[caption id="attachment_5198" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Niclas Winroth, CEO
Beyond Retail[/caption]

Founding the company Beyond Retail almost ten years ago in Stockholm we asked the question: what's beyond retail? I.e. what comes next? At the time the obvious answer was e-commerce.

For many years, we were the only management consultancy firm specializing in e-commerce in Sweden. The reason we started Beyond Retail was that the digital consultancy market was, very fragmented, offering little guidance to companies looking to expand their sales channels from classic retail to online. There were SEO-agencies, SEM-agencies and affiliate marketing companies, all looking to grab the biggest part of the clients budgets. However,  none took the integrated approach which nowadays is so commonplace. On the tech-side of things it was even worse with the major players being the classic IT consultants, with little digital knowledge, offering a complete lack of unbiased advice colored by their strong platform partnerships. At Beyond Retail we wanted to be a solution to these problems offering our clients independent and holistic strategic advice on how to grow the online sales channel. To help them navigate this new landscape. Ranging from advice on what technical platform to use to how to optimize the digital marketing mix.

“ Independent and holistic strategic advice on how to grow the online sales channel”

Some four years ago we added recruiting services to the company offering and developed our organizational advisory even further. The story behind this move was that we saw many companies struggling with how to build a successful digital team and how to attract digital talents. With our digital expertise and large network of digital talents we were well positioned to help. Our recruitment offering has, since then, seen tremendous growth and is now a substantial and important part of our business. Having both the Consultancy and Recruitment business under the same roof gives us an edge over our competitors. It is what makes us unique in the market. A market which has moved in the direction that we anticipated, ten years ago, to more integrated and holistic consultancy offerings. The unique combination of services springs from our mission to accelerate our clients digital growth by increasing their digital capabilities and competitiveness.

“To accelerate our clients digital growth by increasing their digital capabilities and competitiveness”

The word “their” is key here. This traces back to the core of our values being a completely client centric company, were we put our clients needs and results first. This is our heritage and why Beyond Retail was founded and the core principle that drives us. Unlike our consultant competitors we care about growing the clients digital capabilities and focus on growing their knowledge. We help them recruit digital talents so that they can stand on their own digital feet and not be completely dependent on the consultants to infinity. However, building strong digital teams takes time and our consultants can provide the needed skills in the interim as an in-sourced and integrated part of the organisation. So what's beyond retail today? It’s definitely not more retail, that's evident in the recent foreclosures of well-known large retail chains and stores. It is surely more e-commerce, but it's not the only answer. What's beyond retail?...maybe we can agree on commerce?