New CEO's Three-Part Plan for Reviving Signet

RAPAPORT... Timeshave not been good for Signet Jewelers. A decidedly disappointing holidayseason saw same-store sales slide by 5.3%. This followed a 4.6% drop in 2016.Add to this poor performance the sexual harassment and discriminationallegations that have hounded the retail giant, and a share price that slumped30% over the past year, and it becomes apparent that 2017 was a cocktail ofcatastrophe for the jeweler.Despitethe gloom, Signet's new CEO, Gina Drosos (pictured), appears confident she has what ittakes to stop the retailer's freefall. "Thelast couple of years have been disappointing," she says frankly, sitting in asuite in the plush London NYC hotel in midtown Manhattan. "Now we need to haveour fingers on the pulse of what customers really want." The millennial market Drosos,who was appointed in July, is banking on three strategic imperatives totransform Signet, the first of which is "customer first." And her message tocustomers is that Signet is listening. This, she believes, will put Signet in aprime position when it comes to wooing millennials - the most sought-after, yetmisunderstood, consumer segment. "Weare really spending much more time understanding relationships and what isimportant to our millennial consumers," she says. "And what we know from thatis that millennial consumers don't see the kind of sequential relationshipsthat their parents had as being necessary. So while their parents may have met,dated, gotten engaged, gotten married, then moved in together and then hadkids, millennials see that as being able to happen in a much more fluid way. Sowhat's important for us to do is recognize that and to be able to help themhave jewelry to be able to celebrate many of those different milestones alongtheir journey." Andlike night follows day, "customer first" feeds directly into the second pillarof Drosos's strategy: omni-channel. "Weknow that most customers who are making a jewelry purchase start theiromni-channel journey online, and they end that journey in the store," she says."We want to be part of that seamless journey every step of the way. In holiday2016, when customers visited our websites, only about 3% of the time did theyget a unique view based on everything that we know about [their previousvisits] - what they are shopping for, what they want and need." In holiday2017, she says, that number went up to 30%. Success story Inorder to implement this customer-centric, omni-channel approach, Drosos will bedrawing on a deep well of past success. "Ispent 25 years at the Procter & Gamble company," she says. "I was part of ateam of people who built up a beauty company inside that soap and diapercompany to become the biggest beauty company in the world. And we did thatthrough understanding what customers wanted and needed by reinventing brands thathad become tired or outdated or weren't as relevant to customers as they couldhave been, and by bringing new and innovative products and experience tocustomers. I think many of those same things apply to Signet, where we have anopportunity to take the lead and drive industry growth by putting customersfirst and bringing new innovation." That'swhere her third strategy comes in. The company has implemented a neworganizational model, moving away from a "functionally led structure" to one of"single-point accountability" to drive the success of each Signet brand. "Wehave created within our company what we are calling the innovation engine.Because of our size, we have the capability to do more market research than anyother company to understand customers even better, so we are creating acreative process to have a funnel of great ideas that get screened very quicklyand that get developed very quickly in the right way and can come through tothe marketplace," she says. "Andthen, once we bring great ideas to the marketplace, we are looking at how wedrive the longevity of those great ideas," she continues. "There's definitelyan opportunity for us to improve both the quantity and excitement of new ideasthat we are bringing based on consumer desire, but also to extend the life ofsome of those innovations by continuing to innovate and delight customers overtime." Drososis hoping three is the magic number that will drive the success of herstrategy. With any luck, it will be the three-pronged plan she's laid out, andnot a third year of negative sales figures for the company she's trying torevive.This article was first published in the February issue of Rapaport Magazine.