What if your app wasn't just a shopping tool — it was a storytelling platform that deepened customer relationships? Ian Dewar, who shaped customer experience strategies at The North Face, Anthropologie, and across the VF family of brands, makes a compelling case for rethinking how apps serve customers. In this episode, he explores how leading retailers have transformed their apps from transaction engines into discovery platforms: from rewarding customers for hiking national parks instead of just spending money, to pioneering "in-store mode" that bridges digital wishlists with physical retail, to using curated personalization that introduces customers to products they didn't know the brand even made.
This is a deep dive into building brand affinity, using behavioral data to drive frequency over acquisition, and what it actually means to make an app worth opening — not just for checkout, but for connection.
On customer frequency vs. acquisition:
“The metric for growth for established and mature retailers is not customer acquisition. It's customer frequency."
"We don't want to sell people product they're not going to use."
On the app being a brand extension:
“By creating these other engagement opportunities on the app, it becomes that brand extension versus mobile web or desktop.”
On apps sitting at the center of the omnichannel experience:
“Apps should have visibility to everything you've bought in the store, online, everything that's sitting in your cart, what's in your wishlist.”
On the app as a discovery tool:
"The future of where apps really add value is this ability to intertwine content, storytelling, brand messaging with the ease to product discovery."
On personalization done right:
"It's not marketing gobbledygook to trick people into buying things they don't need. It's really adding to utility."
01:28 From bike tours to The North Face — Ian's unconventional journey into retail
03:43 National Parks check-in: Rewarding exploration, not just transactions
06:35 Getting internal buy-in when the ROI isn't immediate
09:34 How the app became the hub for better customers
12:17 In-store mode: Making the app work inside physical store
14:37 The jeans problem: Why omnichannel data silos still break the customer experience
16:59 App strategy — quality over quantity in user acquisition
19:12 Frequency over acquisition — the growth metric that actually matters
21:17 Becoming the brand of choice, not just a consideration
24:48 The future of discovery — curated personalization vs. frictionless checkout
27:56 Using behavioral data to show customers what they didn't know you made
Connect with Ian Dewar on LinkedIn
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