Silo Busting 4: Designing Next Normal Retail Experiences with Buck Sleeper and Jitin Agarwal

Retail is—slowly, slowly—reopening. The industry has been walloped, but it’s striving mightily to rally. What will retail’s next normal look and feel like? What will it take to make the restart safe, human-centered, and economically viable? To find out, we turned to Buck Sleeper, Director of EPAM Continuum’s Restaurant and Retail Innovation vertical, and Jitin Agarwal, VP of Enterprise Products for EPAM. Since Agawarl recently wrote about the rebirth of retail and Sleeper has long been interested in retail’s physical and digital merge, our Ken Gordon thought it was an appropriate time to toss some questions in their direction. Together the guys are optimistically cautious, or cautiously optimistic, about throwing an open sign on the industry’s big door. But they recognize that the industry is moving into new extremely new territory, and it must move with care. As Sleeper says about his most recent shopping experience: “I'll admit, I made it about 10 feet in the door, turned around, drove home, and completed my purchase online.”