Blending Art and Science in Retail with Carl Boutet

February 27, 2021

 

Summary

Our special guest, Carl Boutet, brings years of experience in retail to discuss the necessary blend between science and art that makes for customer-centricity. How do we rethink the retail experience post-pandemic? Are impulse purchases a thing of the past? What does the future of retail hold?

  • We ask these questions and more of our special guest, Carl Boutet, Managing Director of the Quebec Center of Commerce Innovation and Chief Strategist at StudioRX.
  • Carl believes the future of retail is all about meeting your customers where they are and not being afraid of change.
  • Technology is there to achieve amazing experiences if you embrace them. Join us to learn about Carl’s thoughts on retail culture, the modern store’s optimal design, and the trends you should be looking out for.

Conversation Rundown

[ 10:41-11:55 ] Why Clienteling tools have become the core of the strategy?
Your employees should be technologically empowered, at least to the same degree as your customers. It's incredibly frustrating when the customer is more informed than the associates simply because they have a smartphone at their disposal.

[ 24:23-26:30 ] Mastering store operations is key to successful curbside pickup.
Retailers adopted omnichannel strategies because they had to over the past year. Listen to Carl Boutet recount his experience with curbside pickup. It's not enough to push an initiative live, especially when you're rolling it out quickly.

[ 31:10-34:30 ] Incentivizing the curbside pickup with personalization.
Retailers should be communicating with customers when they come to pick up their orders in-store. Letting the customer wait in their car in silence is a mistake.

[ 37:49-39:53 ] Live shopping is the future of shopping
What is your retail prediction? Carl Boutet believes the future is in live shopping, a trend that has already taken hold in China.

Meet the Experts

Carl is a Montreal-based retail strategist and board advisor with over 25 years of hands-on operational, marketing, merchandising, and retail executive experience. He is the founder of Studio Rx and Executive Director of Retail Strategy Data & Insights for CloudRaker. He has also been associated with McGill Executive Institute, McGill Retail Innovation Lab, Quebec Centre for Innovation in Commerce as well. He has worked across a full array of retailer environments from the very large, such as 10 years with Costco Wholesale to working as a strategy consultant for a group of 800 independent retailers across Canada.

Retail Tips & Tweetables

There is always “Futures of Retail” because there is no single path to it.

How we measure, qualify and quantify Customer Centricity is the key question that is going to decide which kind of technology we need to go from here

Retail strategy: Understanding the intersection of art and science as well as the intersection of culture and technology

Customer Centricity is the core of everything.

It is important that your brand culture should operationalize any of the outcomes that the technology promises to deliver.

Subscribe To Our Podcast