Ask Johan Kaij about his best retail experiences and he'll give you three answers. None of them start with technology.

That's a deliberate provocation from someone who has spent over two decades helping leading retailers and brands build strategies, concepts and offerings. He thinks about stores and shopping — by his own admission — more or less every hour of every day. And still, the experiences that stuck weren't the ones with the most sophisticated infrastructure behind them.

The first: four days into a hiking trip in Kebnekaise, tired and dirty, he finds a chocolate bar and a sign pointing him to a beer cold in a nearby creek. He cracks the can. Mountains everywhere, sun in his eyes. Twenty years later, top three easily. Tech level: zero.

The second: walking through Stockholm, he wonders what second-hand shops are nearby. Thirty seconds on Google Maps, three minutes of walking, and he's inside a store with no funny smell, great layout, vintage pieces at fair prices — and a woman behind the counter who tells him the clothes come from TV and film sets. He's still looking for an excuse to go back. Tech level: mid. AI helped him find the place.

The third: someone at home gets sick, evening, no one wants to drive anywhere. He orders medicine online, half-expecting the usual friction. Next morning: package at the door. He never left the sofa. Tech level: high, with serious logistics infrastructure humming behind the scenes.

Three very different experiences. Three very different levels of technology involvement. All of them memorable. All of them worth telling people about.

So what do they actually have in common?

Kaij breaks it down cleanly. First, what you sell. A differentiated offering — whether that's a beer in a mountain creek or a leather jacket that belonged to a detective show — is what makes the experience possible. Without it, you're competing on price and availability alone, which is a brutal place to live unless your operational efficiency is world-class.

Second, easy to find. All three were available when he needed them. Two showed up in search. One was the only option for thirty kilometres. Either way — he found them without friction.

Third, experience. And here's where it gets interesting: the experiences were completely different in form. Personal and conversational in the second-hand shop. Solitary and physical in the mountains. Frictionless and remote for the pharmacy. None was better than the others. Each was adapted to what he was actually looking for in that moment.

That's the job. Not to build the most impressive experience in the abstract. To build the right one for the customer in front of you.

On tech: he loves it. That's not the point.

Kaij is clear that this isn't a technology sceptic's manifesto. He was re-coding startup memory files on his father's PC at nine to sneak in games he wasn't supposed to play. He wrote his master's thesis in 2002 on digital distribution of video games. He's been in the room at NRF, D-Congress, and more pitch decks than he can count.

His argument isn't that tech doesn't matter. It's that tech needs a purpose. Customer first, business second, tech third — to make the first two happen better. Used well, it's a driver, a catalyst, an efficiency engine. Used poorly, it's a layer of complexity between you and the experience you were supposed to be creating.

The question worth asking in any retail or brand conversation right now isn't "how do we use AI?" It's "what experience are we trying to build — and what role does technology play in getting there?"

The thing people actually remember

He ends with an image: an AI-controlled drone from a fully automated beer plant, delivering a personalised beer to the mountains, paid for by retina scan, auto-reviewed and shared. All of that is probably coming.

And the thing he'll remember will still be the cold water of the creek on his hand, the sound of the can opening, the sun on his face, the taste of malt, and the mountains all around.

Build the technology you want. But never forget to build the experience people remember.

That, he says, is a brand in the age of AI.

Johan Kaij is the founder of Circel and a retail strategy advisor with over 20 years of experience working with leading retailers and brands. He is hosting an event — "How to Build a Brand in the Age of AI" — on April 1st. Find him on LinkedIn or at Epicenter.

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