A Billionaire Starts a Retail Management School at McGill University
Canadian shoe magnate Aldo Bensadoun believes grads need to be better prepared for an industry in turmoil. Other universities are also modernizing their retailing programs.
Aldo Bensadoun knows a thing or two about retail. After starting out in 1972 selling wooden clogs, he built Aldo Group Inc. into a globe-girdling shoe chain with more than 3,000 locations. Having handed the reins to his son David, the billionaire Aldo founder is keen to help educate the next generation and has helped fund a retail management school at Montreal’s McGill University, his alma mater. The curriculum will incorporate many fields of expertise needed to thrive in today’s industry, from data analytics and anthropology to artificial intelligence.
Bensadoun says few business schools around the world provide a focus on retail management, which means graduates often aren’t ready to work for a company like Aldo. “They come to us and they studied marketing, and they think that’s retail,” he says. “Retail is not only marketing.” To be a good retailer, he continues, “you need to understand sociology, you need to understand architecture, to be able to create the right atmosphere for that consumer to come and feel the experience of the brand. That’s why it’s extremely important to bring all these various disciplines into one school.”