Retail Prophet Doug Stephens at the Art of Retail Event: "The best days of retail are ahead of us, but things are changing dramatically."By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
I attended the recent Art of Retail conference in downtown Toronto to learn more about how retail is undergoing a massive change and how companies are tackling continued competition from online as well as innovating to stay alive.
Sponsored in part by Microsoft Dynamics, which offers a family of enterprise resource planning products for midsize organizations as well as subsidiaries and divisions of larger organizations, the event featured a keynote by noted retail prophet Doug Stephens.
Stephen's session started out like a wake-up call. Noting the dramatic change faced by the retail industry and how some brands are dying with their boots on while others are innovating themselves back into relevance.
Citing that online retail is expected to earn 1.2 trillion in 2013, a 19% year over year increase. Stephens explained how bookseller turned online superstore Amazon.com, completes 306 online sales per second totalling 29,000,000 transactions per day.
The sad flipside is the shutting down of bookstores and CD and record shops at an exponential rate.
Stephens discussed some innovation in retail, how physical stores need to be dynamic. "It is less about going somewhere and taking something, It is about going places and making something," Stephens explained citing various examples of retail stores where customers could design their own products or tailor their own bicycles, computers, running shoes and anything that can be created on a 3D printer.
Explaining how the notion of a store clerk is quickly changing, Stephens pointed to the new ways shoppers can buy things in stores through apps and various wireless tools that avoid having to interact with clerks for payments.
Michael Griffiths, Global Managing Director, Retail Solutions for Microsoft, explained how for Microsoft, prior to the the launch of the Surface tablet, it was their partner manufacturers who were telling the story for them. The new Microsoft Stores and kiosks, which are the now a contact point with customers, are both opportunistic and dynamic experiences that are designed for traditional retail but more importantly to engage customers on many levels.
The message to retailers is to be remarkable. "Anything that is averasge, middle of the road is going to get killed." Stephens assured.