CASTORAMA
Innovation
&
Sharing Economy
2014 saw Castorama get a new CEO and the will to change the strategy of the business to make it relevant and focus more on the ecosystem and not just the products and stores.
The notion that people want a hole in the wall and not necessary a drill was making the focus shift to services, experiences and ecosystems and away from purely SKUs and store aisles.
I was the first person on board to start expanding on this and the starting point was understanding concepts like the sharing economy, maker movement etc. and figure out how to imbibe them into the strategy of Castorama
Ouishare etc...
One of the first key steps Castorama took was to associate with Ouishare, an international network defined by five values: collaboration, openness, care, do-cracy and permanent beta. I was responsible for managing the relationship with this think tank, and also co-organising the participation of Castorama in the Ouishare Fest, where the company publicly announced a roadmap of future services like installation, building a community, starting open-source education resources etc.
I was responsible for networking with SMEs in the fields, keeping a constant finger on the pulse on what was happening in the industry, with competitors and keeping the C-suite appraised of how it was all relevant for Castorama.
With my team, which I helped put together, I also scouted start-ups we could partner/collaborate with.
Castorama continued to return to the Ouishare fest for the 3 following years, and we also participated in other initiatives around collaboration like Open Cities, The Future of Mobility etc.
I organised Castorama’s participation in and sponsorship of POC21 – an innovation camp that hosted 100 makers, designers and innovators to develop a Proof of Concept of a truly sustainable society
I also liaised with our head offices in the UK and made sure to share best practices with other business units.
Wikiforhome
One of Castorama’s first projects geared towards building and federating a community around DIY and home improvement was setting up a Wikipedia like crowd-sourced encyclopaedia.
I led this project all the way, right from the initial scoping of the strategy, building the business and the investment case, inputting on the structure of the website, co-ordinating the content creation all the way to launching the comms around the project and also finding and recruiting the initial content creators.
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I did roadshows in Castorama stores, and also organised internal DIY workshops to spread the word and recruit enthusiasts from among the store personnel, who could not only contribute to the content but also act as community managers and also spread the word about the site amongst customers
During the course of this project, I brought together a very cross-functional team including developers, content managers, store staff as well as external experts.
I also championed for Wikiforhome to be built based on open-source platforms and for all the content to be non-proprietary and be on the creative commons licence. This actually was pivotal to external partners agreeing to create content for us.
Culture Shift
I was amongst the youngest employees in the Castorama HQ, and the only non-French person too. My education and interests put me apart as well and consequently I was tasked by our CEO as part of my role to champion and try and infuse a change of mindset and strengthen the sense of customer centricity amongst the employees as well.
To bring this to life, I worked on organising several events and workshops in the office where employees could do DIY themselves and understand what the customer base goes through when doing the same. I organised digital workshops, where we showed people how to edit wiki pages, and become content creators themselves, how to use different social networks and other digital tools, we also organised a 3D printing and CNC milling exhibition to educate colleagues about the maker movement and digital manufacturing.
I also worked on strengthening the connections between Castorama and the other business units in other countries, particularly the UK and ensured we were knowledge sharing at regular intervals