Getting clear on why it exists and where it wins
The Reject Shop · Strategy Design, Facilitation · Retail
Helping one of Australia's best known discount retailers get clear on why it exists and where it wins.
The challenge
The Reject Shop has helped Australians save money for decades, but its market was shifting fast. Cost of living pressure was changing how people shopped, competitors were moving in, and years of strategy tweaks under different leaders had left the price and product offer harder for customers to read. The leadership team wanted to step back, agree on what The Reject Shop stands for, and build a strategy that would win back customers and lift performance.
What we did
We helped shape a strategy paper that gave the leadership team a shared, honest view of the business: how performance, strategy and customers had changed over time, and where the market was heading. We then designed and facilitated a strategic planning workshop with the leadership team. Using a “ways to win” framework, the team assessed where The Reject Shop was winning and losing against competitors across value, product, place, communication, systems, logistics and suppliers. From there, the team tested and refined its purpose and vision, explored strategic pillars and outcomes drawing on leading value retailers here and overseas, and worked through a clearer role for each part of the range, from everyday essentials to seasonal events and special buys.
The impact
The leadership team left aligned on a clear purpose, helping Australians save money every day, and a vision to be the country's biggest and most trusted discount variety store. They had a sharper view of where to compete and where to stop, and a Strategy on a Page framework to carry the work into action.
Deliverables
Strategy paper and current state analysis
Competitive “ways to win” assessment
Leadership strategy workshop design and facilitation
Purpose and vision
Strategic pillars and outcomes
Product and value positioning
Strategy on a Page framework
Case studies
- Monash University: Building resilient communities, and proving it
- Libraries ACT: A new chapter for Canberra's libraries, written with the community
- Bayside City Council: Shifting a whole organisation from outputs to impact
- Cancer Council South Australia: A clear strategy to carry a century of impact forward
- Afford Disability: Three years turning strategy into reality, with people with disability at the centre
- Fire to Flourish: Turning complex ideas into a story people can see
- NDIS providers: Finding where the NDIS opportunity really sits
- Bush Heritage Australia: A clearer digital story for some of the country’s most important landscapes
- Interact Australia: Proving the difference, in a way everyone can answer
- beyondblue: Rethinking workplace wellbeing, one leader's story at a time
- Indigenous Business Australia: An impact framework that helped secure $150 million for self-determination
- City of Greater Dandenong: A people-centred strategy, co-designed by the people who deliver it
- Snap Send Solve: One shared purpose, three pillars and a roadmap to take a homegrown app from local favourite to global platform.
- Cathy Freeman Foundation: A sharper story and a stronger funding base to close the education gap
- Philanthropy Australia: Turning a strategy about engagement into the way a team works
- Collaboration for Impact: Telling the story of systems change
- Orygen: A national youth mental health brand, launched on deadline
- MONA: A ticketing platform built for the arts, not the ferry
- Alannah & Madeline Foundation: Eight websites, one connected story
- The Reject Shop: Getting clear on why it exists and where it wins
- PrimeSafe Victoria: A board and executive, realigned around a clear strategy