Retail is no longer competing on products alone. Increasingly, long-term advantage is shaped by how effectively organizations transform digital channels into relationship platforms rather than transactional endpoints.
For established retailers, this shift requires more than building an app. It demands changes in ownership, platform thinking, and the operating model that supports customer experience across markets and channels.
Vladimir Pronin, Principal Product Manager at Holland & Barrett, operates at the center of that transformation. With a background spanning mobile engineering leadership, international expansion, and platform strategy, he now leads end-to-end app experience and platform evolution across multiple squads.
In this conversation, he reflects on what it takes to move from transactional commerce to a scalable wellness ecosystem, how to expand internationally without fragmenting the platform, and why AI must be introduced thoughtfully in trust-based domains such as health and wellness.
1. You’re currently leading app-first and platform transformation at Holland & Barrett. When you first took over the mobile app, what did the product and organization around it actually look like, and what does “app-first” look like there today?
Vladimir Pronin:
Holland & Barrett is a 156-year-old high-street retailer, so becoming truly “app-first” demanded more than launching a mobile app — it required an organizational shift.
When I joined, the app had just been rebuilt in-house after being outsourced. Leadership believed in an “app-first” future as part of digital transformation, but in practice the app was owned by a small central team, while the web was run by multiple dedicated squads. The tech stacks were completely separate, leading to duplicated effort, and features were typically delivered web-first, with the app lagging behind.
Today, app-first means structural ownership. Every vertical squad owns both app and web journeys end-to-end. We introduced a shared platform layer and unified development standards, moving from duplication to scale. Instead of chasing parity, we now leverage channel-specific strengths within a connected omnichannel ecosystem. The app is no longer an afterthought — it’s a central driver of repeat engagement and long-term value.
2. You helped evolve the app from a “purely transactional product” into a broader wellness platform. What does that shift mean in practice for features, success metrics and the way product teams make decisions?
Vladimir Pronin:
At Holland & Barrett, we have an exciting vision to become the trusted partner for over 100 million people globally, helping them achieve their health and wellness goals and adding quality years to life.
That ambition required rethinking the role of the app. Instead of treating it as a purely transactional channel, it became the centre of the customer relationship — the home of loyalty within our omnichannel ecosystem, with a stronger focus on understanding customers, inspiring them through engaging content, and providing meaningful advice that supports lasting progress in health and wellness.
The focus moved from driving purchases to giving customers a reason to return and build healthier habits.
We evolved our metrics from short-term revenue growth to retention and lifetime value. Performance is now assessed on the strength and depth of the relationship, not just the transaction.
3. You moved Holland & Barrett from a small central mobile team to a setup where multiple vertical squads jointly own app and web journeys. What were the hardest parts of onboarding these squads into mobile, and what would you do differently if you had to run that transition again?
Vladimir Pronin:
The hardest part was shifting the mindset across the organization. Before changing the operating model, we had to clearly demonstrate how an app-first transformation would reshape our growth trajectory and elevate the strategic role of the mobile app within the business to secure full executive support.
With leadership alignment in place, we introduced the platform team, which began treating squads as internal customers. We partnered with one squad first, building the platform and defining new ways of working together. Their success became clear proof that the model worked and helped bring the rest of the organization along.
If I were to run it again, I would formalize the onboarding playbook and platform guardrails earlier to accelerate adoption and reduce friction across squads.
4. You also owned international app expansion, launching in Ireland and the Netherlands alongside the UK. What did going multi-country change in your product and platform decisions, beyond just localization and currencies?
Vladimir Pronin:
International expansion exposed how fragile “platform thinking” can be when every market has valid reasons to diverge.
In the Netherlands, for example, local payment expectations forced us to rethink how configurable our checkout architecture really was.
The tension wasn’t translation — it was resisting the urge to fork the app per market. We formalized an 80/20 rule: 80% shared core, 20% market-specific configuration for content, payments, and compliance.
The hard part was saying no. If you don’t protect the core early, you don’t scale — you fragment.
5. From a platform perspective, how did you and engineering decide where to draw the line between a shared mobile platform and the autonomy of individual product squads? Can you share a concrete example where getting that boundary wrong hurt you?
Vladimir Pronin:
We draw the line based on value creation. If something creates customer-facing differentiation, vertical squads own it. If it enables speed, consistency, or safety across teams — such as developer experience, analytics, or release pipelines — it belongs to the platform.
Where we got it wrong was allowing too much variation in analytics implementation early on. Similar journeys were instrumented differently across squads, which led to inconsistencies in reporting and slowed decision-making at the leadership level.
Standardizing analytics foundations under the platform restored clarity and significantly improved execution speed. It reinforced the importance of protecting shared capabilities from drift.
6. You explicitly explore AI-powered assistance in the app — for discovery, guidance and personalised wellness support. Where have you seen AI demonstrably improve customer outcomes, and where do you still keep it out of the experience despite the hype?
Vladimir Pronin:
We are actively exploring AI, but we have not yet launched an AI assistant into production. Our focus has been on validating where it genuinely adds value.
We see strong potential in discovery and guidance — helping customers navigate complex wellness needs more efficiently.
Beyond customer-facing use cases, we are also exploring how AI can accelerate discovery, experimentation, and engineering productivity.
At the same time, in health and wellness, trust is fundamental. We are deliberate about where AI should not lead — particularly around diagnostic or medical advice — ensuring human oversight and evidence-based guidance remain central.
7. Earlier in your career you led iOS at Lazada during a shift from functional teams to business-aligned feature teams across several regions. What did that reorganization teach you about scaling mobile development that you still apply in your current role?
Vladimir Pronin:
At Lazada, teams were initially structured around functions — separate iOS, Android, backend, and QA teams, each optimizing for their own delivery and technical roadmap.
Moving to business-aligned feature teams changed the dynamic. Ownership shifted from “shipping my part” to delivering a complete customer journey. Instead of optimizing for platform-specific excellence, teams optimized for end-to-end outcomes.
The key lesson was that scale depends on accountability. When teams are aligned around customer value — supported by shared standards and strong technical foundations — delivery becomes faster, cleaner, and more predictable. That organizational principle still shapes how I design platform and squad models today.
8. As a co-founder of Nova Ocean and the productivity app Mindlist, you’ve also built and operated your own consumer products. What have you learned from running a smaller, independent app that big retail organisations often miss when they build their own?
Vladimir Pronin:
When you own the product end-to-end, the feedback is immediate and unfiltered. You see directly how a change affects retention, engagement, and sentiment — there’s no buffer between decision and outcome.
In larger organizations, that signal can get diluted across layers, roadmaps, and reporting structures. The discipline is to stay close to your customer — through dogfooding, rapid experimentation, and direct conversations — so decisions reflect real behavior, not internal narratives.
9. You mention “significantly increasing the strategic contribution of the app within the digital channel.” Which concrete metrics convinced leadership that the app had become a genuine growth driver rather than just another touchpoint?
Vladimir Pronin:
It came down to customer behavior. App customers retained at higher rates, purchased more frequently, and delivered stronger lifetime value than other channels.
Beyond channel performance, we built a cohort-based growth model linking acquisition, engagement, and repeat behavior to long-term MAU and revenue forecasts. It showed how incremental improvements compound over time.
That shifted the discussion from short-term feature delivery to the app’s role in driving sustained performance across the business — positioning it as a structural growth lever within our omnichannel strategy.
10. Looking at where retail and consumer apps are heading between now and 2030, what do you think today’s product managers need to understand about platforms, AI and omnichannel if they want to operate at the portfolio level you’re working at now?
Vladimir Pronin:
At portfolio level, the role shifts from shipping features to shaping an ecosystem of products. You’re accountable for how the entire experience fits together and how it scales.
Customer needs don’t fundamentally change over time — people still want to be healthy, connected, and fulfilled — but the way those needs are met evolves as technology and contexts shift. That’s why product leaders start with the customer.
That means building meaningful omnichannel experiences that support real goals — and using AI thoughtfully to enhance relevance and remove friction — while at the same time designing scalable platforms that allow squads to move fast without fragmentation.
Sustainable advantage comes from aligning operating models, technology, and customer experience around that principle.
What Defines Platform-Led Retail Transformation
Retail evolution is not defined by digital presence alone, but by how effectively organizations align operating models, platform strategy, and customer experience.
The companies that succeed will be those that treat apps not as channels, but as relationship engines — supported by scalable platforms, disciplined governance, and thoughtful use of AI.
