Women2Watch Interview: Amy Roche

Author, innovator, retailer, marketer and self-proclaimed experience nerd Amy Roche is this week's featured Women2Watch honoree. Learn about how she redefined the in-store experience for retailers and consumers through her company, Retail Rockstars. 

Who are you, what do you do, and who do you do it for?

I'm Amy Roche, I'm a retailer, marketer and in-store experience nerd. I moved to Australia from the US in 2001—my husband is Australian—and I have a nine year old son named Harrison. I'm also the author of The Retail Experiment, five proven strategies to engage & excite customers though in-store experience.

I'm the founding director of Retail Rockstars—an event marketing platform that develops inspirational and educational LIVE in-store experiences and classes for large retailers customers. We source bespoke experts (our “Rockstars”) to facilitate and then we market and manage the events from start to finish.

What sparked the idea for Retail Rockstars was an absolute desire and curiosity to figure out why consumers were changing. After the Global Financial Crisis, I noticed a definite change in how consumers were reacting to the marketing that had previously worked for my store (The Good Guys in Australia) and I wanted to know why. It seemed they were now more price conscious, less loyal and overall disengaged.
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The first 3-chapters in my book The Retail Experiment, outlines the research of why consumers have changed so dramatically, and why us retailers and marketers need to change our approach to re-engage our relationships with our customers.

How did you get to where you are?

Having national and global marketing roles in both the US and Australia has helped me understand what my clients—large multi-site retailers—need, and also what hinders them.

Later, I owned a 2500-square meter consumer electronics store, which gave me the opportunity to experiment with what motivates and deeply engages local customers—ultimately what makes them loyal advocates of a store.

By testing and measuring I developed my own bespoke event framework called Experience by Design™. Experience by Design™ has given retailers the opportunity to know how and what they can do to drive in-store experience and deeply engage with their customers in their own way. My book provides a DIY recipe, and if you don't have the resources to execute it yourself then Retail Rockstars can do it all for you from start to finish.

Using very simple concepts like experiential retailing, humanics, sales mindset, retail storytelling and events, a retailer can easily re-engage their retail customers increasing visitation, sales, profit and overall loyalty for your retail business.

Owning the store also highlighted while it was lucrative to run these events, it was extremely resource-hungry to source local facilitators, market and manage them.

Why are you doing what you're doing?

I tested, measured and built a service that I used to grow my business.

Soon, due to my store's success (adding nearly $10M in turnover in just two years), other stores within our franchise network asked me to do the same thing for them.

While both corporate and franchise retail models are systemized and nationalized for cost efficiencies, they also distance and hinder retailers relationship with local customers.

In-store engagement and events work to build advocacy, increase visitation, and dwell times in online and offline sales. I'm pioneering in this area because I feel it's a force multiplier for retailers with brick and mortar stores.

What advice would you give to other aspiring Women2Watch?

If you are an expert in your field, be cautious in the advice that you take from others. Initially, I had a lot of resistance from seasoned 'old fashioned' retailers. I realized after several years of success that Retail Rockstars is not for everyone—it's for retail thought leaders and innovators.  

Disruption is about thinking differently, before giving up on your idea or dumbing it down so that others can catch up, make sure you test it thoroughly and have statistics and case studies for the innovators you want to work with.

If it still doesn’t resonate, refine, re-test and try again.

Find out more about Amy

Learn about how the Women2Watch program has helped Amy in her career and business in this recent video. You can also connect with Amy on LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as learn more about her book The Retail Experiment​.