Charlotte Arch

Amid falling levels of inflation, disruption in the Red Sea and political change in the UK, Alex Winch reports from CDR’s inaugural retail and consumer event focused on the ‘Retail Road Ahead’.

Retailers face big challenges as they head into the second half of 2024 from the pressure to become activist brands on sustainability or social issues to dealing with a lingering cost-of-living crisis – but there are also lucrative opportunities for those who get it right. This was the conclusion of CDR’s panel of retail experts who we recently brought together to ponder what’s next for a sector that employs more than 3 million people in Britain.

Taking to our stage at the Charlotte Street Hotel: Linda Ellett from KPMG, Mike Watkins from data experts Nielsen IQ, David Butler, CEO of clothing retailer Weird Fish and Hugh Radojev from Retail Week. In the audience? Attendees from big names like Burberry and Burger King as well as key figures across the investor community.

The panel sought answers to some of the big questions retailers face today.

1. Is the cost-of-living crisis over?

For the last couple of years, consumers have felt the pinch. Data from KPMG has shown that one in four of us are feeling less financially secure with this leading to a continued pinch on retail sales as ‘as many consumers become increasingly deliberate with their spending choices

Mike Watkins sees this moment characterised by retailers now having to contend with a polarised consumer. On one hand you have the squeezed consumer affected by the cost-of-living crisis while on the other, there are those who are financially confident.

According to recent KPMG research, 4 in 10 consumers are still cutting their spending. That means – as David Butler highlighted – that certain brands become a considered choice and brands must find a way to cater for those who are cutting spending. For him, it means that brands need to focus on how to attract the squeezed consumer.

2. So, what is the path to success?

Increasingly, as David put it, brands in the middle “have to be very agile to succeed” as well as targeting people “very individually.” Knowing your customers has become much more important. For Crew Clothing, which David ran until May last year, that meant partnerships with the likes of the Queen’s Club Tennis Championships and the Henley Royal Regatta, two popular events amongst his target market as well as the Lawn Tennis Association. David’s view is that by being associated with brands that resonate with your audience, you give yourself a much better platform for success.

Despite some customers continuing to reduce their spending, many firms are emerging as “winners”. Retail’s Week’s Hugh Radojev was quick to draw attention to clothing retailer All Saints as an example. The brand has expanded overseas but throughout this process, products have remained consistent globally.

A key factor ensuring you are on the path to success cited by all panellists is a strong multichannel offering. While an online presence is critical, retailers are increasingly seeing demand for physical stores. Businesses need to have the right stores in the right place. Your channel offering also has to reflect the needs and behaviours of your target customers, companies can’t just have a multi-channel offering for the sake of it. As David pointed out, this is a task he is currently undertaking with Weird Fish. The business is expanding across all channels to ensure it is linked with its diverse customer base, both with physical stores but also through its online presence.

3. Shifting priorities to focus on

With customers becoming more accustomed to the cost-of-living crisis, data from Nielsen IQ has shown health and wellness is a top priority for consumers. Clearly, unlike myself, people are sticking to their New Years Resolutions! This shift in priorities also represents an opportunity for retail and consumer brands. Being quick to adapt is key.

But it isn’t just health and wellness that is front of mind. More than half of consumers have said that sustainability is now more important to them, leading to increased scrutiny of brands, their manufacturing process and labour practices.

4. What lies ahead then?

Looking ahead, Linda concluded that for retailers to position themselves for success, they “need to be everywhere”, through physical stores, digital channels including social media, and through partnerships and advertising. Consumers now expect “seamless commerce” – that means their favourite brands and retailers provide them with a consistent experience from their first interaction to when they receive the final good or service, irrespective of which channel they are engaging through at each point.

Most of the discussion’s focus was on UK habits, but some trends stand out as being global in nature. Health, wellness and sustainability are a focus for shoppers worldwide, with “value and trust” being priorities for Gen Z shoppers in particular. Mike’s view is that in the future, consumers are going to “want to see more engagement from brands”, especially on issues which shape the future of societies around the world.

What was clear to me, was that we are at a crucial moment for businesses in the retail and leisure sectors. With a new Government in the UK and levels of inflation falling, now is the time for businesses to put their foot to the floor and ensure that they power themselves down the retail road ahead and onto success.

“Alpha” is a concept that has always distinguished hedge funds. It means outperformance relative to the “beta” of the market, and alpha generation is the goal of the industry. An actively managed hedge fund that is not generating alpha, i.e. that is not outperforming a passive index tracking fund, will lose its raison d’etre. 

In the early days of hedge funds, alpha was generated at a prodigious rate. The greats of 1990s, for example, such as the legendary George Soros at Quantum, were associated with bold bets and outsize returns. This continued in the early years of this century, but the Global Financial Crisis was a watermark moment. It ushered in an era of central bank intervention in markets that made generating alpha much more difficult. 

That was because programmes such as quantitative easing that were utilised by central banks globally had the consequence of pushing up the value of most assets for a sustained period of time, indeed from spring 2009 through to the Covid crisis. This meant it was a great time to hold assets like U.S. equities which were going up 15-20% a year, and passive index tracking funds flourished because of it. 

It is difficult for any active investment manager to outperform the market consistently when the market is growing at such a high octane rate, and this was true in aggregate of the global hedge fund industry, although of course there were many exceptions. Instead, the industry sought to define its value to investor portfolios in terms of downside protection and diversification rather than alpha. The alpha era was apparently over. 

But now it may be back. And that is according to the investment banks that provide services to hedge funds, the so-called prime brokers, who arguably understand the industry best. For example, according to BNP Paribas, we are entering a new era of alpha for hedge funds. In their recently-released 2024 Alternative Investment Survey they argue that “allocators are starting to position for an era where alpha and diversification are finally expected to deliver strong returns”. Similarly, according to new Barclays research, investors are planning to increase their hedge fund exposures this year and more allocators want to add new managers to their portfolios. 

The investors themselves were making similar points during “hedge fund week” recently in Miami, where many of the largest hedge fund conferences globally take place. From their perspective, the opportunities are back for hedge funds to flourish. The return of market volatility, banished during the “great moderation” of central bank intervention, creates winners and losers.  

Hedge funds which, unlike their mutual fund cousins, have the ability to trade across asset classes and to use powerful instruments like leverage, derivatives and shorting, should be well-placed to capitalise on these opportunities. Indeed in Miami some investors, speaking under the Chatham House rule, talked of all of this meaning a new “golden era” for hedge funds. 

So as this new era dawns, allocators will be looking at hedge funds with renewed interest. But that does not mean that the money will roll in to the industry. Many institutional investors remain cautious about allocating to the space, and devote great time to due diligence of managers. In order to be rewarded with capital, a firm must avoid giving prospective allocators any reason not to invest in them. That often means having the right operational infrastructure, governance and culture, but it also means having the right reputation in the marketplace.  

As many firms have found, negative reputational issues can gravely damage their capital-raising prospects, while conversely a strong reputation can be highly compelling to allocators. Increasingly, hedge fund managers understand that reputational risk can be just as important to the success of their firms as market risk. 

Christen Thomson is a Senior Director at Citigate Dewe Rogerson specialising in hedge funds.