Mathieu Champigny Of CoCreativ Group On The Future Of Retail Over The Next Few Years

Use your retail space to make your brand message even more obvious. There is no better place to reinforce your brand message than your store. Use this space as your live billboard, all the time.

As part of our series about the future of retail, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mathieu Champigny CoCreativ Group CEO.

Mathieu has held a number of high-tech and creative management positions in Europe and the US over the past 20 years. He is currently the Group CEO at CoCreativ, leading Industrial Color, Globaledit and Smashbox Studios, servicing top-tier brands in creative production solutions. The group specializes in high-end photography, video production and post-production, SaaS collaboration, animation, eCommerce, broadcast videos and CGI at any scale in its network of studios in New York and California. Before managing this creative group of agencies, his career started in structured finance in Paris, France then Houston, TX. He earned a Master’s Degree in Process Engineering from INPG and an MBA from ESSEC Business School.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I have always known that I needed to have my right and left brains equally functioning in order to have balance in my life. The creative industry was an obvious choice, to combine my creative appetite and my analytical skills. As a process engineer by trade, I often look at creative challenges as binary issues, and then look at how creative thinking can devise more creative ways to achieve the results we are looking for.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

Not the most creative production I have been involved with, but one that I will remember is when we had the opportunity to host a photoshoot for Formula 1 pilot Lewis Hamilton. When I stepped on set, I discovered the best F1 pilot in the world standing on the parapet of our outdoor patio on the 22nd floor of our studios in NYC, with the photographer also standing overlooking the city below. That view (and the risk involved) is still in my head! And that shot ended up great!

Are you working on any new exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

We just wrapped on a huge Spring Campaign with Urban Decay Cosmetics called Wild Greens. The entire line that they released is created using 100% vegan products. In our industry, we’re seeing more and more brands and companies pledge to be entirely organic or vegan in the manufacturing and it’s a wonderful thing to see the prioritization of sustainability and environmentally conscious business models.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

When I joined Industrial Color over 10 years ago, then CEO and founder Steve Kalalian took me under his wing and trusted me with a very fast moving organization, expanding rapidly through organic growth and external acquisitions. It was an exciting time when we acquired the studio division of eBay Enterprise, started our partnership with Estee Lauder and Smashbox Cosmetics, and so much more. At that time, everybody was carrying several roles and Steve’s trust was instrumental to my growth and success.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Hmmm…. Very good question. I try to bring fairness in all I do, and I always try to consider how the decisions I make every day might affect others. It does not mean that everybody is necessarily in love with everything we do, but I take pride in prioritizing the growth of my teams and people around me.

Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. The Pandemic has changed many aspects of all of our lives. One of them is the fact that so many of us have gotten used to shopping almost exclusively online. Can you share a few examples of different ideas that large retail outlets are implementing to adapt to the new realities created by the Pandemic?

Between 2019 and 2020 there was already a steady increase in eCommerce sales but of course during the pandemic the jump became significantly bigger. Many of these brick and mortar stores have completely restructured their business model to serve online consumers — this trend is most likely here to stay. Contactless payment options were implemented by many peak-pandemic. Best Buy created a scheduled pick up in which you can pick up your prepaid and ordered items from the comfort of your car. Gap just bought Drapr — a 3D avatar company which will allow shoppers to virtually try on clothing before buying. The use of virtual try on is something we’re going to see more and more of, especially as participation in the Metaverse grows more popular.

The supply chain crisis is another outgrowth of the pandemic. Can you share a few examples of what retailers are doing to pivot because of the bottlenecks caused by the supply chain crisis?

The supply chain delays have created a huge need to adapt in many ways within our industry but especially when shooting on set. VFX and CGI have become a huge advantage when it comes to product shortages. If a product is needed in multiple locations at once but is limited in supply — our in-house experts can generate and manipulate a digital recreation of the product with a creative freedom that the standard product wouldn’t allow. Globally, many retailers are starting to expand their return options which gives customers more flexibility and expands fulfillment. Other stores are cross-training back office personnel to assist with eCommerce overhauls. Everyone is finding new ways to stay ahead of the delays and shortages, including us.

How do you think we should reimagine our supply chain to prevent this from happening again in the future?

When it comes to consumer demand, a lot of shifts in approach can begin with the suppliers themselves. Many stores are establishing daily meetings and creating weekly strategy plans to stay prepared for changes. There has been a reduction by suppliers in product variety which is something that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. If companies begin to revise their buy plans, relocate staff to higher demand categories, and adjust their buy plans accordingly it could result in a positive reimagination of how companies can redirect their inventory to high-demand areas and optimize wages and routing.

In your opinion, will retail stores or malls continue to exist? How would you articulate the role of physical retail spaces at a time when online commerce platforms like Amazon Prime or Instacart can deliver the same day or the next day?

While eCommerce took over during these past few years, retail stores are coming back in numbers. Currently, about 60% of U.S. consumers are visiting brick and mortar shops, which is less than before the pandemic, however, because of the success of online sales, many retailers have accelerated their previously existing efforts to innovate. There is a major culture change going on for many retailers who have been anchored by in-person shopping. Stores that built long standing and reliable relationships with their customers are having to reinvent and redefine their relationships with the consumer public entirely. These businesses must reconfigure the idea of their target audience and develop a way to still provide value in that journey. It is not an easy task, but it is not an impossible one, many stores are succeeding. Look at someone like Nike, despite the pandemic and supply chain issues their sales are continuing to go up, both in person and online through a reconfiguration and reapproach.

The so-called “Retail Apocalypse” has been going on for about a decade. While many retailers are struggling, some retailers, like Lululemon, Kroger, and Costco are quite profitable. Can you share a few lessons that other retailers can learn from the success of profitable retailers?

Putting customers first has always been a gateway to success and buyer retention. These successful companies have come up with new and inventive ways to include the customer in the changes they are going through and making it as fun and beneficial as possible to stick around. Lululemon for example saw the increase in a need for athleisure wear during the pandemic and made the decision to expand their Men’s collection making them more notable as an athletics store rather than a Women’s store. They are revisiting and changing their original business model and image to suit the needs of the current market and it is skyrocketing their sales. They’ve created a system and they are standing by their products that earned them success in the first place.

Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise to retail companies and e-commerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?

It is estimated that with one-second delay in website loading times can result in nearly $1.6 billion in lost sales for Amazon over the course of a year. If retailers can optimize all of their product images, avoid unnecessary browser caching and secure an excellent hosting plan — there are ways in which they can become more efficient and reliable than competitors.

Amazon offers an extremely wide array of products, ranging in quality and price. If companies can secure high quality products only, or find a smaller selection of niche products to stick to, there could also be some success.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a fantastic retail experience that keeps bringing customers back for more? Please share a story or an example for each.

This is such a loaded question, as retail experience is now not just a retail experience, but part of a customer journey and overall engagement.

• Make it an experience: know that the consumer can most probably find your product online, or through other retailers. Limited-time pop-ups and exclusive one-time experiences are key to keep bringing customers back for more.
• Focus on client experience: it is not solely about the product, but about how the customer feels when they enter the store, and how they feel when they leave. Focus on how customers are welcome, guided, advised, and ensure that they got more than they would somewhere else or browsing online.
• Use your retail space to make your brand message even more obvious. There is no better place to reinforce your brand message than your store. Use this space as your live billboard, all the time.
• Retail and digital are one and the same now: we all need to think of one being an extension of the other. The brands winning at this really consider digital and retail as 1 journey, and know that you will not succeed in one without the other. Devising digital campaigns designed to bring customers to your stores are key to the brand’s success, but let’s not forget that it must also go the other way around. Meaning, how do you keep engaging with your customers after they leave your store. Generic loyalty programs are good but not enough anymore. Winning brands keep that engagement high after the retail experience, using text message campaigns, discounts for return visits, user generated content and social media activations, to really connect with their customer base within and outside their stores.
• We need to provide in the physical space something that is not readily available online, whether it be the personalized services, luxury treatment, some exclusive products, etc…

Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

It would have to be art related, and using art to promote social progress around the world. Art has a way to transcend language barriers and borders, and I would definitely try to leverage my experience and my creative network to that end.

How can our readers further follow your work?

Follow Industrial Color (www.industrialcolor.com) & Smashbox Studios (www.smashboxstudios.com) and Globaleit (www.globaledit.com) on Instagram and on LinkedIn.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!