

this idea that this acceleration of the differentiation of what I call necessity retail, right? I have to go to Costco or I have to go to the supermarket or ⁓ I have to go to CVS drug or today.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:59)
Yep.

you

Kevin Roche (05:09)
you kind of say, I have to go to Amazon to buy versus things. It’s kind of necessity consumerism versus the non-essential necessities that might be, everything else might be considered a luxury if you don’t need it. It’s a form of luxury. And so…

Shelley E. Kohan (05:11)
Ha.

Yeah.

Well,

two things, Kevin, real quick. I want to bring up something because I want to follow up on something you said. Well, two things you said. One about the monetary aspect of what you’re working on not relating directly to sales specifically. But also you mentioned Tommy Bahamas. And I’m going to ask you a question that you absolutely don’t know the answer to, which is, do you know what a hot date for me and my husband is?

We go to Tommy Bahamas in New York City and we sit there and we listen to the guitar player at the bar and we have dinner there. And I don’t spend a cent in the retail store down below. Sometimes I do, but mostly I don’t. But you know what I do do? Every time I’m somewhere, resort, just on vacation in Vegas, know, on vacation, I go into Tommy Bahama and I’m buying a lot of stuff.

Kevin Roche (06:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank

Yeah, yeah, mean, that’s that, you know, there’s a saying, I don’t know, I’ve had it in my head for a long time. I don’t know if I made it up, I know where it came from. People don’t buy brands, they join them.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:27)
That’s right, and that’s so true. And then the other thing I want to talk to you about is you started talking about these essential retailers and this kind of transactional. So when I look at our mega brands, our mega retail brands out there, Walmart, Amazon, Alibaba, Costco, here’s what I notice. Those retailers are very, very focused on essential transactional product.

But what they’re making a big play in right now is non-essential fashion items. And so what they’re doing is they’re making a tremendous impact of their indirect competitors who focus or specialize in non-essential fashion world.

Kevin Roche (07:07)
Yes. mean, I mean, that’s, I mean, again, I think these lines are blurring between what is essential and non-essential and preparing some of my notes. You know, I talked about, you know, the, some of these, what I’ll call category concepts that I think are, you know, really spectacular ideas such as Ulta, Boot Barn. You know, I love Boot Barn. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (07:35)
Love Booborn.

Kevin Roche (07:36)
Yeah, know, the Dick’s

Sporting Goods, ⁓ know, tractor supply. I mean, they’re coal, right? And ⁓ they’re not essential, but they’re, they’re, you know,

I think dominating category

Shelley E. Kohan (07:54)
Boot Barn was a retail radical last year and I won’t tell you how many boots I have from Boot Barn because it’s kind of ridiculous but it’s a very quirky, great experience ⁓ in that store model. So I think when we look at kind of this blurred, you know, lines of retail…

Kevin Roche (07:57)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:12)
We’re seeing consumers, they’re just so inundated. They’re multitasking, multi-experience. So I think that’s a big part of what we’re seeing in terms of consumer shopping, right?

Kevin Roche (08:24)
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, I think about this 24 7 idea that, you know, you can buy everything in the palm of your hand. You can buy 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can sit at a concert in during an intermission or a sports and you can look at your phone and you can buy something. And so, you know, it’s just it’s it’s it’s have this idea that we

eat where we shop, we shop where we eat, we eat and shop where we’re entertained, that all these things are continuing to blur. You used Tommy Bahama.

maybe a hundred restoration hardwares around the world, but I’ve never, I’ve never bought a restoration hardware product. Not yet. Anyhow. Do we belong to that tribe? No, not really. But you know, we’re on the fringes, you know, of it. And so it’s this idea of what business am I in anyway? Am I in the furniture business? Am I in the, you know, Hawaiian sports shirt business or?

relationship business and I think that’s one of the key questions that you know leadership you know has to deal with. I read this book back in 2008 that just I keep it on my desk. I have it right here on my left. It’s got marks on it, paper clips and so forth. It’s all I use as a reference. was written in 2008 by ⁓ Robert Bruner and Stuart Emery. It’s called Do You Matter? And there’s one quote in there that I think just continues to resonate.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:52)
Ha ha.

Kevin Roche (10:05)
Don’t sacrifice the experience for growth. You drive growth from the quality of the experience. Which, you know, kind of is upstream or against the current or the tide of traditional, you know, retail mentality where the word retail to me, you know, it kind of speaks as a transactional business. I wish I had a better word.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:31)
Yeah.

Kevin Roche (10:31)
retail then because it it’s a store and we sell stuff right versus a place we go to spend our time our social time to to meet people to entertain to have a day to go to dinner to shop to watch a film to

to be among the people of like interest. These things are becoming more and more seamless and it’s happening at lightning speed.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:05)
It’s so true is I want to go back to restoration hardware. have to bring this up. They just opened their flagship store in Paris a week ago, two weeks ago. ⁓

Kevin Roche (11:10)
Sure. Yeah. I was there. I was

there, yeah, maybe two weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:18)
I’m jealous. I am so jealous because ⁓

I only saw pictures and videos. I haven’t been there yet. ⁓ But I can’t believe the amount of talk about a experience that kind of is like the level. So you look at RH and you look at its founding principles and where it is today and you look at Tiffany when LVMH brought Tiffany, I said home run, home run, home run. So you have these companies that

Kevin Roche (11:39)
Yeah, yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:46)
you know, have these rising tides, right? That really understand and get this.

Kevin Roche (11:49)
Right,

Right. I think, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, folks that on the peripheral will challenge or question the racial and hardware, can they make money? What’s he doing? You know, these big hotels, et cetera, planes, know, yachts, et cetera. I don’t think it’s a whole lot different than Ralph Lauren telling a story, having an authentic real narrative. ⁓

Or if it’s not authentic, you believe in it so much that it becomes authentic. And you’re committed to an excruciating amount of execution and detail that it becomes an authentic narrative. And then people join the brand, they don’t buy the brand. And you become part of that Ralph Lauren tribe. And getting a reservation still today at the Ralph Lauren in Paris on the left bank is, you you just can’t call up and walk in.

it’s still a good reservation. so, how you convert those to sales, mean, Ralph Lauren Clitter is in the fashion business, but he used hospitality and a whole host of services to engage in entertainment for share of time, share of mind. I think what’s interesting about restoration is they are blurring the lines between what business am I in anyway? Am I in the furniture business?

To me, their furniture business is an end result ⁓ of what they’re doing.

I think the key luxury brands, hotel groups absolutely get this. Ralph Lauren gets it, Dior gets it, the new Tiffany flagship in Tokyo and Paris get it. They have cultural events, have demonstrations, they bring the engravers from the back to the front. They have price points from 500 to 5,000 to 50,000. They have art, they cultural events. They have the Cafe Blue, which people are lying to.

get in. It’s a social experience that offers a host of variety of emotional touch points. The Audrey Hepburn dress, the back to tippies. mean, it’s duh, it’s obvious, right? We used to say retail is theater. I I’ve heard that for 50 years.

But it is, but it’s a matter of defining what that means. Three-tail theater used to be visual merchandising. Well, you that’s like, you know, at the bottom of the toolbox. I it’s important, but it’s much, again, I think more deeper and richer as our lives are more complex and more seamless and more integrated with how we experience things.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:37)
So Kevin, let me ask you the hard question. Who’s not getting it?

Kevin Roche (14:42)
Well, you know, I hate to beat up on the American department stores, but you know, I live in California, but I’ve worked outside the U.S. for the last 25 years since I sold the design practice I co-founded in the end of 1999. And one of the reasons was there was no one doing really interesting things, especially retailers were, but that is kind of trend has moved somewhat. I think that

You know, my heart, I mean, there are examples all over the world, but those who are just focused on a transactional business ⁓ without being transactional experts, I mean, you go to Amazon and it’s a transaction. There is an experience online, you know, we had to buy some padlocks last weekend on something in LA we needed, we need three padlocks.

We had one combination we couldn’t set. We had to cut it break it off. Long story short, we ordered padlocks. We got them two hours later. That’s an experience. That’s a transactional world-class experience. ⁓ So I think ⁓ if you’re just in a transactional business,

Shelley E. Kohan (15:48)
Yep, it is.

Kevin Roche (16:04)
You’re selling stuff nobody needs, you’re in tired buildings, lack of capital, short-term visions without boards or investment groups that are willing to make generational investments. Generational investments are beyond a CEO that lasts three, five years, takes a big salary and then retires. know, generational investments, ⁓ Balmarché is a generational investment. Los Samaritan is not working because…

Shelley E. Kohan (16:17)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Roche (16:34)
the chess on the chessboard moved after COVID, the Bon Marseille group has taken it over, they will make it work because they get that they’re in the hospitality and entertainment business ⁓ as much as they are in traditional retail. ⁓ So I think, ⁓ you know, and those are generational investments that go beyond any one individual and there’s patient money and

Shelley E. Kohan (16:38)
Bye!

Kevin Roche (16:58)
and a commitment to an emotional and financial commitment to these generational ideas that are constantly evolving and changing. I think Tiffany is a generational investment.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:13)
Yeah. So one of the other things that you and I have talked about, which I think is really important, and we should have a conversation about it because traditionally when we look at retail and when retailers look at themselves, they measure things with very, I don’t know, rigid KPIs, I would say.

So I know you talk about and you have a passion for what you call, you know, measure what matters. But in today’s world where we have this plethora of data collection, integration tools, the growth of AI, our ability for mass, mass computation capabilities, the measurements can actually change. So we’ve always been tied to this, you know, sales growth. And, you know, there isn’t, there’s no such thing as infinite growth.

Kevin Roche (17:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:59)
We always are looking at year over year sales. We’re looking at, you know, same store sales. We’re looking at, you know, ROA. Like, how should we be measuring retail?

Kevin Roche (18:05)
Yeah.

Well, I think I’m going to touch on one thing and I’ll get into the core of the question. I think one of the challenges the US had because of, and I think China somewhat, but they’re pulling back from it, because of scale is scaling. How many stores need more growth? Right? And I think one of the good things you see with Northland’s Blue Weed does it closing stores is a good thing. know, shrink to regrow and regrow doesn’t necessarily mean more real estate. ⁓

more square footage doesn’t mean it’s more sales. The old merchants would say, I need more space, they put it in the Excel sheet, it means more sales. Take out the low margin stuff, put in the high margin stuff, you know, and when you have it, it’s a boring business. This whole idea, which I think came from PearlswaterhouseCoopers, I found it in an article that they wrote.

eight, 10 years ago about ROE, return on experience. And I’ll describe it as, and it requires a different metric. I think with the analytical tools today, with technology, it’s much easier to measure behavioral patterns and time spent and so forth. had store trackers in the group where you can count people and you

transactions and you can do that simple thing. But here’s the story. Bon Marché, Paris. I spent 2010, 2012 settings working with the in-house team. Patrice set stage for the masking plant and then led the design team for the Grand Pisserie and a number of things, the big moves that the group did there. Patrice was going beyond.

generational idea, know, visual merchandising, know, and Christmas campaigns and back to school or holiday, you know, and creating 12-month-a-year events.

And again, have a concert in the store, the entire atrium space taken down by 8 p.m. They have four or five hundred people come in for a concert or a culture exhibition. It goes well into the evening. There’s no way of measuring whether those four or five hundred people are going to convert to sales in the store.

You know, they have their data. They can say, we invest, you know, half a million dollars or euros on this concert, whatever the number is, I don’t know, you know, are we going to get a return on that? You know, that’s hard cost. That’s right out of profit. There’s no way of measuring it. But they believe so deeply in this being socially relevant and culturally relevant.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:21)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Roche (20:41)
that they’re in the entertainment business because they’re selling stuff nobody needs, right? That they’re a social attraction. And that’s what the Weston family, a lot of Weston’s dealing with suffrages. They tend to move away from that. But it requires courage to invest in these things that you can’t measure with the return. Remember, you and I are old enough to remember Neiman Marcus when Stanley Marcus had what’s called the Fortnite.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:51)
Mm-hmm.

my gosh, yes,

of course.

Kevin Roche (21:08)
The fort

lies were cultural events that brought their core customers into the store. ⁓ The famous Christmas catalog book, I still have them, right? As companies move the way from editing out these what I’ll call professional managers, editing out, you know,

Shelley E. Kohan (21:19)
Of course. Yeah.

Kevin Roche (21:30)
expense that couldn’t directly relate to sales turnover or profit, they lost the soul of what made these brands socially relevant. So when you talk about the new metric and the return on experience, there are many, many ways to measure it. There’s not a particular formula. I don’t think what works at Bummer Shea can work at Neiman Marcus or

Shelley E. Kohan (21:41)
It’s so true.

Hmm.

Kevin Roche (21:55)
for harrids or works for salvages or works for restoration hardware, they find their way. It’s their strategic thinking, the principles, the understanding of human behavior and the speed of which these changes are happening and the ability to invest in generational evolution. mean, I think for me that will be the story of Bloomingdale’s. If they’re doing better today than…

and succeeding or getting better results at the expense of sacks and the debacle sacks and demons. Good for them. But will the board and the people who control purse rings allow generational investment? Patrice has been doing what he started since 2010, 2011. We’re 2025, right? It’s taken, I think it’s fair to say, at least 10 years to evolve one store.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:45)
Mm.

Kevin Roche (22:48)
Okay? And bundles of millions at a time in terms of capital expense. So I think that’s this idea of return on experience. I don’t think it’s measured by a quarter.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:50)
That seems like a lifetime in our world.

Yeah.

I love that and I’m gonna…

I love that and I’m going to give you even bigger throwback. When I started in retail in ⁓ Bloomingdale’s, I worked during the Marvin Traub era and that was my entry into retail and kept me very engaged. mean, that’s exactly the Stanley Marcus, that whole experience.

Kevin Roche (23:18)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. mean,

you know, the restaurants in Lexington Avenue, you know, the B way was a buzz. I was in the store recently, the furniture floor used to be Barbara Darcy, you know, it was a lifestyle experience. Again, restoration hardware, right? Lifestyle experience. So I think, I think, you know, we could, I don’t want to really dwell in that.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:36)
Yeah

Kevin Roche (23:52)
because it’s easy to beat up on these things. But I think it’s important to reflect on these. The Dior store, the new Dior flagship on Avenue Montaigne. I’ve been there three times now. The last, I was in Paris just thinking about, I don’t know, four or five weeks ago when I was in London at the same time. And I went by in a car or taxi and pouring down rain, 75 to 100 people waiting in line.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:54)
Yeah.

Kevin Roche (24:22)
umbrellas to get into the museum and you pay. Then there’s a cafe. Then there’s a great gift shop. Justin Jason is the new flagship. Two restaurants, private salons, apartments. ⁓ It is a cultural experience. ⁓ Now can you do that in every store around the world? Probably not. You don’t need to.

But it’s the same message as restoration. They’re following the same, I’m gonna call it game plan or formula, because it’s not. They’re reacting to the way customers are evolving. ⁓ I use an example, I’m a Porsche guy. Porsche gets it. You go to the Porsche driving experiences, you make reservations for lunch, you make reservations for dinner. When we’re in South SoCal in Southern LA, we’ll go there for dinner.

It’s cool. You know, like you go to Thailand, right? You have boutiques. ⁓ So it’s, it’s, that’s where, you know, this idea of everything is blurry and hospitality companies, ⁓ you know, Recruzo, you know,

Shelley E. Kohan (25:20)
Yeah. All right.

yes,

I love his, all his developments.

Kevin Roche (25:37)
Yeah, invited me out

to the Rosewood Marimar, which he developed, the Rosewood manages it. And the idea was, Kevin, I want to put more luxury in here. So I went as a guest. We spayed three days. We made reservations in Montecito and Santa Barbara. Never left the property in three days. And today I went back just in August. You have a Laura Piani, have a Bruno Cuccinelli, you have a Chanel under construction, you have a Dior shop.

And again, it’s a retail destination, it’s a hospitality destination, you multiple concept restaurants so you can go there and have dinner, you can stay, you know. And again, the idea of hospitality, and you might say retail, is capture, or wallet.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:26)
Right. I want to ask you, no, I want to ask you, but I know we only have a few minutes left, but I want to mention two things. One is, we’re talking about, you know, very high level luxury environments, but that doesn’t have to translate luxury down. I mean, all retailers can take some part of this. So the good example is the Tommy Bahama versus the Porsche, right? So it’s not just exclusive to luxury environments, although we’re giving a lot of those examples.

Kevin Roche (26:27)
So I understand.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:54)
But I do want to ask you about mixed use space for a second. So mixed use space has been very popular and there’s some that have been like hits like Columbus Circle to me is a hit in New York City. It just is very thriving. It’s busy. It’s fun. People enjoy going there. And then you have Hudson Yards, which is, I don’t know, kind of a mess. I don’t really get energized when I go there. What makes a hit? What makes a mess? I mean, what’s going on with mixed use space?

Kevin Roche (26:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, mean, I always think everything is mixed use. And again, I don’t think it’s for me. Like, you know, I think that the problem with Hudson Yard is that in the US, generally speaking, the gross generalization, people don’t shop vertically. They will in Hong Kong, you know, but the US, it’s different. Now, will they do that in New York?

was LBMH. We would go to a 20th floor of a restaurant or eighth floor restaurant or it’d be towers with just restaurants on every floor. People will move vertically because it’s spatial issues. I think the problem there was a number of things. I mean you spent how many millions on this monolithic attraction by is it Chipperfield or Heatherwick, Thomas Heatherwick. You know why not, why, that should have been in the Adrian space.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:15)
Right.

Kevin Roche (28:16)
Where the attraction, if it’s an architectural, experiential attraction, put it in the building, not outside the building. I think these marble hallways of just leasing agents, leasing boxes, is not so interesting and boring. The most interesting mixed uses are happening in Asia. I was in Korea in May at a conference and I toured the new Hyundai.

500,000 square feet of net retail space. Is it a mall? Yes. Is it mixed use? Yes. Is it a department store? Yes. Is it a destination for restaurants, food hall, food market, like a Bomber Street, Grand Prix, Serres? Yes. It’s all those things. And the typologies, you can’t tell where a mall begins and where a department store ends. And there’s a hotel or so forth. Shinsegae, Gundam, another 500,000 plus net retail.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:06)
Mmm.

Kevin Roche (29:16)
niche use space of everything that you consider from hospitality, hotels, fitness centers, all levels of retail, food markets, restaurants, etc. It’s niche use. I think the problem with something like Hudson Yard, it’s almost an architectural…

vanity project, then it is really focusing with serious people around having humility to realize that big budget architecture isn’t necessarily the solution.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:57)
Right. I think the other thing that makes mixed use space is very interesting is really cultivating current consumer trends. So for example, I’ve seen pickleball courts in mixed use spaces. And that’s like the hottest thing that consumers want to do. So being able to pivot and ⁓ address consumer shifts in behavior I think is important as well. Annie? ⁓

Kevin Roche (30:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, and I’m

an architect and designer and I love to do architecture and design, but it’s only one tool in the toolbox. And if that overpowers the content, the meaning, know, take print on in New York, you know, there’s a complex formula of how all these things go together. And it’s not formulaic in one site versus the other. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (30:35)
Yes.

Kevin Roche (30:47)
necessarily, it doesn’t translate. They’re very, very site-specific and very, very almost market sector-specific. But mixed use, I think, you know, everything is, think, use. There’s a project in Texas I’ve been… ⁓

and a firm that did some consulting with is doing this. It’s a health care facility. It’s Texas Medical Center in Houston. They’re building a separate building to house 120,000 square feet of retail, services, fitness club, concept restaurants, not your hospital cafeteria, you know, because they have thousands and thousands of people a day and open to the community.

Shelley E. Kohan (31:36)
Yeah.

Kevin Roche (31:36)
airports

are becoming mixed-use destinations. Look at the TWA branded hotel at JFK. I mean, I’ve talked about the airport industry. That’s a whole other industry that the same challenges are emerging where they have captured traffic anywhere from 10 to 50 million people a year go through these airports and they’re captured and they’re quickly becoming mixed-use destinations.

Shelley E. Kohan (31:40)
That’s great.

That’s right. And Kevin, that’s a whole nother podcast right there. We should talk about travel retail. Have you back on talk about travel retail. Any closing thoughts?

Kevin Roche (32:07)
That is.

You know, yeah, think, you know what, think, and again, you know, as a consultant sometimes, you when I was on the consultant side versus client side, I’d it takes a great client to do great work. It takes inspired leadership. And I’m really ⁓ like these few big ideas of generational success, measuring based on generational success. You know, I mean,

A good president of United States can’t do much in three years because the fourth year they’re running, right? A CEO can’t turn around a complicated business in two or three years. It’s generational, know? Patrice now has really made Bon Marche or Shea one of the most talked about, best in class examples of social retail, and it’s taken time and patience and learning.

of what works, doesn’t work. And I think that is important. And an authentic long-term vision, ⁓ that is just not gimmicks. And an authentic can be made up, like the Ralph Lauren story or the Restoration Hard Work, but it’s so committed and so rigorously and vigorously supported around a set of non-negotiables that it becomes authentic.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:31)
love that. Thank you, Kevin, so much. It’s such a pleasure having you on. can’t wait for our next conversation.

Kevin Roche (33:35)
Likewise.

Likewise. Well, think about it. We can do something on airports because I told you I’m speaking, I’m doing a keynote speech in Hong Kong at Asian Pacific Travel Retail Association conference in December on this very topic of airport sales are falling, but travel is going up.

Shelley E. Kohan (33:56)
Excellent. Would love to have you back.

Kevin Roche (33:58)
Thank you, good to see you Shelley.