The consumer wants to pay less. That is mathematics, not strategy.
Jaume Miquel Naudí, Chairman & CEO, Tendam · recorded at the World Retail Congress, Berlin 2026.
Ask a retail chief executive what all their fragmented, unpredictable, endlessly-segmented consumers still have in common, and most will reach for a trend. Jaume Miquel Naudí reaches for arithmetic. “They want to pay less. That’s mathematics.” You can do whatever you want, he says, but the number bends one way.
Miquel is Chairman and CEO of Tendam, the Spanish fashion group whose loyalty clubs count more than 27 million members. That last figure is not a footnote. It is the whole thesis.
He frames the next few years as a film with all the spicy elements: fear, tension over pricing, the eruption of AI, and consumers seeking truth. But the discipline underneath the drama is where the value sits. Loyalty clubs are 75 per cent of Tendam’s business, so that is where the money goes. Not cost savings, which he will take but does not prize. Investment in what makes the business different: consumer behaviour, personalisation, pricing. On technology he refuses the single big bet, running instead a pyramid: infrastructure at the base, some 25 quick wins in the middle to keep the organisation excited, and the strategic projects on CRM, demand forecasting and margin optimisation whose payback comes later. “Momentum is important,” he says, and he means it as an operating principle, not a mood.
Then the human turn. Push everything to pure science, he warns, and you land in a world of one product, one car, one microchip. The job is to serve the dream as well as the infrastructure.
For any brand owner, the lesson is uncomfortable and clarifying. Know your one consumer, forget the rest, and earn the right to charge for the dream by first being true.
The Roth Read. If your customer wants to pay less and buy less, price is not your problem to solve, it is the condition you build inside. Decide today which one difference justifies your margin. If you cannot name it, your shopper already has: it is the price.
David Roth In Conversation is a series of conversations with the leaders shaping the future of retail, recorded at the World Retail Congress, Berlin 2026 in association with the World Retail Congress. A new conversation is published every Friday.