Revolutionising retail: what’s in store?

The fes­tive sea­son was once a bonan­za for pic­ture edi­tors, with images of the lines snaking around the block as shop­pers queued in the freez­ing cold to snag a bar­gain. 

Today, most shop­pers are now com­fort­ably ensconced on the sofa, click­ing on emails instead of pound­ing the pave­ment. If now the most icon­ic of shop­ping events has migrat­ed online, does this mean the high street is final­ly redun­dant? More than ever, we ask our­selves, what’s a store for? 

This is pre­cise­ly the ques­tion four retail experts came togeth­er to dis­cuss dur­ing a recent round­table on rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing retail. And they revealed that, to mis­quote Mark Twain, reports of in-store retail’s death have been some­what exag­ger­at­ed.

Immersive experience 

Leanne Cahill, CEO of lin­gerie retail­er Bravis­si­mo, sought to high­light the immer­sive expe­ri­ence of in-per­son shop­ping: “Store envi­ron­ments are unique­ly placed to pro­vide choice and per­son­al­i­sa­tion. For a lot of brands, stores are there to give a holis­tic expe­ri­ence of a brand where you can lit­er­al­ly step in and immerse your­self in it.” 

Chris Rigg, retail direc­tor of out­door sports retail­er Ellis Brigham agreed, how­ev­er he not­ed that while ecom­merce seems to have grabbed own­er­ship of the con­ve­nience label, it has a place in phys­i­cal retail too. “There are two sep­a­rate cus­tomer jour­neys, the expe­ri­en­tial shop­per who wants the brand­ed expe­ri­ence and also the need for func­tion­al retail. We have to make sure we don’t for­get about that. Much is said about the­atre with­in retail, and that’s key from a brand­ed point of view, but peo­ple also want to just pur­chase and go away again.” 

Of course, con­ve­nience means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Mak­ing it a point of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion for a phys­i­cal retail­er means pulling numer­ous levers. These include offer­ing click-and-col­lect facil­i­ties, using real-time inven­to­ry man­age­ment sys­tems and pro­vid­ing exem­plary cus­tomer ser­vice. 

“The word omnichan­nel is real­ly omnichan­nel-plus now because it’s about how you join up [on and offline] com­plete­ly if you’re not a pure play,” says Beth But­ter­wick, CEO of fash­ion retail­er Jig­saw. “Some of the devices and tech­niques such as tablets that find stock, find it local­ly, build out­fit ideas and send them home or help store staff talk about influ­encers. There are many more things stores can do.”

Strategy first, then technology 

With so much tech­nol­o­gy avail­able, how­ev­er, it can be hard not to fall into the trap of gim­mick­ry. By all means, use it to dis­play cut­ting-edge tech, but it has to deliv­er on both effec­tive­ness and the company’s ulti­mate strate­gic aims first. 

“It is a chal­lenge for every­one,” warns Alan Hol­croft, coun­try man­ag­er at glob­al retail soft­ware com­pa­ny Cegid. Cegid’s uni­fied com­merce and POS plat­form is trust­ed by more than 1,000 spe­cial­ty and lux­u­ry retail­ers in more than 75 coun­tries. “Savvy retail­ers have adopt­ed a strat­e­gy of pur­pose­ful inno­va­tion,” says Hol­croft. “Whether invest­ing in tech to allow omnichan­nel flows or pro­vid­ing cus­tomer data to store teams, that’s what peo­ple need to work out how best to imple­ment.” 

It’s also about deliv­er­ing that full-cir­cle expe­ri­ence. From Jig­saw build­ing out­fits in store with cus­tomers and then email­ing them the sug­ges­tions to review at home, to Ellis Brigham using a 3D scan­ner to cre­ate a lit­er­al dig­i­tal foot­print that the cus­tomer can then use to size when online, tech­nol­o­gy in the phys­i­cal store set­ting is tying up those final strands in the omnichan­nel expe­ri­ence. It can have far-reach­ing con­se­quences, with tech­nol­o­gy improv­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, which reduces the return rate, low­er­ing cost for the retail­er and bring­ing down car­bon foot­print. “That could be a real gamechang­er,” Rigg says. 

As a part­ner to store asso­ciate exper­tise, tech­nol­o­gy is key to help­ing staff deliv­er that joined-up, tar­get­ed expe­ri­ence: “When a cus­tomer walks into our store, we want the team to be able to see the last thing that per­son pur­chased from us, even if that was online, and join it up with what they’re say­ing today. A lot of our busi­ness does not hap­pen on the shop floor, it hap­pens in the fit­ting area. It’s the team bring­ing choice to the cus­tomer,” Cahill says. 

It’s vital that all retail staff have access to the infor­ma­tion they need to demon­strate that lev­el of exper­tise. “One of the things that can lead to an incon­sis­tent expe­ri­ence in store is lack of prod­uct knowl­edge,” says Hol­croft. 

“Where we are see­ing some clever cus­tomers that tack­le these things is around prod­uct cat­a­logu­ing – so deliv­er­ing key infor­ma­tion about the prod­uct that you’re sell­ing in store. I’m not just talk­ing about fit or colour or size or stock avail­abil­i­ty, but more around the prove­nance, the sus­tain­abil­i­ty top­ic, and that blends itself neat­ly into the omnichan­nel flow.” 

The human touch 

It’s so impor­tant to remem­ber that tech­nol­o­gy is play­ing a sup­port­ing role in-store. That, to date, no bits and bytes have been able to sup­plant the human touch. “Humans can under­stand a customer’s need state, which machines can’t do. This is why a com­bi­na­tion of fan­tas­tic tech and the beau­ty of humans is the best expe­ri­ence you can give a cus­tomer,” But­ter­wick adds. 

This extends to a much-changed post-pan­dem­ic retail envi­ron­ment. Both Ellis Brigham and Jig­saw moved some retail spaces to dark stores dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Bravis­si­mo used staff in-store while all shop­ping was done online to pro­vide vir­tu­al fit­tings in a famil­iar envi­ron­ment, albeit one seen through a screen. 

The chal­lenge now is that cus­tomers want both in-per­son and vir­tu­al try-ons, while the stores now have cus­tomers throng­ing about. When forced to close, Bravis­si­mo still used the store teams and envi­ron­ment to pro­vide vir­tu­al fit­ting. “We’re try­ing to bal­ance still being able to offer that while the store is open,” Cahill says. “The chal­lenge is around learn­ing and devel­op­ment and bring­ing peo­ple into the busi­ness that can sup­port that jour­ney,” Rigg insists. Hol­croft agrees: “You can’t just dump tech­nol­o­gy on store teams and say get on with the job. We have to make it sim­pler and more intu­itive.” 

Hol­croft also says that so much more is now expect­ed of staff: “The role of the store asso­ciate has com­plete­ly changed, they have to be brand ambas­sadors, sales cham­pi­ons and be experts in sup­ply chain and prove­nance [yet] they’re still mea­sured on tra­di­tion­al KPIs. Tech is a use­ful tool to com­ple­ment the change in role.” 

Understand success 

Mea­sure­ment is no less vital in a post-pan­dem­ic envi­ron­ment, but retail­ers need to recog­nise that the way they met­ric suc­cess must fun­da­men­tal­ly change to meet the new con­di­tions. 

“We have to look at dif­fer­ent ways of mea­sur­ing peo­ple in store. We’ve changed our whole incen­tivi­sa­tion away from in-store sales and made it about the over­all omnichan­nel. It’s hard to quan­ti­fy. Look­ing at the halo effect of a store is the most impor­tant thing we can do,” Rigg says. 

While it’s heart­en­ing to hear that the role of the store may be evolv­ing, it is still very much beloved by busi­ness own­ers and cus­tomers alike. But even if com­pa­nies are more relaxed about where the sale ulti­mate­ly takes place, that phys­i­cal pres­ence is a cost, and it must wash its face, finan­cial­ly speak­ing. “At the end of the day stores still have to con­tribute,” But­ter­wick says. “Store con­tri­bu­tion and the pow­er of brand comes through peo­ple and man­agers and how inno­v­a­tive they are.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it cegid.com