Reigning the realms of retail marketing in Europe is Horizon. Founded in 2009, Horizon is a retail design and brand communications agency, providing innovative retail marketing solutions to world–class brands and retailers.
Over the last 15 years, Horizon has grown to become one of the most influential retail marketing agencies in Europe. Although the agency is based in the United Kingdom, it has rapidly expanded its operations over Mainland European territories like the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy to better support Horizon’s clients with their pan–European projects.
Horizon supports global brands through the conceptualisation and implementation of their retail marketing campaigns. It has gained a renowned position in the consumer electronics and gaming industry thanks to its innovative Point–of–sale
This journey has led the agency to be recognised as the Innovators of the Year 2023 by The CEO Views. We interacted with Andrew Moss, CEO of Horizon to gain a better insight into how they are redefining the realms of retail marketing.
Embracing Trends and Opportunities
“There are two significant movements we are witnessing right now, especially in the retail B2C end of the marketing landscape and that ultimately affect to what brands and retailers expect from our service,” shares Andrew.
One trend as Andrew points out, refers to the customer journey logic, whilst the other refers to shopper behaviour and the products that they are demanding. Horizon’s purchase journey is now seamless and the touchpoints that customers have with brands come from online, offline and various channels simultaneously. In the communication of their value proposition, brands are from a multichannel approach in which digital. and physical channels had clear boundaries, to omnichannel campaigns that encourage the customer to experience the brand in both worlds sequentially and at the same time.
Horizon tries to bridge this gap with POS solutions through interactive screens, QR codes, social media, and streaming applications, etc. The key is to make the customer journey seamless while boosting the multisensorial benefits of the physical store rather than overlooking them.
When it comes to products and shopper behaviour, there’s a certain saturation in the consumer electronics industry. The pandemic accounted for the pinnacle of home entertainment and traditional consumer electronics. This led to profound product innovation and the advent of many new brands that now engross the competitor list for market leaders. This leads to a rapid growth of the wellness, fitness and wellbeing technology sub–markets, together with everything related to outdoors leisure cosmetics, spirits, outdoor sports, travel tech, content creation, etc.
Tools to Win at Point of Purchase
Horizon provides brands and retailers with the tools to win at the Point of Purchase. From Point of sale displays of different sizes and levels of complexity, to digital content, they aim to challenge convention and help brands stand–out by being different, original, and innovative.
“Unlike many of our competitors, our company is both a creative agency and a manufacturing business.” Andrew adds, “Our teams control the whole process, research, design, production, and implementation of the Point of sale. Controlling the full journey allows us to remove layers of cost and complexity, so that we can be most cost and time effective.”
Meeting Demands
Client budgets have changed. Timescales have become much shorter, and return on investment is demanded in the same financial year, not over a prolonged period as before. Horizon strives to make business streamlined and flexible, to pivot on demand. Bringing more processes in house allows the company to meet tighter timescales and budgets where others are simply unable to meet.
Commitment to provide Award–Winning Creativity
Right now, more than ever, project satisfaction revolves around costs and lead times. Brands have tighter budgets for their campaigns, and they demand quicker turnarounds from production order to store execution. For this reason, Horizon has invested millions of pounds in expanding the headcount of different strategic departments and acquired state–of–art software and machinery to reduce lead times on the production side without compromising the quality delivered.
They have been collaborating with Aston University and Innovate UK in a Knowledge Transfer Project since 2021, which foster proactive, real–life innovation, not just halo, and maximize operational efficiency.
Andrew further states, “Sustainability is also an important element of our mission. We must be responsible with our footprint, and we are making the right investments to minimise it. Most of the energy consumed in our production facilities is produced by our new solar panel array. We’ve invested in a software called Team Haven, which helps us do more work in stores, while reducing the mileage. We use the Sustain eco–design tool, a standard for our industry, to improve the overall sustainability of our P–O–P displays, reducing their carbon footprint and increasing their recycled content and recyclability.”
We are all here working as ‘One Team’ to help support one another to bring the best out of each other.
A Trusted Partner
Horizon always aims to create strong and transparent relationships with clients, based on mature conversations, market expertise, product advice and ultimately trust. B2B is all about problem solving and Horizon attributes its success to the commitment of staying with a project throughout, ensuring clear and comprehensive way out from potential project pitfalls.
“We are genuine partners and consider ourselves as stakeholders in clients‘ future success, and not just another vendor. Our clients perceive as a trusted part of their retail journey, which is reflected in our customer retention rate and lifetime value,” Andrew mentions.
Staying Ahead of Curve
In a highly fragmented industry where businesses face competition from all corners of the world, staying at the forefront demands for innovation. “Innovation drives us to evolve the way that we think. Making things simpler. cheaper. quicker. better. more sustainable,” says Andrew.
“Retail theatre is increasingly important, but innovation is embedded in to every creative process. Thinking that something has worked is no longer good enough, knowing that an activation worked is the only way in which future decisions should be made.”
Horizon’s revenue model is based on manufacturing. So, while the big creative competitors in London need to charge admin fees for the creative part of a project to make a decent margin, Horizon is more competitive. This puts the company ahead of the curve.
Fostering Internal Entrepreneurship and Endorsing Innovative Ideas
Happy staffs in turn lead to happy customers. Andrew believes that their success story is directly linked to the quality of their team, and it is their personal commitment, experience and dedication that helps them achieve client visions. He ensures to provide his team at Horizon the most relevant training and development required to nurture and expand their skills and experience within the business. Furthermore, the team works under one roof, which fosters a collaborative work approach at every stage of the project.
“We are all here working as ‘One Team‘ to help support one another to bring the best out of each other. By working diversly we enable our colleagues to work collaboratively, enabling them to grow their mindsets and push their creativity to the next level.”
Business Turnovers
“Lumpy trading patterns are our biggest bug bear,” shares Andrew. The three months leading up to black Friday and Christmas accounts for 60 percent of their turnover, directly followed by very quiet first quarter. Having the resource in place to manage this peak trading period yet remain sustainable during quieter periods has been a challenge. Sales forecasting has never been harder, with the only certainty being uncertainty. This makes it almost impossible to plan ahead with any level of accuracy.
“We continue to adapt to this new trading pattern, with a fixed resource that can breathe in and breath out whilst developing a sub contract base which is the proverbial tap which you can turn off and on.”
Envisioning the Future
Omni channel is the now and the future. That’s what Andrew believes. “Online retail trumps bricks and mortar for convenience, but not experience. Bricks and Mortar retail is definitely here to stay, but it will change.”
To break the wall between physical and online, providing improved shopping experiences through interaction and engagement is a must. Andrew also thinks that instoring POS in many instances will replace store staff as head counts continue to fall. Security solutions embedded In the POS solutions will also help counteract the enormous surge in instore theft. Also, he believes investments in retail POS executions are a lot easier to measure and have effect than investing in an increasingly noisy and diverse online.
A highly conscientious and visionary leader, Andrew advices the young entrepreneurs to identify what success looks like. “Don’t continually chase utopia, because your definition of utopia changes as the years and months progress. The human mind allows you to continually chase utopia and in turn success, when in fact you have already achieved it. Celebrate your success. That’s the key to your journey.”
