Retail Conference ’25: Navigating a crisis to ensure future resilience

Learn practical skills for handling crises – from cyber-attacks to supply failures

What do you do when the worst happens?

In retail, there’s an ever-intensifying set of risks that might send management teams to crisis stations.

In a volatile geopolitical landscape, critical supply chain failures can – and do – emerge overnight – leading to potential contract risks on top of the operational disruption.

Increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks, like those we saw hit brands like M&S, the Co-Op and Harrods earlier this year, have shown their potential to bring even the most complex retail operations to a shuddering halt – not only clearing shelves but raising serious data privacy risks.

Meanwhile, a rising wave of assaults against store staff is making colleague security and even more pressing concern, and the new ‘failure to prevent fraud’  offence in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act  has increased the risk of large retailers being held liable for fraud committed by their employees – to name just a handful of the many factors that might keep a C-suite up at night.

In our experience, when we get a call to support with a crisis situation, it’s usually only after an issue has hit.

But the very strongest brands view even the threat of a crisis as an opportunity to grow – proactively planning around the many challenges that lurk in the modern retail landscape, and implementing sound policies, procedures and protection so that they’re already prepared when an issue arises.  

It’s with this in mind that we’ll be co-leading a practical workshop on how to reframe crisis management as an opportunity for transformation at FRP’s upcoming Retail Conference in Central London on the 1^st of October.

Together with Joanna Grant, Managing Partner of Fenchurch Law; Sarah Milner, Technical Director at MacTavish and Paul Stiff, former Global Head of Insurance at Ocado Group, we’ll be sharing real-life crisis learnings, discussing who to call when issues arise, and highlighting the key elements of any good proactive crisis management tool-kit – from  internal protocols and policy, to insurance and even communications responses.

The cost of a crisis isn’t just in pounds and pence – it’s in reputation too. In the ever-more competitive retail environment, brands simply can’t afford to be on the back foot. Join us as we explore what will help build real retail resilience.