Pete Humm is Head of Retail at CADS, with more than 30 years’ experience in retail space planning, retail store planning and space optimisation. He leads CADS’ retail planning team, supporting major UK and international retailers with additional planning expertise, capacity and estate-wide programmes.
Shop floor experience
Pete brings experience from both sides of the retail relationship. Before joining CADS, Pete held various management positions at Tesco, giving him first-hand experience of working in busy retail environments. This gave him a strong understanding of the day-to-day operational pressures retailers face. He also understands the importance of customer experience and making effective use of store space.
That retailer-side experience continues to inform Pete’s approach today. Pete understands that macro space planning decisions need to work in practice, not just on a floor plan, and considers how changes to space and layouts can affect store operations, colleagues and customers. Pete has worked on the client side as well as supporting retailers through CADS. This gives him a practical perspective on space planning, store change and estate-wide programmes.
Retail space planning experience
Pete has worked across grocery, fashion and general merchandise retail. His experience ranges from individual store layouts and changes to large-scale programmes across multi-site retail estates. His focus is on helping retailers make better use of their space, maintain accurate store plans and implement change consistently across their estates.
Long-term retail partnerships
Pete works closely with retail property, store development, programme and space planning teams. He provides additional planning expertise and resource as workloads and priorities change.
One example is CADS’ long-term relationship with Waitrose, where the retail planning team provides additional resource to support everyday store updates and projects as requirements change. CADS has supported Waitrose with ongoing store planning since 2008. Describing the relationship, Pete explains:
“By working closely with the Waitrose team, we are able to respond quickly and effectively. We provide the necessary workload overflow resource for every day updates and projects as the need arises.”
Retail Planning Innovation
Pete has also been closely involved in CADS’ work with Primark, where retail planning expertise has been combined with data, technology and architectural services to improve planning processes. This has brought together retail planning, store data and StoreSpace® to improve planning processes. Speaking about the project, Pete said:
“We were delighted to work alongside the team to join the dots of existing data sources, resulting in the automation of the store planning and counting process.”
In 2022, Pete also accepted Sainsbury’s Partner of the Year – Innovation award on behalf of CADS, recognising the impact of StoreSpace® and the teams responsible for its implementation.
Multi-disciplinary retail support
Pete takes a multi-disciplinary approach to supporting retail customers. He looks beyond space planning to identify where other specialist CADS services can add value to their projects and wider estates.
He works closely with CADS Surveys and Prosper to bring together retail planning, measured survey data and architectural expertise where a project requires them. Pete is also involved in introducing and implementing new services for retail customers. He works across the businesses to ensure these meet practical client requirements and complement existing retail planning support.
This joined-up approach gives Pete a broad understanding of retail property and store development. It helps him identify opportunities to improve project efficiency and connect customers with the right specialist expertise.
Published insights
Pete regularly contributes practical insight on retail space planning, macro space planning and store optimisation. His published commentary covers changing consumer behaviour, omnichannel retail and HFSS legislation. Pete also explores how retailers can adapt store layouts as operational and customer requirements change.
Outside of work, Pete likes to watch premier league and national football games and regularly attends the CADS team socials, where he may be spotted on the dancefloor.
