Ron Thurston is the bestselling author of Retail Pride, an indispensable guide to accelerate a career in retail and beyond. Thurston brings more than 25 years of leadership experience working for some of America’s most prominent fashion brands. He most recently was Vice President of Stores at Intermix and currently sits on the board of directors for Goodwill NY/NJ. In 2021, he was named one of the Top 100 most influential people in retail.

In celebration of Pride Month, Thurston provides insight on navigating a career in retail, defining what retail pride truly means and pursuing his exciting new business venture, TAKE PRIDE TODAY™.

As the bestselling author of the book, Retail Pride, what pivotal moments in your education, career, or personal life inspired you to share your story?

There was a moment in mid-2017 where the conversation about “the death of brick-and-mortar retail” was headline news around the world. The new “direct to consumer” brand growth was exploding, Amazon was rapidly expanding its reach, and the decline of the department store and mall business was attention-grabbing. The conversations in every part of the industry began to shift from choosing retail as a very successful career to fear that the entire industry was on the verge of collapse.

As someone who has always had great pride in working in retail and spent the last 25-plus years leading the retail teams for some of the country’s most iconic specialty brands, I wanted to change the conversation from “Oh, I just work in retail” or “I fell into this completely by accident” to one of intention, commitment, and pride.

Everyone in the world is impacted by retail—every day. When I think about this industry’s size, scale, and positive influence, it gives me great joy and inspired me to write my book because I know millions of people love working in retail, and they should be celebrated.

How would you define Retail Pride?

I would define it as the fact that there has never been a more critical and influential time to work in retail, love what you do, and be better at it than you ever have before. The pride in our industry requires all retailers and their teams to look through a wider lens and develop more innovative e-commerce and in-store experiences that will continue to redefine what success will look like in the future.

Retail pride also comes through because customers are overwhelmed by the number of online choices and crave the personal attention and curated selection that only a brick-and-mortar store can provide. This is our opportunity to shine! Now is the time to be our best and highlight our industry’s vital role in the global economy.

Digital experiences will never replace your relationship with the person at your local store who knows you best. And nothing is more personalized than your communication with an exceptional, curious, empathetic, and focused sales associate, who educates, comforts, and encourages you.

What initiatives do you find to be the most important for brands to create a culture of pride and belonging?

Before we can talk about creating culture, we have to discuss belonging and its impact on our career experience. Culture will never grow if we feel like we don’t belong on the team.

Belonging is a shared experience, and people in the retail workforce are often linked together by nothing more substantial than the fact that they all work at the same place or in the same store. As a leader, you have the power to change that because belonging begins with generating a deep sense of shared mission and purpose. You and your team members should always know that you share the same values and work toward the same goals. That begins with how we choose to serve our customers by first being in service to each other.

These are some of my favorite questions to ask each other as you embark on the journey:

What would it look like if we were to do our very best every day?

What would we like to be known for? This is one of my favorites for any individual conversation or team.

What accomplishments would we be most proud of?

What will it take for us to get there? What do we need?

What’s the most important way you, as a team member, can help us get there?

How can individuals and teams contribute to a more inclusive and diverse workplace?

The best leaders understand that the single most precious resource for any growing organization, regardless of size and industry, is talented people supported by a unique, inclusive, and engaging company culture.

A better question might be a self-reflection of “What impact can I have on the culture here?” In a small company, individual employees from the president to sales associates have a more significant proportional impact on a company’s overall culture. In a company of 10 employees, a single worker makes up 10 percent of the workforce. In larger organizations, you can still exert a significant positive influence; you just have to know where to start!

Culture is the personality of a store or company. It’s fluid and changes with every new employee, and everyone has the ability and, I believe, the responsibility to contribute to it.

As a fashion professional with decades of experience, what advice would you give to people pursuing a career in the industry today post-pandemic?

Have a great story to tell! Everyone has a storyteller inside them, and everyone has a story to tell. You just may not know it yet. The difference between people who seem interesting and those who don’t is their ability to turn their experiences into compelling narratives.

Of course, some people are more naturally gifted in this area than others, but anyone can learn the craft of storytelling because like so many other skills, it’s a series of behaviors and principles. In a results-focused retail environment, storytelling with data is a subtle art that can lend credibility and impact to any argument. Nothing summarizes an issue like an inarguable series of numbers, although that is not usually the most exciting part of the story!

In retail, we traditionally track our results daily (even hourly!), week by week, month by month. We plot them against our goals and then seek to understand both the results and the behaviors we achieved. While metrics are essential, the journey of how they are achieved is equally important.

As you practice the craft of storytelling, ask, “What were the results I delivered, and how did I achieve them?” This simple question can be your mantra for the rest of your career.

Can you share more about your new business venture – launching your own brand?

Yes! I am launching my own brand of retail culture consulting, speaking, education, and books under my umbrella of TAKE PRIDE TODAY™. I believe we all can show up and take pride today in one memorable act, one great conversation, one thing that you might have not even noticed.

We can all TAKE PRIDE TODAY™ in the fact that retail careers, and the millions of people who have them around the world are alive and well!

To learn more about Retail Pride and TAKE PRIDE TODAY™, explore Ron Thurston’s social media accounts @retailpride and https://www.retailpride.com.