In this episode of Women in Retail Talks, Associate Editor Kristina Stidham talks with Flora Delaney, president of Delaney Consulting and author of the new book, Retail The Second-Oldest Profession. Listen in as Delaney identifies seven timeless principles of retail success, corresponding action items that retailers can implement in day-to-day business to fulfill these principles, and shares learnings from her career journey in retail. She emphasizes that these seven fundamental principles of operations, customer service, merchandising, strategy, pricing, marketing, and managing are essential to any and all types of retailers, and that if retail leaders can step back and re-evaluate how their business pursues these principles on a basic level, they will find success.

The book ends with a few simple yet powerful statements: “Listen to your customers. Listen to your team members. Listen to your vendors. Listen to your marketplace.”

Flora Delaney is a retail business expert with over 20 years of multichannel, cross-functional experience. She and her team have consistently delivered strategic projects through merchandising insight, change leadership, process design, team mentorship, and IT partnership. Delaney’s previous roles include director at Best Buy, vice president at Musicland, and president and retail consultant at Optimal Advantage.

Delaney Consulting has a networked team that comes together to help retailers, vendors and their extended community build value in their strategic projects through change leadership, process design, team mentorship, and IT partnership. The high-performance team inspires a trustworthy and collaborative atmosphere. Located in Minneapolis, Delaney Consulting has led projects in North America, Asia and Europe.

Date: July 2, 2019