'The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking’. Read why Einstein hit the nail on head for today’s cx innovators by downloading Start Being Lean, our guide to what Lean – the model driving success at Zara, Uniqlo and Mercadona – teaches us about creating brilliant, simple and relevant customer experiences. Start Learning here.

1. Reservation of intellectual property rights © Start Limited 2017
LEARNING
STARTBEING
LEAN
Kevin Gill
Start UK CEO
April 2017

2. Albert Einstein
LEARNING
“THEWORLDWEHAVECREATEDIS
APRODUCTOFOURTHINKING;
ITCANNOTBECHANGEDWITHOUT
CHANGINGOURTHINKING”
© Start Limited 2017

3. AGILEMIGHTBETHEBUZZIESTOFBUZZ
WORDSRIGHTNOW-THEHOLYGRAIL
ONEVERYRETAILER’SLIPS-
BUTARECENTTOUROFTHEBEST
SHOPPINGINBILBAOGOTMETHINKING
ABOUTTHEBRILLIANCEOFLEAN.
Developed by Toyota as an entirely new
production system back in the 1960s, Lean is the
modus operandi behind the stand-out success of
fast fashionistas Zara and Uniqlo.
And it’s also the method by which Spanish super-
supermarket, Mercadona – its store a highlight
of my trip - reinvented itself to fight back in the
face of Spain’s worst recession in years.
The goal of a lean organisation is to create more
value for the customer. A lean business does this
by finding and eliminating waste and complexity
from all its processes.
Essentially, it’s about ‘less is
more’. The practice of using
fewer resources to create more
quality not quantity.
Which should surely be the rallying cry of
modern retailers?
LEARNING
Start being Lean
© Start Limited 2017

4. Zara epitomises this Lean agility. At its heart
is an innovative supply chain, driving new
products from design studio to factory to stores
worldwide in as little as fifteen days – a process
that can take competitors six months. It’s made
Zara one of the world’s most valuable brands
(according to Forbes, worth $10.7 billion in 2016).
Mercadona is another example of Lean
modern shopkeeping at its best: a vertically-
integrated model driving continuous operational
improvements for its shoppers. The retailer
controls every stage of its assembly line: from
the inception of a product idea that meets a
specific consumer need to manufacture, delivery,
the shopping experience - even the consumption
of the product, post-purchase.
Lean empowers Mercadona to deliver its famous
‘always low pricing’ promise and a market-
leading own-label range that strikes fear into the
brands it shares shelf space with.
Giving it a clear advantage over its competitors,
and keeping its customers coming back.
FROMLOGISTICSTOGOVERNMENT
ANDFROMHEALTHCARETORETAIL,
LEAN’SPRINCIPLESOFRELENTLESS
IMPROVEMENTHAVETURNEDTHOSE
THATGETITRIGHTINTOATHLETIC,
AGILEBUSINESSES.
© Start Limited 2017
LEARNING
Lean makes you agile

5. “We’ve already arrived at the retail crossroads.
If you want stuff then turn left for the internet,
which is full of it; and what’s more it might well be
delivered within the hour. But if you want social
contact, proof that you’re not alone on this planet
and would perhaps feel reassured by a light, fleeting
exchange with a fellow inhabitant, then turn right
for the shops. Shops are only for social needs now;
everything else is waiting in a brown parcel by your
front door. It’s not nuanced, complicated or category
specific at all. The brutal, binary simplicity of this can
be hard to swallow for professional retailers who
have been oiling their machines for half a century,
but it’s how it is now. Just ask your grandchildren.”
Lean’s principles are custom-
made for helping us adapt to
the massive changes happening
in retail.
Because, if ever there was a time for fleet-of-foot
creative efficiency, it’s now. These days, customer
experience designers need to innovate fast,
prototype new concepts continuously and always
be in ‘beta’ mode when it comes to getting ideas
to market. Six months for a new retail concept?
Too long. Six weeks is more like it. Today’s app-
happy, tech-savvy consumers are constantly one
step ahead - raising the stakes and defining the
shopping experience for the rest of us.
Retail guru Howard Saunders captures the
point brilliantly:
www.22and5.com/beware-slippery-shopping/
LEARNING
Lean outpaces change
© Start Limited 2017

6. Seamless, stress-free, engaging, entertaining,
NOW – it’s the only way to do it and create
value for both customer and brand.
How to get there? Let these three core
principles of Lean be your guide.
LEARNING
BRANDSNEEDTOWORKEVER
HARDERTOGETTHEDIGITALAND
PHYSICALEXPERIENCERIGHT.
© Start Limited 2017

7. Putting the audience at the heart will hardly be
earth-shattering news for any experience designer
worth their stripes. But we must now rethink our
design and innovation processes so that customers
- their personas, behaviours and shopping journeys
– sit down at the drawing board with us.
This might mean literally recruiting one to be part
of the team. Or bringing a target customer to life
through tools such as ‘persona creation’.
However it’s achieved, keeping the customer’s
voice real and loud throughout is crucial -
from initial discovery phase, through idea creation,
prototyping, review and tracking.
We’ve also got to make it easy for customers to
give feedback, at every opportunity. We need to
build a process that exploits their thoughts fully,
and responds swiftly with something better. Both
Mercadona and Zara have shown how empowering
staff to be part of this process reaps rewards.
Feedback breeds improvement, the key to Lean.
We can’t stand still; if experiences must evolve to
be relevant, then so must the way we create them.
The truly amazing thing about Zara’s production
process is how it pulses, relentlessly, to the beat
of its customers’ likes and dislikes. ‘Designers
and customers are inextricably linked’ (Zara’s
words) through an integrated, contracted design
and production process. In-store teams provide
weekly feedback - not just sales data,
but anecdotal customer evidence too - via state-
of-the-art instore technology, on what’s selling
and what’s not. If a design isn’t popular,
Zara tweaks it or stops producing it altogether,
pretty much straight away.
LEARNING
1.STARTBEING
CUSTOMER-CENTRIC
© Start Limited 2017

8. LEARNING
2.STARTFINDING
THEVALUE
The Leadership Network says that for Lean-ers,
‘value is defined by the customer. You create
value by providing the right solution at the right
cost for your customer’.
Easy to say, but solutions are more complex
to create; a careful consideration of price,
convenience and overall experience, delivered
friction-free across all touchpoints.
Businesses that want to go Lean must map
their entire supply chain and identify where
the blockages are - where resources are being
wasted or duplicated. Keeping the supply chain
flowing is crucial to delivering.
At Start we use experience mapping to do the
same; to see where a brand’s experience flows and
where the pitfalls are. It’s crucial to understanding
the big picture systematically, as well as the detail
- experience mapping can reveal where pain lies
for customers, as well as where the most valuable
improvements can be made.
Great customer experience begins with a blueprint
for the desired state and a defined process for
innovating and executing continuous improvement.
So a Lean-thinking business will map its future,
and devise a strategy for getting there. Start’s
recent work in health and beauty for both Tesco
and P&G highlights the need to optimise the retail
experience against the shopper journey, to match
service expectations, differentiate through own
label product innovation, and design with purpose.
We tackle projects like this using our Delivery
Framework – a modular process for customer
experience innovation within the client’s business.
Built around five work-streams, it can flex according
to a project’s needs and is designed to highlight
problem areas and reveal unique opportunities to
define your brand through improved experiences.
© Start Limited 2017

9. 3.START
MINIMISINGWASTE
LEARNING
Lean thinking says that waste is anything that
doesn’t create value for the customer.
Over-production is the worst kind of waste.
Toyota invented lean as an antidote to Western
mass production, which it saw as inefficient,
wasteful and costly.
Minimising waste in customer experience is
about using every opportunity to make simple
but beautiful connections with customers:
to match their heightened expectations with
pinpoint relevancy, yet be so effortless that
going shopping is a joy. This is the kind of
experience that will disrupt the market and
create new paths to purchase. But it can
only happen as a result of a process that has
consumer understanding at its foundation.
Over-spaced and under-utilised, traditional,
sprawling store estates are no longer the most
efficient or enjoyable way of meeting the needs of
customers. Finding a valuable role for the physical
space in today’s omnichannel shopping journey is a
challenge we help clients with all the time. We look
for ways to solve the frustrations consumers have
with the physical store, compared to the ease and
responsiveness they’re used to online.
But it’s also about using the store as a space to
deliver something truly valuable, that can’t be
accessed online.
Our client Sephora has been leading the way in
defining a future model for retailing by piloting
smaller, smarter stores, populated with great content,
physical moments of delight and smart inventory.
© Start Limited 2017

10. THEAIMOFBOTHLEANANDSTART’SCUSTOMEREXPERIENCE
DESIGNPROCESSISONEANDTHESAME–TOCREATEVALUE.
LEANREMINDSUSTHATVALUEISSUBJECTIVE;
YOURCUSTOMERSWILLDECIDEWHETHERYOUDELIVERIT.
IFYOUDO,THEY’LLFOLLOW.IFYOUDON’T,THEY’LLLOOKTO
YOURCOMPETITORS.OMNICHANNELISTHEIMPERATIVEFOR
SWIFTINNOVATIONANDAGILEDESIGNPROCESSES.
LEANTHINKINGCANONLYADDVALUETOTHEWAYWECREATE
CUSTOMEREXPERIENCESTODAY.
To find out how to Start being Lean, sign
up here to be part of Start Learning and
get a FREE Lean Retail Best Practice case
study delivered to your inbox.
Watch out for the first in our new Start
Learning series on how Lean thinking
can create relevant, simple and brilliant
customer experiences:
‘Do Less. Deliver More.
How to Be a True Customer-Centric’.
PLUS get help
planning your own
innovation process
by downloading our
Delivery Framework
template.
LEARNING
Kevin Gill
T: +44 (0) 7885 277 386
E: kevin.gill@startdesign.com
© Start Limited 2017
Start delivering