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.

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.

Table of Contents

Section 1 Introduction to the Al Revolution

Chapter 1 How Al Has Revolutionized Many Other Industries over the Last 20 Years

Chapter 2 The Three Myths of How Al Will Transform Retail

Chapter 3 How Al Will Automate and Optimize Retail

Chapter 4 Level-Setting the Al Doomsday-ism

Section 2 Al Theory

Chapter 5 What Is AI?

Chapter 6 From CPUs to GPUs

Chapter 7 Optimization

Chapter 8 Measuring Al Performance

Chapter 9 Al Learning Techniques

Chapter 10 Simulators and Al

Chapter 11 OODA Loops

Chapter 12 Hierarchy of Data Maturity

Chapter 13 A "General Theory for Retail Al"

Section 3 Applications of Al in Retail

Chapter 14 The Inefficiencies in Retail Today

Chapter 15 Al for Merchandising

Chapter 16 Al for Inventory, Ordering, and Supply Chain Management

Chapter 17 Al for Replenishment and Labor Management

Chapter 18 Al for Labor Budgets and Scheduling

Chapter 19 Al for E-Commerce and Customer Service

Chapter 20 Al for Warehouse and Distribution Centers

Chapter 21 Al for Checkout

Chapter 22 Al for Pricing and Promotion

Chapter 23 Other Al Use Cases

Section 4 Implementation

Chapter 24 Create Your "Al Strategy and Road Map"

Chapter 25 Buying vs. Building Al

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

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

“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

About the Author

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.