Retail Labor Optimization: Insights from NYC Road Show 2025

At the Arlo Midtown Hotel in New York City, senior retail leaders gathered for a focused conversation about one of the most pressing challenges in specialty retail; making labor a driver of growth, not just a line item on the budget.

The StoreForce NYC Road Show 2025 wasn’t a product demo or a general industry update. It was a working session for operators, finance leads, and retail executives who know that driving profitability starts with smarter workforce planning.

Hosted by Sean Bonnell, Client Success Manager at StoreForce, the event featured firsthand experiences from Aesop and Kipling, as they are actively transforming their retail operations.

Here are the key insights from the event.

How Aesop Increased Conversion Without Increasing Payroll

Aesop’s story stood out because it addressed a challenge most specialty retailers face; growing sales without growing costs. In an environment where payroll is often the largest controllable expense, many brands hit a ceiling on revenue because they rely on outdated labor models. Aesop broke that pattern.

Here’s what they changed:

– Shifted from bottom-up planning to strategic, top-down labor models. Instead of having individual stores estimate their needs in isolation, Aesop created unified plans that tied labor allocation directly to sales behaviors, traffic patterns, and growth targets.

– Set a target of 90% peak coverage. This metric was based on real conversion data, proving that when stores were properly staffed during key hours, in-store conversion was higher than the company average.

– Aligned all departments around one version of the truth. Finance, operations, HR, and store leadership worked from a shared plan, eliminating the gaps that often lead to overstaffing, understaffing, or misaligned expectations.

This approach produced measurable results. Aesop increased its in-store conversion rate from 49% to 53% while maintaining the same labor hours as the prior year. They didn’t add more people, they got better at using the people they had.

For a deeper dive, check out the full case study: Aesop Increased In-Store Conversion Rates by 4 Percentage Points.

How Kipling Used TPLH to Find $1M in Revenue Opportunity

Kipling approached the problem from a different angle. With a smaller footprint and fewer associates per store, every shift mattered even more.

Kipling found that legacy planning models like Sales per Hour (SPH) were incomplete. They tracked sales but didn’t highlight missed service opportunities.

That realization led them to adopt Traffic per Labor Hour (TPLH) as their guiding metric.

TPLH doesn’t just help balance labor costs; it helps brands capitalize on their busiest moments. For Kipling, this unlocked two major wins:

1) They stopped leaving revenue on the table. By studying TPLH data across store locations, Kipling identified critical weekend windows where conversion was lagging. This wasn’t because customers weren’t coming in, it was due to not having enough associates available to help them. This discovery alone uncovered a $1M annualized revenue opportunity.

2) They exposed hidden patterns across the fleet. With TPLH, it became clear that some stores were consistently overscheduled during quiet periods and understaffed when foot traffic spiked. This discovery helped them achieve a 200 basis point increase in their Visit Value.

Leadership didn’t position the change as a cost-cutting initiative. Instead, they framed it as a way to make the most of their people’s time, respecting both the customer’s experience and the associate’s effort.

As Kara Flood, Head of Stores, put it: “It’s not about cutting hours. It’s about making every hour count.”

Your stores already have the people. Let’s make sure they’re scheduled at the moments that matter most.

Read the full breakdown of how Kipling used TPLH and how you can apply it in your business: How Kipling Boosted Visit Value by 200 Basis Points.

Leadership Lessons from the Panel

The panel emphasized a common thread across both brands: alignment is everything.

Planning can’t happen in isolation. Finance, operations, HR, and store leadership need to work from the same data, with shared expectations.

Kara Flood, Head of Stores at Kipling, said it well: “Finance doesn’t bother you when they know business is good.”

This means data builds trust. When store managers use real-time insights, they move from reacting to budgets to managing proactively.

With data in hand, store leaders shifted from reactive firefighting to proactive planning.

Key Takeaways for Retail Leaders

As the event wrapped up, Sean Bonnell summarized four critical lessons:

– Use data to drive every decision. Instinct has its place, but precision creates growth.

– Fix broken processes before they become habits. The right tool should simplify, not complicate.

– Understand the non-selling side of your business. Selling is one piece of the puzzle.

– Involve others early. Change happens with stakeholder buy-in at every level.

The path forward for specialty retail isn’t about cutting, it’s about optimizing. Retailers who connect strategy to execution, backed by the right tools, are the ones seeing measurable growth.

StoreForce works with specialty retail leaders who want to build retail operations that perform today and scale tomorrow.

Let’s build what’s next.

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FAQs

What is StoreForce and how does it help retail businesses?
StoreForce is a retail operations platform that helps specialty retailers optimize labor planning, improve conversion rates, and align teams for efficiency and profit.

How did Aesop grow without raising payroll?
Aesop used data-driven scheduling and StoreForce tools to boost in-store conversion while keeping payroll steady.

Why is the Reforecasting Tool important for store managers?
It lets managers adjust schedules in real time based on traffic and sales, improving agility and decision-making. It helps prevent both over- and under-spending on labor costs.

How does Kipling use StoreForce for payroll planning?
Kipling analyzes hourly traffic and Visit Value to schedule smarter labor during peak times and weekends.

Why is change management critical for new retail tech?
Change management builds team confidence, ensures buy-in, and helps new tools become part of daily routine system, and ensure that new tools become part of everyday business practices.