A few of the panelists and speakers: David Bensadoun of Aldo, Peter Simons of La Maison Simons, Chantal Levesque of Shan, PKP of Quebecor, Mahée Paiement, plus reps from companies like Lightspeed, Cossette and Ricardo Media.

But for a crash course in the future of retail, Charles Desjardins of Absolunet stood out. He offered 10 e-comm trends of 2018 in 45 jam-packed minutes. Here they are:

1. The renaissance of bricks and mortar. Frank + Oak and Structube were cited as examples of retailers using stores to support their online business. Interesting stat: 50 per cent of millennials prefer to shop in store at some point. And Kanuk, which has a cold room refrigerated to minus 25C in which to experience your potential new parka.
2. B2B is moving to B2C, with distributors bypassing the retailer and going directly to the consumer.
3. Virtual reality, from Ikea, Houzz and Amazon, which lets you place furniture in your living room virtually.
4. Retailers can now reliably measure the power of online research, and data can also tell them which ads worked. One stat cited by Desjardins: 82 per cent of consumers research a business; with 24 hours, 18 per cent of those make a purchase.
5. Mobile checkout is becoming less painful – and will reach 70 per cent of e-comm traffic by the end of this year.
6. Artificial intelligence can use a consumer’s data to personalize her online shopping experience. It’s like a familiar salesperson. Nextflix is a perfect example, catering movie picks to viewers based on past behaviour.
7. Amazon is more and more of a marketing force. Currently, 55 per cent of Americans start their buying research on Amazon, meaning if you’re not on Amazon, you’re missing out. Wayfair is also becoming a major marketplace.
8. Voice command technology is changing e-comm so that product info will have to be compatible with voice searching. Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa are already shaking it up.
9. Photo shopping is here. You upload an image of something you like – say, Kim Kardashian’s outfit – and your search engine or app will find you the look.
10. On that note, your web browser’s dominance is waning. The browser will be one channel among many – apps, voice interaction, for example – as a way to purchase stuff.

For the full trend report from Absolunet, click here. 

The post The voice: 10 trends you need to know about e-comm in 2018 appeared first on Eva Friede.

Storied Ste-Catherine St., the vibrant heart of Montreal, dates back to 1758, two years before the British conquest, with the beginnings of the Faubourg St-Laurent, a suburb separated from the heart of the city by marshes.

For 150 years or so, it was largely a mixed residential street. Then, in 1891, Henry Morgan & Co. made the brash move uptown, building the fine architectural gem known as Colonial House, facing Phillip’s Square.

Morgan’s move ushered in a golden age of department stores on the street, followed by retailers large and small, theatres and burlesque halls, strip clubs, restaurants and sports venues, and now the Quartier des Spectacles.

Dinu Bumbaru, policy director at Héritage Montréal, on St. Catherine street in Montreal.
Photo by Dario Ayala

Ste-Catherine St., circa 1900.

Along the way, it became the vibrant heart of the city – chaotic, for sure, as Dinu Bumbaru of Heritage Montreal describes it – the venue for parades and protests, shopping and dining, strolling and entertainment. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, it’s elbow to elbow for shoppers. When a Stanley Cup game ends in disappointment – or jubilation, the vandals come out. When armistice was declared on May 7, 1945, ending five years of World War II, throngs celebrated on the street.

“It’s a shopping street, it’s not a shopping centre. The street may be chaotic, but there’s life to it until 3 o’clock in the morning,’’ says Bumbaru.

“Even the old postcards are covered with scenes of the nightscape.”

It was also the gateway to Montreal because of its proximity to Windsor, Bonaventure and Central Stations, he points out.

The retail barons of the 20th century have created a legacy, Bumbaru says, and stores were built with spectacular features. Look up, he advises, to view the cornices and decorations on the upper floors. “It shows that even the most greedy retail architecture had a sense of participating in the theatre of the street.”

The entry of global giants like H&M or Victoria’s Secret has not changed the scale of Ste-Catherine, but many local retailers have decamped to the underground malls.

The city should have a strategy, Bumbaru says, to save space for artists’ studios, for instance, as happened with the Belgo Building, or to set up retail incubators. West of the downtown core, rents are cheaper, he points out, and new retailers tend to set up shop there.

But back to Morgan’s, purchased by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1960, although its name was not changed to The Bay until 1972. Its move uptown was met by derision and doubt, but many shops followed from the Old Montreal business district – and prospered.

Vintage image of Morgan’s, now The Bay.

Among the names that might not be recalled by most of us today: S. Carsley, W. H. Scroggie, John Murphy,  Hamilton, and Goodwin’s. For more recent recollections, the T. Eaton Co. bought Goodwin’s (formerly Carsley) in 1925; in 1929, Murphy’s became Simpson’s. In Montreal, Simpson’s – then owned by The Bay – closed in 1989; 10 years later the once mighty Eaton’s department chain went bankrupt. Also in 1999, Simons, the venerable Quebec City-based institution, moved to Ste-Catherine St. in part of the former Simpson’s building.

And then there is Ogilvy, known as the Grande Dame of Ste. Catherine St., which opened in 1866 as a linen shop on Mountain St. just north of St. James, moved to Ste-Catherine St. in 1896 and across the street to its current pride of place in 1912.

Now owned by Holt Renfrew, it is in the process of renovation, expansion and merger with Holt Renfrew.

Further east, Dupuis Frères opened up shop in 1868 near St. Hubert. It went out of business in 1978. Bumbaru explains that topography – the natural slope that is Bleury St., the marshes that separated the old city from the new – and the dead zone that once characterized the area between Bleury and St-Laurent Blvd., split off the eastern area from what became the downtown shopping zone.

Change is inevitable, of course, and so it goes for the street itself, which is undergoing a major renovation, with plans for heated and widened sidewalks, more trees, and more places for pedestrians to sit.

Much is at stake.

Heritage Montreal has been asked to sit on planning committees working on the renewal of the street.

“They’re very conscious of the very fragile ecosystem that they’re working with,’’ Bumbaru says of the city. “They don’t want this to turn into a page of the history book that says, ‘There was once upon a time a lively street called Ste-Catherine.’”

The post Ste-Catherine St.: more than a shopping artery appeared first on Eva Friede.

Leonard was the poet troubadour of my youth, and well beyond. I turned to his songs – Suzanne, Sisters of Mercy, So Long, Marianne – for the comfort of his melancholy.

As I came of age and moved to the Plateau, he remained a spiritual presence – as the voice of bleeding hearts, romantics and seekers – and in real life. He would be seen walking around Parc du Portugal, just off St-Laurent Blvd. and Marie-Anne (not the Marianne of the so long-farewell), and would nod to passers-by who acknowledged him.

News of his death, several days after his passing, on Nov. 7, 2016, resonated around the world, but nowhere so much as in Montreal, where for five decades, he was our man.

The tributes keep on coming – a huge mural on the Cooper Building on the Main, another on Crescent St., and little signs and wonders throughout the Plateau – but most significantly with the major exhibition exploring Cohen’s life and legacy at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), opening Nov. 9.

Leonard Cohen – A Crack in Everything was in the works years before his death and with the permission of Cohen, says John Zeppetelli, director and chief curator of the MAC.

It’s an audacious exhibition for the museum, Zeppetelli says, featuring multimedia and immersive installations,including commissioned works from artists and musicians, along with archival material from the National Film Board and Radio-Canada.

Some displays:

*The Depression Box by Israeli film-maker Ari Folman. A lone visitor enters a darkened chamber to be confronted by the demons of depression. Famous Blue Raincoat plays.

*The Offerings, a video installation by Kara Blake with multiple projections as Cohen speaks.

* A dance performance by Clara Furey, titled Cosmic Love: Where Even The ….

Zeppetelli says he and guest curator Victor Shiffman were brainstorming on a project to mark Montreal’s 375th anniversary when Shiffman suggested Leonard Cohen.

“He is profoundly local, yet instantly planetary. Who (from Montreal) has the kind of resonance that Leonard Cohen has?” While thrilled with the project, Zeppetelli recounted, Cohen said he would not participate in the production of the works.

“We didn’t realize then how ill he was,’’ Zeppetelli said. His death did not change the commissions, but they did change the mood.

“The artists were even more committed afterward. It brought a different dimension, a different kind of emotional intensity to the production of the works.’’

Leonard Cohen – A Crack in Everything runs Nov. 9 to April 9, 2018, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 185 St-Catherine St. West.

The post The comfort of his melancholy: memories of Leonard Cohen. MAC tribute opens Nov. 9 appeared first on Eva Friede.

Yes, all of the above. With speakers including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, BuzzFeed’s Laura Henderson, venture capitalist Leonard Brody, A+E’s Amanda Hill, designers Dror Benshetrit and Karim Rashid – to name a few – plus a bewildering array of workshops and labs, parties and brain dates, no person could report on it all.

So here’s a cheat sheet on some of the most profound, surprising and inspiring things I heard. Just don’t ask me how to get from the Hangar to the Plaza to the Studio to the Forum in the Arsenal. My sense of direction is challenged at best, but when intellectual and sensory overload sets in, I am lost.

Hanging from the rafters at the Arsenal.

Leonard Brody, venture capitalist

We are now at a tipping point, going through The Great Rewrite in history, with more change in the past 100 years than at any other time in history. We are better off on most counts, Brody says – life expectancy, literacy, work load – but most North Americans don’t see it. Why? Because institutions are failing to keep up with the societal shift.

For the first time in history, we own our own means of communication. “Part of the instability you feel – that society seasickness,’’ he says, is because we are not sure how institutions are going to keep up.

And our behaviour has fundamentally changed because of the internet. He calls it bifurcation. As an internet user you have a physical self and a virtual self.

Some predictions:

*Virtual performances by, say, a Michael Jackson.

* Housing will be the new water.

* There are 3 billion people on the network now; in 24 months there will be 1 billion more.

“This will be the single largest economic even in human history.”

Laura Henderson of BuzzFeed under the big top at C2 Montreal. Photo: Allen McEachern

Laura Henderson, BuzzFeed marketing senior VP

“BuzzFeed is a next gen-media company built on human connection,” Henderson says, “Everything we do is built from the audience.

“Everything is focussed on sharing.”

And: “We have zero editorial vision.”

It garners 9 billion views a month, and with its “digital advantages,” is quick to react.

So when, on Henderson’s first week on the job, incoming President Trump call BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage,’’ after it published salacious reports on the president-elect, the company quickly launched a line of merch, featuring trash cans and T-shirts. It made $25,000 in nine hours, and donated the money to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Henderson suggest brands do simple things to adapt to the digital age:

* Rewire for responsiveness.

* Get good at prototyping in bite size pieces, with small stakes..

* Resist the urge to create strategy.

* Experiment. “Experimentation is about creating space for serendipity,’’ Henderson says.

Henderson’s boss, founder and CEO Jonah Peretti, would say, “I’d rather just put out a whole lot of crap and see what sticks,’’ Henderson recounted.

Karim Rashid, designer

“If we design well, we make better human experiences,’’ says design superstar Karim Rashid. Rashid is not just thinking about better products; he is concerned about the state of the planet. Humans have been around for 100,000 years, but in the 180 years since the start of industrial revolution, we have destroyed, extracted and robbed the earth, he says..

At a design fair in Milan, there were 30,000 products. “It’s absurd.”

He went on to make a case for sugar-based plastics – “Who needs sugar, anyhow?” and talk about an epoch of creativity and empowerment. For the first time in history, he says, every one of us has a voice.

“We’re on this earth to create. That’s the meaning of life, to create,’’ he says, meaning both procreation and intellectual creation.

Furthermore: “The digital age came along to save the planet.”

Why? Because there are no borders, the world is shrinking and it is bringing humanity back together.

But we’re only 40 years into the digital era, at a tipping point between analog and digital.

The most important thing about the digital age: it affords us heightened experiences with much less consumption, Rashid says.

The post C2 Montreal: Bewitched, bewildered, inspired appeared first on Eva Friede.