Shownotes
In this Omni Talk Retail interview, recorded live from World Retail Congress 2026 in Berlin, Chris Walton sits down with Romain Roulleau, Group Digital & Ecommerce Director at Kingfisher, to unpack how one of Europe’s largest home improvement retailers plans to grow ecommerce from 21% to 30% of total sales.
Romain explains why stores sit at the center of Kingfisher’s digital strategy, how marketplaces are transforming DIY retail, and why AI in home improvement requires a very different approach than categories like grocery or apparel. The conversation also dives into omnichannel fulfillment, click-and-collect innovation, retail media, and why project-based shopping changes everything for ecommerce and AI personalization.
Plus, why Kingfisher is prioritizing customer journey support over AI-powered checkout and what retailers still misunderstand about the future of agentic commerce.
Key Topics Covered:
• Kingfisher’s strategy to grow ecommerce to 30%
• Why stores are central to modern digital retail
• How click-and-collect is evolving in marketplace ecommerce
• Integrating third-party marketplace products into in-store shopping
• Why DIY retail is uniquely complex for AI and personalization
• The future of AI agents in home improvement retail
• How retail media differs between 1P and 3P marketplace sellers
• Why Kingfisher sees stores as a competitive advantage vs. pure-play ecommerce
• The operational challenges behind large-scale omnichannel retail
• Why AI-powered checkout may still be years away
Thank you to Vusion for supporting Omni Talk Retail’s live coverage from World Retail Congress 2026 in Berlin.
#WRC2026 #WorldRetailCongress #OmniTalkRetail #Kingfisher #Ecommerce #RetailMedia #AIinRetail #Marketplace #DIYRetail #Omnichannel #RetailInnovation
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcripts
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A:This is omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Chris Walton and I am coming to you live from the World Retail Congress in Berlin from the Fusion Podcast studio.
Speaker A:Now, joining me is a man that I interviewed earlier on stage today, and that is Roman Rolu.
Speaker A:Hope I said that closely.
Speaker B:Closely.
Speaker A:Close enough.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And he is the group digital and E Commerce director at Kingfisher.
Speaker A:Ramon, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker A:It's great to have you.
Speaker B:Great to be there.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker B:Yeah, man.
Speaker A:Tell us about.
Speaker A:Tell us about yourself, your background, and also about Kingfisher for those in the US that might not be as familiar with them.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I have 25 years experience in digital.
Speaker B:Started in my career in the B2B business, mail order business, and then moved to the travel business, which I spent half of my career and moved to retail only 10 years ago.
Speaker A:Only 10 years ago.
Speaker A:All right, let's.
Speaker A:So which.
Speaker B:Which is pretty.
Speaker B:Which is pretty funny because I have a half of my carry in the travel business and half of my carry in the retail business, which is pretty unusual.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:That's funny.
Speaker A:That reminds me of something that was set on stage, but that's true.
Speaker A:Inside baseball.
Speaker A:We'll talk about that afterwards.
Speaker B:You can talk about baseball if you want.
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm a big baseball fan.
Speaker B:Are you Red Sox nation?
Speaker A:Red Sox.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:You got a good team, too.
Speaker A:I like the Red Sox.
Speaker B:Good stuff.
Speaker B:Not.
Speaker A:Not this year, though, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:They just fired their manager.
Speaker B:Yeah, No, I know.
Speaker B:But now they.
Speaker B:Three in a roll.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Oh, right.
Speaker A:That's so funny.
Speaker A:Funny how that works.
Speaker A:All right, well, what brings you to wrc?
Speaker A:What brings you to the World Retail Congress?
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's my first time, to be.
Speaker B:To be honest.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Very impressed by the level of seniority, the level of quality of content, the quality of networking discussions.
Speaker B:We had a great session on AgentIQ earlier and I think I'm going to come back next year.
Speaker A:Yeah, awesome.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, it was a really good session.
Speaker A:I like.
Speaker A:What do you like about it particularly?
Speaker A:What do you think?
Speaker A:What were you happy that we brought away for the audience?
Speaker B:No, I think it was good because we had a different point of view between a.
Speaker B:A software partner, a tech view and a U.S. environment.
Speaker B:And obviously my view, which is more like you said, an operational one and basically leaving it as we speak.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:It's funny, you said on stage, too, that Kingfisher's E commerce now represents roughly 1/5.
Speaker B:Yeah, 21%.
Speaker A:21%, Right.
Speaker A:And the ambition is to actually grow that to 30%.
Speaker B:Yes, that's our target.
Speaker A:What's the single biggest unlock you think you need to make to get to that number?
Speaker B:So the single unlock is not really an unlock.
Speaker B:At least it's an acceleration is putting stores at the center of our digital strategy.
Speaker B:So we have clearly defined that the fact that if we want to go against pure players and play with the same skills and the same rules that they do, we're going to lose.
Speaker B:So we're going to use and maximize our assets.
Speaker B:Our assets are stores.
Speaker B:We already discussed about it.
Speaker B:But DIY is a complex project and a complex industry where you have a lot of interaction before you transact.
Speaker B:And we want to make sure that we maximize our stores, which means maximizing in terms of customer relationship, but also maximizing in terms of e Commerce Fulfillment.
Speaker B:90% Of our e commerce business is being fulfilled by stores today in all of our banners.
Speaker B:So we have BNQ, who is a leading DIY retail brand in the UK.
Speaker B:Screwfix is leading B2B retail brand in the UK.
Speaker B:Castorama and Brico, who are number two and number three in France.
Speaker B:Castorama, Poland was number one in Poland.
Speaker B:Brico Depot, which is a challenger in Spain and Portugal.
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm always amazed at how you all, particularly on the digital side, manage all of that complexity and all the different things that have to go into it.
Speaker A:It's unreal to me that you can, as one human being, process that much that you have to have under your.
Speaker B:So first of all, let's make sure I'm not alone.
Speaker A:I have a team.
Speaker B:First of all, we have great digital banners teams for all of our banners.
Speaker B:Bnq, ca, Autorama, Screwfix, RICO Depot.
Speaker B:Massive, massive skills.
Speaker B:We have developed our internal skills for the past 10 years, massively, because we do believe that obviously we rely on vendors, but we need to make sure that we have the right level of expertise because it is a strategic pillar on the overall kingfisher strategy.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:So the key point going back to the question though is, which is really great to hear that you think the stores are actually the center to unlocking the growth in digital, taking it from 20 to 30%, which is your goal.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker A:And you think of that really in two ways that I took from you.
Speaker A:So one, fulfillment side, the true omnichannel nature.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:If you take the marketplace, we were the first one in the UK to launch, click and collect and return available on a marketplace business.
Speaker B:If you take continental Europe, which is more advanced than the UK in terms of marketplace business, roughly none of the large omnichannel marketplace operators do provide a service where you can click and collect in the store.
Speaker B:It's pretty new.
Speaker B:So some of them have a marketplace for 10 years and they have not launched the click and collect service.
Speaker B:We launched it six months ago at BNQ.
Speaker B:And return.
Speaker B:We launched it 18 months ago.
Speaker B:So basically we allow our consumers to return in a store a product that they have bought online through a third party vendor.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And then the other piece of it too was around, you know, it sounds like deepening the relationship with the customer because you understand the customer in the store, you have that much more data around them and you can enrich their experience too, in the store, day to day.
Speaker A:How are you thinking about that?
Speaker B:So what we start to do is to make sure that first of all, for the store associate, the marketplace is not like an alternate channel.
Speaker B:It's part of its strategy.
Speaker B:Which means that, for example, you go in a B and Q store or Castorama store and you want to do a kitchen project and basically you're going to select all the components of your kitchen project.
Speaker B:Sometimes within the project there is an element where basically our 1P offer does not suit the customer.
Speaker B:Color, size, style, whatever, or stock.
Speaker B:The reflex of the associate is to provide an access to the hundreds and thousands of opportunities that we have on our marketplace and propose this to the, to the customer in order to complete the project.
Speaker B:Instead of saying, sorry, I don't have this tab on my portfolio, you need to go somewhere else.
Speaker B:No, we have some third party vendors.
Speaker B:Let's see if it fits.
Speaker B:Oh, it fits.
Speaker B:Then we integrate it within the same basket.
Speaker B:So we are currently seeing how we can integrate 3P within a 1P basket.
Speaker A:In a store, which is a really important point that I don't think many people in the US understand.
Speaker A:I want to make sure that I heighten it up is that you said basically the marketplace allows you to be in stock in a store potentially, or in an online transaction when you're not necessarily in stock as the first party provider of that item.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So when you have a large 3P opportunity.
Speaker B:At BNQ, we have 3.5 million Skusarama.
Speaker B:In France, we have close to 1.5 million.
Speaker B:If you take a.
Speaker B:Our 1P offer, which is our own brands, plus the national brands, we basically have between 40 and 70,000 SKUs.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's about what I said.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So which means that when you, when you do select a product, sometimes you have some.
Speaker B:Obviously we are very keen on making sure that our Stock is very reliable.
Speaker B:But sometimes you're out of stock on the same SKU or at least on the same service and value.
Speaker B:Sometimes a vendor does provide the stock and is available in 24, 48 hours delivery.
Speaker B:Let's make sure that we use this in order to maximize and to satisfy.
Speaker A:The customer or pick up in store.
Speaker A:Exactly right.
Speaker A:That's the whole thing here.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Wow, that's really cool.
Speaker A:All right, so you mentioned.
Speaker A:Let's keep talking about marketplaces because marketplace.
Speaker A:The other thing is the retail media side of that.
Speaker A:How do you think about the relationship between marketplaces and retail media particularly?
Speaker B:So our target is to have 3% of our retail media should represent 3% of our total e commerce GMV.
Speaker B:That's our target, which is pretty significant.
Speaker B:If you take the split between 1p and 3p.
Speaker B:3P vendors are more educated, more advanced than 1p vendors.
Speaker B:Why?
Speaker B:For one reason, because they're already using Amazon.
Speaker B:And when you go on Amazon ads, they know the platform is working.
Speaker B:They know if they put some marketing budget, what kind of impact is going to be generating in terms of sales.
Speaker B:Which means that they know that they can calculate and they are basically autonomy.
Speaker B:They have full autonomy on their service.
Speaker B:Differently with large brands that operate and we buy from them, sometimes they are not fully educated in order to use the platform on their own.
Speaker B:So we do need to provide a managed service.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And it takes time and obviously there is a learning curve on their side.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:All right, so I can let you go.
Speaker A:I mean, we just got off stage talking about it, so I got to share with the audience back home some of what we talked about.
Speaker A:So AI, right.
Speaker A:Home improvement, high consideration category, high complexity category.
Speaker A:How different is the AI personalization challenge in DIY versus like grocery apparel?
Speaker B:Let's say yes, if you take.
Speaker B:I'm going to take an example.
Speaker B:If you take all the example that went out at the NRF in January where basically, if you take all the examples of ucp, acp, they always give a very simple transaction model.
Speaker B:Basically you ask your agent in order to put one item in the basket and do the checkout.
Speaker B:For me.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's very good.
Speaker B:In diy, it doesn't work that way.
Speaker B:You very rarely go into a home improvement store just for one product.
Speaker B:Most of the time you go for a project or a complex combination of products, accessories and stuff.
Speaker B:Doing this through agent today doesn't work.
Speaker B:Which means that the agent that we provide either externally through those platforms or within our own platform with our own agents.
Speaker B:We launched Elocasto and lo bnq providing that and making sure that it does provide a full customer journey service and a support to the consumer.
Speaker B:That's extremely critical in diy, and that's where we're investing our money on.
Speaker A:Right, Right.
Speaker A:Great point.
Speaker A:And so to that point, to end on this, I'm curious, and I didn't get to ask you this on stage.
Speaker A:Where do you think AI is overhyped?
Speaker A:Are you, like, deliberately saying, hey, that's cool, but we're going to do that later?
Speaker A:We're going to get to that later.
Speaker A:We're not going to look at that yet from the chair atop which you sit.
Speaker B:So let's say overhype, not too much, but I would say not.
Speaker B:What is the priority is a checkout.
Speaker B:It's a checkout checkout.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Because we do believe that the level and the volume of consumers in Europe that are ready to rely fully, rely 100% on an agent in order to do everything, including the checkout.
Speaker B:I don't think it's for today, might be for tomorrow, but I think we have some other priorities to tackle with, which is today's priorities and today's focus.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker A:So kind of keeping your eye on it, keeping tabs on it, but not a focus.
Speaker A:And so by that.
Speaker A:So making sure so not the truly, the true ability to agentically check out, to integrate checkout is not something you guys are keenly focused on right now.
Speaker A:And it sounds like that's the prevailing sentiment here, because somebody else said that to us on stage as well, and it seems like that's what we're seeing in the US Too, because there's a lot of things that have to be ironed out before.
Speaker A:Before we can get to that point.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:That's good to hear you say that, man.
Speaker A:You are.
Speaker A:You are super knowledgeable, Dude.
Speaker A:Like, I love this car.
Speaker A:This was great, man.
Speaker A:God, I can learn so much.
Speaker B:For me, I love this dude expression.
Speaker B:You know what he.
Speaker B:You know what?
Speaker B:You know what he reminds me of?
Speaker A:What?
Speaker B:The Big Lebowski.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:Well, you're my Big Lebowski today, my friend.
Speaker B:You're my Big Lebowski.
Speaker A:All right, well, so thank you so much.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:It's such a great pleasure getting to meet you finally.
Speaker A:We've talked about doing this for a while.
Speaker A:We were able to make it work.
Speaker A:Hopefully we can do it again sometime.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And on behalf of all of us at omnitalk, and thanks to Vuzion for sponsoring our coverage here at the World Retail Congress.
Speaker A:But on behalf of all of us at Omnitalk, be careful out there.