Xavier Cottet: “digitising commerce is an excuse for change”

• The Cottet family’s business involvement and their contribution to Barcelona’s commercial development since they opened their first shop in 1902 has earned them the “Albert Gonzàlez” Award at the latest Barcelona Commerce Awards. We analyse the challenges, advantages and disadvantages facing the retail trade against a backdrop of digitisation and e-commerce.

Digitising commerce as an excuse for a change of model. To provide solutions for consumer needs and take one step further, to differentiate. To see the current scenario, with its studies and debates on the impact of e-commerce on physical or offline businesses, as an opportunity. To face up to challenges like convincing Barcelona residents to value the shops on the city streets and to recognise that nothing is set in stone. That everything changes and you have to adapt. These are some thoughts on the present and future of the retail trade in Barcelona from Xavier Cottet, Managing Director of Cottet Òptics, Deputy Chair of the commercial association Barcelona Oberta and a member of the Executive Committee of Barcelona Shopping City, a branch of Turisme de Barcelona. 

There are shops, businesses and brands that have become a Barcelona institution in their own right. One is Òptica Cottet, a commercial flagship since 1902 in the very heart of the city with its emblematic thermometer on its Portal de l’Àngel façade. The jury for the latest Barcelona Commerce Awards agreed to award the Cottet family the “Albert Gonzàlez” Award for helping to promote and raise awareness of the city’s commerce.  

In Xavier Cottet’s view, proof of Barcelona’s commercial dynamism is its good commercial positioning around the world, reaching second position in the global ranking for shopping cities, its big attraction as a tourist destination and the value of revenues from tourism for the wealth and well-being of the city. Entrepreneurship is vital and, as an example, he highlights the success of Barcelona Activa as an incubator for entrepreneurs, a model that other cities in Spain have adopted. In his view, another success is public-private collaboration to get initiatives off the ground in the city.

Experts are currently studying the impact of e-commerce, which is experiencing high annual growth rates of above 20% in Spain. This has created the need for physical businesses to overcome their resistance to change through digital transformation, with some shifts in their internal processes and more training. Some short-term proposals include creating customer experiences (both at business locations and through digital channels), product customisation and creating an omnichannel relationship with customers to enhance their connection with the brand or business.

“They are two parallel but differentiated worlds that will converge at some point.” The advantage of the internet is that it is not an evolution but a disruption,” says Xavier Cottet, who likes to think of crises as opportunities. He gives an example of the difference between offline and online businesses: companies with many years’ experience have less information about their customers than companies set up in recent years and selling the same product. “We have to learn a lot from new entrepreneurs. With our commercial history, we can recognise that the new entrepreneur is an engineer, so what should we do now? Hire them. Evolve”, he says.

Digitising business

“It’s an excuse to change. Commerce must be like the industry we used to have in Barcelona. We have to think that we have the opportunity to go around the world and sell our products”, he insists. On the other hand, there is the threat to physical shops from online businesses. The latter can sell products at any hour of the day; they can be reached from anywhere on the internet; and they don’t have to meet the same structural costs paid by street shops.

Cottet thinks that e-commerce will transform some physical businesses, which could disappear, and it will also affect cities themselves. He explains how in the United States shopping centres on the outskirts of city are currently facing sudden closure “because they don’t provide anything” as he puts it. Part of the solution is to learn what is new, to have the right information and to know how to analyse it. Even more important is to think more than ever about customers’ needs and give them solutions, to offer something more.

Challenges facing commerce in Barcelona

Besides the steps for implementing commercial and marketing strategies, this Managing Director from Barcelona thinks there are other challenges in terms of digitisation: to convince Barcelona residents that “commerce is their best friend for protecting the quality of life enjoyed until now”. He supports this statement with well-known but still very significant facts: commerce turns streets into secure, well-lit, clean and lively spaces. “A street without shops is dead.”

The second challenge is “to understand that cities are alive and to think that trying to stop a neighbourhood from changing is impossible. Constant change is a reality”. What should retailers do? “Get used to change, whether changing the shop, the location, moving, closing a shop in one neighbourhood and opening it in another, and seeing all this as normal.”

Customisation and the value of professionals

Xavier Cottet is an optimistic guy. He prefers to see the glass half full. At his businesses Cottet Òptics and Àudio, with 48 shops mainly in Catalonia, the values he continues to promote are proximity and quality. Online he also has online shop. Whether online or in-person, he believes that product customisation is a successful formula. He concludes by saying that in his experience, the street shop will always have its place because there are lots of products that require professionals to assist customers during their purchase.