Andy Austin, career geek, has returned from the future of retail with a mission to build brand courage and readiness for the innovations in consumer experience ahead.
AT&T
Decades ago, Austin invented an interactive touchscreen experience for AT&T stores—boosting traffic by 25% and revenue by 12% after implementing the first worldwide trial of Microsoft Surface. More recently, he developed ROSI (Return on Shopper Investment), a new model for measuring the value of retail interactions within shoppers’ lives. Austin’s dedication to the retail moment is clear. The only question is who’ll take him up on the dynamic future he’s mapping.
The Industrious
He’s the founder of The Industrious, a bold experience design firm that delivers on technology’s promise to spark curiosity, interaction and exploration in retail spaces. Fueled by an inspired urgency, he’s now developing more direct relationships with retail businesses and brand leads, particularly in Europe. His perspective spans every new and emerging technology for strengthening relationships with consumers. He sees the enduring connections that can be born, furthered or culminated at retail. And he wants to know what everyone is waiting for.
Austin’s experiential software toolkit runs the gamut—mobile apps, in-store displays and interactives, websites—rounded out with casually ingenious innovations like reactive walls. Plenty of engineer-leaders promise to digitally enhance stores. But Austin’s work builds on his expansive understanding of retail ops and implementation. The experiences he champions integrate seamlessly with existing back-end systems. Store manager-friendly, he knows what it will actually take to activate a space and all the salespeople in it.
Forbes
Austin is far less interested in past wins, however, than what the future can and should hold for the general middle-class retailer. He’s currently a Business Council Member for Forbes, regularly publishing his urgent keyboard jabbings about how to (and how not to) use technology to make retail interactions more meaningful. In 2022, he released a 48-page white paper on the digital lives and shopping trajectories of Millennials and Gen Z—a comprehensive guide for brands who can’t yet envision the stores these shoppers will reward with visits.
Shape retail strategies
Looking ahead, he aims to shape retail strategies from the brand leadership table as a master integrator of current assets, new investments, insights and learnings. Beyond experience design and store ops, merchandising triggers and responses, he notes the rising tide of data on Millennials and Gen Z. There’s little brands won’t be able to find out about them. But what matters? And how should retailers show up—by device, by geography, by store type, by market need—to create and sustain the store’s role as an irreplaceable, experience-led destination?
Austin has ideas. Just ask.
