What Every Retailer Should Know About Accessible Shopping | Mark Webb

0:00We want to be represented and we want an easy shopping experience. Despite us being 20 to 25 % of the population, 2 % of advertising features disabled people, 2 % of TV programs and films involve disabled people, and 1 % of TV programs involve a lead character who's disabled. We want to be seen. I don't mind if you're cold and practical and just saying, oh, bloody hell, we need a wider aisle and we need people trained because we've got to deal with the bloody disabled people. Well, fine, but make money out of us because we're there to spend. I just want a pleasant accessibility experience, but also people not looking the other way.

0:44Just coming over, not grabbing my wheelchair and pushing me around, but just saying anything I can do to help, sir.

1:00Natalie Berg: You're listening to Retail Disrupted, a podcast that explores the latest industry developments and the trends that will shape how we shop in the future. I'm your host, Natalie Berg.

1:18Natalie Berg: We are kicking off today's episode with some very exciting news. Retail Disrupted has won a Signal Award. Just getting shortlisted has been such an honor because these awards are judged by Netflix, NPR, Spotify, YouTube. So honestly, just making it to the final round was incredible. But we have taken home gold for the thought leadership category. so I am at a loss for words I am just so honored to have this recognition the podcast has come so far I think back to when I had the idea for this podcast a few years ago I knew nothing about podcasting and it was a very steep learning curve and it took a lot of courage to finally get started as well to kind of put your name and your voice to a production and try to figure out how to do the whole podcasting thing.

2:14Natalie Berg: So, um, we are a two person team and I, I just want to say a huge thanks to my video editor, Mitro, who does amazing things every week for the podcast. He does all the clips and he, he produces, um, the weekly episodes that are now on YouTube. So a huge thanks to Mitro and a huge thanks to all of you, all of you who tune in every week, who listen or watch the podcast and share your feedback. I absolutely love hearing from you all. So I just want to say thank you. It's so great to know that these conversations are resonating and you are getting value from my many guests from all over the world.

2:55Natalie Berg: And we've got lots of exciting things in store for the future. So that's it for me. That's my major news. on today's episode, you're going to hear from Mark Webb. Mark is a former retailer and a disability advocate. He's going to share his personal story of living with MS. We're also going to talk about accessibility and how Mark thinks retailers can create more inclusive spaces. If you haven't already, please do hit that subscribe button. Every week we speak to the leaders and disruptors that are shaping the future of retail, and your subscription really does help the channel to grow.

3:37Natalie Berg: Mark, welcome to the show. It's funny because, well, it's funny, isn't it? Because we've been connected on social media for years and years, and this is actually the first time we're speaking directly. So it's really great to have you here, and I'm glad we're fixing that today and getting you on the show. So just to get us started, Mark, can you tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about yourself and your background? Yes. So in retail terms, I spent a fabulous 11 years at DSGI, which became DSG International, which became Dixon's Retail, which became Dixon's Carphone, which became Curry's.

4:18Prior to that, I was in entertainment Leisure, at David Lloyd Leisure for three years, and Disneyland Paris and the Walt Disney Company for 11 years where I met my beautiful wife. I'm medically retired nowadays. I'm a public speaker and a disability advocate. I retired when my flavour of disability got progressively worse. I have multiple sclerosis.

4:52Natalie Berg: So we're going to get into all of that, as you say, because there's lots to explore there. I guess just to start with Dixon's, which as you say is now Curry's, you worked for three different CEOs during your time there. So you worked for John Clare, John Browett, and Seb James, who then went on to become the CEO of Boots. I know you saw a lot of change in that time. But take us back to the early days. What was it like when you joined? What kind of shape was the business in? It was a very 80s business. And I don't want to be so too critical of John Clare because he was a wonderful chap. But it really was.

5:32Monday morning at 6 a.m. meetings, John Clare had had a fax sent to him over the weekend, over the Sunday night with all the results. And basically, Monday morning is what sold well, which didn't. Okay, we need to advertise this double page spread in the sun. And that's our plan for the week. And that was about as, I'm slightly exaggerating for effect, but that was about as complex as it got. It was just advertising and marketing was a thing, but not really. There was half of somebody in analytics who worked half a day and that was it. It was a very different time to the one I grew into.

6:23Natalie Berg: Yeah. Yeah. That's, it's really hard to imagine. I mean, just the word fax machine is It's just something we don't hear about anymore. So that's interesting. So then you spent 11 years there. And obviously, you know, Amazon, online shopping, all of that was sort of really starting to take off. So how did the business progress and how did kind of leadership styles change with the new CEOs? Well, so first of all, John Brown, he had come from Tesco.com. He had basically built that. and they had held him to his notice period because, of course, Tesco were, they're not so big now, but they were big into electricals at the time.

7:07So that actually gave John this fantastic opportunity to travel around the world and look at all the best electrical retailers. So Media Mart, Best Buy, which, of course, has its own story in the UK. But he just took so many ideas from there and really went heavy on the transformation of the business. And John often said that he wouldn't have been able to go as fast and as hard and as urgently and as pressuringly with the transformation if it hadn't been for the fact that there was a serious recession on a big downturn and then the arrival of Best Buy on our shores. so it was it was a massive period of change um john claire and the whole business that you probably didn't go into any of these shops but they were not built customer friendly they had a race basically what was called a racetrack around the building so you you could get across but basically you followed it almost ikea wise until you found what you needed to buy and the hope was that you would buy other shit on the way around but that wasn't very customer friendly.

8:33So John Browett was very much about store transformation. Any spare money that had been left post-free serve had been used for share buybacks and no store transformation whatsoever other than the Curry's digital fascia in the high street. But suddenly we had these straight sight lines, these adjacencies for different categories, just all making it so much more customer friendly. And if you do remember Dixon's and Curry's and PC World of the noughties, we had an awful customer service reputation. So there was an enormous effort into training employees to give good customer service. We got rid of commission, which wasn't particularly popular, but it meant that it wasn't a hard sell when you got in and you were sold the right stuff, not the most valuable to the employee stuff.

9:38But big changes delivered very quickly.

9:42Natalie Berg: Yeah. Wow. That's really interesting. And I'm just thinking about Curry's today and it's my favorite, hands down, my favorite retailer on Instagram because they just smash it. They just, the content they're pumping out, it just feels so relevant. And I just, it's interesting. I know this is kind of post Mark Webb days, but it is interesting to see how much that business has evolved over, you know, the past 15 years or so. Yes. And sorry, just on that point before you go on to the next question. It amazes me that, you know, John Burr was all about transformation. Sebastian James was all about transformation.

10:21And then the next guy who is now going on to Boots, where Seb went to, he's all about transformation. So it's been a constant evolution of a business.

10:32Natalie Berg: So let's talk about your time at Dixon's because you helped turn Seb James into the most followed FTSE 100 leader on X, which at the time was Twitter. and it's kind of hard to really remember what that time was like like seeing a business leader on social media was really unusual and Instagram probably wasn't really around we definitely didn't have TikTok this was pre-Elon Twitter it was a very different space and a different time so I'd love to know like what was the thinking behind getting him on Twitter and you know how did you convinced him to do it? I didn't. So actually, what Sebastian James wanted was the non-fresh paint version of his stores and the feedback from his employees.

11:18So before I started working with him on this, he had started Twitter to talk to his employees. So he got the unvarnished truths and their issues direct from them rather than via the manager and the area manager and the divisional manager etc etc so actually he had started it quietly and then people like Tim Danaher who was at the time a retail week editor discovered him and just found out it was fascinating watching these because you don't see that. You don't see an unvarnished chat between a FTSE 100 CEO and a ground floor employee. So it started tractioning before I got involved.

12:11Natalie Berg: Interesting. I did not know Tim Danaher was involved. It is interesting, isn't it? Because there's a great stat from the FT, which is that only a few years ago, about 15 % of, I think it was FTSE 100 CEOs were on LinkedIn and now it's 85%. So I know that's a separate platform and maybe a little bit, I don't know, better suited for business leaders, but it's just interesting, this huge shift we've seen from a comms perspective and transparency and authenticity and relatability, all of that's becoming so important for business leaders. Absolutely. So LinkedIn at the time was a bit of a fight between me wanting to put out results and new store openings, new partners, whatever, and HR wanting to do the kind of stuff that LinkedIn is used for.

13:02And Sebastian, to my recollection, was on it, but very rarely. So Twitter was such a powerful tool. I can't bear to erase my Twitter following, but I don't use it except to retweet the odd anti-Trump stuff, knowing I'm not going to the USA anytime soon. So I don't use it as I did. But at the time, it was a fabulous tool to talk to journalists. I was much closer to journalists on my little keyboard as opposed to when I'd been on the phone in dodgy Himmel Hempstead and making the old trip into London.

13:48Natalie Berg: Yeah. And a long way from the fax machine days. Yes. And I'm sure I'm sure John Clare still uses fax machines. um okay so mark you were at dixon's in this pretty high pressured corporate role when you were diagnosed with ms and i know you had experienced symptoms for a long time before the diagnosis so can you take us back to that period and you know what the experience was like for you and and how the journey has been so my first symptoms coincided with the opening of euro disney now Disneyland Paris, where I was working. And if you look at the picture there, I'm at the front holding Mickey's hand and behind me is Michael Jackson.

14:37My first job at Disneyland Paris was looking after A-list celebrities. So I looked after Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Gloria Estefan, Michael Jackson, the most bonkers three days of my life. Just, I had an amazing first introduction to the world of Disney and pink and four foot mice. But I also got pins and needles right down my left hand side for three days, which then went away. And I was in my mid twenties. So I ignored it and got on with life, chasing girls and chasing beer. and running after celebrities. I then started stumbling on my left foot every so often. I had bladder issues, which in France, luckily I was living in France, so I could visit every tree because every other Frenchman did that.

15:37But, you know, various accidents and whatever. But I still didn't put things together until my wife persuaded me to go to the doctors. And I went when I was about, I don't know, two years into my Dixon's journey. And even diagnosis takes a few months. You have an MRI scan. You have a lumbar puncture, which I wouldn't advise you taking. It's horrible. And yes, I was diagnosed with MS.

16:12Natalie Berg: And I'd love to know how it's changed your day-to-day life, because I know you're in a wheelchair. Is it full-time? Yes, I'm in a wheelchair. No, I'm not going to do it, but if I wanted to, I could get up and wave my catheter in front of you because I now wee out of my tummy to stop accidents. But I'm a full-time wheelchair user. I have chronic fatigue, so chronic means forever. So I start my day on three out of 10 battery and get worse so this half hour chat will exhaust me for the day um but such is life i can't work anymore apart from public speaking but i've had a brilliant brilliant life and um i read something about somebody saying about why me yesterday and i said to them why not me i i've just had a brilliant time and now I just roll around having a brilliant time.

17:15Natalie Berg: And I was going to say it doesn't seem like it's stopped you from advocating. I know you also play rugby. You've done indoor skydiving. How, you know, how is it, how has it sort of changed your outlook on life? Well, it's, it's, given my message advancing fairly quickly, it's, it's made me think very much, very short term about what next adventure I can do. How can I raise money? Where's my next public speaking gig? I've still got so much to do and I'm currently writing a book about my adventures and I've done my Michael Jackson chapter. That's bonkers. But I've just had a wonderful time, but I'm not stopping.

18:01I just do different things. Like you said, I played wheelchair rugby. I know I look 21, but I'm actually 57. And I retired from wheelchair rugby when I was 54. So because of my MS, I was playing contact sport up till the age of 54. And if I hadn't had MS, I wouldn't have been playing a contact sport. So, you know, I wish I wasn't disabled, but sod it.

18:31Natalie Berg: Yeah. And what's something that you wish more people understood about living with MS? As we take part in trials and more drugs get discovered, it's not all about wheelchairs. And most people with MS, it's invisible, just a walking stick or it's eyesight issues and whatever. So it's called the snowflake disease because not one of us out of the millions across the world have the same version. Okay, I didn't know that. Please, no, just please don't make assumptions about MS. You've seen one MS person, you've seen one MS person. It's not that you suddenly understand MS. I'm more of a disability advocate now than an MS advocate because disabled people represent 20 to 25 % of the population in the UK, depending on how you measure it exactly, which makes us the largest minority.

19:28So it's just so neglected, despite us being 20 to 25 % of the population, 2 % of advertising features disabled people, 2 % of TV programs and films involve disabled people, and 1 % of TV programs involve a lead character who's disabled. and we want to be seen and we want to be represented and we want an easy shopping experience.

20:01Natalie Berg: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's shocking. It's shocking statistics. And I think you're right about representation in the media. I have an autistic child and what you just said about if you've met one person with MS, you've met one person with MS, I copy replace with autism. It's very,

20:22Natalie Berg: individual and complex and also invisible in many ways. So I can relate to some of what you said as a parent of an autistic child. And I think you're right. I think representation is so important. I've been loving watching The Pit, which is like the new ER. I don't know if you've seen it. It's got a neurodivergent doctor, but it's not the typical neurodivergent representation. it's it's all the things where if you understand neurodiversity you get the the oversharing the the overwhelm uh they're all it's very subtle but i just love that just from a representation point of view i've been loving the uh the tv series because of this one character um it's also brian cranston's daughter from breaking bad so there's a random fact for you there you go as i was looking at the stats i saw that neurodivergency is that a word um yeah neurodiversity Neurodiversity is even less represented than, you know, disability and, you know, autism is a disability.

21:26Natalie Berg: Yeah, yeah. And I guess, I guess that kind of brings us to your career. And I know you were really vocal about how well you were treated at Dixon's. And it sounds like that's maybe not the norm for disabled employees. So can you tell us a little bit about that time and how you were accommodated? yes so so the the first you know major transition was just when I was diagnosed and that was a huge shock my wife remembers lots of tears I don't remember that but I do remember feeling very dumb and contacting my boss and saying I'd take a couple of weeks off just to acclimatize when I got back the team around me had actually researched into MS and understood at least some of the symptoms that I might be experiencing and the psychological impact of MS and that was just wonderful because I could just carry on I could start making my bad dad jokes about MS and disability and wetting myself and whatever else I wanted to joke about and I could just carry on with them at the time and in fact I was promoted to the head of comms for the whole group during my MS so that was just wonderful because I and I've done this was the topic topic of my TEDx talk was about people drifting away when you are diagnosed with any condition because people don't want to talk to you because they feel awkward they feel embarrassed they don't know what to say they're scared of saying the wrong thing they'd rather dance on the table with somebody who's non-disabled drink tequila etc so people drift away and genuinely they do and why in wider parts of the business that happened and there were people that as soon as the word got out that I never spoke to again well they never spoke to me again and that's not just going for disability that goes for cancer diagnosis divorce bereavement in my TEDx talk I talked about somebody who experienced child loss and I didn't I feel so guilty I didn't talk to them because I felt awkward and you know years later now I feel so awful about that but it's a thing so that would be my first lesson for anybody out there is we're still human we still want to laugh in a conversation and we're still the same person as we were but anyway MS is a progressive disease and by the time I got to I think walking stick stage my boss got me in a room and I was expecting either the guilty check as in there there Mark have a year's salary and sod off or being made something like chief photocopier as in you know put in a corner where the company didn't have to think about me anymore and actually what happened was they sat me down and said mark you're not going to be able to cope very nice terms but paraphrasing you're not going to be able to cope much longer with this high pressure job what can we do together to create a role for you that works for you and your condition but allows us to still have a real piece of work.

25:08And that was when Twitter was emerging as a real powerful tool. And we suggested the head of social media, the head of group social media, and I went to it. I had to go home in tears that day because I was so emotional about what they'd just done for me, which was just, it was just being human and normal. It wasn't spending money. It wasn't building a lift for me or anything expensive. It was just being creative together. And like I said, we made Seb the most followed CEO on Twitter. And I was responsible for that, for Dixon's Retail's Twitter feed and my own one.

25:56Natalie Berg: Yeah, in a way that suited your needs at that time. And I think the flexibility and compassion, all of that's just so important. It was absolutely wonderful. And I won't buy from John Lewis or from Amazon anything electrical. I will always buy from Curry's. And I still buy my warranties from Curry's. I still follow them. I'm like a free of charge ambassador for the company because of people who have left years ago because of how they treated me. it's uh it's just such a feel-good story so thank you for sharing that um i also wanted to get your thoughts on uh and then i will let you go mark i'm conscious of i don't want to tire you out and keep this too long so i i would love to get your thoughts on retail though because i know you you do feel passionately about how retailers can offer a more inclusive experience um there's the whole purple pound which is i think getting more press than it used to which is fabulous but disabled people in the UK have a combined spending power of 446 billion pounds per year.

27:03No, that was the old number. Is it the old number? Oh, correct me, please. 660. Well, anyway, look, I take that with a pinch of salt because I think that includes, so that number is any household involving, including a disabled person. So that would be your household and my household.

27:23Natalie Berg: Okay. So I take that number with a pinch of salt because not everybody who is disabled thinks of themselves as disabled. And not every person requires any accommodation, but it is still gazillions. And as we said earlier, we are not advertised to, we are not featured in TV programs. We are not featured in mainstream life because we're kind of forgotten about and we're now a burden on society, etc, etc. We're twice as likely, more than twice as likely to be unemployed as a disabled person. We have money. Look at my lovely house. I've got a lovely lantern above me there, which we built. I have spending power and I want to shop.

28:15I want to buy nice stuff. I want to have a good time. I spend more money on restaurants and theatre experiences than retail per se, but I still spend money. And when I go, I go to the VIB bit. And I'm not catered for. So I want shops to have staff trained to deal with customers. I want basic accessibility. So, oh gosh, what's the new WH Smith in the high street? ID Jones?

28:51Natalie Berg: Oh, TJ Jones. TJ Jones. There's plenty of TJ Jones. I know I can't even get into because of the thin aisles. It's just crazy that a large section of society is excluded from doing a pastime, which is not to be nice. It's to make money out of us. And I don't mind if you're cold and practical and just saying, oh, bloody hell, we need a wider aisle and we need people trained because we've got to deal with the bloody disabled people. Well, fine, but make money out of us because we're there to spend. So I do buy from Amazon my clothes because it's so hard work to get out to shop. But I just want a pleasant accessibility experience, but also people not looking the other way.

29:46Just coming over, not grabbing my wheelchair and pushing me around, but just saying anything I can do to help, sir.

29:53Natalie Berg: So do you think training is a big part of this? Yes, absolutely. And awareness. Like I said, you met one MS person, you met one neurodivergent person, and you won't understand everything about disability. But you do need to understand the general accessibility needs of the average disabled person. I'd love to know how you'd rate retailers progress on this compared to maybe just 10 years ago. So that's one thing I'd like to ask you, but I guess before you answer that, it feels, and maybe I'm looking at it from a neurodiversity perspective, which I appreciate is very different. Although there's probably some overlap there, but I think like if you look at Sephora, for example, they just started doing quiet hours because it's like sensory overload with, I mean, I, so I have ADHD.

30:41I probably should have said that earlier and I don't really

30:44Natalie Berg: need any accommodations, but I hear everything. That's for me, I can get overwhelmed with all, like I can hear, if I'm in a restaurant, I can hear things happening in the kitchen. I can hear other people's conversations and it's, and I come home and I'm just exhausted because I just take it all in. Like there's no filter. So I love that some of these stores are starting to do quiet hours. And I guess that's a fairly simplistic, but, but maybe really impactful thing. So I'd love to get your take on, I guess, retailers progress. And I'll make this a final question, to mark because I am conscious of your time and energy that we've used today.

31:17Natalie Berg: How would you rate Retail's Progress? And I guess if we were speaking to a retail CEO, what more can they be doing? I follow Curry's very closely. And since working with them, I've seen that they've got a whole community of disabled people working for them. And I'm sure that a lot of them existed before, but they've now been brought together and that's very important to employ disabled people preferably at the top and God knows about the board level disabled and neurodivergent percentages, it's appalling there are things being done there are a good few quiet hours I do see I can smell better training sometimes when I go out in shops I can just tell basically because they're nice but just i can tell when people have been trained and there are apps that that we can use to to pre-inform a store that we've we're on our way and what special requirements we have that's great i didn't know that yeah so welcome for example welcome dot me you can say yeah i've got a wheelchair sometimes i might need a emergency loo blah blah blah so So, yeah, and some stores are using that.

32:39I would give retailers four out of ten for better employment opportunities, two or three out of ten for actual action on the ground floor, and one out of ten for advertising.

32:56Natalie Berg: Wow, so a long way to go. Yes. Yeah, great. Well, listen, Mark, it's been so nice to speak to you. Thanks for being so open and sharing your MS journey. and I hope we'll get the chance to meet in person someday.

33:15Natalie Berg: Thank you for listening to Retail Disrupted. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast, please leave a rating or review or share it with others. It really makes a difference.