Kraig Koelsch, Author at FutureShop | Hybrid Retail Solutions & Services

15 Oct

Periodical Highlights Future of Retail

Our Senior Vice President of Design, Steven Duffy, was recently a featured author discussing the future of retail in the October 2021 issue of Retail and Restaurant Facility Business. The article is available in the print and online editions.

In the article, Duffy revealed four ways technology can transform stores by 2030. The following is a quick excerpt from the article:

The future of retail changed forever as the pandemic exposed the inadequacies of eGrocery. Consumers seek convenience at a fair price, and they want a frictionless experience. Grocers and retailers must adapt, and quickly. Retail and grocery formats and their supporting technologies have remained static for decades, unable to respond to shoppers demands, new technologies, and have failed to meet today’s consumer’s shifting paradigm.

Retail of the Future is at an Inflection Point Today

During a recent speaking engagement at the Category Management Association annual conference, we provided clarity on the four future retail themes or paradoxes. Theses are driving the change in how and why we shop and are the connective tissue, the infrastructure behind the transformation of future grocery retailing.

1.) Physical to Virtual: The merging of physical to digital, often called phygital, is how we buy today.

2.) Small is Big: Smaller format is more attractive with technology and convenience playing a part.

3.) Blurring Formats: Retail stores are decreasing in size as restaurant and C-store formats hybridize to include grocery.

4.) Simplify Complexity: Make systems easily accessible enabling a more intuitive and frictionless experience.

Let’s unpack each of these elements that form a base for the rapidly transforming, technology-enabled retail and food-based ecosystem. This overview addresses the retail experience, yet broader and more sweeping changes are necessary across the entire environment and logistics network to facilitate changes moving forward.

To read the entire article, please go here:
https://editions.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=58881&i=726990&p=14&ver=html5

11 Oct

New FutureShop Model & Fly Through Unveiled at Groceryshop

Cuhaci Peterson was extremely pleased to help AutoStore develop an eGrocery automation model for their exhibit at Groceryshop 2021, representing the store of the future that’s here today.

The model and virtual fly-through illustrate the functions of AutoStore fulfillment connected to an operating grocery store.

Below are still images of the automation model by itself and on display at the booth, as well as the full fly-through video.

27 Sep

Phygital Ecosystem and the Future of Retail

Cuhaci Peterson Chief Executive Officer, Greg Simpson, was recently a featured author in the September 2021 issue of Progressive Grocer. The article is available in the print and online editions.

In the article, Simpson offers key considerations in merging physical and digital strategies to obtain the optimal store experience. The following is a quick excerpt from the article:

After 18 months of tremendous change accelerated by an enduring pandemic, the retail industry has reached an inflection point. Expanding and varying customer needs, coupled with re-emerging competition, require new ways of thinking. Or is it an old way of thinking?

The customer is always right, but for that premise to be true, then the future of grocery must be designed for the benefit of the customer, not to coerce them. It’s not the user experience that is changing, but that the customer will change it.

However, to give a better grocery experience requires connecting a series of dots that meet the evolving customer ethos. Grocery must be evaluated across all the channels, forming a network with a new portfolio. Let’s call it Retail Portfolio 2.0 – a concept centered on the entire store portfolio, addressed from the customer point of view. It requires connecting the need, the timing and the delivery method to succeed, but that success only happens when the silos of logistics, store design and construction fade away.

This isn’t a simple process. Retailers often appear just as confused and are divided in attitudes toward innovation, the ability and willingness to make capital investment, and the need to rethink the future store. Over the past two decades, retailers considered only a physical retail portfolio network. Fast-forward to today, and we see a new interconnected environment.

To read the entire article, please go here:

https://progressivegrocer.com/future-retail-phygital-ecosystem

08 Sep

Hybrid Shopping | Omnichannel Retail | Design & Development | FutureShop

Future Marketplace: 4 Ways Technology Can Transform Stores By 2030

The future of retail changed forever as the pandemic exposed the inadequacies of eGrocery. Consumers want convenience at a fair price, and they want a frictionless experience. Grocers must adapt, and quickly. They must also ask themselves how their brand will remain relevant in the future marketplace.

In a recent webinar with the Category Management Association, Steven Duffy, Cuhaci Peterson’s Senior Vice President of Design, offered a unique perspective on the future of small format and technology-enabled retail and how technology, innovation and cultural acceleration transform retail – small formats by 2030.

“Retail of the future is clearly at an inflection point,” Duffy said. “Yet today is the time to harness future retail themes,” he added.

Duffy noted the following four paradoxes will drive retail transformation:

1.) Physical to Virtual: The merging of physical to digital, often called phygital, is how we buy.

2.) Small is Big: Smaller format is more attractive with technology and convenience playing a part.

3.) Blurring Formats: Retail stores are decreasing in size as work from home shifts store sales.

4.) Simplify Complexity: Make systems easily accessible and easy to use.

25 Jun

CP Teams Up on New Interactive Feature Highlighting Microfulfillment

Cuhaci Peterson, PULSE Integration and KPS Global are teaming up to provide powerful end-to-end solutions to reimagine grocery for a brighter future — starting now with the launch of a new interactive titled GroceRE Imagined.

The combination of systems integration and end-to-end e-commerce solutions is fundamentally paramount to delivering on the promise of future retailing excellence.

As grocers design future store formats, the integration of e-commerce into the retail network requires an adept team to connect all the systems together and eliminate any gaps in processes and operations.

Automation is the answer: Bringing the product to people is faster than bringing people to the product.

Customized microfulfillment strategies are helping businesses adapt to their new reality by introducing user-friendly systems that respond to modern shopper demands while greatly improving the end experience for customers. And to optimize the use of these new fulfillment solutions, the various systems need to be seamlessly integrated.

Our hybrid shopping experience replaces shopping the “maze of aisles” in store and online with a high-density system utilizing robotics that enable an order to be ready for pick up within minutes.

“At it’s core, hybrid shopping is the merging of the physical and digital experience, often referred to as phygital,” said Steven Duffy, Sr. Vice President of Design, Cuhaci & Peterson.

Today’s retail customer utilizes technology that has drastically advanced their expectations. And for grocery, modernizing through automation is the optimal way to meet them.

Learn more by visiting our new GroceRE Redefined interactive feature.

1 2 Next page

Commerce Redefined

Author Archives: Kraig Koelsch

Periodical Highlights Future of Retail

New FutureShop Model & Fly Through Unveiled at Groceryshop

Phygital Ecosystem and the Future of Retail

Future Marketplace: 4 Ways Technology Can Transform Stores By 2030

CP Teams Up on New Interactive Feature Highlighting Microfulfillment