Tag Archives: Retail Design

15 Oct
Transformation Paradoxes graphic

Periodical Highlights Future of Retail

Author Kraig Koelsch Posted on October 15, 2021September 20, 2022 Categories General

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

17 Nov
Hybrid Shopping

New CP Microsite Targets Future of Retail Shopping

Author Kraig Koelsch Posted on November 17, 2020October 23, 2022 Categories Announcements

Cuhaci Peterson is pleased to announce the launch of its new microsite, FutureShop.C-P.com/, which provides an exciting look at accelerated changes driving broad categories of retail transformation, next generation e-commerce and its hybrid shopping experience.

Today’s retail disruption represents a time of opportunity as the pace and future of retail transformation increases. The hybridization of retail formats continues to merge traditional, defined models. The blurring of store platforms includes: Hybrid shopping, logistics, disruptive real estate effects, and increased use of automation and technology. Increasingly, consumers are demanding an unlimited assortment of products, immediate fulfillment to autonomous delivery, and a willingness to pay less. As these demands are fulfilled by retailers, many stores will disappear or become consolidated.

“At the core, hybrid shopping is the ‘phygital’ experience,” said Steven Duffy, Senior Vice President of Design at the firm.

Through a partnership with industry leaders AutoStore, Pulse Integration and KPS Global, this integrated physical to eCommerce grocery experience enables shopping using in-store kiosks, mobile phones, or desktops while having groceries picked and packed via the AutoStore system within minutes. Shoppers can place orders in-store, may choose to enjoy experiencing prepared food services, or may shop for other items they prefer to handle on their own.

The system will also serve as the fulfillment hub for online shoppers in the area giving the grocer a more profitable fulfillment solution while improving inventory control and reducing congestion in store aisles.

The concept replaces areas of the center store gondola with the AutoStore robotic storage, disrupts current retail models and represents the future of grocery retailing. We have received significant interest by reimagining the future of grocery as we know it. It is the store of tomorrow.

Why the need for Hybrid Shopping?

“We believe there’s a better, quicker and more cost-effective solution, which is robotics through microfulfillment,” Duffy added.

Accelerated change is upon us. Retail has reached an inflection point based upon the pandemic and the eGrocery industry is in the epicenter.

The remaining stores will condense in size and need to fundamentally reshape their retail experience to fit the new landscape. This tectonic disruption is not one that will impact retailers in the future, but one that is being felt today. Cuhaci Peterson is making sure that those necessary solutions exist now.