Scandinavian Outdoor
Helping Scandinavian Outdoor turn customer data insights into growth with AI agents
2 min read
Scandinavian Outdoor, a leading Nordic retailer for outdoor gear, teamed up with Columbia Road to make better use of their customer data. By using AI, they wanted to quickly surface useful insights that would otherwise take hours to uncover. With Columbia Road’s AI agents, they were able to get a clearer view of customer behaviour, store performance and growth opportunities, making their marketing more focused and effective.
Starting point: Unlocking insights from untapped customer data
Scandinavian Outdoor was eager to tap into the full potential of its customer data to drive personalised customer experiences and deeper strategic insights. However, like many B2C ecommerce businesses, the team lacked the time and in-house resources to surface and act on the vast insights buried within their marketing automation and customer data platforms.
Our approach: Making complex data insights simple and actionable
We integrated two pre-trained AI agents with Scandinavian Outdoor's live customer data via Custobar, their marketing automation and customer data platform (CDP). These agents, focused on Purchase Behaviour and Customer Profiling, were securely connected through Custobar's API. The AI agents were capable of transforming natural language questions into actionable analyses, dashboards and strategic recommendations.
Our collaboration enabled the Scandinavian Outdoor growth team and management to:
- Model customer lifetime value across different segments
- Compare shopping behaviours and CLV components between top-performing and lower-tier customer deciles
- Derive omnichannel insights linking offline and online behaviour to long-term customer value
- Connect behavioural patterns to the product catalogue for enhanced merchandising and targeting
"Thanks to the AI Agent, we could dive deep into our customer data in Custobar quickly and easily. Before, this would’ve taken us hours, but now we've got to the insights with just a few prompts. For example, it was really interesting and useful for us to compare our different stores and see how our best customer segments (top deciles) perform in each one. This data helped us identify concrete areas for improvement, which we can now use to make our store-specific marketing more effective. The whole process was quick and easy. Columbia Road gave us some great ideas and findings, plus clear guidance that made it easy for us to use the agent ourselves."
Kuutti Haapanen, Head of eCommerce and Marketing, Scandinavian Outdoor
Impact: Turning insights into smarter decisions and better outcomes
By leveraging Columbia Road's AI agents, Scandinavian Outdoor was able to extract deep insights at scale, something that would have otherwise required significant manual effort and analytical capacity. These insights empowered the growth team to steer strategic decisions, prioritise high-value segments, and better align their offerings with real customer behaviour.
Crucially, the agent's data model was built around Custobar's structure, meaning Scandinavian Outdoor could now interact directly with their data, asking questions, pulling key segments, and even preparing updated datasets ready for reintegration into Custobar. This closed-loop capability lays the foundation for future automation and real-time updates.
Project highlights: Key moments that brought AI insights to life
- Rapid onboarding: From a live demo at Digital Commerce Finland's event in February to a live integration in record time in April
- Natural language interface: Democratised access to complex analytics for both management and growth teams
- Strategic alignment: Enabled data-driven decision making without requiring deep technical resources
- Future-ready architecture: Built-in potential to trigger automated actions directly from the AI-agent to the CDP
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