Leadership Trends for Convenience Retail

Dr Marcele De Sanctis

Oppeus International is a boutique, Australian-owned consultancy dedicated to “Finding and Supporting Great Leaders.” Based in Melbourne with offices in Sydney and Singapore, we support our clients on Executive Search, Leadership Assessment, Governance Reviews and Remuneration across a number of industries including Retail, Mining, Oil and Gas, Education, Infrastructure, Health and Financial Services.

In Executive Search, we have been privileged to recently support one of Australia’s leading convenience retailers in Innovation and Business Development, successfully appointing an outstanding Executive to drive innovation strategy in an increasingly competitive market. In undertaking this search, Oppeus International gained significant insights into the sector and built on our understanding of the current candidate pool for Senior Executives in the convenience retail and broader industries.

From a leadership and talent perspective, we provide the following commentary:

– A clear opportunity exists in convenience retail to attract individuals who bring global thinking and creativity to the Australian market. Oppeus International identified a pool of innovative, strategic candidates with deep experience driving transformation in store renewal, category diversification, supply chain innovation and technology

– For organisations willing and able to structure highly attractive remuneration packages, there is a real opportunity to build bench strength and attract innovative leaders from much larger organisations into smaller businesses

– Businesses are under increasing pressure to use technology to optimise the customer transaction. Oppeus identified a range of candidates with deep experience embedding evolving technology into retail businesses to foster competitive advantage

– For organisations prepared to embrace talent beyond the narrower confines of convenience retailers, there is strong candidate pool in related sectors (e.g., food retail, grocery, store innovation) who appear to have readily adaptable skills for the convenience sector

If you are interested in discussing our recent, relevant experience, please contact our Retail Practice Leader Dr Marcele De Sanctis on mdesanctis@oppeus.com or 03 9661 8000.