Canadian Tire shows the way to the future of business
Canadian Tire, that great icon of Canadian business, has seen the future.
And the future is now.
“We believe COVID-19 has permanently shifted the shopping behaviour of many,” president and chief executive Greg Hicks said on Thursday.
The company is now “going to pour gas on” an existing project to upgrade its e-commerce sites, he said in an article in The Globe and Mail.
That should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the news over the past few months while Canadians have been encouraged to stay at home to avoid further spreading the coronavirus and the deadly disease, COVID-19, that it causes.
In those months, the world has gone increasingly digital. Unfortunately, many Canadian businesses haven’t figured that out.
What’s surprises me is how many other major companies – not just in retail but in many other business areas – are still sitting on their hands, expecting that life will go back to pre-COVID “normal” at some point this year.
It won’t.
If you as a business leader - large company or small business — are not already planning how you are going to change the way you do business, you are in big trouble, my friend.
As I argued six weeks ago in an earlier blog post, the world in general and the world of business in particular will never be the same. This won’t be a temporary hiccup.
I’m not arguing that all will be rosy when we fully defeat the coronavirus, which will be months, if not years from now. Complete victory cannot be obtained until there is an effective vaccine for all of the world’s citizens. Experts say that’s at least six months or more away.
What business leaders need to do today is think hard about their pre-COVID business model, how the world has changed in past few months, and what they need to do to survive in the increasingly digital world to come.
That’s what Canadian Tire is doing.
"We’re dealing with a surge of 25 to 30 times demand, virtually overnight," Hicks said in The Globe article.
"We certainly knew we were going to run into capacity issues with our (web)site but thought that we could grow our business two to three times before it was an issue," he added.
The main Canadian Tire website saw average order volumes increase to more than 80,000 a day in April, compared with an average of 5,000 a day before COVID-19.
Canadian Tire did an emergency upgrade on its previous site, quickly rethought existing expansion plans, and is now looking for even more technological options to meet what it knows will be the increasingly digital world to come.
That’s forward-thinking. That company knows there’s no going back to pre-COVID “normal.”
If you need more convincing that the world of business has already changed irrevocably, take a look at these stories:
Shopify surges past Royal Bank for title of most valuable company in Canada
Like giant ice cream trucks, supermarkets on wheels get ready to roll into the neighbourhood
That’s just a small sampling, of course, of the vast changes already taking place and those coming soon.
If you need any help preparing or changing your business’s digital strategy to meet the challenges of the new world, or if you just have questions you want answered, my consultants and I are ready to help.
Further reading in this series:
The bigger, better digital world ahead
What if schools are closed next year, too?
Why are grocery stores taking so long to meet the challenge of online delivery?
