Decathlon is a sporting goods store. It’s been around for over
45 years. Started in France. We have over 1,700 stores worldwide, and we’re unique here in Calgary
being a concept store. And the mission of the company
is to sustainably make the benefit and pleasure
of sports accessible to the many. This system is unique.
It’s the first micro-fulfillment center that Bastian Solutions has done. It’s located on the second level
of a shopping center in a mall. So it’s really leading-edge technology
br
inging products closer to consumers. Micro-fulfillment meaning small, micro,
so it’s a very tiny distribution center bringing the product closer to consumers. Here at Decathlon Calgary, we have
products for over 65 different sports. We have over 7,000 different products. We have our AutoStore
solution so that we can service the 4 Western Canadian provinces
as well as our in-store customers, so we are the only store
like this in the world. We are integrating the AutoStore solution
with the in-sto
re shopping experience as well as being able to service our
e-commerce customers for Western Canada. Decathlon has always been tech-forward.
They’ve always been looking into the future. They had the concept in their mind
of this store and how it would operate having the robots or some type of
solution in the back room and then the customer shopping
experience in the front room. Originally, we decided that
we were going to open up in Calgary, which we were very excited to be
able to bring this co
ncept store to it, but it was a unique concept where we
would be integrating an automated warehouse with the traditional in-store
retail experience, and so we went out into the marketplace
and surveyed a number of families so that we could make sure that
the solutions we were coming up with really met their needs,
then we were not off the mark. We went to a micro-fulfillment solution
because we had a very specific idea of what we wanted to
be able to do in Calgary. We are looking to revolutioniz
e the way
that people deal with in-store retail. We wanted to be able to have more
products in the back and not on the store. And a traditional warehouse
did not allow that solution to work. AutoStore was the right
technology because mostly it met the density needs we required, but they were able to
address all of our unique needs. We have very low ceilings,
we are on the second floor of a mall that has a little bit of flex to it, and so it was really the best
solution for all of our needs. And
another reason we
chose AutoStore was the fact that it could meet the time
constraints that we needed. We need to get any order
that customers could put together organized within three minutes,
and they were able to meet that solution. Decathlon’s goal was to create a unique
and new and better customer journey, and removing more
non-added-value tasks from the staff. Certainly having AutoStore
in a retail setting is very unique, but the biggest impact is on the fact that we’re able to spend more
time directly with our customers and it has created a really
unique shopping experience.
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