The future of experiential luxury: A conversation with Marty Wikstrom
The luxury industry is undergoing a recalibration. As traditional department store models face unprecedented stress, the winning formula now relies on radical reinvention, meaningful experiences, and uncompromising supply chain integrity.
In this episode of Business Casual, McKinsey Senior Partner Anita Balchandani sits down with seasoned luxury executive Marty Wikstrom. With a formidable career spanning top leadership roles at Richemont, Harrods, Nordstrom, and now Fortnum & Mason, Marty brings over 35 years of expertise in shaping global retail.
Together, they explore the shift toward experiential shopping, how to navigate the emerging "anti-logo" era, the potential for AI to revolutionise personal curation, and the leadership lessons learned from embracing life's unexpected zigzags.
Experiential retail
Anita Balchandani: Marty, we know the luxury industry is going through an immense recalibration. Nowhere in the value chain do you see more stress than in the department store and distribution end. How are you seeing the big shifts play out, and what is your take on the channel shift here?
Marty Wikstrom: I think there’s going to be a real reinvention. Department stores overall have had too many branches, and they need to bring those way down and make each one more special. Their curation needs to be better. You don’t want to go to a store, make your way there, and not be able to find sizes or the product that you want—that’s very disappointing.
But there are things we can do in our stores that are just fun. People today are looking for experiential ideas: hospitality, food offerings, and other elements that increase dwell time and make the experience more fun. I think it’s our job to figure out what that is. We’re in a process of reinvention, and the winners will figure out things that play into the imagination of our customers.
Moving past over-consumption
Anita Balchandani: We talked the other day about how we’re at "peak stuff," you could argue. Everybody has enough of pretty much everything, and it’s all very easy to access. So experiences matter, and that which is special really matters. How do you think about creating that special magic that keeps bringing people back?
Marty Wikstrom: Certainly, it all starts with product, leadership, and people. If you’ve got those, I can engineer almost anything—but I can’t engineer into a bad product. Your product has to be unique in the way you build it and think about it.
There’s a trend in the industry right now, especially for many young people, toward an "anti-logo" era. A lot of these kids are looking for niche and unique brands. That’s why you have to keep creating and thinking about collaborations. Bringing in ideas that don’t rip out the underpinning of your brand, but add something extra for customers looking for something unique, is key.
Supply chain integrity
Anita Balchandani: You are also very passionate when it comes to product provenance and origin. Over your career, you’ve seen a lot more scrutiny go into that. How do you think about provenance, and how do you navigate it?
Marty Wikstrom: It’s really complicated when you have to put entire teams of people in to audit manufacturing and how things are done. You look at what’s happened in Italy recently with labor issues—we can’t have that kind of stuff. Everything is traceable today.
Take my brand, Johnstons of Elgin. It’s a B Corp and a double Royal Warrant holder, and we can trace products all the way back to the farmer or goat herder. We may not know the individual goat, but we can trace it all the way back into our factory. We even open our factories up for people to come and take a look.
Anita Balchandani: And do consumers actually do that? Are they really interested?
Marty Wikstrom: Yes, they love it! It’s an incredibly interesting experience to see raw materials transformed into yarn, and then into the final product through a blend of new technology and traditional machinery. We see a lot of people visiting—even executives and manufacturers who want to see what’s going on and feel confident in what we’re doing.
Tech-driven efficiency
Anita Balchandani: The craft of luxury is clearly vital. How does this coexist with technology, AI, and all the other shifts we’re seeing?
Marty Wikstrom: Maybe with AI, we can shorten the design process. That would be great if we could make that more efficient with our teams—it saves everyone time. There are inefficiencies in the way we do things, and wherever you have bottlenecks or trouble, that’s a place to deploy AI.
Anita Balchandani: Luxury is also about human experiences around clienteling and personal shopping. How could AI and tech help transform that area?
Marty Wikstrom: I would really love it if someone curated for me. Spotify curates my music, they know what I listen to. Yet, I get so many irrelevant marketing emails from brands I’ve shopped with for a long time. They have my purchase history, yet they don't leverage it.
Build a "Spotify for dressing or wardrobing" – I’d love it! It would save me a lot of time so I’m not scrolling in my slippers at 11 o’clock at night.
Lessons in leadership
Anita Balchandani: If you were starting a career in luxury today, or advising someone looking to do so, what would your advice be?
Marty Wikstrom: "Get up, dress up, show up."
It’s never a straight line. If you get a shot at a job, grab it. You’ll learn something—not only what you want to do, but also what you don’t want to do. The zigzags along the way make life fun and unexpected. I didn’t think a girl coming out of the ski industry who took a part-time job at Nordstrom would stay for 20 years, move to London, and work for Richemont.
So just take fear, knock it off, and go for it.
