Pret A Manger CEO Pano Christou walks through the company's successful growth strategy.
Our Retail Consulting Services
BCG’s fashion consultants develop innovative digital solutions to help retailers respond to shifting consumer journeys without compromising on creativity and design. Learn more.
BCG’s luxury goods consultants help clients to rightsize spending and prioritize digital and personalization efforts in both the front and back of the house—while still investing in long-term brand equity. Our work gives design-led luxury brands the ability to create the highest quality product, partner smarter in supply and distribution, digitally transform their businesses, and supercharge a new level of
personalization across merchandising,
marketing, and clienteling—in-store and beyond.
Decades of experience working with global brands and retailers in the fashion industry gives us a unique understanding of the pandemic-driven challenges facing this sector—and how to respond. In the industry’s key luxury market, for example, our unparalleled China-based team—with years of experience in the field—has remapped the Chinese luxury consumer journey, using its cultural knowledge to identify and quickly act on shifting behavior and trends.
Decades of experience working with global brands and retailers in the fashion industry gives us a unique understanding of the pandemic-driven challenges facing this sector—and how to respond. In the industry’s key luxury market, for example, our unparalleled China-based team—with years of experience in the field—has remapped the Chinese luxury consumer journey, using its cultural knowledge to identify and quickly act on shifting behavior and trends.
Related Services
How We Help Clients Create a Retail Strategy for the New Reality
BCG’s retail consulting teams are composed of retail industry experts with skill sets that span the entire digital space, supported by proprietary platforms and solutions from
BCG X, our tech build and design unit. Our work focuses on improving the commercial proposition, formats, and omnichannel and operations capabilities needed to deliver on retail strategy.
Retail Analytics and Artificial Intelligence
To help our retail industry clients better leverage the power of their data—and better integrate with retail ecosystems—BCG combines advanced analytics and AI with data to solve problems all along the value chain, from ranging and pricing to personalization and logistics.
Omnichannel Retail Strategy
BCG’s retail consulting team takes a customer-driven approach to omnichannel strategy design, drawing on our proprietary consumer research techniques and world-class personalization data-science capabilities to support data-driven sales and omnichannel growth strategies. Our approach to omnichannel retail offers a holistic view that allows clients to attribute, track, and measure the value of investments across all channels.
Retail Operations
The need for flexibility extends to retailers’ supply chain partners and other drivers of a multiformat retail experience. With the desired customer experience and economics acting as the North Star, we prioritize the right end-to-end operations use cases, then rapidly mini-test and iterate specific solutions (physical and digital) to improve demand forecasting, product availability, service and labor planning, inventory management, waste reduction, and more.
Cost Optimization
Addressing each element of cost independently, we reset the base on a collection of cost drivers to align operating costs with the retailer’s customer value proposition, providing significant value for key stakeholders. In a shifting retail environment, rigorous tradeoffs among cost, service, and experience are essential to this process.
Digital Retail Marketing and Personalization
To help retailers expand their audience and deepen connections with existing customers, we leverage our experience in developing digital marketing capabilities, using AI and other retail technology to drive personalization—the frontier where customers, now more than ever, are won or lost.
Social Impact
Embedding sustainable practices and active social responsibility into retail operations has moved from a side activity to a top priority. We partner with global retailers to ensure that contributions to social and environmental goals—for example, inclusive hiring practices and reduced food waste and plastic packaging—drive business value.
Our Client Work in the Retail Industry
Working with a leading EU retailer, BCG created a new pricing and promotions strategy and applied new range-performance-analysis tools on approximately 25,000 SKUs, optimizing all food categories. Our joint work delivered promotional results that were 33% above target in the first year. It also reduced the range by around 20% while making it more relevant for customers. In addition, there was a 6% increase in like-for-like volume—driven by the investment of liberated funds into pricing for top lines—along with a significant improvement in value perception.
BCG delivered an AI transformation at a global fashion retailer, in close partnership with the client’s internal team. Using our technology partners, including BCG X, the team leveraged AI to improve forecasting and pricing for more than 10,000 products, optimize inventory across more than 3,000 stores, and generate over 500,000 automated personalized emails. Completing a small pilot in four weeks, the team quickly scaled it, achieving a double-digit profit uplift. The project scaled to more than 70% of the global business in less than one year, and the industrialized model was complete in 18 months.
A declining North American multiformat grocery retailer engaged BCG to create a transformation management office to ensure a successful turnaround. This hub drove a major reorganization, launched cost-out programs, and expanded e-commerce to drive growth. Early success showed gross margin increases and adjusted EBITDA up around 1%, with a rebound in share price to pre-decline levels. Now on track to exceed $500 million in savings, leadership is looking to advanced analytics and AI to further growth.
A retailer in Asia-Pacific with ambitious environmental targets partnered with BCG to create a business incubator to develop and commercialize projects. Together, we defined the incubator’s role, operating model, and governance, then prioritized and designed four scalable initiatives in upstream food waste, plastics action, sustainable agriculture, and waste-as-a-resource. Deliverables included a detailed roadmap and, with the resource budget needed to meet targets of 30% growth, 4X reduction in net GHG emissions and 2X diverted food waste.
Video
December 12, 2024
The Power of Resilience and Tech: A Focus on Marketing and Data Creates Opportunities for Pret A Manger
Client Success
In partnership with BCG and BCG X, a leading retail company launched a new business aimed at reducing food waste to enhance climate and societal impacts.
Our Solutions for the Retail Industry
Retail AI by BCG X
Retail AI unlocks key advantages across six value chain components with holistic, tailored retail intelligence software.
Retail AI by BCG X
Merch AI by BCG X
Within Retail AI, Merch AI decodes a fundamental retail challenge: how to offer the right products in the right stores at the right cost.
Merch AI by BCG X
Video
Video
Commercial Allocation by BCG X
Commercial Allocation helps clients to strategically manage, allocate trade-offs, to keep up with the rapidly changing consumer behaviors.
Commercial Allocation by BCG X
Book
Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI
Personalization is a $2 trillion opportunity. BCG's new book offers a playbook for capturing your share of this personalization prize in the retail industry.
Explore Our Insights on the Retail Industry
Video
January 24, 2025
How a Pioneer in Alpine Apparel Stays on Top
Mammut CEO Heiko Schaefer and Sylvain Duranton of BCG X discuss AI's role in product and process innovation and the importance of building a culture of trust.
Article
January 17, 2024
New capabilities put retailers in a position to leverage AI and generative AI to obtain a clear picture of what a product should cost and how its suppliers stack up.
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