QBD Books is leaning harder into data as it seeks to protect the value of physical retail at a time when costs are climbing and customer expectations are becoming harder to satisfy.
The Australian bookseller, which has spent more than 150 years building a national store network and a loyal following, has been refining its operating model through its Awesome Customer Experience, or ACE, strategy. The aim is to keep the brand’s personal, service-led feel intact while giving man...
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agers clearer insight into what is happening on the shop floor.
That need for better visibility is familiar across retail. For QBD Books, one of the biggest blind spots had been the gap between customers entering a store and the outcomes that followed. Until recently, questions such as how traffic converted into sales, whether staffing matched demand, and which merchandising choices were actually working were difficult to answer with confidence.
To address that, the retailer partnered with Kepler Analytics, a global retail analytics business that says it supports more than 20,000 locations worldwide. Kepler’s platform is designed to give retailers a fuller picture of store performance, combining footfall and engagement data with operational inputs such as roster information, promotions, online sales and loyalty activity.
The QBD Books implementation was not treated as a simple technology install. According to the company’s description of the partnership, the work was supported by Kepler’s client success framework, with change management, training and clear decision-making processes built into the rollout. The retailer also used comparative benchmarking through Kepler Retail Market Index to judge performance against industry peers.
Kepler’s product is built around dashboards that track patterns such as store comparisons, time of day, day of week and zone performance, giving managers access to live information rather than retrospective reports. For QBD Books, that has helped shift discussions from intuition to evidence, particularly around staffing, layout and sales conversion.
The retailer says the results have been material. Since adopting the system, it has recorded a 5 per cent lift in average transaction value and a 2 per cent increase in conversion. It has also been able to identify its strongest-performing stores more quickly, creating a platform for coaching, recognition and the sharing of best practice across the network.
In practical terms, that means head office and store teams can respond faster when a format is working well or when a location needs support. It also gives frontline staff a clearer sense of how their daily decisions affect outcomes, helping turn store-level data into action rather than reporting for its own sake.
The strategy has not gone unnoticed. QBD Books was included in Deloitte’s Best Managed Companies programme in 2025, while chief executive Nick Croydon was recognised as Best CX Leader at the 2026 Inside Retail Awards. Kepler Analytics was also named CX Partner of the Year at the same event, underlining the broader industry interest in data-led store optimisation.
For QBD Books, the message is straightforward: in a tougher retail market, good service still matters, but it now needs to be backed by sharper measurement and more disciplined execution. The next phase of physical retail, as the company’s experience suggests, may belong to businesses that can combine human connection with operational precision.
Source: Noah Wire Services
