DFI CEO Scott Price on Retail’s AI Future, Growth Obstacles & Training the Next Merchants | WRC 2025

Hello everyone, this is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are coming to you live from the World Retail Congress, the Fusion Group's booth in the Grand Foyer ballroom just outside the main keynote stage.

And standing between us is a man who we had on last year at wrc, Scott Price, the CEO, I should say, of DFI Group.

Scott, welcome back to omnitalk.

Scott, you did an excellent job today on stage.

I just have to say there's a lot of things that Chris and I both took away from your session.

But before we get into those details, if you don't mind just giving people a little bit of background again on what DFI Retail Group is and then your role there and all you oversee.

So we're a Hong Kong based multi format retailer.

11,000 stores, roughly 13 countries, five formats of food, convenience stores, health and beauty, home furnishings and restaurants.

About 200,000 team members and quite an exciting portfolio for a business.

And what all do you oversee in your role there?

So as chief executive, it's publicly listed, so we, I think as a traditional CEO, I'm responsible for strategy, resource allocation, managing stakeholders, risk mitigation and of course the all important talent development, which is pretty important most days.

That starts with you, doesn't it Scott?

I think that starts with.

That's the praise, right?

All right.

So when we talked to you last year, I think you were just about in year one of the job, just finishing up year one.

You've now been in year two.

I'm curious, as you look back, how is year one different than year two?

What did you wish you knew that now you know, I mean, I'm going to give a shout out to the DS my team.

About 12 months ago we were really clear we needed to move from a holding company structure with all of these banners and a lot of minority which we sold out into an operating company focused on those four.

So in the last 12 months after the sale, we paid down all our debt, our profits have increased 30%, our stock price is up as of today, 46% in the last 12 months.

So that team is really delivering.

Wow.

Lots of time.

Well, Scott, I'm going to get back to the panel because you spoke on the panel this morning.

One of the things that we loved that you said was where retail growth will come from.

Will you share with our audience what your answer was to that question?

So you know, the retail growth used to be all about the what, you know, the what being assortment, price, value, innovation and now what's happening is growth is coming from also the how.

So the how very much to me driven by technology.

Data has been an asset for retailers for decades.

It's only really in the last 10 years they started to figure out how to monetize it.

Now AI is accelerating it.

So in addition to creating personalization with the customer, you're also creating value for the vendor because you can give them more effective media access, you can monetize the data by helping them more effective promotion.

AI though is also changing the nature of work in retail because a lot of the sort of more manual or repetitive work is being replaced.

And you know, one of the concerns I have is look, an assistant buyer job and a search admission, it's a great job to get into retail.

You know, you a lot of pricing and promotion, etc.

Basic work.

AI is replacing that which means that you go from a 22 year old college grad to now a cheap merchant.

I mean it's as those jobs get eliminated, we're going to have to think about how we develop this next generation of merchants.

Yeah, that was a great point.

I mean I'm sure you have some thoughts too, Chris, giving your background, former.

Merchant, in the audience listening to you today, I was like struck by two things.

One, that you are all in on AI.

That was really interesting.

Said it was going to be the separator between the haves and the haves nots.

But you know, again, as a former merchant, I'm curious too, like how do you solve that problem?

Like, because you know, AI is such a powerful tool that it's going to be hard to stay in front of that.

How are you thinking about adapting to that challenge?

So look, you'll know merchandising is art and science.

I think that the science will absolutely be overtaken by AI.

But I am confident that the art can never be replaced.

And the reason I say that is that the role of innovation is very much driven by human decisions.

And I had a bit of a debate with someone else in another, in another conversation who said, no, no, no, it can do the art because it can go to social media and pick up hints.

And my point was that comes from them experiencing the product that came from availability.

Who made the decision.

It's a chicken and egg discussion.

Humans have to make the decision.

I think other humans will like this product, like this color and therefore there will always be that art in merchandising which will then drive the social media, which will then drive volume.

I think there's a particular difference too between Online merchandising and in store merchandising as well.

Where the.

Yeah, it is, it is.

But the E commerce side of it probably lends itself more to that gentleman.

Or woman's perspective, because availability is the key.

Not so much the curation that you have to do in a brick and.

Mortar, the brand blocking, the color of everything, et cetera.

All of those.

Exactly, exactly.

All right, so growth is one thing, right?

So we talked about growth.

You talked about retail media as well, being the growth engine that's going to help, you know, fuel the industry.

I'm curious, what other obstacles besides training do you see on the portfolio?

Because that's part of your job too, when it's moving obstacles.

What other obstacles are you on the lookout for?

This tr.

You know, we're in a.

We're living in a very uncertain time.

And, you know, it's not just the terrorists.

It's keep calm, carry on, this will be sorted out.

I think the key is that consumer confidence has taken a real hit in the last couple of years.

First, we had inflation globally, which caused a lot of challenges for people in terms of life.

And so what I'm finding is that in general, we're all having to rethink our assortment to much more value price and then affordable innovation.

And this is where it's a real challenge to be a retailer.

People still want new experiences.

You think about the aging of population, they're thinking about not just curative, they're thinking preventive.

So how do you bring innovation that's affordable in those areas?

So the real challenge to me is staying relevant in this time of economic challenge, which I think is going to last for the next three to five years.

I think we're going to have cautious consumers for three to five years.

So all of us have to pivot all of our assortments to be able to address it.

And that's global, global, global.

I don't think it's just Asia.

It's everywhere.

And Scott, what bets then would you be placing when it comes to technology on the.

On the ways to really double down so that you are investing in those experiences that you're giving consumers that, you know, what, what's the, what's the foundation that people should be like, solid on right now?

It's funny you use the word foundation because every retailer who's been around for 30 years has tech now.

You know, buy, move, sell is simple.

Most big retailers have really put off the erp, so we have to modernize foundations amongst all retailers.

The bets, though, to me, are on the platforms that we're going to choose for AI.

It's funny as coming to this conference in my name out there, I probably got 18 requests to meet me via LinkedIn for people who have AI solutions.

Right.

And the fact is there are a lot of solutions that are not yet.

And so for me, the big bet is whose platform are you going to use to help you one, monetize your data, help your merchants do a better job, help your vendors do better promotions, and at the same time, help you support that vendor portal that'll bring that retail media in as well.

So that whole ecosystem, to me, is the big bet for retailers today.

Yeah, because we're still not seeing one person taking all of that information yet, too.

It goes back to ideam, forgot other podcasts that we've done too, about the importance of data engineering being the kind of the pipes of everything before you can get to the data science.

Right.

Your data lake is dirty.

It's of no use.

Right.

And that's an important thing for CEOs.

Not every CEO.

Again, like I was saying before, not every CEO is talking about AI.

Not every CEO is talking about the data to that extent either.

All right, well, thank you so much, Scott.

We really appreciate you taking the time with us today.

Thanks to all of you who followed along our coverage here from World retail Congress Day 1.

That wraps us up, so stay tuned.

We'll be back tomorrow with more interviews, and until then, be careful out there.