1-on-1 With IGA CEO John Ross

Originally published Winsight Grocery Business on April 27, 2018.

John Ross is CEO of IGA, the largest group of independent grocery retailers in the world. Prior to joining IGA last fall, Ross was president of Inmar Promotion Network a global software, data services, analytics and strategic consulting provider for retailers and manufacturers.

Meg Major: Congrats on leading IGA into the next era. Let’s get started by discussing the radically changing marketplace, which has certainly made food retailing more complex. What are your top priorities on this note as it relates to IGA members?

John Ross: We’ve been looking at our mission statement and the services we provide today versus envisioning what we should do for the future—which is generally what happens when you get a new boss. But it’s clear that we have to step up the range of services we provide, because as the retail business is changing and becoming more complex—and much more creative and interesting, by the way—we need to help our members evolve with new skills that all grocers need to have today, such as becoming better restaurateurs and better nutrition experts, and of course becoming more digitally savvy in e-commerce. On all fronts, I’m bullish, not just because I’m with IGA, or because I think independents are in a cool business. I’m bullish because the very nature of what we’re doing hits on all of the coolest parts of the future of the business.

MM: Please discuss how your background has prepared you for your role, and what appealed to you most about it?

JR: I started off in retail, and I’ve been an operator, a merchant and a marketer. I’ve also been in traditional e-commerce, private label and national brand launches, and worked on the service side for advertising agencies and marketing companies, and then with Inmar—a full-blown data and technology company. I’ve done so many different things in the retail ecosystem, and when we sold Inmar last May, Mark [Batenic, IGA’s president/CEO since 2006] and I started talking about his retirement. I started getting excited about IGA’s independents, because some of the data and the trends we’re seeing intersect directly with what I envision for the next generation of grocery—the nature of the store, the widening of its value proposition, the switching to experiential retailing—all of which is way more fun than commodity retailing.

MM: As an advocate of the role data analytics plays in marketing and retailing, as well as a champion of technology-empowered shoppers, what do you feel is most significant for independents in this domain?

JR: Anybody who’s a good operator is already a data and analytics person who runs their business by movement, shrink reports and gross margins. They’re already good numbers people. But what makes data and analytics new, fresh and cool isn’t that it’s some scary technology; what makes big data interesting is that the machine starts doing some of the work for you, and that’s not what indies have seen so far. Their take on data analytics has been more reports, albeit not prescriptive. No operator, big or small, has time to sit down and analyze a spreadsheet. They need to know what’s broken, and what are the top two things they can do to change it? So our next task is to inform them about how to convert that data—not into a report card, but a benchmark, with a set of recommendations that say: “If you want to move the metric up, try this.” And it’s not scary. And when done right, it becomes a new tool that doesn’t require sitting in your office looking at spreadsheets, but instead taking a set of recommendations and implementing them, and then watching to see if they made a movement in your margin of your sales.

MM: Switching gears, what advice would you give to your 20-year-old self?

JR: At 20, I was still in college, and was a commissioned salesperson working retail. I was also probably playing the piano on Bourbon Street at night to put myself through school. And that kid wanted a career in anything but retail. I did, in fact, quit my retail job and left to try something different. I ended up going back into merchandising and I’ve never left.
You said something very smart at the beginning our interview, Meg, about how we as industry do a generally terrible job with young people in retail by not courting them. Had I not gotten the opportunity to go back and work for an independent, and have one of the senior merchants take me under his wing and show me how cool retail really is, I would never have done what I did. So, my advice to my 20-year-old self would be, “You’re already in an exciting business. You’re in a business that will give you leadership opportunities early, and you’re in a business that will allow you to experiment, and test, and fail, and learn, and grow in a way that you couldn’t do in a big corporate company. Food retailing is a great place to be.” 

Lightning Round

What is your most prized possession?
Three-part answer: My father’s old Hamilton watch, my family (although I realize they’re not possessions) and my ’51 Corvette—black with silver coves and red interior—which is pretty cool, too.

How about your favorite leisure activity?
I like driving cars, fast.

What words or phrases do you most overuse?
My latest one is “bespoke.” “Retailers don't need a homogenous answer—they need a bespoke solution.” It sounds so haughty, but loosely defined means made to order.

Illustration by Olivier Balez