Retail Insider is streamlining its Canadian retail news from around the web to include a handful of top news stories that can be viewed quickly during the day. Here are the top stories from the past 24 hours.
Payment service provider Clik2pay has launched flexible and scheduled payment options, offering Canadian businesses more options when requesting payments from their customers.
The two new features make it easier to request direct-from-account payments – making Clik2pay more usable for billers who are looking to collect funds from their customers.
“Getting paid is a fundamental part of any business, so why not make it easy?” said Mike Bradley, Founder and CEO of Clik2pay, which is based in Toronto but with staff across the country. “We are giving businesses what they need to provide their customers with the best payment experience possible – hassle-free, direct-from-account payments.
Mike Bradley
“Businesses are looking for easier, more convenient and lower cost ways to collect funds from their customers. Credit cards have been around for many, many years of course. They work well for many consumers but not all. We know that over 40 per cent of Canadians would prefer to pay from their chequing or savings account and often these customers are unserved by businesses, particularly online.
“So you think of people who are new to Canada or maybe are credit challenged or just prefer the immediacy of being able to make a payment from their bank account and not having to get a bill 20 days later, an unpleasant surprise with that bill. For all those reasons, nearly half of Canadians would prefer to pay from their bank account or don’t have an option for a credit card. And when you think of online payments specifically, it’s typically credit card or nothing. For retailers that means you’re missing out on a big portion of your potential customers. We often say that retailers who aren’t taking payments from bank accounts are abandoning their customers.”
The company launched just over a year ago at the Payments Canada conference.
“We make Interac e-transfer, we built it for businesses, to enable businesses to be able to receive payments seamlessly via e-transfer. Lower cost. Available to all Canadians who have a deposit account, which of course is almost all Canadians,” said Bradley.
“I’ve been in payments for nearly 30 years, worked with major banks and VISA and Interac directly, but have always kind of wanted to continue to improve the options that Canadian businesses and consumers have to complete payments. And paying from an account has never been as easy as paying by card and we set out to change that with Clik2pay.
“These direct from account payment methods are emerging not just in Canada but around the world. Every Canadian knows how to use Interac e-transfer. It’s very familiar for people. It uses bank grade security which is a real positive but it hasn’t been built in a way that made payments easy for businesses and for consumers to pay businesses. What we did is we set up a whole series of interfaces, timeout buttons, QR codes,messaging, and all of the services and features that back it up and make e-transfer a way that any Canadian can easily pay a business.”
Bradley said Clik2pay is a much lower cost than credit cards which typically can cost two to three per cent of sales or sometimes even more. Clik2pay comes in at about half that cost, he added.
With Clik2pay Flexible Payments, a business may embed a direct-from-account payment link in a communication to its customer, such as a bill or collection notice. The customer can pay the amount of the bill, or edit the payment amount within a custom range (minimum and/or maximum) chosen by the business. This feature can be used where the business is willing to accept only part of the total amount due.
“Think for example a $200 bill that a biller may decide or a Clik2pay customer could decide that it is willing to accept any payment over just for example $50 and allow the customer to be able to choose how much they want to pay of the bill. I’m sure we’ve all had times where we get a credit card bill but you’re only able to make the minimum payment or able to pay half of it. This flexible amount really allows the business to offer that as an option to their customer,” said Bradley.
With Clik2pay Scheduled Payments, a business may set up a payment request for a specific future date, or set up a series of recurring payment requests. This feature can be used for payment plans where amounts are set in installments, or to plan payment requests for recurring bills, such as a monthly utility bill or rent collection.
“An example would be a collection agreement with a customer. You’ve got a couple of hundred dollars owing and you don’t get paid until next Thursday. Rather than having to call back next Thursday to initiate the payment, the business can just schedule a payment for pay day. It just makes it more convenient,” explained Bradley.
“Another way a business might use this is a landlord or some sort of recurring payment application where there’s 12 payments of a fixed amount over the next year they can just schedule all those payments at the same time.”
One of the major effects of the pandemic during 2020 was the increase in e-commerce sales, which was a direct result of store/mall closures and other shopping restrictions, said a new report by Trendex North America, a marketing research and consulting firm.
In Canada, the net effect was that during 2020 Canadian total e-commerce sales increased 70.5 per cent and accounted for 6.1 per cent of retail sales.
E-commerce growth in Canada slowed in 2021 as stores/malls continued to reopen after March 2021 and consumers resumed their normal shopping behaviour. The net result was that Canadian total e-commerce growth last year slowed to only 14.2 per cent, according to the report.
CF Toronto Eaton Centre (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
Randy Harris, president and owner of Trendex North America, said last year was a bit of a wakeup call for all those pundits who had been forecasting a bright future for apparel e-commerce in Canada.
“I want to say that e-commerce in groceries that’s a bright prospect. There’s no doubt that that will continue to grow,” he said.
Randy Harris
Harris said a growth, especially in 2020, was attributable to the closing of stores and malls and other restrictions that were pandemic-related to shopping.
“But what we’re seeing this year is that the consumer is returning to the malls, is returning to brick and mortar stores,” he explained.
“In the end, consumers are cutting back on their e-commerce purchasing. This in a sense is bad news for some retailers who bet their farm on e-commerce sales growth. What we’ve got here is a situation where we have e-commerce retailers, or people engaging in that, providing now free shipping in most cases with a minimum order. They’re getting a high rate of return and also the cost of building and maintaining an infrastructure to support their e-commerce operation. What that means if you put it all together e-commerce will only end up being profitable for a certain segment of the apparel industry.
Prada at Yorkdale Shopping Centre (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
“I think retailers are going to come to grips with this in a while because I think in some cases now they’re actually losing money on their e-commerce operation. And I know nobody else is saying those things but you look at the data from Statistics Canada that’s coming out on e-commerce actually going down so far this year in total. It’s down by about 21 per cent, total e-commerce sales in Canada, through the first four months of the year.
“People have got to look at these numbers and even retailers like Aritizia, which I think is a standout e-commerce company, only reported growth of 15.5 per cent in its first quarter of the year in their e-commerce sales. And the numbers for Canada Goose were not that much better. Again, all of the signs are pointing to a slowdown in e-commerce sales and certainly the growth projections that came out two years ago by industry pundits make absolutely no sense in retrospect at the moment.”
The Trendex report said the pandemic also had an effect on the way in which Canadians purchased apparel. After increasing 13.5 per cent in 2019, apparel e-commerce sales increased 108.1 per cent in 2020.
“However, during 2021 when consumers were not forced to make the choice of buying no apparel or buying online, retail apparel sales became dominated by consumers choosing brick-and-mortar over e-commerce. Determining the magnitude of the resulting decrease in apparel e-commerce sales is a challenge for two reasons: Very few Canadian apparel retailers publish their e-commerce sales and those that do are not reflective of the performance of all Canadian apparel retailers,” said the report.
“However, two of those that do report Canada Goose and lululemon noted that the growth in their e-commerce sales during 2021 fell from 54 per cent to 8.2 per cent and 100.8 per cent to 21.6 per cent respectively. Not surprisingly, Aritzia was the exception as its e-commerce sales increased 87.6 per cent in 2020 and 88.0 per cent in 2021.”
Image: Canada Goose at West Edmonton Mall
The report said Ingram Micro Commerce and Services estimated that Canadian apparel e-commerce sales fell 7.3 per cent in 2021, while Statistica reported an 8.1 per cent decrease in apparel e-commerce sales.
“Trendex has an even more depressing estimate, as it reported that apparel e-commerce sales fell 10.7 per cent in 2021. The decrease was primarily attributable to a 26 per cent decrease in apparel specialty store e-commerce sales,” said the report.
“When it comes to forecasting the growth for Canadian apparel e-commerce sales, Trendex is taking a contrarian position as we maintain that a segment of consumers going forward will become increasingly disillusioned with purchasing apparel online and will return to both malls that are being reconfigured as lifestyle centres and to stores which are being upgraded with new retail technologies. Bottom line, apparel e-commerce sales from 2021-2026 will increase only marginally more than total apparel sales growth.”
Sears talks about how retailers can find and retain staff, what created this situation, how bad it is, can wages fix it, is it just a wage issue, can retail be a career choice for young people, is it going to get better or worse and the recent news of layoffs at Shopify.
The Video Interview Series by Retail Insider is available on YouTube.
Connect with Mario Toneguzzi, a veteran of the media industry for more than 40 years and named in 2021 a Top Ten Business Journalist in the world and the only Canadian – to learn how you can tell your story, share your message and amplify it to a wide audience. He is Senior National Business Journalist with Retail Insider and owner of Mario Toneguzzi Communications Inc. and can be reached at mdtoneguzzi@gmail.com.
Also check out the other series offered by Retail Insider, including The Weekly podcast and The Interview Series, which are both available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Podcasts, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Simplecast and other podcast players.
Those Girls at the Market, an organic chocolate store in Saskatoon Saskatchewan, has recently moved to its new location downtown as it needed more space to meet customer demand.
The store produces handmade organic chocolate and has become popular in Saskatoon and throughout Canada. Its first store opened in 2019 and moved to its new location at 3332 20th street West in Saskatoon in January. Customers can find a variety of chocolates such as classic, coffee, cranberry and sea salt, mint, sugar free, and it also has sugar free options. Its first store was 240 square feet, and the new store is 2050 square feet and has expanded to include a local farmers market section.
Julianna Tan
The store owners, Julianna Tan and Ying Tan, are health focused sisters who wanted to start a business together, and they did. After finding out the health benefits of raw chocolate, Juliana and Ying got inspired and wanted to start chocolate making. In 2014 the chocolate making began, and in 2019 they went to chocolatier school.
“It was a very random thing. My sister and I knew we wanted to do something together. But, when we got into chocolate making, we realized it was way more complicated than we ever imagined as it has a lot of science and chemistry. We spent 3-4 weeks in the beginning of our summer when we were opening in our little booth and self teaching ourselves everything about making chocolate,” says Julianna.
Selling Out Fast
Image: Those Girls at the Market
Those Girls at the Market originally started selling at the local farmers market in 2014 and to their surprise, the chocolate sold out.
“The first day we had our booth opened we actually ended up selling out of everything we made, and we were super happy but then we realized we had to stay up all night long to be back the next day and we sold out again on Sunday and it continued which was pretty exciting for us since we went in with no expectations,” says Julianna. “By the end of the summer we had hundreds of regular customers and we couldn’t just stop and go back to regular life.”
After graduating from her Kinesiology degree from Dalhousie University, Julianna started her career as a chocolatier and bought, along with her sister, their first retail shop which was 240 square feet. As the original store also was connected to the store The Little Market Box, a farmers market retail store Julianna co-owns with Shawnda Blacklock, the store quickly got cramped and it had to move to a new location.
The Little Market Box
Image: Those Girls at the Market
The Little Market Box, owned by Julianna and Blacklock, opened its doors right beside Those Girls at The Market. It was inspired to bring locally fresh food to the downtown core, something that was missing since the farmers market moved locations from downtown to an industrial area making it inaccessible. The concept of the Little Market Box is to operate as a farmers’ market, but more as a retail store. Within six months the store had over 60 local produces and now it has over 130 – something they did not expect.
“We had no idea what to expect with our farmers market shop, we had a vision of maybe 10 producers joining us and in the long term our goal was to have 30 producers join us, but within 6 months of operating we had over 60 local producers. So, we knew this was going to be a lot bigger than what we imagined. And we quickly ran out of space, so we had to find a new and bigger location and we just moved into our new location in January of this year, so just over 6 months ago,” says Julianna.
The new location has combined Those Girls at The Market and The Little Market Box. Products can include chocolate, bison, chicken, flowers, and anything you can think of.
The Demand for Chocolate – Hundreds of Customers Every Week
Image: Those Girls at the Market
Juliana said the store has several of hundreds of regular customers and during the colder months, starting in the Fall, they ship throughout Canada.
The chocolate, which is all organic and handmade by Julianna, can take up to 48 hours to make – just for one batch.
“When it comes to chocolate making, it depends on a few factors. What the temperature is that day, the humidity, and how much I am making. So, if I am making a small batch, I can get it done within 4-5 hours; however, for larger batches it can be up to 10 hours in the kitchen,” says Julianna.
As for speciality products, like its Avocado Chocolate bar, it could take up to 48 hours. The store is constantly adding new special features, including a maple fudge toffee bean bark bar which will come out by the end of the summer.
Future plans
Those Girls at the Market (Photographer: Molly Schikosky
Image: Those Girls at the Market
Juliana said the one big plan they have currently, is collaborating with other restaurants in the community on how to reduce food waste.
“A big piece of what we are working on right now is food waste deduction, so when it comes to food it is incredible with how much food goes to waste. We are really working on how to reduce waste and as we grow, we want to really collaborate with restaurants and other producers on how to transform the food and how to preserve it,” says Julianna.
Other plans include possibly selling their chocolate wholesale if the store does it will be within the next year or two. “As we go in time, wholesale is something we will start considering for this year or for next,” says Julianna.
Julianna says they also enjoy connecting with their regular customers daily.
“There is something very special about selling directly to the customer and that is a big piece of our business, is that we know a lot of our customers and they bring a lot of their friends and their family to visit us. So that personal connection to our customers is important to us,” says Julianna.
As consumers, and the brands that seek to build relationships with them, face both competitive and cost pressures, how do retail marketers win hearts and wallets? What are the most powerful tools to grow relevance, loyalty, and drive sales?
Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Marketing Conference, hosted in person this year on September 8, 2022, at the Delta Hotel in downtown Toronto, is an exceptional full day conference for retail marketers across Canada to share how they are overcoming today’s challenges, actively connecting with consumers, and responsibly growing their brands and businesses.
Conference Topics
Digital behaviours that were once feared, such as showrooming or price comparisons, are now being leveraged to help build early connections with consumers, especially gen-z. This shift in retail strategy is reflected in many of the featured sessions on the main stage.
Also shifting is the focus on how marketers are contextualizing “making life better” for customers. Eva Salem, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Brand with Canadian Tire Corporation shares how their 100th Anniversary has both refreshed the brand and appropriately highlighted the unique emotional motivators that connect Canadians from coast-to-coast to the Canadian Tire brand.
Meta Canada’s Head of Agency, Nish Shah, looks at how brands can add depth to their storytelling and build unforgettable experiences. Nish shares how platforms can be leveraged to increase visibility and maximize audience engagement.
Lindsay Carter, Direct to Consumer Retail, Google Canada, shares research on the latest shopper insights and marketing innovations that will help Canadian retailers of all sizes both stay agile and improve their bottom-line. Lindsay also shares a sneak peak of what is in the Google pipeline for retail marketers.
Personalization and relevance also extend to positioning and timing of unique product assortments. As Canada’s consumer landscape evolves, the idea of a “holiday season” is also changing. Howard Lichtman, Partner and Co-Founder of Ethnicity Matters, unpacks the growth opportunities in cultural holidays, including Diwali, Eid, Dragonboat Festival, Holi, and Singles Day, amongst others. Howard shares how to strategically consider these occasions and market them with confidence so that consumers can appreciate a how a brand prioritizes its connection to it consumers over the sale itself.
RCC’s Retail Marketing Conference would not be complete without the critical conversations on flyer marketing. Caddle’s Chief Revenue Officer Colleen Martin shares the very latest information on consumer behavior as impacted by the economy and what this means for the future of flyers. reebee’s Mark Smith joins the conversation, sharing unique insights on the evolving flyer ecosystem.
This year Retail Council of Canada is offering its Retail Members the best prices with a new duo conference pass. Register with a colleague to save $50, or, register your team of 5 or more for 20% off. Early bird rates for associate members and non-members ends August 8, 2022.
Retail Insider is streamlining its Canadian retail news from around the web to include a handful of top news stories that can be viewed quickly during the day. Here are the top stories from the past 24 hours.
Podcast: Luxury Nodes Shifting in Canada as Malls Take Over and New Ones are Built
This week Craig and Lee talk about how luxury retail nodes in Canada are shifting with the construction of Oakridge Centre in Vancouver and Royalmount in Montreal. The discussion topics includes past luxury retail nodes in Canada and why things are shifting to suburban malls from traditional downtowns.
The Weekly podcast by Retail Insider Canada is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Also check out ourThe Interview Seriespodcast where Craig interviews guests from across the Canadian retail landscape as part of theThe Retail Insider Podcast Network.
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Background Music Credit: Hard Boiled Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Casa Loma Garden Wedding (Image: Liberty Entertainment Group)
This summer is the first wedding season in the past two years without restrictions due to the pandemic, with exclusive interviews with wedding dress stores, venues, and a recently married couple, we will investigate how busy this summer has been as there has been one common theme – three wedding seasons scrambled into one.
What does this mean for booking weddings? Well, couples might have to be prepared to get married midweek or on a Sunday.
“We are extremely busy, we have had two years’ worth of weddings plus the inquiries coming in for this year, so essentially it is three years’ worth of clientele we are looking to serve and host,” says Sue Vivanco the Director of Sales and Catering for the Liberty Entertainment Group. “At Casa Loma, I would say we are 99.9 percent sold out for the season. If we do have a date available, it would land midweek and Liberty Grand is also extremely busy. We are seeing a lot of brides and grooms getting married on Mondays or Tuesdays, so there is no stopping our clients from getting married.”
Liberty Grand (Image: Liberty Entertainment Group)
Casa Loma and Liberty Grand are known to be very elegant and beautiful spaces for weddings, making them a popular wedding location. The venues offer full services to their bride and grooms such as full food and beverage catering. Vivanco said the total count of events for the season will be over 500.
One obstacle Liberty Entertainment Group is having is not being able to accommodate everyone.
Sue Vivanco
“We are not able to host everyone as we do not have enough availability. It is hard not to be able to service them all, but everyone in the industry is excited and happy to be able to host again. We have been waiting for so long, and now that we are able to open our doors again and host our clients, it is great.” Says Vivanco.
Other venues are extremely busy as well as one Ontarian couple who recently got married on June 12th only had the options of two Sundays, even though they booked their wedding 13 months ago. They originally had their wedding booked for July 11th, 2020 which was their 10th anniversary; however, when the pandemic started they decided to cancel and wait.
“We decided to delay it a lot longer than we originally anticipated. Our biggest challenge was finding the day,” says Daniela. “The only two days the venue had for us was two Sundays in 2022, so we just picked the Sunday we felt suited us most. The only Saturday the venue had available was not until December. We also booked a restaurant instead of a banquet hall, so I think people who booked with a banquet hall struggled a bit more. We were not forced into a weekday, but we were forced into a Sunday.”
Smaller Close-Knit Weddings
Instead of big weddings, Vivanco said for this wedding season they are seeing a new trend of smaller, more personalized weddings.
“I think people are extremely excited to see family again, so when it comes to the weddings we are hosting now, it is more immediate family. People are looking at the guests they are inviting, who is going to be coming, and who in their family they have not seen in a long time. I think the difference would be the capacity, everyone looking forward to seeing each other, and I would say it is a bit more personal,” says Vivanco.
Venues for this wedding season were already prebooked before restrictions being lifted, once guests had the green light to invite more people, they changed the number of guests which has made it difficult. Vivanco said they started getting requests for bigger weddings such as from 50 people to a 100 or more.
Image: Daniela and Joseph
For Daniela and Joseph, they were one of the couples who opted for a small wedding.
“We come from an Italian background, so it is traditional for us to have a massive wedding, but we went with a small one, even with my own family we are seeing the trend more and more now where people are going to a more smaller size wedding and more intimate, and more family related opposed to massive extensions of people. And I think that is a direct result of Covid to keep everything close knit as possible and so just you have people you want there,” said Joseph.
One other issue Liberty Entertainment Group is having, is guests counts changing last minute because of people not being able to come because of Covid. Brides and Grooms still must pay for their full number count, despite if their guests show up or not, but it does change the venues plan in terms of table settings, seating arrangements, and dinner.
Saying Yes to The Dress
Saying yes to the dress has been a bit more complicated compared to previous wedding seasons as the bridal boutique Sash and Bustle and a wedding gown designer Fernando Canton from Lea-Ann Belter Bridal have noticed a higher demand for the season.
Sash and Bustle, a bridal store in Toronto that is owned by sisters, have been open for eight years now. Before restrictions, Sash and Bustle signed a new lease as it needed a bigger space to expand in, even with the struggle of the pandemic, the boutique decided to continue with its expansion plans. The bridal boutique is now located at 111 Berkeley Street in Toronto.
At its new location, to continue business during Covid, Sash and Bustle needed to get creative to still bring the wedding dress experience to their brides. And they succeeded – instead of having in store appointments, the store went to the brides.
“Going through the pandemic has been a challenge for everyone, we did know in our hearts we needed a new space for Sash and Bustle, it was feeling too busy and too tiny in our previous location so we kind of went ahead with our expansion. It was with a lot of challenges, but we went ahead, we kept our team and staff to work with our brides virtually so we pivoted in every way we possibly could have imagined,” says Andrea Dineen the co-owner of Sash and Bustle.
Image: Sash & Bustle
Image: Sash & Bustle
Sash and Bustle provided a unique way for their brides to still try on dresses – virtual and home-based appointments. The virtual appointments were to show the brides a variety of dresses, then Dineen said they would bring about five dresses to the bride’s home where she could try them on. And recently this year Sash and Bustle has implemented a luxury appointment where its brides can have an appointment that is double the length, includes wine, and more service. But their busy season for dresses was about six months ago.
Andrea Dineen
“Our busy season is usually six months before the summer, so we were extremely busy and experienced rushes for around that time but now, it has just been steady and manageable,” says Dineen. “We don’t offer in-house alterations at Sash and Bustle, but I know that those businesses are very busy this year. They have all this year’s weddings, and all the other wedding dresses over the last couple of years – so they are feeling it.”
Fernando Canton who is a wedding dress designer and the production manager at Lea-Ann Belter Bridal says he starts designing wedding dresses a year before the wedding date, but he is extremely busy with tailoring and brides picking up their dresses.
“The thing we must consider here is that when you get engaged, I think one of the first things that brides would start even the week after of getting the ring would be buying the dress. So, we are busy with a lot of pick up. I think last month and now was our busiest for that and we have the backlash of the people who did postpone their weddings, so it has been a little crazy for us,” says Canton. Also, brides must consider the mens wedding bands when planning the big day.
Image: Fernando G. Canton Barros
Canton said brides who postponed their weddings needed more dress altering as the dress did not fit the same as when they tried it on a year or two ago.
“It is crazy in the way; people are picking up dresses they bought two years ago, and the fitting is different. Brides come in to pick up their dress and suddenly, we have to take the dress in or replace the whole body – it is overwhelming,” says Canton.
There is daily pick up at Lea-Ann Belter Bridal and the store produces about 30 dresses a week and orders come from all over the world. During the pandemic it was a different kind busy for Canton as he needed to design dresses for brides who did not cancel their wedding – an unexpected rush.
“We were getting a lot of brides who didn’t cancel their weddings or didn’t postpone, and they just wanted to go ahead and still get married. But, instead of having a party of 500, they would reduce to around 30 or less ceremony and would obviously have more of a budget for their gown. So, it was kind of different for us, something we did not expect that it would backfire that way, but we were happy to have bigger budgets for our brides and they were happy to have better dresses,” says Canton.
Image: Lea-Ann Belter Bridal
Canton and Dineen also noticed brides are expanding the traditional wedding dress and are bringing in more of a variety and creativity.
“I have been surprised. It has been across the board with lots of different styles. We used to only sell very simple dresses, I felt like everybody was buying the exact same thing, but this year it has been a lot of variety which is exciting,” says Dineen. “Sleek and simple is great and always makes our brides shine, but also we have been doing really fun looks as well and people are going over the top, accessorizing a lot and I think that after the pandemic, being in our sweatpants for two years people are ready to like get dolled up and feel really special.”
As a designer, Canton is always excited to talk to the bride about what their dream look is for their wedding day, and Canton says most girls have an answer for that.
“I love talking to the bride and asking what their dream is, as designers you must see the image of what your customers wants. That is really when the magic happens, and I am super excited that weddings are back because that means we are going to be busier so get out there and get your dress,” says Canton.
Casa Loma (Image: Liberty Entertainment Group)
With the rush of three wedding seasons into one, everyone in the wedding business is busy – but is excited to have some sort of normalcy back and to be able to meet wedding day expectations.
“I am extremely excited. Everyone in the wedding industry is extremely happy to be able to host again. We have been waiting for so long, and now we are able to open our doors again and host, it is great,” says Vivanco. We are looking forward to continuing to stay in business and to continue to work with our couples, I think it is just extremely exciting to be back operating again.”
For Sash and Bustle, Dineen said they are also excited to be able to make memories again with their brides and get back to a normal wedding flow.
“We are all about making memories at Sash and Bustle, I think weddings are a lot about making beautiful memories and for many finding the dress is a special moment and it is for everybody. So, we always loved hearing the bride’s plans and all the unique ideas they have for celebrating. It’s feeling like we are in our groove now and we are kind of getting back to the new normal that we were used to,” says Dineen.
Leav, a Canadian tech startup that provides stores with a comprehensive platform offering a frictionless checkout process, has signed an agreement with leading intimate apparel retailer, La Vie en Rose, to implement Leav across the retailer’s four downtown Montréal locations and one Bikini Village location.
Leav is a mobile shopping platform that enables shoppers to checkout on their phone from anywhere in the store without needing to download an app or create an account. The company said the future of retail is in-store, and Leav aims to achieve that vision by providing retailers with a powerful tool that enables them to focus on sales and customer service while giving shoppers their time back at scale.
Olivier Roy, Co-Founder and CEO of Leav, which is based in Montreal, said the initial idea for the company began in November 2019.
At the time, Roy and others were in a bar in Montreal and wanted to pay their bill at the table. But the server was not available and it took about 45 minutes for him to come. So they started brainstorming on how they could pay their bill at the table. The first thing that came to mind is they needed to connect with the POS. They needed a link between a webpage and the POS of the restaurant.
Image: Leav
They started working on a solution for a few months and the first mockups. Then COVID hit in March 2020. In about July, they raised about $150,000 from friends and family for the initiative. With restaurants shut down because of the pandemic, they started looking at the retail sector.
Olivier Roy
“It was always where we wanted to bring Leav in the future. It was always the end goal to be in retail. To be able to skip the line and shop as fast as we wanted. So we did the pivot and the goal we set for ourselves was to open the first autonomous store in Canada for December 1, 2020,” said Roy. “So we had about five months to make it happen, to develop the technology, build the system.
“Come December we had rented our own store at the Eaton Centre in Montreal. Beautiful store. First floor. Street level store. We renovated everything ourselves. We bought the merchandise and it was a real Leav store branded. That was quite a success.”
The concept gained traction with exposure to retailers and consumers who thought the idea was really cool. From there, it rebuilt the technology from scratch in 2021 until the fall when it was ready to roll out the product. Leav started working with La Vie en Rose and started integration with its POS. In April of this year, it added its first store with the retailer in the Eaton Centre.
Leav at Montreal Eaton Centre (Image: Leav)
Recently, it added another three more of the retailer’s stores. Roy said the company is aiming to have its platform in about 20 stores by the end of the year in Quebec and Ontario. Leav is also working with Parc Olympique and other retailers Roy said he could not announce at this time.
“There’s a massive labour shortage and it’s affecting most retailers. It’s a massive problem.”
“If you go to any grocery store, you’re going to see signs everywhere that they are hiring. That’s a problem we can solve by reducing the number of self-checkout stations, that costly hardware. It’s not super fun to use. So for every retailer Leav can be a great tool to mitigate check out lines, solve the problem that they are losing billions a year because of abandoned carts.”
Image: LeavImage: Leav
Leav said retailers can cut minutes from every checkout, making the experience up to 10 times faster. Its simple three-step process enables shoppers to simply scan the item(s) they want to purchase, pay using their preferred credit card, and leave with their purchases in-hand – without having to download any applications. Retailers benefit from this integrated system environment and experience increased efficiencies as staff can focus on sales and customer service, thereby streamlining operations.
Evgeny Grachev
“We believe that the future of retail is in-store, and all one needs to do is enhance the customer experience. Leav does just that and provides retailers the tools to automate low-value tasks to help them focus on what really matters – sales and customer service,” said Evgeny Grachev, Leav’s Cofounder and Chief Product Officer.
Leav cited a recent survey from Adyen, a leading payment provider, indicating that one of the greatest challenges in retail has always occurred during the checkout process, costing North American retailers an estimated US $21.9 billion.
“We are excited to be the first retailer to partner with Leav. The option of self-checkout at some of our stores will enable our sales associates to spend more time helping customers find what they are looking for. As one of Canada’s leading intimate apparel retailers, La Vie en Rose is proud to be the first to go to market with this technologically advanced easy to use platform. It is in line with our values of providing a seamless and effortless experience, where and when customers need it,” added François Roberge, President and CEO of La Vie en Rose.
For more information on Leav, Retail Insider readers can set up a demonstration by visiting this landing page.
