AI for Retail

The coming of the AI revolution in brick-and-mortar retail

In AI for Retail: A Practical Guide to Modernize Your Retail Business with AI and Automation, Francois Chaubard, AI researcher and retail technology CEO, delivers a practical guide for integrating AI into your brick-and-mortar retail business. In the book, you’ll learn how to make your business more efficient by automating inventory management, supply chain, front-end, merchandising, pricing, loss prevention, e-commerce processes, and more.

The author takes you step by step from no AI Strategy at all to implementing a robust AI playbook that will permeate through your entire organization. In this book, you will learn:

• How AI works, including key terminology and fundamental AI applications in retail
• How AI can be applied to the major functions of retail with detailed P&L analysis of each application
• How to implement an AI strategy across your entire business to double or even triple Free Cash Flow

AI for Retail is the comprehensive, hands-on blueprint for AI adoption that retail managers, executives, founders, entrepreneurs, board members, and other business leaders have been waiting for.

Introduction: Why You Need This Book as a Retail Leader 1

Section 1 Introduction to the AI Revolution 11

1 How Ai Has Revolutionized Many Other Industries over the Last 20 Years 13

2 The Three Myths of How AI Will Transform Retail 37

3 How AI Will Automate and Optimize Retail 51

4 Level- Setting the AI Doomsday- ism 67

Section 2 AI Theory 75

5 What Is AI? 77

6 From CPUs to GPUs 84

7 Optimization 88

8 Measuring AI Performance 94

9 AI Learning Techniques 100

10 Simulators and AI 111

11 OODA Loops 116

12 Hierarchy of Data Maturity 120

13 A “General Theory for Retail AI” 125

Section 3 Applications of AI in Retail 137

14 The Inefficiencies in Retail Today 139

15 AI for Merchandising 143

16 AI for Inventory, Ordering, and Supply Chain Management 153

17 AI for Replenishment and Labor Management 177

18 AI for Labor Budgets and Scheduling 193

19 AI for E- Commerce and Customer Service 199

20 AI for Warehouse and Distribution Centers 212

21 AI for Checkout 227

22 AI for Pricing and Promotion 254

23 Other AI Use Cases 263

Section 4 Implementation 269

24 Create your “AI Strategy and Road Map” 271

25 Buying vs. Building AI 285

26 How to Run a Proof of Concept Bake- off Effectively 292

27 Transitioning to a Fact- based, Data- driven Culture 303

About the Author 309

Index 311

FRANCOIS CHAUBARD is the CEO of Focal Systems, a deep learning computer vision company dedicated to helping brick and mortar retail businesses automate their operations. He has helped companies like Walmart, ShopRite, Piggly Wiggly, Good Food Holdings, and Fairway optimize their operations with state-of-the-art deep learning that revolutionizes how stores are run. Chaubard also co-created and taught many courses on AI at Stanford University, including CS229: Machine Learning, CS224D: Deep Learning for NLP, and CS231M: Computer Vision for Mobile.

Retailers around the world are looking for ways to optimize their businesses through artificial intelligence (AI). From international behemoths like Amazon, to local mom-and-pop operations, retail leaders are increasingly recognizing that their survival depends on their ability to adopt new frameworks for automation.

In AI for Retail, technology CEO and AI researcher Francois Chaubard provides a hands-on guide for integrating AI into your brick-and-mortar retail business. Chaubard has spent the last 14 years building AI systems in applications like self-driving cars and missile defense systems, and shows how to apply those same AI principles to retail.

Chaubard explores how to use AI in everything from customer service to warehouse optimization and demonstrates how to craft and implement a big-picture AI strategy across your entire business. You’ll learn AI basics, including critical terminology and fundamental AI applications in retail, as well as how to use AI and deep learning for checkout, automated inventory, pricing, loss prevention, demand forecasting and planning, and e-commerce.

AI for Retail offers key takeaways for retail executives and those responsible for deploying intelligent automation at every level of a retail company. Relevant and exciting real-world case studies illuminate and highlight the concepts discussed in the book, showing you how leaders have deployed the author’s frameworks with great success.

AI for Retail is the practical blueprint for retail AI adoption that executives, board members, managers, retail business founders, entrepreneurs, and other business leaders have been waiting for.

PRAISE FOR AI FOR RETAIL

“Francois has truly captured the secrets of accelerating retailers’ adoption of AI to dramatically increase free cash flow. This book is an absolute must-read for your entire executive team.”
—Don High, Former Chief Scientist, Walmart Inc.

“AI is the next big thing and retailers are still getting their minds around how to use it. As Francois has discovered and explains, when you focus on automating and optimizing core tasks, the ROI can be so high and so powerful. Retailers need to be thinking very hard about AI due to their razor thin margins. It’s good for the customers because it improves availability and their shopping experience, it’s good for the retailer because it lowers cost and drives profitability, and it’s good for brands because they sell more.”
—Tony DeNunzio, Former CEO, Asda

“Francois adds a purity to awareness. He refuses to accept false facts and has created a system of learning that validates observation and attacks inefficiency.”
—John J. Sumas, Co-President, Village Super Market Inc.

“This book is wonderful reading packed with important exposure to topics in AI that retailers need to understand. Retailing in this day in age without AI is like fighting with one arm tied behind your back.”
—Abel Porter, Former CEO, Smith’s Food & Drug, and Fairway

“Nobody knows this space better than Francois, and there is no book from which you can learn so much as fast as this book.”
—John Linehan, President, King’s Hawaiian

“An excellent guide for business leaders looking to better understand AI and what it means for their future.”
—Francois Chollet, AI Researcher, Google

“Francois has been at the forefront of bringing AI into retail with the explosive growth of deep learning over these past few years.”
—Dr. Mykel Kochenderfer, Associate Professor, Stanford University