Canadian Tire Corp.’s Michael Medline, president and incoming CEO, recently outlined his aggressive three-year vision to keep the company on offense in a rapidly changing retail environment.
“We can unlock tremendous growth in our existing businesses,” Medline said. “We have an innovative and aggressive management team that I would put up against the best in the industry. We have exceptional entrepreneurs in our Associate Dealers at Canadian Tire. Each of our businesses has a clear three-year vision for growth – and we’re already seeing the early results of changes that were initiated in recent years.”
The retailer will invest in new digital technologies as it prepares to attract a generational shift in the target customer – young families with kids. The new digital technologies will involve an evolution in product assortments, marketing, store layouts and investments in digital and online offerings, said the company. This evolution comes in the form of targeted digital messages that alert customers to deals based on real-time events.
For example, the targeted digital messages would automatically prompt customers to go online or to a local store for a discount on seasonal goods such as winter tires. In order to do this, Canadian Tire will invest heavily in systems that allow the company to categorize its products based on a number of criteria.
A portion of the $575 million that the company expects to make from 2015-2017 will be used for this new digital investment, in addition an expansion and upgrade of the company’s store network.
