Sri Lanka Retail Forum 2018, challenging the status-quo

The retail industry’s premier knowledge event, Sri Lanka Retail Forum, is to be held 17 and 18 October at Cinnamon Grand Colombo. With the theme of ‘Towards a Dynamic & Evolving Retail Sector’, the Retail Forum brings an important opportunity to identify new trends and map out new strategies, as well as for collaboration and networking within the retail industry.

The Sri Lanka Retailers’ Association is organising this premier retail forum for the second consecutive year, and this year it will feature four thematic sessions, with 18 resource persons, nine of which are foreign experts who are presently in the regional retail conference circuit and seasoned in the global retail ecosystem. This provides the forum a balanced perspective, with insights on international retail trends to Sri Lankan retailers.

The forum features a session on ‘New Models Challenging Status-Quo: Brands-Culture-Sustainability’ which is the third session subsequent to two other sessions focused on consumer trends and customer engagement, and digitisation strategies for the Sri Lankan Retail Industry. The third session builds from its prior sessions to relook at current practices, and identify changes that need to be driven accordingly. Working in line with the status-quo may leave room for complacency, as such, this session seeks to create a paradigm shift, and outline sustainable winning models. It will also discuss the need to build a competitive advantage through people and brands and what this will entail for the future retail workplace.

The experts who will present during this session are Ashish Mishra, Managing Director of Interbrand India, and Simon Wintels, Mckinsey & Company Partner, Singapore. Interbrand and Mckinsey & Company are both leading global brand and management consultancy firms, who have worked closely with businesses in shaping their retail journey, and their experience will provide an insightful outlook for the Forum. Joining them in a panel discussion will be Sharika Senanayake, Director of Environmental Sustainability, MAS Holdings, and Nisthar Cassim, Editor-in-Chief, DailyFT as the moderator. 

Other sessions at the forum will focus on areas such as reshaping customer engagement, digitisation strategies, and an overall view of where retail in the region is heading. This wide range of discussion brought by the Retail Forum are timely to the current issues faced by Sri Lanka’s retailers. If you wish to be a part of this exclusive forum, do not delay to contact Niroshini Sivagananathan via +94115588852 or [email protected].