After graduating in law, Wayne Robbins turned his hand to research at recruiter Oryx Executive Search, before joining ecommerce and omnichannel specialist Iconography in 2003 and becoming a director soon after. Wayne looks after Iconography’s commercial side, developing new business and extolling the virtues of the agency’s OMNIS Retail software.
How might a child describe what you do?
Sitting around looking confused.
What’s the biggest long-term challenge you face?
Pivoting the business from ecommerce agency to a provider of online business systems for retail.
If you had 10 x your working budget, what would you spend it on?
International expansion.
What would be the title of your autobiography?
He came, he saw, he played conkers.
What does ‘work/life balance’ mean to you?
Increasingly getting to the gym a few times a week, delegation, and seeing the team grow and evolve.
Who’s been your most influential professional mentor?
A sales director in an executive search agency back in the late 1990s.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Exercise more.
What’s been your best day in business to date?
Filming a video for our OMNIS Retail software at Haskins Furniture.
What’s the biggest myth about our industry?
That people don’t buy furniture online.
What should everyone in our industry either stop or start doing?
I wouldn’t presume to advise on this. However, I do think the smartest retailers have started to really understand the difference between selling furniture online and selling furniture in-store.
Where do you see the industry going in the next 5-10 years?
Experiential retail, with immersive visualisation of design-led room concepts.
What question do you wish we’d asked? How would you have answered?
Q: Who are the 10 best-known furniture brands amongst the UK general public?
A: Are furniture brands really brands at all?
Pictured: Haskins Furniture MD Jade Farthing with Wayne in the retailer’s Somerset store
