Tell us about Kiaro:
The name Kiaro, comes from the Italian phrase “Chiaroscuro” meaning “from darkness to light”, which encapsulates our journey as a brand from the municipally licensed “grey market” to the fully legal recreational market. However, the name is only one small part of the Kiaro experience, most importantly our stores and HQ are staffed with people passionate about cannabis, customer service, and combining the two into an amazing cannabis retail experience.
What is the customer experience like at Kiaro?
From the moment a customer walks in the door they begin their own Kiaro customer experience. This means they are greeted warmly by both our team and by the Kiaro branded scent shared by all of our stores across Canada. From there they embark on a cannabis journey with our highly trained team. Our team members act as personal guides for our guests, whether they are new users looking for education and direction, or long term consumers looking for product recommendations. Our team collectively uses their knowledge, passion, and communication skills to ensure customers leave both feeling satisfied and that they’ve learned something new every time they visit the store.
What was the inspiration for the look and design of your store?
Kiaro’s design was inspired by our love of the modern, sleek, and comfortable retail experience. Our thematic use of black and white is shared among every one of our retail stores, all of which are highlighted with a rainbow of colours that act as a reminder of the diversity of experiences created by the cannabis plant.
How are you using Buddi at your stores currently?
Currently, we’re using Buddi as our customer-facing clientele system, meaning that customers or sales staff use Buddi to display products, provide product information, and submit orders to our fulfillment room. We also use Buddi’s user profile feature to allow our customers to make profiles, track their purchases, mark favorites, and subscribe to our email list. Finally, Buddi powers our in-store order board which displays “in progress” and “ready for pick-up” orders to both customers and our sales team.
What do your customers think of Buddi?
Customers who are new to the legal cannabis industry are blown away with the Buddi clientele. The fact that they can view, browse and order cannabis in an Amazon-like system eliminates any remaining skepticism or stigma they may be holding towards the legal cannabis retail experience. Return customers appreciate the ability to create a user profile, track their previous purchases, and highlight their favourite products.
What’s your favourite or most used feature in Buddi?
Buddi is most useful to us as a product display and order system, though the order board unarguably is a positive addition to the customer experience. More specifically, the ability to filter our inventory by product type, strain, cannabinoid levels, flavour, and brand help us immensely when assisting customers.
How does Buddi help your business?
Buddi helps our business by allowing us to display our full product list to our customers, process orders, display customer orders on the in-store order board, and finally promote Kiaro through the integrated user-profile and Kiaro mailing list feature. It’s also very useful for some of our more private return customers, who aren’t looking for guidance or product recommendations, and want to minimize conversation with staff. They’re able to pop in, order their cannabis, and pop out in an efficient and convenient manner.
How do your staff members feel about having Buddi in store?
Our staff are all fans of Buddi, it makes their jobs easier, adds to the customer experience, and generally makes the store function more efficiently.
How do you see Buddi helping with Cannabis 2.0 (edibles, topicals, etc)?
Buddi will assist our team with Cannabis 2.0 by assisting us in providing product information to our customers, including cannabinoid levels, terpene profiles, brand & LP information, and more. This will be especially important with 2.0 products, as we expect to see a lot of new consumers coming into the store to purchase edibles, and the more informed our customers are, the better the experience they will have with their cannabis products.