The Challenge
John Lewis & Partners are seeking innovative step-change ideas to deliver more inspirational, immersive and personalised in-store shopping experiences that:
• Give customers a differentiated reason to visit our shops
• Create peak moments of emotional engagement for our customers
• Support John Lewis & Partners to realise tangible commercial results (e.g. conversion)
Innovations could be used by our customers, or our in-store Partners, or both, and ultimately must support us to find incredible new ways to make shops relevant destinations for our shoppers to delight in.
John Lewis & Partners is a leading omni-channel retailer in the UK with 51 shops and online business – Johnlewis.com.
Loved and trusted by our customers, our department stores have been the cornerstone of our business for over 150 years. As customer expectations rapidly evolve, it’s critical we continue to reinvent our physical shops to be the very pinnacles of future experiential retailing.
As a Partnership of 83,000 co-owners, we are even more driven to deliver exceptional service for our customers. Our Partners (i.e. our staff) are a key source of differentiation and it is paramount that we find innovative ways to empower them to deliver more unique and personalised experiences for our customers.
Key requirements:
This challenge is open to any start-up or established business which has a proposition that aligns with the above objectives and also meets the following criteria:
• Has knowledge of the John Lewis Partnership company values and John Lewis & Partners brand
• Is able to demonstrate their idea and its unique value to customers within the John Lewis & Partners shop environment on pitch day (to take place outside of London)
• Is able demonstrate ideas that are scalable, sustainable and can be integrated into end-to-end customer experiences
• Is willing to openly share information and work collaboratively together with John Lewis & Partners
• If selected, is able to run a trial within our ‘test-bed’ stores (maximum 3, UK wide stores) with minimal integration requirements
Specifically not sought or required are propositions that target ‘transactional’ needs/processes (e.g. appointment booking, payments, discounting, returns), and/or are time bound ‘gimmicks’ that demonstrate no sustainable impact on the Customer Experience (shop based partners (e.g. self-serve tools))
JLAB, the startup innovation programme from the John Lewis Partnership, is back for a fifth year and if you have a great idea or technology we’d love you to be part of it.
JLAB is one of the UK’s largest retail tech innovation programmes in the UK and the John Lewis Partnership is famous for innovative products, services and our unique employee ownership model. Run for the first time this year in association with True – Europe’s only retail and consumer sector specialist, operating across the entire investment vertical – we are inviting startups with disruptive tech to join our JLAB journey. This journey will help take your business to the next level and build relationships with the two of the UK’s leading retail brands, John Lewis and Waitrose.
2018 will see lots of changes to JLAB and for the first time it will be run as an all year-round programme. We will also be launching later in the year a number of new activities for those who aren’t a business so watch this space for more details….
A chance to pitch your business to key decision makers from John Lewis & Partners
Possibility to co-develop and trial your solution with John Lewis & Partners
Access to an extensive network, customer base and insights of John Lewis & Partners
Possible investment from the JLAB fund at the end of the project
Office space in John Lewis & Partners central London HQ and Waitrose & Partners HQ in Bracknell and at True’s central London Innovation Hub
The John Lewis Partnership operates 50 John Lewis shops across the UK, johnlewis.com, 353 Waitrose shops, waitrose.com and business to business contracts in the UK and abroad. The business has annual gross sales of over £11.5bn. It is the UK’s largest example of an employee-owned business where all 85,500 staff are Partners in the business.
Waitrose has 353 shops in England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, including 66 convenience branches, and another 27 shops at Welcome Break locations. It combines the convenience of a supermarket with the expertise and service of a specialist shop – dedicated to offering quality food that has been responsibly sourced, combined with high standards of customer service. Waitrose also exports its products to 58 countries worldwide and has eight shops which operate under licence in the Middle East. Waitrose’s omnichannel business includes the online grocery service Waitrose.com, as well as specialist online shops including waitrosecellar.com for wine and waitroseflorist.com for plants and flowers and waitrosegifts.com for gifts. In recent months, Waitrose has been awarded the much-coveted European-wide Compassion in World Farming ‘Best Retailer Award’, Soil Association’s ‘Best Organic Supermarket Award 2017′ and The Drinks Business’ ‘Retail Buying Team of the Year Award’.
John Lewis operates 50 John Lewis shops across the UK (36 department stores, 12 John Lewis at home and shops at St Pancras International and Heathrow Terminal 2) as well as johnlewis.com. John Lewis, ‘Best In-Store Experience 2017’, ‘Best Furniture Retailer 2017’, ‘Best Homewares Retailer 2017’* stocks around 350,000 separate lines in its department stores and johnlewis.com across fashion, home and technology. Johnlewis.com is consistently ranked one of the top online shopping destinations in the UK. John Lewis Insurance offers a range of comprehensive insurance products – home, car, wedding and event, travel and pet insurance and life cover – delivering the values of expertise, trust and customer service expected from the John Lewis brand.
*GlobalData Retail Consumer Satisfaction Awards 2017
True (www.true.global) is Europe’s only retail and consumer sector specialist that operates across the entire investment vertical. Formally True Capital and TrueStart, which were established in 2013, True has total funds under management of £200m and invests in retail and consumer sector business models which represent the future of the industry.
True’s Live Network model brings together its private equity companies, startup innovators, investors and leading industry partners to add value, both strategically and operationally, across the retail and consumer spectrum.